God, Mammon, and the Worship Wars
If you’ve been to a church at any time in the past 30 years, you have no doubt been subjected to the “worship wars.” Contemporary vs. Traditional. Modern vs. Postmodern. Those on the traditional side say the conflict is ultimately a matter of theology. Those on the contemporary side say it is ultimately a matter of relevance.I’ve got my own opinions about this question, and - just for the record - I’m a traditionalist when it comes to matters of worship. When I hear people talk about relevance, I want to ask: “Relevant to whom?” Any attempt at relevance is by definition an exclusionary activity. In other words, attempts to be culturally relevant to a teenager are exclusionary for an elderly widow. The Body of Christ should be about bringing the teenager and the grandmother together, not driving them apart. Corporate worship should be about what is universal to us all, not about what is unique to the few.
But whatever side you are on in this issue, all can agree that something unprecedented has taken place in our churches over the past 30 years. For nearly 500 years, since the Reformation, Protestant worship - at least — has remained more or less the same. Up until 30 years ago, with only incremental changes and modifications, we sang many of the same hymns, recited many of the same creeds, and made many of the same confessions as Calvin, Luther, and Wesley. But about 30 years ago a radical transformation occurred, and that transformation can be summarized in by two words: contemporary worship.
Why did this happen? How could it be that after hundreds of years, the way we worship could be transformed in a generation? Did a bunch of theologians get together and decide that the new way was more biblically sound? Did we try it in a few places and discover that it was more effective at disciple-making? No. It happened because of money, and most evangelicals don’t even know it.
To understand this, consider that when a congregation sings Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” no money changes hands. But when that same congregation sings “God of Wonders,” written by Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd, both men - and their music publishing company, get a small payday. Why is that? Because “A Mighty Fortress” is in the public domain, but “God of Wonders” is owned by them and both they and their publishers have an economic self interest in seeing that these songs are sung and played in churches around the country.
This phenomenon of Sunday morning worship becoming not a day of praise, but a day of pay, is a recent one. It can be traced to an organization called Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). CCLI collects fees from churches and then pays the copyright holders - keeping a percentage for itself, of course. The size of the copyright fee depends on the size of the church, but a 500-member church would pay about $300 per year. Currently, approximately 140,000 churches are CCLI license holders. That means that $40- to $50-million per year is collected and re-distributed to copyright owners.
And this large and growing number is just one part of a growing CCLI empire. CCLI also allows churches to pay additional fees to use movie clips as sermon illustrations.
It’s no coincidence that the CCLI’s founding in 1984 corresponds more or less with the beginning of explosive growth in the contemporary Christian music industry, and with the growth of worship music in particular. CCLI provided the “third leg” of the stool for Christian music promoters. The growth of Christian radio provided a way to introduce new material to the market, the churches themselves started using the music in their services, and CCLI allowed the promoters to get paid by the churches who used them.
Contrast this with the “old” method. Hymn books contain songs that are mostly in the public domain and have little or no licensing fees. They have historically been published by denominational publishers who make them available to congregations more or less at cost. They were not aggressively marketed or promoted because they are typically denominationally specific, reflecting the doctrine and liturgy of a particular church. But that is a key point: the hymnals are informed by and reinforce the theology of the church. Said plainly, hymnals are discipleship tools.
Contemporary worship songs, on the other hand, are a revenue stream for copyright holders and music publishers. Now, I have no problem with writers getting paid for their work. I am, after all, a writer myself. “The workman is worthy of his hire,” as scripture says. But this revenue stream not only pays the writers, but it funds the aggressive promotion of these songs to the church. Indeed, “praise and worship” music now make up a significant share of the $4.5-billion Christian retail market.
Indeed, no matter which side you are on in these “worship wars,” both sides can agree on one more fact: for the most part, the traditionalists have lost this fight, at least in the evangelical church. Virtually every one of the churches on “Outreach” magazine’s annual list of the largest and fastest growing churches in America is a church that has one or more so-called “contemporary” services. Indeed, most of these churches have no traditional services at all.
And that fact highlights the real tragedy: the triumph of Mammon over sound theology in the modern evangelical church.