The Only Way To Play Christian Music...

Is there such a thing as Christian music? This is one of the questions that was posed on the Journeymen Podcast this week.

I personally don’t think that music should be labeled Christian. People are Christians. Christians make up the church. Christians play music and worship God. The music itself does not have the power to follow Christ, but it is the writers and singers of that music that follow Him. As I mention on the podcast, there are a lot of people who would listen to Christian music if it didn’t have the label “Christian music”. The point of being a Christian is to make disciples. The point of making music as a band is to have as many people as possible listen to your music. As a Christian in a band, wouldn’t your goal be to make as many disciples through your music? I get it that there are Christian bands out there doing this, but just imagine how many more people would hear their message if there wasn’t this Christian music stigma that is ingrained in the minds of so many.

I remember some conversations with friends when I was growing up about bands that were once on Christian record labels that signed with secular labels. My friends would complain about how those bands sold out for money and were forgetting why they were making music in the first place. That always annoyed me. So what if they made more money by signing with a main stream record label. By doing so, their music is being heard by way more people than would ever hear them on a Christian label. If I were in their shoes, I would have done the same thing.

Another issue that I share with Bryan McCabe with music being labeled as Christian is that most people think of adult contemporary music when they hear “Christian music”. There are a lot of Christians out there making music in other genres that don’t get the recognition on radio stations like K-LOVE because they don’t fit their nice little mold of what Christian music should sound like. Christian music is not a genre. In my opinion, it is music made by Christians.