10 Signs a Church May Be Trying Too Hard to Be Hipster

I especially like the one about the age of leadership—I think the Bible calls them “elders” for a reason. Points about CCM are well taken as well—just like “God’s Not Dead 2” proves the need for Christians to really study filmmaking so they can make something decent, too much CCM proves that Christians really need to study music as it is, not just pop music of the past 30 years. For that matter, if CCM artists could do pop of the past 30 years credibly, that would be a nice improvement.

When recorded music first became available, the challenge was to make the recording sound like the live performance. (We’ll never know how great Caruso sounded in person.) With the introduction of more technology, the challenge now is to make live performance sound the the product of the studio. Some pop performers don’t even try; thus they lip sync. Some of the new church musicians try to duplicate the recorded sound in congregational settings and fail. Extended musical bridges, “crooked” rhythms, multiple key changes, and quirky transitions lead to congregations who become an audience rather than participants. (Note: the average church attender is not listening to CCM all week long.)

[Ron Bean]

When recorded music first became available, the challenge was to make the recording sound like the live performance. (We’ll never know how great Caruso sounded in person.) With the introduction of more technology, the challenge now is to make live performance sound the the product of the studio. Some pop performers don’t even try; thus they lip sync. Some of the new church musicians try to duplicate the recorded sound in congregational settings and fail. Extended musical bridges, “crooked” rhythms, multiple key changes, and quirky transitions lead to congregations who become an audience rather than participants. (Note: the average church attender is not listening to CCM all week long.)

What Ron says, especially in bold. If music is, as I believe Scripture indicates (1 Cor. 14, etc..) supposed to impart the Word of God in poetic/lyric form to believers, playing a lot of “performance” tricks like Ron mentions is going to work against this. I personally dislike “medleys” for the same reason—it amounts to “changing the subject” every 30 seconds or so. (worship for those with ADHD?) And on a related note, I once saw a CCM performer live that I’d listened to on tape (yeah this was a while back), and while I hated his work on tape, the concert wasn’t half bad because….he couldn’t afford to take his band with him, and thus the “fluff” was gone. Just cleaned up an awful lot of mess that someone had put in there.

I’m all for using modern instruments, rhythms, and the like in the church, but people on both sides of the “music wars” really need to remember what we’re trying to accomplish here. Not everything done in showbiz will help to impart the message we’re trying to send. One possible gut check for the music pastor; is most of the congregation singing? If not, you’ve got to ask whether the genre/music/lyrics/skill/etc.. simply aren’t up to snuff. And of course, adding more laser light shows isn’t the solution.

[Bert Perry]

One possible gut check for the music pastor; is most of the congregation singing? If not, you’ve got to ask whether the genre/music/lyrics/skill/etc.. simply aren’t up to snuff.

I’m not sure that gut check could be relied on, at least in our local church. There are some people (a lot) that simply are not going to sing no matter what type of music/song you are singing. When I look across our congregation as we sing, the ones that are singing are typically the ones that have a closer personal relationship with Christ…and it really doesn’t matter the style of music that we are singing because the praise of God is just bursting from them (our style runs from old hymns to new Getty/Sovereign Grace type songs). That is a result of their heart condition and not their musical preference. This doesn’t mean that those that aren’t singing do not have a close/continual relationship with Christ though.

Ricky, point well taken—I’ve just seen enough cases where it seemed to work that it merits a bit of thought. Not that a lack of acceptance ought to be a show-stopper, but it just might indicate cases where the congregation knows something is wrong, even if they can’t quite put it in words what they don’t like about it. It might also indicate that the music leader ought to branch out in the genre he likes—some like the oldest hymns (>200 years old), some the 19th century hymns, some the camp meeting songs, etc.. I’ve seen very nice responses to bluegrass and black gospel myself.

But to avoid this becoming “just a music thread” (sorry, y’all!), there is a lot of good in comment #1 about the church’s name, #4 on social media presence, #6 on being self-consciously “real” (in other words, fake), #7 on being self-consciously casual (in other words, fake and fashionable), #8 on being self-consciously buzzwordy (in other words, fake), #9 on being self-consciously “different” (just like everyone else; in other words, fake), and other signs of being….just plain fake.

As the article says, just be yourself. OK, repent if your natural persona is “sinful jerk” and see where that goes, of course, but beyond that, be yourself. It just comes across a lot better. Most people can spot a fake a hundred miles away.