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2014 City Church, Tallahassee, Blurring the Lines of Sacred and Secular Katelyn Medic
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COLLEGE OF MUSIC
CITY CHURCH, TALLAHASSEE: BLURRING THE LINES OF SACRED AND SECULAR
By
KATELYN MEDIC
A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music
Degree Awarded: Spring Semester 2014
Katelyn Medic defended this thesis on April 11, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were:
Margaret Jackson Professor Directing Thesis
Sarah Eyerly Committee Member
Michael McVicar Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! (Psalm 100:1–2, ESV)
I thank the leaders and members of City Church for allowing me to observe their worship practices. Their enthusiasm for worship has enriched this experience. I also thank the mentorship of the members of my committee, Margaret Jackson, Sarah Eyerly, and
Michael McVicar.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi
ABSTRACT ...... vii
INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Time to Rehearse ...... 1 City Church & The Southern Baptist Convention ...... 1 Significance: Guiding Concerns ...... 4 Background ...... 5 The Sacred and the Secular ...... 7 Popular Music ...... 8 Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) ...... 9 Review of the Literature ...... 10 Theoretical Framework ...... 15 Methodology ...... 18 Structure of Thesis ...... 19
CHAPTER ONE: A Brief Historical Overview of Musical Styles Connected to the Contemporary Evangelical Church in the United States Since the 1960s ...... 21 “Jesus Music” of the 1960s/70s: Phil Keaggy ...... 22 The Emergence of Evangelical Megachurches in the 1980s ...... 24 Contemporary Worship Music of the 1980s & Early ‘90s: Amy Grant ...... 26 Modern Worship of the Late 1990s/Early 2000s: Switchfoot ...... 29 The Hillsong Invasion ...... 32 Blended Worship of Today: Sufjan Stevens ...... 33
CHAPTER TWO: City Church’s Backstage Theology ...... 37 The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) ...... 39 City Church’s Connection to the SBC ...... 41
CHAPTER THREE: City Church’s Front Stage Hipness ...... 49 City Church’s Social Setting ...... 51 The Café ...... 53 City Church’s Rock Atmosphere ...... 56 “Walk the Line” ...... 59 Congregants’ Worship Experience ...... 64 Conclusion ...... 69
CHAPTER FOUR: “Blurred Lines:” City Church and the Broader Evangelical Imaginary ...... 71
APPENDICES ...... 81 A. Artists’ Discographies ...... 81 B. Watt’s Hymn “Joy To The World” ...... 84 C. IRB Approval Memorandum ...... 85
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D. Adult Informed Consent Form ...... 86
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 88
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 95
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: The back entrance to City Church inside the mall...... 37
Figure 3.1: Pastor Dean Inserra preaching at City Church...... 50
Figure 3.2: The front entrance of City Church at the Tallahassee Mall in Tallahassee, FL...... 51
Figure 3.3: City Church members gathering over coffee before the Sunday morning service. ...53
Figure 3.4: City Church’s sanctuary...... 57
Figure 3.5: The tech crew working during a church service...... 58
Figure 3.6: The worship band playing during a Sunday church service at City Church...... 58
Figure 3.7: Worship band leader Todd Doss (right) and singer Giana Hall (left) perform P!nk’s “Just Give Me a Reason” (2012) as the opening song for Sunday worship at City Church...... 61
Figure 3.8: The City Church congregation standing during a worship song. The right side of the picture shows an adult baptismal fount...... 64
Figure 3.9: Front view of the worship band singing during a CCM song. The three projector screens display the song texts for the members of the worship band...... 66
Figure 3.10: An excerpt from the CCM song “Rooftops” by the band Jesus Culture...... 66
Figure 3.11: Lyrics from the CCM song “Whom Shall I Fear [God of Angel Armies]” by Chris Tomlin...... 66
Figure 4.1: Picture taken from sermon series title advertisement displayed at City Church on the projector screens...... 71
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ABSTRACT
In this thesis I investigate the negotiations of sacred and secular practices among City Church participants in Tallahassee, Florida. City Church is a contemporary evangelical church associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. It uses both contemporary Christian music (CCM) and popular music, or music not originally designed for religious devotion, for worship during its weekly Sunday services. I explore how this community, whose members are connected by participation in common worship practices (explored here as an “evangelical imaginary”), uses its shared aesthetic interests (expressed through choices of music, media, dress, and architecture) to create meaning in the performance of these practices. How does City Church musically define what is sacred when using popular music that employs secular messages? This investigation seeks to understand the ways City Church members construct meaning behind their aesthetic practices, use secular song to reinforce Church ideology, and define what is sacred when using popular music that employs secular messages. I use ethnographic methods such as narrative field notes, interviews, and audio and visual recording to investigate how music and place shape City
Church worship experiences. My hope is to contribute to the discourse surrounding the increasingly blurred divide between sacred and secular musical practices in present-day Christian evangelical communities.
Chapter one is devoted to the blur between secular and sacred notions of music within the historical arc of the evangelical community and CCM. I address the ways City Church members use music to negotiate belonging in the broader evangelical community while simultaneously distancing themselves from negative perceptions of rigid social conservatism associated with fundamentalist Christians in chapter two. Chapter three’s focus is the ways musical practices
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allow City Church to manage the impressions it displays on its front stage. I conclude with how my observations connect to the broad evangelical world and its future of hip worship practices.
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INTRODUCTION
Time to Rehearse
I parked my car outside the empty Tallahassee Mall parking lot and walked into City Church’s main entrance. The time was 4:30am. As I entered the worship space, a group of musicians all wearing jeans and t-shirts quickly walked on stage. They all looked wired as they clutched their coffees.
Action music immediately blared over the loud speakers while a slide that stated,
“Rebels,” flashed on the middle screen on stage. Then Todd, the Church’s worship leader, started up Twisted Sister’s “We’re not Gonna Take It.” As the band performed, Todd bounced around stage like a lead singer from a rock band while colored lights swirled around the auditorium. He then spoke into the microphone and said, “Dude I don’t know if it’s the new sound system, but my guitar sounds amazing right now.”
Another song immediately followed. The sounds coming from the stage were loud and muddy, and the instruments overpowered the voices so that the texts were not audible.
Periodically, I could hear the word “God” interjected over the loudspeaker at choreographed moments. During this song, the house lights dimmed and the screens flashed City Church-related ads. As the band played, I could feel vibrations in my chest. My ears were ringing.
Once the dress rehearsal concluded, the normal lights came back on and the tech crew cued up the song, “Diamonds” by Rihanna for exit music. I wobbled out of the auditorium dazed and confused. Did I just attend church or a rock concert?
City Church & The Southern Baptist Convention
Established in 2007, City Church is a contemporary evangelical church located in the
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Tallahassee Mall in Tallahassee, Florida.1 It is associated with the Florida Baptist Association
(FBA), a consortium of Southern Baptist churches located in the Franklin, Jefferson, Leon, and
Wakulla counties of the Florida panhandle.2 It is also connected to the Southern Baptist
Convention (SBC), a Protestant evangelical denomination.3 Although City Church is affiliated with the SBC, its leadership is careful to note the Church’s autonomy while distancing it from negative public perceptions of the Southern Baptist Convention’s social conservatism.
City Church’s mission is “reaching a lost generation by communicating an everlasting truth in an ever-changing culture” (City Church). Now breaching one thousand attendees and over a thirty-member staff, it has moved from “The Warehouse,” to Leon County High School auditorium, and now to its current shopping mall location. The Church’s mission states,
City Church aggressively reaches out to people who are far from God. Rather than run from culture, we have chosen to harness it to connect with people and show them God’s timeless truths. Although our approach is anything but traditional, we believe in and maintain a conservative theological position (City Church).
The phrase, “run from culture,” refers to contemporary secular culture. It indicates that the
Church desires to be in the world but not of the world.4 Its mission is to spread the Christian gospel to residents of Tallahassee by contemporary means such as meeting in a mall, wearing casual clothes and playing rock music in church, practices typically associated with middleclass,
1 It was originally named “The Well.” 2 For more information about the FBA, visit
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white adolescents and young adults.
The majority of time in the Sunday service is devoted to making and/or listening to music.
City Church incorporates a variety of musics, including recently published contemporary
Christian music (CCM), traditional Protestant hymns, and latter twentieth century secular songs circulated through radio, television, and internet. Hymns, such as “Come Thou Fount of Every
Blessing” and “Amazing Grace,” and CCM are used as communal worship songs before and after the sermon. In the case of contemporary Christian music, songs are often taught to the congregation by the full City Church rock band so that the entire Church may sing them together later in the service. Secular songs are performed and listened to in the Church’s Café area, as the congregation is entering the worship space, during the “Need to Know” or welcoming video, and as the members exit the space. These secular tunes both lure people into the worship space and are then are transformed into an evangelical product that binds the CCM musical experience.
The Church’s rock band plays a central role in each worship service. Todd Doss, the worship leader, leads a group of thirty rotating volunteer musicians. The Sunday worship band includes three vocalists, an acoustic guitarist, electric guitarist, bassist, drummer, and a keyboardist. Most of the volunteers are members of the church and work in the greater
Tallahassee area.
The rock concert atmosphere of each worship service is enhanced by advanced-stage production techniques. The tech crew, led by production director Alex Scott, enhances the music by operating a variety of colored stage lights, loud speakers, and a smoke machine. In-house graphic designs (such as videos and musical text) are also incorporated into the worship experience. Moving images, such as shooting stars and nebulous figures, appear behind the musical text. They are displayed on three big screen projectors in the auditorium. The two outer
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screens display sung text and Scripture quotes while the middle screen projects members of the band performing and/or the pastor preaching his sermon. These production values enhance the musical experience at City Church.
Growing up in predominately liturgical church settings (United Methodist, Serbian
Orthodox, and Anglican) I practiced chant, sung liturgy, and hymns during services. My exposure to praise band or popular Christian music within a congregational setting was minimal.
Unless playing in a church’s praise band, I struggled to participate as a community member in contemporary worship and felt isolated and confused when the music was playing, distracted by both the projector screens and the praise group. Many Christians, especially in my generation, have used praise music as a viable form of musical worship. While popular Christian music is a practical genre for Sunday service settings, I believe many praise bands struggle to find a balance between performance and communal worship within these contemporary settings. My experiences at City Church exposed me to radical new ways of conceiving worship music by employing popular music within a worship service. These new ways of worship have fueled my investigation as to how City Church defines its own practices of Christian worship.
Significance: Guiding Concerns
A defining marker of City Church ideology is that Christians should maintain consistent behaviors both in and out of church. As a result, the Church treats Sunday as just another day of the week. This notion also allows Christians to communally worship in spaces not originally created for sacred worship practices such as a shopping mall, an idea that I will explore in greater detail in chapter three. During my observations and interactions with Church members I understand that in the members’ lived experience there is no blurring (between the secular and sacred), but what they perceive is that other churches have reinforced the divide that need not
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exist. City Church is trying to break those walls down. As I understand this attempt, City Church has to continually blur the divide between the sacred and mundane, a practice that extends to the
Church’s use of popular music that employs secular messages during worship services.
Throughout this thesis I investigate the ways City Church reinforces this temporal (the notion of
Sunday) and spatial (the worship space) continuum through the blending of sacred and secular musical practices that I term sæcular.
Background
There is much debate surrounding the term “evangelical Christianity” because it contains a broad range of meanings. The word “evangelical” has its roots in Greek etymology, meaning “of good news” or “related to the Gospel.” The early Greek Church fathers used this term in direct reference to the Gospel. The use originated in the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, when it referred to the works of Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin. During this period it was synonymous with the term “Protestant.”5 “Evangelical” now refers to Christian denominations stemming from the Protestant Reformation.
For my purposes, I will use an understanding of the term “evangelical” that developed from the fundamentalist and modernist’s split from the early 1900s. Since that time, “evangelical” has come to refer to Christians who a) believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, and b) have a mandate to spread the Christian gospel. Roger Olsen contextualizes this, stating:
5 Roger E. Olson writes, “The architects of the union consciously chose to incorporate the word evangelical into the name of the new denomination in order to state publicly that it would be gospel-centered in the Lutheran sense of proclaiming the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith” (2007, 9).
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Evangelicalism is a loose affiliation (coalition, network, mosaic, patchwork, family) of most Protestant Christians of many orthodox (Trinitarian) denominations and independent churches and parachurch organizations that affirm a supernatural worldview; the unsurpassable authority of the Bible for all matters of faith and religious practice; Jesus Christ as unique Lord, God, and Savior; the fallenness of humanity and salvation provided by Jesus Christ through his suffering, death, resurrection; the necessity of personal repentance and faith (conversion) for full salvation; the importance of a devotional life and growth in holiness and discipleship; the urgency of gospel evangelism and social transformation; and the return of Jesus Christ to judge the world and establish the final, full rule and reign of God (2007, 14–5).6
City Church is an evangelical community that employs contemporary cultural elements such as popular music to connect and evangelize to non-Christians. I will explore the urgency of gospel evangelism and social transformation among the participants of City Church throughout this thesis.
Ethnomusicologist Monique Ingalls augments Olson’s theological definition of evangelicalism in her dissertation, “Awesome in this Place: Sound, Space, and Identity in
Contemporary North American Evangelical Worship” (2008). Drawing upon the ways Benedict
Anderson and Charles Taylor have theorized imagined communities as “both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson 1983, 6) with a “widely shared sense of legitimacy” (Taylor 2004, 17),
Ingalls treats the notion of community in evangelicalism as an “evangelical imaginary.”7 The
6 Olson writes, “One often hears or reads the adjective evangelical used by journalists to describe anyone or any group that seems particularly (by the journalist’s standards) enthusiastic, aggressive, fanatical, or even simply missionary-minded” (2007, 13). Larry Eskridge also provides a pithy twenty-first century definition for the term evangelicalism that highlights four hallmarks of the evangelical religion: “conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; Biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and ‘crucicentrism,’ a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross” (1996). These aspects relate to part of Olsen’s definition concerning “the urgency of gospel evangelism and social transformation” (2007, 14). Evangelicalism is an active social transformation movement, stressing the gospel, and specifically the notion of crucicentrism. 7 Anderson’s reasons for the ‘imagined’ are based upon characteristics of limitedness, sovereignty, and community. The nation is limited because no nation envisions itself having the
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idea of an evangelical imaginary is described as an imagined community whose members are connected by participation in shared practices such as meeting in a mall, wearing casual clothes and playing rock music in church (2008, 11–12). This term sets up the importance of music as a shared cultural product and producer among churchgoers.
The Sacred and the Secular
Sacred and secular are used in this thesis as spatial metaphors. While “secular” is a contested term, I use it to refer to everything that is nonreligious, especially the public sphere. My collaborators at City Church collectively work these categories out in a way that seems to match
Durkheim’s model of the division between the sacred and the profane and his model works for my purposes in this investigation. Durkheim observes:
All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present a common quality: they presuppose a classification of things—the real or ideal things that men represent for themselves—into two classes, two opposite kinds, generally designated by two distinct terms, effectively translated by the words profane and sacred. This division of a world into two domains the one containing and that is sacred and the other all that is profane is the distinctive trait that is religious thought. The beliefs, myths, doctrines, dogmas, and legends are either representations or systems of representations, which express the nature of sacred things, the virtues and powers which are attributed to them, or their relations with each other and with profane things (2008, 36).
The sacred is referring to a product of people coming together, saying that they will mark this as
“sacred” and this as “profane,” or in these purposes of my thesis, “secular.”
same boundaries with mankind; it is sovereign because it was born out of the Enlightenment and Revolution period(s); and it is community because it is also conceived as a horizontal fraternity (1983, 7). Taylor’s definition of such a community draws heavily upon Anderson’s definition. In this text, Modern Social Imaginaries (2004), Taylor defines social imaginary as “a common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy” (2004, 17). Similar to Anderson’s notion of imagined communities, Taylor’s social imaginary can refer to the shared comprehensions of the evangelical community.
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Popular Music
Using the term “popular music” is challenging because it contains a broad range of meanings.
Music making within a City Church worship service falls broadly under the category of what members consider popular music. According to musicologist Richard Middleton, popular music
“has no permanent musical characteristics or social connections; rather, the term refers to a socio-musical space always in some sense subaltern, but with contents that are contested and subject to historical mutation” (2013, 1).8 Assessing popular music practices depends on the broader social contexts in which the music is embedded and entails an appraisal of both musical and socio-economic components. In his book, Understanding Popular Music (2001), sociologist
Roy Shuker writes, “Essentially, all popular music consists of a hybrid of musical traditions, styles, and influences, and is also an economic product which is invested with ideological significance by many of its consumers” (2001,7). Popular music is then influenced by cultural identity, historical change, geographic location, and on the audiences defining it.9 It simply depends on the context and the audiences determining it.
In this thesis, I refer to popular music as music that is not originally created for Christian worship and that is currently circulated to a broad audience through mass media for
8 The term “popular” is indicated by “internal distinctions and hierarchies, add[ing] that the criteria for these are often drawn from neighboring musical categories (notions of aesthetic value from art discourses, for example)” (Middleton 2013, 1). Sociologist Roy Shuker also defines main terms and concepts used in popular music in his book Popular Music: The Key Concepts (2002). 9 Sociologist Keith Negus also stresses the idea that human experiences are grounded in cultural activities in his book Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction (1996). Ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino additionally suggests that different types of societies and cultural groups have varied systems of worth and social priorities in his text Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (2008).
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entertainment purposes.10 Popular music, as viewed by City Church congregants, is secular music that is disseminated by local popular music radios stations, Spotify, and Facebook. An important musical and cultural information source to which City Church members often refer is the nationally broadcast radio station HOT 104.9, which plays the United States’ most popular and current songs based upon surveys of Facebook users. In personal interviews, City Church congregants referenced this station as an important arbiter of relevant trends in popular culture in the United States.
Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)
City Church members are also consumers of contemporary Christian music (CCM), which combines instrumentation rooted in the traditional rock band (a drum set, electric guitars, and a keyboard) with texts directly referencing and/or quoting the Christian Gospel. Practically, CCM is music created for commercial use, usually geared toward youths by incorporating Christian- themed imagery into popular music instrumentation. Members engage with CCM primarily through K-LOVE, a national radio station whose mission is “to create compelling media that inspires and encourages you to have a meaningful relationship with Christ” (K-LOVE).
The CCM industry focuses on genres such as gospel, contemporary, and alternative
Christian music.11 Its lyrical dimension, rather than the music as a whole, differentiates it from other popular musics. For a song to be categorized as a CCM piece, the lyrics must be Christian- themed. In an encyclopedic survey of CCM and artists from the 1960s to 2002, Mark Allan
Powell appraises CCM as “music that appeals to self-identified fans of contemporary Christian
10 Aspects of mass media include aural and visual communication on a large scale of production and dissemination. 11 This market was first introduced in the 1960s during the Jesus Movement.
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music on account of a perceived connection to what they regard as Christianity” (2002, 13). I will explore the nature and history of this market and its Christian symbolism in chapter one.
City Church leaders base their song repertoire upon a) what the leaders want to hear and b) by congregation members’ feedback on songs used in the service. In a personal interview, production director Alex Scott explained that City Church tries to emulate a Hillsong-style performance aesthetic for its Sunday services. Hillsong Music is a popular company that produces CCM, sponsored by the Pentacostal megachurch of the same name in Sydney,
Australia.12 Hillsong style consists of playing Hillsong’s music for worship as well as copying certain instrumental interludes as seen on YouTube excerpts of Hillsong performances. It also means using an instrumental setup consisting of guitars, vocals, and drums, similar to a traditional rock band, as a significant element in CCM. This combination of sonic elements yields a musical product that is attractive to a City Church congregation whose tastes are shaped by Hillsong-style songs.
Review of the Literature
In trying to understand the Church’s creation of a sæcular environment, I investigated City
Church’s practiced evangelical theology, its social interactions, and the ways churchgoers perform their own understandings of “hipness” as important markers of City Church belonging.
Music making plays a significant role in these processes. In using CCM, popular music, and traditional hymnody, Church members imbue their musical practices with symbolic meaning.
My investigation drew upon scholarship devoted to a historical understanding of the CCM movement. Since the Church uses both CCM and popular music, I explored how this shared
12 To learn more about this church visit
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aesthetic interest is defined and practiced by City Church to create meaning in the performance of common worship practices. Scholarly investigations that have informed my ideas include: histories of contemporary Christian music and the CCM industry, the integration of CCM in popular culture in developing religious identity, and Manuel A. Vásquez’s materialist framework.
Manuel A. Vásquez’s discussion of the relationship between religion and embodiment, and more specifically religious bodies as social artifacts in his text More Than Belief: A
Materialist Theory of Religion (2011), informed my understanding of City Church’s practiced theology.13 He focused on how religion is practiced on a daily basis.14 Instead of first observing a religious group’s theology to understand how a group’s practices are created, Vásquez suggested using a materialist framework that examines how a religious group’s activities and ways of behavior inform its theology.15 His framework reflected my own understanding of Olson’s definition of evangelicalism and of observations of City Church’s mandate to spread the
Christian gospel by creating a church environment that appeals to a youthful culture such as the
13 For further reading, see Vásquez’s discussion on Thomas Csordas’ construction of cultural phenomenology of embodiment in “The Phenomenology of Embodiment and the Study of Religion” (2011, 113–17). 14 Vásquez seeks to facilitate discussion about “the fashioning and control of religious bodies, the constrained creativity involved in the emergence of hybrid religious identities, the relations of domination and resistance that mediate the formation of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the practices that make possible the creation of spaces of livelihood, which often dovetail with sacred landscapes, the ways in which religion enters physical and virtual flows and networks, including the global mass media and the Internet, and the close interplay between popular culture, and consumer capitalism” (2011, 3). 15 Other books that discuss a theoretical framework of religion are: (1) Robert A. Orsi’s The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies (2011) and (2) Thomas A. Tweed’s Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (2006). Works that investigate the relationship between CCM and evangelicalism are William David Romanowski’s dissertation on evangelizing the youth by using CCM music, titled Rock’n’religion: A Sociocultural Analysis of the Contemporary Christian Music Industry (1990); and Trevor C. Williams’ discussion on media technology used in evangelical churches in his thesis, “A Changing Worship Experience: The Emergence of Media Technology and Contemporary Worship in an Evangelical Church” (2008). Also, Colleen McDannell investigates the relationship between religion and mass consumption in her book, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (1995).
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mall meeting space, playing popular music, and dressing casually. According to Pastor Dean
Inserra, Sunday at City Church should be experienced just as any other day of the week. So listening to popular music in the car should also be allowed in church, a practice that reflects a literal interpretation of scripture, specifically John 4: 19–26.16
City Church’s current musical practices are an outgrowth of early Christian evangelical youth culture and the CCM industry movement that began in the 1960s.17 Historian Paul Boyer investigated this movement’s integration, reception, and cultural role within the greater United
States’ twentieth-century secular history (2013, 30). Boyer argued that evangelicalism and the wider United States secular culture have deeply influenced each other. Certain evangelical industries that embody contemporary culture are CCM and Christian bookstore industries. Some
Christian businesses that have filtered into the larger secular culture are Chick-fil-A, Hobby
Lobby, and Hallmark Card’s purchase of DaySpring, a Christian greeting card business.
While Boyer provided an overview of evangelicalism’s diversity in its political and cultural manifestations, Eileen Luhr elaborated on publications geared towards an evangelical youth readership (2013, 52). Luhr observed the structural change and personal conversion of
16 John 4:19–26 (ESV) states, “The [Samaritan] woman said to him, ‘Sir I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am he.’“ 17 The nineteenth century, specifically the Second Great Awakening, also contained evangelical waves in the United States. Reverend Charles Finney was a significant leader of the evangelical revival movement in the northeast. This movement also highlights social activism in terms of the abolition of slavery. For further reading, Laurence Moore details the commercial aspects of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century evangelicalism in his text, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (1994).
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young believers during the 1960s through the Campus Life and Hollywood Free Paper publications. Both Luhr and Boyer articulated the complex relationship between evangelicalism and the greater United States contemporary culture starting in the 1960s. They also emphasized the importance of the 1960s Jesus movement in attracting youths to evangelical Christianity.
Their descriptions affirmed my understanding of City Church as a contemporary evangelical church whose mission is to appeal to youth by blurring secular youth culture in music, media, dress, and architecture choices.
A growing body of scholarship focuses on the multi-billion dollar CCM industry and the ways CCM circulates through media conduits to influence evangelical youth cultures.18 Shaun
Horton wrote about the history of the CCM industry in his thesis, Redemptive Media: The
Professionalization of the Contemporary Christian Music Industry (2007). He specifically explored the commercialization, professionalization, and industrial growth of CCM in the United
States. Horton argued that CCM has become integrated with the secular music industry even though evangelicals attempt to articulate distinctions between CCM and non-CCM. Similarly,
Joshua Busman focused on music in religious practice and mass media and technology. Busman investigated the construction of the musical genre label “praise and worship” in his conference paper, “Worship Under Erasure: David Crowder Band and the Problem of Evangelical
‘Performance’” (2013). He observed the public performances of the David Crowder Band, a
CCM band most popular during the early twenty-first century. The performance elements (such
18 Some additional texts include: Heather Hendershot’s chapter, titled “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? Christian Music and the Secular Marketplace,” in her book Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture (2004); Jay R. Howard’s and John M. Streck’s Apostles of Rock: The Splintered World of Contemporary Christian Music (1999), detailing CCM’s relationship to the larger popular culture and; David Stowe’s No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (2011).
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as sound, lighting, and instrumentation) the band uses contributes to the constructed idea of the
“praise and worship” genre, a musical category for songs that are used to worship God. City
Church uses “praise and worship” strategies popularized by the David Crowder Band to engage its congregation members and continues to innovate this environment by incorporating sæcular practices of both the sacred and secular worlds.
Music journalists have also assessed the growing influence of contemporary Christian music practices since the early 1960s. Spin journalist, Andrew Beaujon focused on the relationship between the evangelical youth culture and mainstream Christian rock bands, such as
P.O.D. and Switchfoot, in his book, Body Piercing Saved My Life (2006). In his text, Beaujon attended and observed Christian music festivals such as Cornerstone Festival. He also interviewed musicians who were associated with playing Christian-themed music while attracting a fan base from both secular and Christian backgrounds. Some artists he interviewed are David Bazan, the founder of the band Pedro the Lion, and Mute Math. Beaujon’s text is the closest monograph I could find concerning artists whose musical works are mixed with sæcular musical practices. While Beaujon focused on CCM’s reception into mainstream popular music, I focused on popular music’s reception in City Church, specifically how the Church uses popular music to attract both Christians and non-Christians to attend Sunday services.
Additional scholarship addresses the use of contemporary Christian music in worship settings. In her dissertation, Monique Ingalls investigated contemporary worship music (CWM), illustrating how sounds and performance spaces influence North American evangelical Christian identities (2008). She explored how the musical repertory informs an “evangelical imaginary”— a contemporary understanding of a shared notion of evangelicalism within the local and
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translocal19 religious group(s) (2008, vi). While Ingalls tackled CWM’s contemporary role in the identity of evangelical imaginaries, I investigated the gap between sacred and secular notions of music within a congregational setting.
Theoretical Framework
Christian cultures have been mixing sacred texts with secular sounds for a millennia. Martin
Luther is well known for setting sacred text to familiar tunes of his day.20 CCM is a continuation of this practice; City Church, however, represents an anomaly. Rather than wedding sacred and secular musical compositions together, the Church incorporates popular music artifacts into its worship. These artifacts are untouched, meaning the worship team does not reorchestrate or set different text to these tunes. They are symbols of contemporary and nonreligious culture, while hipness functions as demonstrating how young, culturally relevant, and democratic City Church is in its creation of a worship service.
This thesis augments current investigations into the role of CCM within evangelical congregations and a broader public. My main investigation is how City Church musically constructs what is sacred by using popular music’s secular lyrics to reinforce the Church’s messages. By examining both secular and sacred aspects used in common worship practices I will illustrate how members are defining the space and culture of City Church. My framework explores popular religion, interaction rituals, and hipness as key aspects of self-performance.
City Church’s congregation is comprised mostly of middleclass, white, young adults
(about 18–35 years of age). Thomas E. Bergler’s “juvenilization,” or “the process by which the
19Relating this term to Ingalls’ dissertation, she applies “translocal” to mean communities that gather for special events such as concerts and conferences within the evangelical world. 20 Other early composers who set religious text to secular tunes include: Guillaume Dufay’s Missa L’homme armé, set to a secular French tune during the Renaissance period, and in the eighteenth century, Bach’s “Passion” chorale is based on Hans Leo Hassler’s secular love tune, “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret.”
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religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages” (2012, 4) echoes my understanding of how City Church employs youth-based characteristics as part of its sæcular practices in drawing attendants to City
Church. The leaders employ worship aesthetics that attract this age range such as meeting in a mall, playing contemporary popular music, dressing casually, and providing an overall concert experience complete with loud speakers, colored lights, and a smoke machine.
Hipness is a living sensibility for City Church members and manifests itself within their worship practices. Members of the Church do not use “hip” as a well-defined category, rather, they use both “hip” and its similar term “cool” to describe elements of City Church, such as the sæcular productions values, songs, and pastor’s self presentation on the pulpit, that are culturally current. Both Sarah Thornton’s discourse on club cultures as hip subcultures (Thornton 1996) and Phil Ford’s notion of hipness as a living sensibility (Ford 2013, 13) contribute to my understanding of how City Church’s identity informs the listener’s and performer’s notions of what is secular and sacred.21 Drawing from Pierre Bourdieu’s work, Thornton discusses the notion of club cultures in terms of attitudes and ideologies of subculture insiders and participants.22 To be hip is to be in the know about insider information not distributed by the mass media (1996, 6). Similarly, Ford defines hipness as a “high-denomination currency in the
21 Similarly, Rupa Hug investigated a series of musically-centered global youth cultures including hip-hop, electronic dance music, and bhangra to illustrate ideas of youth culture in his book, Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World (2006). Also, a study that focused on how marketplace cultures facilitate communal consumption to subcultures and brand communities in “Learning to be Tribal: Facilitating the Formation of Consumer Tribes,” (2013) written by Christina Goulding, Avi Shankar, and Robin Canniford. 22 She explains the values and hierarchies of club cultures, consulting French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s work, titled Distinction (1984). In his text Bourdieu writes about his term cultural capital, meaning information that is gathered through upbringing and education, in terms of influencing social status (1996, 10). Thornton’s investigation operates within Bourdieu’s system of thought to observe the artifact of hipness.
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economy of symbolic exchange, something that Sarah Thornton calls subcultural capital” (2013,
12–3). Rather than privileging the notion of hipness as an artifact (as Thornton and Bourdieu treat it), Ford considers hipness as a living sensibility. With this in mind, hipness is an integral element of sæcular practices in City Church.
Drawing upon Ford’s notion of hipness as a process and using Ingalls’ “evangelical imaginary” as a group whose youth members are connected by participation in shared hip sæcular practices, I view City Church as a type of hip evangelical imaginary. The Church’s use of hipness is centered on being culturally relevant to both members and outsiders through the use of sæcular practices, meaning, the Church differs from traditional notions of “church” by using markers of contemporary mainstream culture to demonstrate its cultural relevance to members.
Whereas traditional, conservative Protestant notions of church include the use of hymns, Sunday formal dress, and a white building with a steeple, City Church plays popular music, dresses casually, and meets in a mall department store.
During my observations at City Church, I was consistently drawn to members’ outward, public performances of worship. In order to theoretically understand the idea of performance, I have turned to scholars who focus on public performativity. Erving Goffman considers the individual’s belief in one’s reality in his book The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life (1959).23
Similar to a theatrical performance, social interactions contain a “front” region where the “actors,” or individuals, are on stage facing an audience (2004, 61).24 The “back” stage is a more private
23 Goffman insisted that everyday interactions are ritually based (1959). 24 Leo Tolstoy explains the relationship between communication and emotions in his entry “Art as the communication of feeling: From what is art?” He explains that art is a verb that joins persons together under a mutual emotion, writing, “To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art” (Tolstoy 1989, 58). Art is a means of uniting individuals in
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performance space revealed to close friends and family. The audience defines these front presentations in a general and fixed way so they can understand intersubjectivity. I refer to these types of performances using Goffman’s term “front,” the region where individuals display their performance of ritual and worship to those around them at City Church. One example of a front performance is the band’s public execution of worship songs on stage, facing the congregation.
These front elements include but are not limited to the members’ dress, position on stage, and the instruments they play. The band’s front presentation of worship is the Church congregation’s general image of how they should worship.
I also find Randall Collins’ discussion of social organization useful in my theoretical understanding of the social performativity within the Sunday services. Collins uses an analytical model of Durkheim, Mead, and Goffman, using Goffman’s term, “interaction rituals,” as his preferred method of understanding social situations in his book, Interaction Ritual Chains (2004).
He argues that IR theory is an analytical model used to examine elements of ritual practice, all of which generate varying degrees of emotional energy (2004, 372). Some interaction rituals observed at City Church are group conversations held at the Café before the service, within the service itself, and post-service made amongst various Church social groups. The emotional energy they create serves as a central motivating force for group members. Emotional energy manifests itself both physically and psychologically, acting as a power status indicator for an individual within a group. I employ Collins’ notion of emotional energy to identify how members hierarchically situate themselves within communal settings at City Church. The leaders
one feeling. Music, first performed by the musician’s “front,” is the linking verb uniting individuals under one emotion. More specifically, Goffman identifies a “personal front,” referring to a person’s identity. Some components of a personal front include: insignia of high office or rank clothing; sex, age, and racial features; size and appearance; posture; speech patterns; facial expressions; and bodily gestures (2004, 62–3).
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participating in the service itself generate a dominant emotional energy because they are situated on stage and their voices are amplified over the congregation. Their emotional energy influences how sæcular practices are performed in a public worship setting.
Methodology
I used ethnographic methods to understand the relationship between sæcular practices and City
Church members. I also observed musically related activities such as Sunday services and weekly worship band rehearsals as part of my investigation of sæcular practices. The church’s emphasis on lyrics aligning with its theological beliefs, performance of new songs (within this past decade), and occasional use of a secular song within the services are all features that contribute to the blurring of secular and sacred notions of music and church. I took narrative field notes of my observations of Sunday worship and related events such as ensemble rehearsals and special events. I observed both leaders conducting the services and the audience members’ reception of the services. Photography and audio recording devices were used during these times to provide additional perspective. In addition to these observational techniques, I conducted interviews with leaders and members of City Church. Using these techniques, I believe, was the most appropriate way to observe the environment of City Church.
Structure of Thesis
Throughout this thesis I will discuss notions of sæcular practices over the course of four chapters.
In chapter one I will investigate the blur between secular and sacred notions of music within the historical arc of the evangelical community and CCM. The survey will start with the folk tunes that stemmed from the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and end with the today’s
Christian music. I discuss the importance of lyrics in chapter two as it relates to Goffman’s front stage and a backstage performance area to generate what Collins refers to as emotional energy
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between congregants. This will be explored by observing City Church’s song selection process.
In chapter three, I will focus on the performance of songs used in Sunday services. Elements I consider in this chapter will be: the building, lighting, stage layout, display of text, and dress and body language of both the worship leaders and the congregation members. In chapter four I conclude my observation by placing City Church’s methods within the broader evangelical world.
By focusing on these elements connected to the lyrics and the performance, I illustrate music’s role in the process of negotiating elements of secular and sacredness within a religious setting.
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CHAPTER ONE
A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF MUSICAL STYLES CONNECTED TO THE CONTEMPORARY EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE THE 1960s
Protestant churches have been combining sacred texts with secular music for hundreds of years.
Early Catholic traditions, for instance, often re-texted secular tunes with sacred words in an attempt to better connect the everyday lives of congregants with the spiritual practices of the church. Since the 1950s, contemporary Christian musical styles changed to maintain their relevance and appeal to current audiences.
As I began my research at City Church I quickly realized how little I knew about contemporary Christian music. I would feverishly write down band names, songs, and other facts that were considered common knowledge in various contemporary church communities. In an effort to quickly familiarize myself with this genre, I consulted various literatures and would often probe conversations about this musical genre with contemporary Christian music listeners.
I wanted to first know what is contemporary Christian music and secondly how City Church’s musical worship fits in this genre as well as how it further evolves it. My purpose in this chapter is to chronologically survey the last fifty years of musical styles connected to the contemporary evangelical church in the United States to illustrate how City Church’s worship practices are part of this historical continuum of joining sacred text with secular music. I highlight certain artists whose work exemplifies popular musical worship styles throughout the last five decades and who connect to both Christian and mainstream consumers by record label associations, fan bases, and musical genres.25 This survey will show how worship styles have changed while maintaining conservative notions of the Christian gospel within the lyrics, and will also describe how City
25 To view each artist’s discography, see appendix A.
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Church participates in the continuation of certain worship styles.26
“Jesus Music” of the 1960s & ‘70s: Phil Keaggy
The 1960s and early ‘70s embodied a seminal period for white evangelicalism in the United
States, a time when the movement was moving away from pre-World War II fundamentalist militancy.27 Significant political changes were also happening during this time such as the sexual revolution, Progressive Era (pro-ERA) activism, the legalization of abortion, and the elimination of prayer in schools. Many historians specifically mark the year 1976 as the “Year of the
Evangelical,” the emergence of conservative Christian politicking, where President Jimmy Carter, a born-again Baptist, came to office (Stowe 2011, 5).28 Media Studies scholar, Heather
Hendershot writes, “Carter was an avowed born-again, but to the disappointment of his conservative Christian supporters, he turned out to be something of a liberal in sheep’s clothing.
Just having a born-again in the White House, however, helped to get evangelicals onto the popular culture map” (2004, 27). Having a practicing evangelical in office contributed to the encouragement of contemporary evangelicals creating their own countercultural environment, reacting to the political changes in mainstream culture.
The “Jesus Movement” or “Jesus People Movement” was a revival that fueled the growth of evangelical Christianity. This movement was significant to CCM because it adopted separate sets of styles in dress, language, music, and alternative institutions. One example of this
26 City Church’s unique worship practices will be explored later in this thesis, specifically, when members describe the importance of lyrical content (expressing theological consistency) for a valuable worship experience. 27 Although there is a larger discussion over this period illustrating the shift from prewar fundamentalism to the new Christian Right, my purpose for briefly mentioning this shift is to introduce and give context to “Jesus Music.” 28 Pollster George Gallup Jr. made the phrase, “Year of the Evangelical,” famous. Other celebrities who contributed to the public exposure of evangelicalism were Chuck Colson’s publication of Born Again, and Bob Dylan’s public coverage of his born-again experience into Christianity.
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outgrowth is the start of publications geared towards an evangelical youth readership such as
Campus Life and Hollywood Free Paper (Luhr 2013, 63). Musically, the success of two
Christian-based rock musicals, Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar of the early 1970s also created a space in some United States areas in popular culture to talk about Jesus, God, and other spiritual matters. Although this movement contributed to reorienting American society, politics, and religious culture, I will focus on the use of Jesus music as an outgrowth of this new counterculture.
“Jesus Music” combined a rock and/or folk instrumentation with lyrics focusing on the love and peace of God.29 It was used to evangelize the Christian gospel by employing culturally relevant musical styles to appeal to “unbelievers,” or people who had little to no exposure to church music. The lyrics were based on contemporizing biblical stories, by putting the stories in the hip idiom of pop music (Ellwood 1973, 64). This integration of sacred lyrics and popular instrumentation made way for a wider range of musicians (from both secular and Christian realms) to participate in the Jesus Movement.
Among these was folk singer and guitarist Philip “Phil” Keaggy (b. 1951).30 His music has appealed to both secular and Christian audiences for the past thirty years and contributed to the growth of the CCM industry in the early 1970s. His first solo album, What a Day (1973), is an example of Jesus Music because he combines contemporary, popular music of the 1960s/’70s with lyrics about God. His band is made up of an acoustic guitar, vocals, drum set, piano, and electric guitar. The song “What a day” is about coming home to Heaven to see the Lord and his disciples.
29 Duane Pederson is credited with coining the terms “Jesus People” and “Jesus Movement.” “Jesus Music” is a byproduct of these terms. Pederson was the founding editor of the Hollywood Free Paper (1969–1975), a publication focusing on issues connected to the Jesus Movement. 30 Examples of some other high profile mainstream musicians of this era are Bob Dylan and the group Peter, Paul, and Mary.
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The first verse and chorus are set to an upbeat rhythm in a major key while Keaggy sings,
When I get home I will see all The holy men I read about. Peter and John, James, Luke, and Paul And brother Tom without a doubt. And I do believe there will be King David at the harp A song of praise with every chord. What a sight to see, the redeemed and The angels gathered round worshiping the Lord. What a day that will be Oh what a day that will be!
Similar to pop tunes on the radio, Keaggy’s song contains a repetitive chorus and a narrow tessitura, making it easy for a congregation to learn and sing. This emphasis on musical simplicity and ease of transmission is still apparent in the ways CCM is employed in contemporary worship contexts. City Church specifically uses CCM songs that contain these elements so their congregation can learn the songs quickly and easily. Keaggy’s Christian-theme lyrics set to rock style instrumentation appealed to young evangelicals of the Jesus Movement because of the incorporation of contemporary styles with Christian-themed lyrics. His musical success also contributed to the emerging Jesus Music or Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) industry.
The Emergence of Evangelical Megachurches in the 1980s
The music of Keaggy and his contemporaries heralded a 1980s demand for more Christian-based products such as clothing, music, and books and ushered in a new generation of CCM artists.
The popularity of these artists coincided with evangelical megachurches in the 1980s.
Hendershot writes, “The Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 70s created a new demographic— hippie Christians (or ‘Jesus freaks’)—and T-shirts, key chains, bumper stickers, jewelry, and
Bibles were all specialty marketed to this crowd” (2004, 21). This emerging industry promised evangelicals consumption without being “worldly,” or becoming a secular, nonreligious-based
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consumer. As this industry grew so did church congregations, specifically in suburban areas of the United States. To plan for high volumes of attendees, churches would build large multi- purpose facilities within the suburbs to accommodate new traditions and their target audience: white, middleclass suburbanites in the United States.31 These churches became known as megachurches.
A feature of megachurches is the impetus to attract the largest base of people possible to their services. One technique of attracting large audiences is through seeker methods such as creating culturally relevant sermons by connecting Scripture to daily living scenarios of going to work or spending time with family. The questions that the leaders asked themselves throughout this seeker service process is reflected in the essay of Robert Haight, “Where We Dwell In
Common” (2005), where scholar Mary Hinton highlights five questions geared toward churches practicing this method:
1. What is the nature and purpose of the church? 2. What is the institutional or organizational structure of the church? 3. Who are the members of the church? 4. What are the activities of the church? 5. What is the relationship between the church and the world? (Hinton 2011, 46)
The above questions are part of a “seeker” service technique, where church gatherings are designed to attract outsiders or non-churched persons, usually creating a common and familiar environment.
City Church is a contemporary manifestation of a megachurch and employs these seeker service techniques. One way that they do this is by congregating in an abandoned department store. According to City Church leaders, un-churched people feel more
31 Some well-known megachurches who employ this framework are: (1) Willow Creek in the Chicago area, (2) Mars Hill in the Seattle, WA area, and (3) Harvest Church in Riverside and Orange County, CA.
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comfortable entering into the Church’s doors at the mall because this location is where both
Christians and non-Christians go for consumer needs. Another example of a seeker technique is when Pastor Inserra of City Church opens his sermons with a pop culture story from the news. Since pop culture news is disseminated to a wide audience, both Christians and non-
Christians know what he is talking about as well as understanding the connection between pop culture stories of today and what biblical messages he focuses on during services. Overall, both megachurches of the 1980s and City Church strive to evangelize to a large audience by first relating the current culture to Scripture by using “seeker” service techniques. CCM is also used to evangelize to non-Christians and to facilitate worship for Christians in church services.
Contemporary Worship Music of the 1980s & Early ‘90s: Amy Grant
Musically, the emergence of megachurches coincided with significant changes in CCM styles during the same decade and then moving into the 1990s as well as with the explicit commercialization of the genre. Jesus music was now referred to as contemporary worship music
(CWM), redesigned to fit the present-day nature of churches in the 1980s.32 Ingalls writes,
While praise songs of the Jesus Movement had used rock- and folk-style musical settings to signal their alliance with youth culture’s opposition to what they regarded as stale or co-opted tradition, in the 1980s, praise and worship recording and publishing corporations began to espouse a more conservative musical style, setting new praise and worship songs to orchestral and adult contemporary styles (2008, 94).
As the evangelical youth of the 1960s and ‘70s got older, CCM made changes to Christian music by marketing to more adult audiences. The contemporary elements included synthesizers and light percussion integrated with keyboard-led ensembles and bright vocals to reach more
32 Throughout most of the 1980s, however, worship music and CCM were considered distinct entities with separate publishers and systems of distribution. One significant contribution to this distinction was the industry split in Maranatha! Music, which was one of the largest CCM labels and publishers in the United States.
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conservative audiences who had reservations about intentions behind the Jesus Movement’s rock- and folk-styled settings.33 One artist whose music exemplified the CWM or praise music style of this era is Amy Grant.
Amy Grant (b. 1960) is an American gospel and pop singer who is most known for popularizing CCM in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. She has sold over 30 million albums and won six Grammys®. Her website review describes her as, “an American music icon who has erased lines between genres and earned the respect of fans and peers with her honesty, vulnerability and ceaseless creativity” (“Amy Grant” 2013). By having a successful musical career in both
Christian and secular pop genres, Grant is one artist during the 1980s and ‘90s who bridges the divide between Christian and secular genres by arranging her spiritual lyrics to pop ballads.
Grant’s iTunes biography markets her in the following way:
She [Grant] achieved this breakthrough for CCM and for herself by forging a pop/rock sound that matched the production values, and often aped the styles, of pop/rock, and by writing lyrics that often were ambiguous in their meaning, sounding to Christian music fans like appeals to God and to more general pop fans like love songs. She also matched the staging of rock concerts in her shows, which often played in venues more typical of secular performances than religious ones. And her music videos, which emphasized her photogenic appearance, were on a par with those of pop stars (“Amy Grant” 2013).
All of Grant’s music, production values, and stage presence gained credibility in both the CCM and pop culture worlds.
Grant’s sixth album, Age to Age (1982), was her first significant record to appeal to both
33 Major Christian publishing companies—such as Maranatha! Music, Integrity, and Vineyard— also adopted this new ideology of incorporating contemporary elements with spiritual lyrics. These organizations also held seminars geared towards worship leaders and musicians to teach them how to better incorporate new styles into congregational settings.
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secular and Christian audiences.34 The songs are arranged in a performance ballad, containing piano, drum set, and a string orchestra accompanying Grant’s cheerful voice.35 Songs like “In a
Little While,” written by Grant, Brown Bannister, Gary Chapman, and Shane Keister, contain lyrics that describe today’s circumstances with Christian overtones, as seen below,
Got a ticket coming home, Wish the officer had known What a day today has been. Then I stumbled through the door, Dropping junk mail on the floor. When will this day end? . . .
In a little while, We’ll be with the Father; Can’t you see Him smile? (Ooooooh....) In a little while, We’ll be home forever, In a while.... We’re just here to learn to love Him; We’ll be home in just a little while.
Grant sings of everyday complaints such as getting a speeding ticket and junk mail. The
Christian allusions, however, are found in the chorus: “In a little while, we’ll be with the
Father; can’t you see Him smile?” Grant’s chorus reminds the listener that tiresome trials of daily living are trivial compared to what life will be like with God in heaven.36 iTunes’ album
34 Age to Age (1982) was Grant’s first record to go platinum, winning the Grammy® Award for Best Gospel Performance and the Gospel Music Association Award for Best Pop/Contemporary Album. 35Like most of Grant’s music, the lyrics to her songs were co-written by Grant and other productions members. For this album, Age to Age, “El–Shaddai,” written by Michael Card and John Thompson, was named Gospel Song of the Year. Grant’s upbeat musical style was well matched to singing the lyrics. 36 Although the lyrics do not point to a specific verse, verses that are similar to this notion of wanting to be in heaven are: 1) Philippians 1: 21–23 “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for this is far better” (ESV) and; 2) Philippians 3:20–21 “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a
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review refers Grant’s lyrical style as “Christian lite,” meaning the lyrics describe a personal relationship with God but they can also refer to an earthly father or even an idealized boyfriend (“Amy Grant” 2013). In this song, God is treated like a friend rather than a feared or revered being apart from this world. The concept of “Christian lite” puts the focus on the person and less on God. The upbeat tempo and simple rhythms that accompany the colloquial language creates a feel-good relationship between the person and God. This style was used to evangelize to non-Christians while facilitating worship for Christians in church services.
Modern Worship of the Late 1990s/Early 2000s: Switchfoot
By the 1990s Protestant, evangelical churches’ use of Christian lite music was palpable. In an effort to appeal to a wider audience (young, old, Christian, non-Christian, etc.), many churches hosted two different kinds of Sunday worship services: 1) the traditional service, where the congregation sang hymns accompanied by a piano or organ and leaders would dress in clerical robes or; 2) the contemporary service, where both leaders and congregation wore casual clothes and sang CCM tunes accompanied by a praise band. By the 1990s evangelical churches were fully engaged in “worship wars,” the battle between practicing traditional services and contemporary ones. This distinction between services contributed to new social organizations within churches. For example, the traditional service attracted older adults and families because it began at an earlier time and in tandem with Sunday school for children.
This audience also preferred singing hymns that they grew up singing. The contemporary service appealed to more young adults because it had a later start time and both leaders and congregation members could attend in casual clothing (jeans, t-shirts, etc.). The music was also reflective of what a younger audience listened to outside of church.
Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (ESV).
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As churches battled balancing contemporary and traditional worship styles, the CCM industry once again began to market a new kind of worship. “Modern worship” music incorporates elements of alternative rock.37 Both genres use a distorted guitar sound, transgressive or boundary-imposing lyrics, and artists portraying a nonchalant or defiant attitude. Modern worship usually contains an electric guitar-infused rock ballad, accompanied by typical rock band instrumentation (electric, acoustic, and bass guitar, keyboard, and percussion). While CCM of the 1980s and ‘90s marketed a more Christian-lite style with acoustic-based instruments and synthesizers, worship music of the late 1990s and early 2000s was more “edgier” or electric guitar-rock driven. City Church currently uses this musical setup to attract youth-based audiences to worship. This form of youth-driven music of the ‘90s is best exemplified in the band Switchfoot.38
Switchfoot is a rock band that started in the CCM industry in 1996, signing a contract with Sparrow Records.39 After gaining recognition in the film, A Walk to Remember (2002),
Switchfoot made a definitive crossover to popular music when they signed a contract with
37 I understand that the phrase “alternative rock” is a broad-based term with a complex history. For the purposes of my paper, I refer to “alternative rock” as a genre of guitar-lead rock music that challenges the status quo or mainstream culture in areas such as attitude, dress, lyrics, and musical sounds. 38 Other well-known Christian rock artists during this time were bands such as Creed, Relient K, and The Fray. 39 The group first started as a trio with Jon Foreman (vocals and guitar), Tim Foreman (bass and vocals), and Chad Butler (drummer); and then added Jerome Fontamillas (multi-instrumentalist) for the album Learning To Breathe (2000); and Drew Shirley (lead guitar) for the Nothing Is Sound (2005) album. After Switchfoot signed a record deal with the label Re:Think, Re:Think was bought out buy by Sparrow Records, a CCM recording company. As a result, Switchfoot’s first two albums, Legend of Chin (1997) and New Way to Be Human (1999), were marketed heavily towards Christian listeners. Their third album, Learning to Breathe (2000) was considered more alternative rock (rather than exclusive CCM) to album reviewers. This album was nominated for a Grammy® for Best Rock Gospel Album.
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Columbia Records for their album, The Beautiful Letdown (2003).40 This album blended the band’s Christian faith with the contemporary rock sounds of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The Beautiful Letdown (2003) was Switchfoot’s official shift from a band identified with an exclusive CCM label to a more mainstream rock band. This change was visually emphasized by how the band was marketed through album art. The album’s cover art illustrates the style of
“modern worship,” where the artists display nonchalant or defiant attitudes and incorporate images of an electric guitar. The front cover shows a guitar lying at the bottom of a pool next to a drain.41 This image represents the guitar-led sound of modern worship. The font of the text, “Switchfoot, the Beautiful Letdown,” looks like graffiti against the rusting wall, creating an edgy image to the band’s name. Similar to the dress code and performance presentation at
City Church, the members of Switchfoot also portray a sense of youthful hipness by wearing jeans and t-shirts and playing rock instruments.
The back cover of the album shows images of the four band members sitting on top of the pool’s edge. The four men are wearing jeans and styled long hair behind a setting sun.
Their posture appears to evoke a “cool,” or fashionably hip stance. They are informally seated on the pool’s wall in relaxed postures (crossing arms, putting their feet up, and leaning on
40 As far as I know, there was no public controversy about the switch from producing music geared to CCM consumers to more mainstream audiences. In fact, Beautiful Letdown gained some much popularity that it is considered double platinum, selling 2.6 million copies shortly after its release. 41 In an interview with the website, “Jesus freak Hideout,” Jon Foreman talks about the scene of the cover art, saying, “The guitar is my guitar. I bought it at a pawnshop in like North Dakota for thirty bones and the original idea was we were going to break it in half and put it at the bottom of the pool. Well, actually, we were going to light it on fire, but the place wouldn’t let us light things on fire, so we were going to break it in half. But then I got too attached to it. As I was playing it, I was like “I can’t break this in half!” So we ended up just throwing it at the bottom of the pool. It was in North L.A. Probably North Hollywood. I don’t know exactly the location. It was a sketchy hotel where people rented rooms for months, y’know? It was a weird place, but it had a cool looking pool!” (Jesus Freak Hideout).
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their arms for support), conveying confidence in their appearance. Overall, the album art sends an edgy rock performance message to a broad-based audience. City Church congregants and leaders echo these visual elements and coded behaviors (in terms of clothing and physical stance), an issue I will explore further in chapters two and three.
The Hillsong Invasion
An additional stream of influence that one can detect in contemporary CCM and in City Church is hillsong style. Hillsong Music is a popular company that produces CCM, sponsored by the
Pentacostal megachurch of the same name in Sydney, Australia.42 This organization is so big that the word “Hillsong” may refer to any of the following: Hillsong Church, Hillsong Conference,
Hillsong Global Project, Hillsong International Leadership College, Hillsong Music Australia,
Hillsong United, and Hillsong United (band). The sub-organizations of Hillsong allow this industry to disseminate their production model in a myriad of Christian-based avenues. Journalist
Chris Price comments on the organization in his article “Australian Idolatry: Evangelical
Christians Resurrecting the Music Industry,” writing,
Needless to say, any church funded by a ‘dynamic music label’, as its promotional materials describe it, is foursquare in the realms of ‘non- traditional’ financing models. But Hillsong is no traditional church. It is ministry with marketing strategies and corporate visions, communion by focus group, where clergy are CEOs and pastors head up ‘creative teams’. Services take place in ‘state-of-the-art worship centres’, in which chancel is jettisoned for multimedia ministry and preaching by PowerPoint (2011).
Hillsong identifies itself as a church while running its organization(s) using various marketing strategies. As a result, Hillsong has influenced many churches all over the world. Specifically,
Hillsong’s music is frequently circulated on Christian radio stations and many churches use those
42 To learn more about this church visit
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songs in their worship, creating a style known as “hillsong style” worship.
Hillsong practice consists of playing Hillsong’s music for worship as well as copying certain instrumental interludes as seen on YouTube excerpts of Hillsong performances. It also means using an instrumental setup consisting of guitars, vocals, and drums, similar to a rock band like Switchfoot, a significant element in CCM. This combination of sonic elements yields a musical product that is attractive to a City Church congregation whose tastes are shaped by
Hillsong-style songs.
Blended Worship of Today: Sufjan Stevens
As we have examined the emergence of Jesus Music in the 1960s and ‘70s, co-emergence of megachurches and Christian lite music of the 1980s, the alternative rock styles of groups like
Switchfoot in the 1990s, and the shifts that these have wrought in Protestant, evangelical worship services, it is worth noting that another style of contemporary CCM has emerged. The works of Sufjan Stevens best exemplifies “blended worship,” where both styles (traditional and nontraditional) of worship are used within one service. Ingalls describes the various blend options, writing,
Blended worship also took a variety of forms, ranging from the incorporation of praise songs into the church’s “traditional” musical-social organization (e.g. where new worship songs would be accompanied by organist, pianist, or choir); to the contemporary musical treatment of both praise and worship songs and hymns; or to musical dichotomization within the same service, in which traditional songs were performed in the church’s “traditional” musical style using conventional instrumental arrangements while contemporary songs were performed in a contemporary style to the accompaniment of a contemporary musical ensemble (2008, 113).
This technique aims to appease all members, who either like praise music or traditional hymns, within one service. City Church also uses this practice by using CCM, traditional hymns, and popular music all set to a rock-based instrumentation. By mixing musical genres, the Church
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does not need to produce two separate worship services (a contemporary and a traditional service). Broadly, this blended worship style can also be illustrated in the compositions and performances of Sufjan Stevens.
Sufjan Stevens (b. 1975) is an artist whose work straddles the divide between secular and sacred notions of music by blurring aspects of contemporary Christian music and popular music.
He is a Brooklyn-based indie pop singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has gained public recognition by fans from both secular and sacred backgrounds by singing about broad
Christian themes and arranging his lyrics to seemingly unorthodox instrumentation and presentation. iTunes classifies his music as “alternative,” indicating that his music does not deal directly within Christian themes compared to music labeled under “Christian & Gospel.”43
Stevens mixes autobiography, religious text, and regional history for lyrical content.44 With this in mind, music can be a product of its contemporary social and material environment. I will focus on how Stevens blends both the traditional church hymn text “Joy to the World” with his own instrumentation in his version of the song from his compilation Songs For Christmas (2006).
The hymn “Joy to the World” (see appendix B) was written by Isaac Watts (1674–1748), and arranged by Lowell Mason (1792–1872). Stevens’ version of “Joy To The World” is more subdued in tempo and accompaniment than the standard versions heard in many Protestant churches. Stevens (melody) and a female voice (harmony) sing the carol in unison, and are occasionally accompanied by other voices in canon. The two voices are the only instruments
43 Seven Swans (2004) was his first album to focus its lyrics on spiritual themes. Titles such as “He Woke Me Up Again” and “The Transfiguration” directly illustrate his claims of Christianity. His later work, Songs For Christmas (2006), embarks on a likewise theological journey while departing from familiar notions of sacred and popular music. 44 Similarly, musicologist Jonathan Dueck also investigates the borrowing practices of Mennonite hymns. In his examination, Dueck argues that “the most characteristic musical activities are acts not of ‘invention,’ but of historically situated cobbling together, of fabrication from the music materials we have at hand in a particular place and time” (2013, 26).
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singing the original melody. This arrangement might preserve the sacredness of the text and original tune through vocal performance—a traditional mode for worshipping the Lord.45 The accompanying instruments provide the secular elements: an acoustic guitar, two electric guitars, and sleigh bells. During the introduction, conclusion, and interludes, the instruments take over the melody and play a variation of the tune. When the instruments accompany the voices, they do not overpower the sung text, but rather provide a timbral whisper underneath it. The murmuring ostinatos played by the acoustic guitar provide a fluid line rather than an upbeat-oriented pulse that usually drives the carol. Even though the song is sung in a major key, the soft dynamic evokes a more calming mood rather than a loud and joyful praise. Stevens’ work is one example of the blended worship style currently used in many churches. Similar to Stevens’ work, City
Church blends hymn text with rock instrumentation while incorporating traditional hymnody,
CCM, and popular music within one service, practices I will explore in-depth in subsequent chapters. Nevertheless both Stevens and City Church blend sacred Christian themes with contemporary sounds to appeal to their audiences.
Throughout the last fifty years worship music in the evangelical church has evolved to match the contemporary interests of congregations. By briefly overviewing CCM for the past fifty years, we can see how this genre has evolved and begin to compare and contrast City
Church’s worship practices against these musical genres. Through the emergence of “Jesus
45 The song’s text is derived from Psalm 98, stating, “Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord! Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the people with equity” (Psalm 98: 5–9). “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!” (Psalm 95:1); “Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous thing!” (Psalm 98:1); and “ . . . addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart . . .” (Ephesians 5:19) are some verses where God commands his people to praise him with singing. (All quotes above are taken from the ESV translations.)
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Music” of the 1960s and ‘70s, Christian lite music of the 1980s, modern worship in the 1990s and early 2000s, and today’s blended worship style, we see an increased emphasis on rock instrumentation, secular tunes, informal dress, advanced marketing, and the development of a sophisticated music industry surrounding CCM music. City Church is part of this musical evolution by using rock instrumentation and playing CCM that sounds like contemporary popular music. It also is a body that incorporates a lot of these practices, while representing an anomaly. In an effort to subvert the typical “church” environment the Church is choosing to incorporate secular music and text wholesale. This demonstrates how young, culturally relevant, and democratic City Church is in its creation of a worship service. After reviewing CCM’s history this anomaly is possibly an emerging tradition within the CCM. In the following chapters
I will detail how the Church is both participating in traditional notions of church while creating new ways of conceiving worship by using popular music within its services.
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CHAPTER TWO
CITY CHURCH’S BACKSTAGE THEOLOGY
Figure 2.1. The back entrance to City Church inside the mall.
The main entrance of City Church is a storefront in the Tallahassee Mall (see figure 2.1). The above sign displays the words “City Church” in blue and green. Just like walking to different areas (such as perfume, makeup, and clothing) in a store, the Church has signs labeling different stations within its walls. I meander around the space using the tiled walking path—left behind from the previous store—as my guide to various station fronts. I was immediately drawn to the
“free coffee” as advertised at the “Café.” The café seating has a mixture of black leather couches and recycled blue diner tables and chairs for leisurely sipping coffee and visiting with friends. All the walls are painted in bright blues and oranges. A little way down the path, the
“Giving Kiosks” area displays two Mac desktops on high tables accompanied by barstools.
Likewise, the “Guest Services” sections are made up of long wooden tables displaying iPads and signs that read “Free T-Shirts” and “Free Bibles.” Near the end of my church-store walking tour I found a giant red barn façade. A sign above the barn read “City Church Kids.” I peered
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in through the entrance and could see a row of old checkout counters. These counters used to check out material goods but now they check in kids for Sunday school.
As I walked around the church’s space, I noticed elements that were missing. If City
Church is a church, then where are the crosses, images of Christ, and the pulpit? As I investigated further, I also found no indication of a denominational affiliation. What is City
Church?
Although City Church is an autonomous community of worshipers, it is also connected to the broader evangelical Christian community through both its theology and worship practices. In particular, its relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention presents City Church members with points of affinity and tension that challenge them to present their own beliefs in ways that will be in line ideologically with the contemporary conservative Christian movement while appealing socially to a young, local demographic.
In the previous chapter I overviewed a brief history of contemporary Christian music so the reader may be familiar with this genre and subculture to understand how City Church is related to this subculture. While City Church seems to be pioneering popular music used inside church services, it also holds on to religious conservatism in its association with the Southern
Baptist Convention. In this chapter, I will address the ways City Church members use music to negotiate belonging in the broader evangelical community while simultaneously distancing themselves from negative perceptions of rigid social conservatism associated with fundamentalist Christians. Erving Goffman’s dramaturgy model, with its analysis of an individual’s behavior as a performance projection of a chosen self, provides a useful framework through which to view this process. For Goffman, the physical world is a stage—the “front”
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stage—and individuals are seen as actors who present a show of their public selves.46 The “back” stage is a private, undisclosed space where an individual’s motivations are not readily apparent.
As City Church leaders and congregants choose worship music, they enact a variety of behaviors that fall into the front stage/backstage paradigm.
Throughout this thesis I investigate ways worship leaders use music to create excitement about City Church among members and potential members, telegraphing the community’s
“hipness” to younger worshipers. Drawing upon Goffman’s work, sociologist Randall Collins refers to this increased excitement as “emotional energy,” identifying it as the main motivating force in social life. This process is fraught with potential difficulties, however, as secular musics may telegraph a “worldliness” deemed unacceptable by more conservative factions of the evangelical community. Members and church leaders must continually negotiate between front stage behaviors that telegraph coolness and social tolerance and a backstage theology predicated on biblical literalism that may not appeal to the broader City Church community. It is this backstage realm that I will now work to illuminate.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)
City Church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a southern United States-based
Christian organization. Established in 1845, it is the world’s largest Baptist denomination and the biggest Protestant body in the United States. According to the SBC’s website, however, it uses the term “denomination” to loosely mean in support of “churches that practice believer’s baptism by immersion that have been ‘denominated’ by others and by themselves as Baptists for many
46This is the focus of chapter three.
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centuries” (The Southern Baptist Convention).47 Since this organization does not consider itself a true denomination, it does not unite local congregations into a single legal denominational body.
Each Baptist church is autonomous, or responsible for maintaining memberships, collecting offerings, hiring staff members, and making sure leaders are ordained. Individuals do not join the
SBC; instead, they become a member of a Southern Baptist church that cooperates with the SBC.
Both the SBC and City Church reinforce a “city on a hill” form of religious conservatism.
“City on a hill,” is an aspirational term for churches to lead by example according to the
Christian gospel.48 Church congregations who intend to portray an attitude of righteousness and religious piety to the world often use this phrase. The expectation is that these communities will not be negatively influenced by secular practices but that they will still remain connected with their local communities. When City Church holds its worship services in a mall department store, it is directly connected to the Tallahassee community while providing religious leadership mandated by evangelical practice.
We gain insight into how “righteousness” is conceived by both the SBC and City Church when we examine their common positions on homosexuality. This is reflected in the political nature of written statements and videoed sermons that one finds on both the SBC and City
Church websites respectively. For example, the SBC states that it does not support individuals who practice homosexuality, writing,
47 A “believer’s baptism” is a Christian practice of baptism where a person is baptized immediately after his or her verbal profession of faith in Jesus Christ and is then admitted into a local community of Christian faith. 48 English Puritan lawyer John Winthrop in his 1630 sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” coined this phrase. Winthrop gave this sermon aboard the ship Arbella, preparing the Puritan colonists, who would quickly establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to set a rightful example in their new settlement. He states, “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”
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We [the SBC] affirm God’s plan for marriage and sexual intimacy—one man, and one woman, for life. Homosexuality is not a ‘valid alternative lifestyle.’ The Bible condemns it as sin. It is not, however, unforgivable sin. The same redemption available to all sinners is available to homosexuals. They, too, may become new creations in Christ (The Southern Baptist Convention).
City Church’s approach is arguably subtler. Rather than adopting a formal position statement, messages about righteousness are embedded within sermons that are broadcast through the
Church’s website. These methods remain consistent as both groups support conservative sociopolitical issues including the condemnation of abortion and support for male leadership and female subordination within church and marital environments.49
City Church’s Connection to the SBC
According to City Church leaders, the Church is connected to the SBC in three ways: missionary sponsorship by the SBC, donation of a portion of tithes to the SBC, and use of the Holman
Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), the SBC’s official biblical translation that balances emotive nuance with biblical text.50 It employs an historical-grammatical method, an approach that emphasizes the biblical author’s intended meaning by analyzing the semantics and syntactical relationships of the words within the text while taking into account historical context.51 The use of the HCSB’s historical-grammatical translation supports the SBC’s and City Church’s religiously conservative positions and encourages readers to apply the text’s literal meaning directly to the contemporary world.
49 To view more details about the SBC’s positions, visit
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The ideological underpinning of both the SBC and City Church is the urgency of gospel evangelism and social transformation among church participants. As mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, I refer to Roger Olson’s definition of “evangelical” to mean a literal interpretation of Scripture and that Christians have a mandate to spread the Christian gospel.52
Inherent to this worldview is the imperative of conversion. City Church seeks to convert as many people as possible, specifically through the act of baptism. Furthermore, membership in the
Church is quantified through the number of adult baptisms performed by Church leaders.
Like the SBC, City Church reinforces notions of conservatism through musical selections.
Church leaders examine lyrics to contemporary Christian music (CCM) songs for elements reflective of City Church theology. In an interview with Todd Doss, the Church’s worship leader, he explained the song selection process:
Dean [City Church’s lead pastor] sends his sermons to me about two to three weeks in advance so [I have time to create] a connection to support everything Dean is preaching on that Sunday. There is a process that happens before these [worship] songs are selected. They go into Planning Center after they’ve been through a theological read-through. We read every song before it’s put in. We don’t just do it [play the song] because it’s popular or somebody suggested it and said it’s really cool.
Similar to a personal iTunes library, Planning Center is a computer program used to archive songs performed in a worship service. A “theological read-through” is when a staff member examines a song’s lyrics to ensure that it relates to the Church’s theological understandings
52 Olson writes, “Evangelicalism is a loose affiliation (coalition, network, mosaic, patchwork, family) of most Protestant Christians of many orthodox (Trinitarian) denominations and independent churches and parachurch organizations that affirm a supernatural worldview; the unsurpassable authority of the Bible for all matters of faith and religious practice; Jesus Christ as unique Lord, God, and Savior; the fallenness of humanity and salvation provided by Jesus Christ through his suffering, death, resurrection; the necessity of personal repentance and faith (conversion) for full salvation; the importance of a devotional life and growth in holiness and discipleship; the urgency of gospel evangelism and social transformation; and the return of Jesus Christ to judge the world and establish the final, full rule and reign of God” (2007, 14–5).
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(historical-grammatical translation) of Scripture. Songs must lyrically connect to the pastor’s sermon topic to maintain a consistent theme throughout the service.
When church leaders collectively check musical pieces to determine their suitability for worship, they are demonstrating sensitivity to the interplay between front stage and backstage behaviors. A consistent backstage theology, agreed upon collectively by Doss, Pastor Inserra, and other members of the Church’s staff, is the foundation that undergirds all musical selections displayed in City Church’s “front stage” performances. Moreover, they work to generate what
Randall Collins calls “emotional energy” through music that will heighten group solidarity through shared experience and worldview. Emotional energy is the by-product of the mutual focus on text (used throughout the service, including song lyrics and sermons) experienced by both leaders and congregants and is a crucial component of musical function in the City Church world.
Ultimately, the importance of emotional energy is to heighten the experience of group solidarity, something Randall Collins identifies as the primary good in social interaction (2004,
145). This emotional energy experience is continually ritualized in patterned social encounters that encourage participants to “develop a taste for more ritual solidarity of the same port, and are motived to repeat the [interaction ritual]” (2004, 149). According to Church leaders, when they repeatedly use songs whose lyrics directly refer to the Church’s backstage theology, their congregants will hopefully develop a mutual desire for theological consistency in communal worship due to this repeated ritual.
However, not every CCM song circulated through mass media is fit for use in church.
According to Doss, CCM songs must explicitly reference Christ’s death and resurrection for
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them to be appropriate City Church worship songs, an element that the SBC also finds important for supporting theological conservatism. Doss says,
We’ve actually turned down a lot of songs, theologically, because we just don’t know how they line up. One good song is called “How He Loves.”53 It’s a really popular song and it got to like number seven on Christian charts. . . . But there is a disconnect in the lyrics that is poetic and very artistic that most people would not be able to relate to. I’ll paraphrase some of the lyrics for you: He is jealous for me. Love’s like a hurricane. I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.54 So it’s very metaphorical, and it’s not explicitly true. The words that we sing in a lot of our songs there’s no contesting the value of the words we are speaking because it’s not metaphorical. I’m not making it up, you know like, “oh God sometimes when I am in your presence I feel the world spinning around me and everything is so warm and cuddly.” That’s not biblical. That may be the way I feel but its not explicitly gospel and I think that those are the things we try to shy away from because if it’s not actually telling you who Christ is, what He has done, who God is, then what is it [the song] serving?
If lyrics are too metaphorical, then the congregation will be at risk of not understanding how they connect to Scripture. Moreover, when using songs that portray inconsistent or vague lyrical theology, the Church runs a risk of generating little to no emotional energy, thereby thwarting the ritual that is needed to bind the congregation together.
The song, “In Christ Alone” (2001), a contemporary Christian hymn written by Keith
Getty and Stuart Townend, offers insight into the integral relationship between lyrics, theology, and emotional energy. Set to an Irish melody, this song is a Creedal piece where the hymn’s theme is the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The full text of the song is as follows:
53 “How He Loves” is a song written by CCM artist John Mark McMillan for his album, The Song Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down (2012). 54 An excerpt from the first verse of the song: He is jealous for me, Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree, Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy. When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory, and I realize just how beautiful You are, and how great Your affections are for me.
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In Christ alone my hope is found; He is my light, my strength, my song; This cornerstone, this solid ground, Firm through the fiercest drought and storm. What heights of love, what depths of peace, When fears are stilled, when striving cease! My comforter, my all in all— Here in the love of Christ I stand.
In Christ alone, Who took on flesh, Fullness of God in helpless babe! This gift of love and righteousness, Scorned by the ones He came to save. ‘Till on that cross as Jesus dies, The wrath of God was satisfied; For ev’ry sin on Him was laid— Here in the death of Christ I live.
There in the ground His body lay, Light of the world by darkness slain; Then bursting forth in glorious day, Up from the grave He rose again! And as He stands in victory, Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me; For I am His and He is mine— Bought with the precious blood of Christ.
No guilt in life, no fear in death— This is the pow’r of Christ in me’ From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny. No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man, Can ever pluck me from His hand; Till He returns or calls me home— Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.
Similar to the Nicene or Apostle’s Creed, “In Christ Alone” focuses on Christ’s death, resurrection, and second coming, directly answering Doss’ previously posed question: “ . . . if it’s not actually telling you who Christ is, what He has done, who God is, then what is it [the song] serving?”
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In light of my examination of saecular musics at City Church, the case of a hymn like “In
Christ Alone” is a compelling one. While CCM and other popular musics form the primary body of music used at City Church, the music leaders do occasionally play hymns using a rock setup
(rather than traditional four-part harmony accompanied by piano or organ). When I asked Doss about the inclusion of hymns in City Church services, he said,
The new worship that we have out now, that’s contemporary. That’s what everybody’s feelin’ right now—even though it may be speaking directly to, you know, the cross and everything—that’s what we’re trying to emphasize. There’s still a beauty to hymns that is untouched right now, today, in my opinion.
Even though City Church prefers CCM songs for worship, Doss mentions the specialty of hymns.
I asked him for a song that exemplified appropriate worship elements for the Church’s service.
He said,
“In Christ Alone” is a great song. It literally brings together what Christ did for us. You know, no power of Hell, no scheme of man can ever take me from His hands,55 the assurance that we’re never going anywhere from Christ. He’s got us ‘til eternity, giving them [us] the assurance and the hope of Christ’s return. Anything that basically encircles the gospel story, which is what Dean tries to drive home every Sunday, which will be: Christ died for us; Christ rose again; Christ is coming back; you’re forgiven. That is the gospel story. Any song that resonates with that, the church gets because they’ve been taught that the whole time at City Church.
Because this song exemplifies the Church’s theology, it is performed regularly at City Church.56
Furthermore, both its character as a hymn and its lyrical content support a backstage realm that suspends congregants between a longstanding Christian past and a contemporary worship experience. It is exemplary of what Collins identified as a collected symbol, which is in this case
55 Doss is quoting an excerpt from “In Christ Alone.” 56 Interestingly, “In Christ Alone” is a contemporary hymn. To Doss, CCM gets to the point of Christianity faster and more direct than hymns; however, the lyrics of hymns do a better job of tastefully presenting Christian truths in a more poetic style.
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a song used repeatedly in interaction rituals of a well-established group; “recharged with feelings of solidarity, the symbols and the interactions are chained together over time” (2004, 151).
To see if “In Christ Alone” was a successful symbol that telegraphed backstage theology to Church congregants on the front stage, I asked some attendees in a group interview what songs they thought well represented City Church. The attendees’ were young, white, single professionals in the Tallahassee area whose ages ranged from early twenties to mid-thirties. One member, Matt Strenth, responded,
One of the more common songs [that] it is almost always in the service at the very end it is “In Christ Alone.” I think that is really what our whole focus is, being able to understand and accept Christ and rely on Him. The song is just powerful and the lyrics are [too]. The way they [the worship band] sing it is excellent and usually it is after a pretty intense sermon. It is a really good way to end and the lyrics really emphasize what we want, to rely on Christ.
Both Strenths’ and Doss’ mention of “In Christ Alone” makes it not only a collective symbol but also a membership symbol where the song has focused attention during a worship service, generating a lot of emotional energy for a successful social interaction (Collins 2004, 150). In other words, when the worship band performs “In Christ Alone,” it generates a lot of attention because its lyrics are projected on screens while the band is illuminated onstage. For the audience, the focal point is the stage where the dominant emotional energy is emanating from the band, influencing the congregation to participate in singing the song. This frequent collective participation of singing “In Christ Alone” creates group membership and pumps up congregants with emotional energy.
Through an extended process, songs are included in worship services to correspond to the
Church’s backstage theological messages. These songs transmit these messages to the broader public to generate a lot of emotional energy for the Church’s theology. Over time, songs used
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repeatedly in worship interaction rituals become collective membership symbols for this well- established group, creating solidarity between members of City Church.
Even though City Church uses popular songs during worship, it also practices religious conservatism as outlined in the Southern Baptist Convention. Musically, this is considered when selecting contemporary Christian songs for congregational worship. According to the worship leader, songs must directly address Creedal elements of the Christian gospel. Although the worship band prefers to perform CCM, both the worship band and the congregation frequently brought up hymns as examples of favorite worship tunes. This preference is a reflection on the
Church’s practice of directly addressing gospel elements, such as the resurrection of Christ.
When church leaders collectively check musical pieces to determine their suitability for worship, they are demonstrating sensitivity to the interplay between front stage and backstage behaviors.
However, by employing popular music in services, City Church promotes the performance and playing of the songs’ conflicting lyrical content and cultural context to the Church’s conservative theological convictions. In the following chapter I will focus on the Church’s front stage performance of its backstage theological convictions.
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CHAPTER THREE
CITY CHURCH’S FRONT STAGE HIPNESS
City Church’s visible components such as its mall meeting space and members’ appearances all contribute to its overall image as a hip church. These visible elements are located in what
Goffman calls the “front stage,” where City Church attracts its desired members, telegraphing the community’s “hipness” to younger worshipers, specifically comprised of middleclass, white, young adults (about 18–35 years of age). Elements of hipness can be exchanged through social interactions. On Sundays, this aesthetic community gathers around other like-minded people.
Similarities are presented in members’ dress and discussions over like tastes in music, movies, and other consumer goods. To understand the Church’s methods of attracting this hip subculture
I find Sarah Thornton’s work on club cultures to be useful. Influenced by Pierre Bourdieu’s theories in relation to youth culture, particularly his book Distinction (1984), Thornton conceives of hipness as a form of subcultural capital, establishing status of its owner in the viewpoint of the relevant witness (1996, 11).
Subcultural capital can be objectified or embodied. In the case of City Church, subcultural capital is objectified through members’ hairstyles and dress. It is also “embodied in the form of being ‘in the know,’ using (but not overusing) current slang” (1996, 11). Dressed in jeans and flannel button-downs (see figure 3.1), City Church’s pastor, Dean Inserra, embodies hipness, especially when introducing his sermons using current, pop culture narratives. Inserra interweaves youthful, colloquial language such as “selfie” and “twerking” throughout these opening stories.57
57 A “selfie” is a type of self-portrait photo, usually taken using a cell phone’s digital camera. These images are then uploaded to a social media page such as Facebook and Instagram.
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Figure 3.1. Pastor Dean Inserra preaching at City Church.
By speaking and dressing in ways that reflect popular contemporary culture, Inserra embodies and objectifies hipness to the Church’s congregants. The positive responses (usually laughing and/or clapping in agreement) generated by the congregation are confirmation of a successful interaction ritual, or social gathering. Hipness as a subcultural capital contributes to generating emotional energy between City Church members. Congregants who share similar front stage aesthetics are more likely to feel comfortable around each other and facilitate social interactions.
They are also more likely to repeat similar social interactions because of previous success.
To maintain successful interaction rituals, City Church uses its own methods of marketing its subcultural capital on the front stage, specifically advertising to contemporary youth culture by creating new symbols for traditional worship. City Church’s front stage reinforces a temporal (the notion of Sunday) and spatial (the worship space) continuum through the blending of sacred and secular musical practices that I term sæcular. As mentioned in the
“Twerking” refers to a sexually provocative dance where the individual stands in a low squatting position while thrusting his or her hips.
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previous chapter, I understand City Church’s performance of Sunday services through Erving
Goffman’s dramaturgy model.58 Impression management is a component of the model referring to an individual’s or an actor’s desire to manipulate others’ view of his or her front stage.
Individuals use sign vehicles to present themselves to others. Sign vehicles refer to how people use social setting (place where interaction takes place), appearance (how an individual looks when presenting himself or herself), and manner (the attitude displayed while performing a role, specifically conveyed in speech) to communicate information about the self. I will explore the ways musical practices allow City Church to manage the impressions it displays on its front stage in the remainder of this chapter.
City Church’s Social Setting
City Church currently meets in a former Goody’s department store in the Tallahassee Mall, a space not originally created for worship but for buying and selling goods (see figure 3.2).59
Figure 3.2. The front entrance of City Church at the Tallahassee Mall in Tallahassee, FL.
58 The dramaturgy model is a sociological theory that interprets an individual’s behavior as a performance projection of a chosen self. In this model, the physical world is a stage—the “front” stage—and the individuals are seen as actors who present a show of their selves. The “back” stage is a private, disclosed space where an individual is no longer performing his or hers self to impress others. 59 For more information about the Tallahassee Mall, visit
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It is couched between two stores, Shoe Carnival and Sports Authority, a shoe and sporting goods chain respectively. Other businesses listed in the mall are Barnes & Noble, Burlington Coat
Factory, and AMC Theater. The Tallahassee Mall is a one-stop shop for retail items, entertainment, and worship.
The mall is currently a “dead mall,” containing a high vacancy rate and a low consumer traffic level. It gradually received this status as it was passed over to different management in
2000. The mall now lacks anchor stores such as Dillard’s, Macy’s, and Victoria’s Secret, that would serve as an entry to attract consumers into its space. Inside, it is filled with an odd smattering of shoe stores, bargain apparel, lower-scale jewelry stores, and community organizations such as a fencing academy and City Church.
For Goffman, the “social setting” is the physical place where interaction rituals occur.
What kind of message is City Church conveying when meeting in a building that is originally designed for commercial use? Sociologist Roxana Waterson describes the importance of physical structures within communities, writing,
How buildings become points of reference in an inhabited landscape is thus an integral part of the creation of cultural meanings in most societies, and thus must be of obvious concern to anthropologists (2011, 75).
Spaces are place-makers that unite individuals. The mall is a place that informs and sells what is current and relevant to its customers. The movie theater shows the latest blockbuster films while
Barnes & Noble sells the New York Times’ “Best Sellers” and Burlington Coat Factory displays recent retail fashions. Since City Church meets in a former department store, its design, décor, and geographic location contribute to the church’s image as a site for current hip worship practices. The aesthetic components or performance presentation of participants, music, and space are front stage elements that inform and influence what is hip within City Church’s
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community.
The Church’s leaders hope their presence will revitalize this area. With this in mind, what does the Church telegraph when it resurrects a dying commercial space? The choice of the
Tallahassee Mall as home, an architectural structure whose physical presence looms large in the surrounding community, is a crucial component in the socio-cultural experience of communication City Church members’ experience. The Church is hopeful that its presence and growing membership will resurrect the mall’s current dead state into a vibrant, circulating social space. Perhaps City Church is the “anchor” store that the mall needs to attract consumers back into its space.
The Café
Figure 3.3. City Church members gathering over coffee before the Sunday morning service.
Another social setting within the Church is the Café, where members gather before the service begins (see figure 3.3). It is located between several seating areas where members can congregate and converse before and after the service. Members can sit on sleek leather couches
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or in bright booths that used to be seating in a former Tallahassee diner. The walls are decorated with photos of places in Tallahassee and flat screen TVs used to broadcast the service from outside the sanctuary. Here, members demonstrate their shared subcultural capital to others by wearing similar-styled dress and hairstyles, while using the Church’s hip communal space for social interaction rituals. As mentioned in chapter two, this familiar environment helps to create group solidarity—a primary good in social interaction (Collins 2004, 145)—among members.
When congregants display similar types of social capital, the higher the probability of a successful interaction ritual.
While members commune over hot beverages, the Church’s hip subcultural capital is also broadcast over the loud speaker in the form of background music. During my interview with City
Church’s lead worship pastor, Todd Doss, I asked him the purpose for this background music.
He observed, “We all want the positive vibe. We want the positive, energetic music because we wanna make sure that that feeling coming in is upbeat, up-tempo.” According to City Church leader Matthew Robinson, Alex Scott manages the playlist for this background music. The songs are taken from a pre-composed playlist on Spotify, an internet-based medium that streams popular music. Robinson states,
We used to involve some other people who just seemed a little bit hip, and they would make us CDs. Or we’d give them an iTunes gift card to buy some songs, and they’d buy the songs for us. I think he uses Spotify now so that there’s more of a rotation [of songs]. And I know that they go through those [songs, making sure that the lyrics] are clean and that there’s no vulgarity.
Robinson’s claim that Scott screens the playlist for “no vulgarity” is arguably contradicting because some songs on this playlist include: Demi Lovato’s “Heart Attack,” Maroon 5’s
“Daylight,” and Fall Out Boy’s “My Songs Know What You Did in The Dark [Light Em Up].”
In their meanings and contexts, the focus of these songs is vulgarity, an issue that I will address
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in chapter four. As these songs are marketed to a younger audience in mass media, City Church uses them to further present itself as a young, hip evangelical imaginary.
As discussed in this previous chapter, City Church’s staff selects songs that support both the SBC’s and City Church’s theological conservatism for worship. In the Café, however, some songs on the playlist contain suggestive material that conflict with the Church’s backstage theology. One example of this is the pop song “Get Lucky,” written by Daft Punk, a French electronic music duo.60 The song’s lyrics describe the sexual chemistry of a couple:
. . . She’s up all night to the sun I’m up all night to get some She’s up all night for good fun I’m up all night to get lucky. . .
This disco song uses a bass, rhythm, and lead guitar, as well as drums and electric piano. The song opens with an instrumental interlude before the voice enters. The voices sing throughout the song in a mixture of auto-tuned and acoustic timbres. In a Rolling Stones interview, Pharrell
Williams, one of the group’s featured singers, describes the overall song as reminding him of
“some kind of exotic island where it’s forever four in the morning because the sun’s always rising and it has that peachy color to it” (Cumbaaubia 2013). The overall theme is about having a good time and “getting lucky” with a girl.
Even though the lyrics evoke secular messages, this song is played within a sacred setting,
City Church’s Café. According to Robinson, the reason secular songs are used both before and after a service is to help make newcomers feel comfortable in a church environment. He says:
60 Daft Punk is a French electronic music duo consisting on musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem- Christo and Thomas Bangalter. The group is known for its elaborate visual elements incorporated with the music during live performances, as well as wearing disguises while in public. “Get Lucky” is a piece from the group’s most recent album, Random Access Memories (2013). It features musician Nile Rodgers and rapper Pharrell Williams. The song was released in April 2013, and by September, it was on the top ten music charts of over thirty-two countries, and sold more than 7.3 million copies.
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We want to create an environment that is friendly and welcoming to someone who is perhaps coming for the first or second time. In that regard, one of the reasons that we play that kind of music is because people are experiencing that outside of church in lots of different facets, so it’s not completely foreign to them. They walk through a mall, and hear on the loud speakers, or they’re getting out of their car, and that similar type of music is playing. There’s some intentionality in that.
Robinson’s comment demonstrates a feeling that songs can be instrumentalized for evangelical purpose while disregarding their original intents and contexts. Thinking about the Church’s mission statement, this method of using popular songs to attract young audiences is an example of City Church’s mission to use contemporary, secular culture to ease its congregation into learning about the Church’s backstage theology.61 I will expand on this idea later in the chapter.
The Church’s impression management is creating a front stage performance that will attract non-Christians who have similar aesthetic tastes. As a result, City Church’s evangelism is to demonstrate its subcultural capital by being culturally relevant or hip to connect to persons who do not go to church, while compensating, or going against, its backstage push for consistency in theological conservatism. By creating a comfortable environment for non-
Christians, City Church and attendees will create a strong enough interaction ritual for attendees to come back.
City Church’s Rock Atmosphere
Similar to the outer fellowship areas of the church, the sanctuary also contains elements left behind from its previous renters such as tile walking paths, pillars covered with mirror panels, and a warehouse-looking ceiling with exposed piping (see figure 3.4). The sanctuary is separated
61 The Church’s mission states, “City Church aggressively reaches out to people who are far from God. Rather than run from culture, we have chosen to harness it to connect with people and show them God’s timeless truths. Although our approach is anything but traditional, we believe in and maintain a conservative theological position” (City Church).
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from the other areas of the church by a black curtain. Inside the worship space is about 1500 chairs facing the stage. The stage holds several loud speakers, instrumental equipment, and three projector screens to display the stage from various angles.
Figure 3.4. City Church’s sanctuary.
The rock concert atmosphere of worship services is augmented by advanced stage production techniques. The tech crew, led by production director Alex Scott, enhances the music by dimming area lights to operate a variety of colored stage lights, loud speakers, and a smoke machine (see figure 3.5). These light effects are all on stage, centered on the worship band.
The Church’s worship band plays a central role in enhancing a rock atmosphere. Todd
Doss leads a group of thirty rotating volunteer musicians, most of whom are members of the church and work in the Tallahassee area. The Sunday worship band includes three vocalists, an acoustic guitarist, electric guitarist, bassist, drummer, and a keyboardist (see figure 3.6).
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Figure 3.5. The tech crew working during a church service.
Figure 3.6. The worship band playing during a Sunday church service at City Church.
As the band performs on stage, they display hip capital through their hairstyles, dress, and musical equipment choices, physical symbols that are then broadcast over three large projector screens to the audience. Collins writes,
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As the persons become more tightly focused on their common activity, more aware of what each other is doing and feeling, and more aware of each other’s awareness, they experience their shared emotion more intensely, as it comes to dominate their awareness (2004, 48).
The band generates dominant emotional energy for the congregation by presenting their “cool” appearances on both the stage and projector screens as well as playing their rock instruments at high volume levels. Since congregants can readily see and hear the dominant group’s performance, they are more likely to copy band’s projected front stage presentation. Church members frequently comment on the band’s performances outside of services, confirming the band’s dominant hipness.
“Walk the Line”
As services start, the worship band opens with an upbeat pop song. This allows for a fluid transition for members coming in from the mall to prepare for Sunday worship. Members usually trickle in, finishing up conversations started outside in the Café while the opening song is playing. Some cover songs the band has played are: Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line,” Twisted
Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” Similar to worship songs discussed in the previous chapter, these cover songs are also thematically connected to the sermon. For example, when the band performed Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line,” it was to introduce the sermon series over the book of Proverbs, titled “Walk the Line.”
City Church not only plays recordings of popular music over its loud speakers but also appoints the worship band to perform covers of some of the most popular, secular songs. As mentioned earlier, these songs are performed first to attract attendees from the fellowship hall into the sanctuary. Creating what Doss terms a “funnel effect,” a method used to order songs in a worship service, furthers the band’s dominant emotional energy of attracting a large audience.
Doss explains,
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We will not do a secular song unless there is a connection to the message or the theme that we are trying to promote that week and there is kind of a funnel method [that we use]. Sunday is kind of starting over in a way for us because we’ve got church people that bring people that have never been to church before. Throwing somebody like that directly into a song that talks about Christ’s love, they wouldn’t be able to connect to that because they don’t understand the philosophy of what is going to be preached later. So what we typically do is bring in something that is very open. Everybody that can understand, for example, “Yours is the Victory.”62 It’s talking about the power of death has been overcome by Christ. It’s telling a story in a way of how Christ came to earth and has taken away the penalty of sin and death from us. So opening with songs that have [the message of] “god is great, god is powerful” front to them is what we really try to push.
As Doss describes, the opening song is usually a popular song to make outsiders feel welcome.
This is also to have the Church immediately establish itself as a hip church. Instead of jumping into a spiritual song, City Church wants to first “warm-up” the congregation by singing something that is familiar to most attendees. Doss also understands that Christian theology is not immediately intelligible. The duty for worship leaders is to contextualize and preface the theology by first performing secular or CCM musics on the front stage. The backstage theology alone is not enough to initially generate emotional energy. It needs a musical aid to make audience members receptive to its content.
However, cover songs sometimes do not clearly indicate their relation to the series, nor do they directly reflect the Church’s backstage religious conservatism. One morning the band performed P!nk’s duet “Just Give Me a Reason” (2012). The pop ballad is co-written and sung with Nate Ruess, the lead singer from the pop band Fun. The piano opens with a simple melodic motive, and P!nk sings the first verse and chorus. Then the drums and bass enter. Ruess then sings the second verse and the remaining end of the song is sung by both P!nk and Ruess. Below
62 The song “Yours is the Victory” is a CCM tune by the NewSpring Worship band. Similar to Hillsong, the NewSpring Worship band is part of the New Spring church in South Carolina. The lyrics of “Yours is the Victory” describe Christ’s triumph over sin and death, saving mankind.
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is an excerpt of the second half of the second verse where the couple sings together for the first time:
. . . You’ve been havin’ real bad dreams, oh, oh You still lie so close to me, oh, oh There’s nothing more than empty sheets Between our love, our love Oh, our love, our love . . .
The lyrics describe the breakdown of a couple having relationship problems. Similarly, the music video of this piece illustrates the sexual tension between this pair. Throughout the film P!nk is dressed in lingerie while either lying on a mattress or swimming underwater with her lover. The scenes where P!nk is kissing her lover also contains the lyrics the duet sings: “Oh, we can learn to love again.” Both the lyrics and music video illustrate the artists’ focus telling a story of a couple trying to salvage a romantic relationship that is on the fringes of nonexistence.
The worship band performed this song during the Church’s sermon series titled “Walk the Line,” a summer sermon focused on the book of Proverbs. The song was played as an opener for Sunday worship (see figure 3.7).
Figure 3.7. Worship band leader Todd Doss (right) and singer Giana Hall (left) perform P!nk’s “Just Give Me a Reason” (2012) as the opening song for Sunday worship at City Church.
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As the band played, the congregation sat and watched the band. There were no lyrics projected on the outer screens and no one was singing alone. After the performance concluded, the congregation applauded as though they were cheering for their favorite rock band.
Does this lack of physical participation by congregants mean an unsuccessful interaction ritual? During my interview with Doss he talked about using secular covers to create a comfortable environment for a person who does not normally attend church. He says,
We try to create the most welcoming atmosphere as possible. And in a way openers are a way to tear down barriers. If I would have thought of a person who is coming here for the first time, their expectation is going to be that they’re going to hear Christian music, they’re going to hear a sermon, they’re going to read out of the Bible at some point. So they have expectations of what they’re going to get when they come here. And I think in a way sometimes openers do break down that wall of “Why are they [the church] doing this? This is alright.” In a way it almost creates a relational connection to say, “In a lot of ways, we’re not very different from you. There’s only one difference between me and you, and it’s Jesus Christ.”
According to Doss, cover songs are used as an evangelical tool to relate to non-Christians. If non-Christians are approaching City Church’s space as a concert environment, then they are responding to the Church’s secular covers in a successful way, by observing and then clapping in approval at the end of the song.
At the same time, however, whether using CCM or secular songs, the lyrics must somehow connect to the sermon. Thinking of the band’s performance of P!nk’s “Just Give Me a
Reason,” I asked him the purpose for playing that song Sunday morning:
There was no connection sermon-wise because we had a guest speaker that week . . . [But] my number one goal is how well can I tie an opener with what we’re doing [in the sermon], more than how awesome a song is, or how easy it is to play. I want to make sure it ties into the message.
This inconsistency of wanting all songs to relate to the sermon while performing popular songs for no reason is arguably contradictory. In an effort to be current with popular culture, City
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Church loosens the main backstage importance of its theological conservatism. Doss further explains the purpose of a secular opener, remarking,
I think again, that opener is just a funnel of getting everybody into the same area. I think the ultimate idea is that we want people to come back. And if ultimately somebody says, “You know, you did a really good job on that P!nk song, maybe I’ll give it another shot next week.” Even it they didn’t get anything from the service, but it brings them back to hear the gospel next week, I’d say it’s totally worth it.
Perhaps Doss and other leaders have not thought through the implications of this practice.
Beyond performing popular music in church, the songs themselves are utterly coincidental and meaningless to its listeners. Ultimately for City Church, the most important role of pop music is to keep people interested in the “unexpected” activities at City Church. At what point, however, does the “unexpected” become the “expected”? Popular songs used as openers allow City
Church to colonize popular songs and completely change their meanings, using them to create a comfortable and entertaining environment for church.
Following Collins, City Church’s use of popular music contributes to group solidarity. If young adults are initially attracted to the Church because of their mutual affinity for popular music, then attendees will want to come back to further exchange subcultural capital in the social interactions at City Church. The hope for City Church is that if non-Christian attendees keep coming back to their services, the more likely they will desire to become members of the Church community. According to Church leaders, to join City Church and convert to Christianity, an individual must participate in an adult baptism performed by Church leaders.63 As mentioned in chapter two, both City Church and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) emphasize the
63 The details of conversion and membership are explained in City Church’s “Next” class, a one- time meeting where an individual learns about City Church’s history and theological stances. After attending the meeting, the individual may sign up as a member of the church if he or she has already been baptized as an adult baptism. If not, then City Church will perform an adult baptism for the individual during one of the following Sunday services (see figure 3.8).
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importance of conversion. The Church seeks to convert as many people as possible (specifically through the act of baptism) and to maintain its status as a large congregation. If playing popular music on Sundays will interest a young audience to generate group solidarity, then “it’s totally worth it” for Todd Doss and the greater City Church leadership.
Congregants’ Worship Experience
As services progress, the band performs CCM tunes. Some songs include Hillsong’s “With
Everything, “ “Oceans” by Hillsong’s youth band called Hillsong UNITED, and “Give Me Faith” by Elevation, a CCM band from Charlotte, North Carolina. These songs are sung communally and are meant to prepare the congregation for the coming sermon.
When these songs are played, the worship leader invites the congregation to stand and sing (see figure 3.8). At City Church most members are comfortably spaced about two to four feet apart from each other. While standing, some members sing but most stand stationary and watch the band perform, mirroring the motionless band members (the generator of the dominant emotional energy).
Figure 3.8. The City Church congregation standing during a worship song. The right side of the picture shows an adult baptismal fount.
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For Goffman, personal space also contributes to how individuals present themselves. A communal experience during a worship service would be members standing closer together while holding hands to present a group worship experience. At City Church, however, most members stand about two to four feet apart from each other, indicating that most interactions between members are acquaintances, rather than close friends or relatives. The audience also mimics the physical behaviors of band members. For example, the band members usually look down to the ground or have their eyes closed as their bodies slowly curve inward while playing
(see figure 3.6). These physical stances are projected on the screens for the audience to watch.
Since the band is leading worship in this way, many of the audience members follow their example of closing their eyes and curving their bodies inward during musical worship.
Due to the lack of outward forms of worship, such as singing and/or raising hands, I asked some congregation participants how they experience worship during these songs. Member
Brian Miller describes his perspective, saying,
They [the worship band] purposely pick the lyrics, I think, so that you can focus on the words and know them so that you have that time of personal reflection. Like this past Sunday, I really try not to care about the people around me because I get very distracted easily, but for some reason I find with worship and when Dean is preaching, I am just so focused, that is just where my heart is.
In order to have a focused and meaningful worship experience, Miller prefers to concentrate on the preacher and on the text, aided by the projection of song lyrics on the large screen. While this visually reaches the entire congregation, City Church members seem to derive the greatest meaning in their individual, rather than communal, worship experiences. However, the meaning of worship for City Church members seems to be found in one’s individual experience rather than the congregation as a whole. The communal part in services is between the worshipper and
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God, rather than the whole church and God. If members can disengage with those around them, focusing on what is happening on stage, then they can concentrate on what is really important, their personal worship with God.
The three projector screens at City Church are perhaps the main element that leads the church from one part of the service to another. They also project the lyrics during communal worship for members to follow along (see figure 3.9).
Figure 3.9. Front view of the worship band singing during a CCM song. The three projector screens display the song texts for the members of the worship band.
Figure 3.10. An excerpt from the CCM Figure 3.11. Lyrics from the CCM song song “Rooftops” by the band Jesus Culture. “Whom Shall I Fear [God of Angel Armies]” by Chris Tomlin.
As the words are displayed on the screens, the backgrounds of these slides also display nebulous
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images behind the words (see figures 3.10 and 3.11). These images also move from one end of the screen to another. As I was singing with the Church, I found these images distracting. Similar to starring at a screen saver for a long period of time, I would stop singing just to watch the background elements. As mentioned earlier, these visual enhancements are controlled by the tech crew, led by production director Alex Scott, to intensify the rock atmosphere by operating a variety of colored stage lights, loud speakers, and a smoke machine. According to Scott, these production values enhance the musical experience at City Church.
To see if the audience also believes these element enhance their worship experience I asked other City Church members about their observations during services. One member confessed that she did not even notice the background, while others mentioned that they were aware of this distraction.64 Matt Strenth, another member of City Church, confessed, “Sometimes it makes me sea sick (laughter). Sometimes it makes me feel weird. I don’t love the crazy flashing like stuff in the background.” Even though the background elements behind the text is rather distracting to onlookers, other elements the church uses seems to be more obvious to members.
Most members found other rock-like elements, such as lighting and smoke machines, to be distracting during worship, but were quick to mention the importance of these elements to maintain the Church’s image as a hip church. Miller says,
64 The member who confessed that she does not notice most of the production elements in the auditorium is interesting. Although I did not receive a lot of similar responses from members, perhaps those who do not notice these aesthetics are frequently immersed in them throughout their daily lives, such as having exposure to multiple visual elements on the internet or television.
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Yea, I don’t want it to be a concert, but I think the dark ambience is important. And then the lighting, I don’t know, for some people they come into church it is probably important. I mean look if you walked into a restaurant and it was old tablecloths and the booths are all pale green, you would judge your food based off of that appearance. I think that kind of goes the same thing here. Well OK, what is our décor, what does it look like that people are not looking at all these other issues and then they can get fed affectively.
How is the atmosphere at City Church contributing to a worshipful experience, or communion with God? According to Miller, the concert ambiance of the service is needed to help create a worshipful mood for the congregation. The elements, such as the lighting and dress, contribute to demonstrating the Church’s notion of hipness. Even though some elements are distracting to members such as the smoke machine and strobe lights, members are quick to mention the need for these elements to create a consistent hip environment for attendees. These elements are there to demonstrate the Church’s cultural relevancy, to create a comfortable environment for the attendee who has experienced something similar perhaps at a concert, and to guide the worship experience.
Conclusion
Taking a bird’s eye view of the ritual details of City Church, the overall goals of the Church is to visually and sonically create an environment that does not look like a typical church. City
Church’s mission is to spread the Christian gospel to residents of Tallahassee by contemporary means such as meeting in a mall, wearing casual clothes and playing pop music in church, practices typically associated with middleclass, white adolescents and young adults. Thinking about the notion of hipness throughout the service, the Church demonstrates this by using markers of contemporary mainstream culture to demonstrate its cultural relevancy to members.
Popular music is used both for background noise in the café and preparing people for worship.
Within these settings, it is also used as a locator for non-church goers to identify with something
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familiar in their everyday life. Instead of working against dominant popular culture, the Church uses indicators of popular culture to create a welcoming and familiar front stage performance for non-Church goers.
In this chapter I described a typical worship experience at City Church while investigating how this experience mixes with City Church’s theology. The Church’s sæcular ways of performing on its front stage create new ways of disseminating its backstage stances and ties with the Southern Baptist Convention. By presenting traditional theological messages encased in sæcular practices, City Church creates a comfortable environment and strong interaction rituals for non-Christians. Since I have used chapters two and three to describe City
Church’s internal structures, I will now turn my attention towards how City Church’s methods compare to the broader evangelical world in the following chapter.
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CHAPTER FOUR
“BLURRED LINES:” CITY CHURCH AND THE BROADER EVANGELICAL IMAGINARY
Figure 4.1. Picture taken from sermon series title advertisement displayed at City Church on the projector screens.
One morning I observed a City Church service containing a sermon titled “Blurred Lines,” a series highlighting “hot” or sensitive topics, such as sexuality and evangelizing in the workplace.
Interestingly, a recording of Robin Thicke’s song, “Blurred Lines,”65 accompanied the words
“Blurred Lines” projected on stage (see figure 4.1) to open the sermon.
Since “Blurred Lines” was one of the most popular songs on the radio during the summer, the audience and I were familiar with the song’s context. The song’s lyrics describe a man wanting to have premarital sex with a woman he meets at a club. The accompanying music video shows topless female models walking around the singers. Near the end of the video the phrase “Robin Thicke has a big dick” is spelled out on silver balloons. The explicit content has also raised controversy among listeners. Some critics suggest that both the music video and lyrics promote date rape. Phrases such as “blurred lines,” “I know you want it,” and “must
65 “Blurred Lines” is also a popular song by the artist Robin Thicke, featuring Pharrell Williams and rapper T.I., from his album, Blurred Lines (2013). This song was one of those most popular songs during the 2013 summer, and both the album and song were and are nominated for several awards for several organizations such as the MTV Music Video Awards (2013), the American Music Awards (2013), and the Grammy Awards (2014).
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wanna get nasty” insinuate that despite a woman’s protests, she is always sexually ready and simply masking her desire. The opening lines were played during the start of the sermon:
If you can’t hear what I’m trying to say If you can’t read from the same page Maybe I’m going deaf, Maybe I’m going blind Maybe I’m out of my mind Everybody get up
OK now he was close, tried to domesticate you But you’re an animal, baby, it’s in your nature . . .
Pastor Inserra jogged out on stage stating, “Robin Thicke, I love it!” He then jumped into preaching about what Scripture says about sexuality. As he was preaching, I started to wonder what kind of message the Church is sending to its congregation. How are City Church’s backstage convictions being met with their front stage performance of “Blurred Lines?” How can the pastor preach about the sanctity of sex within a marriage if the Church is playing a song about objectifying women? Unfortunately the Church never clarified the thought behind the relationship between the song and the sermon series title.
During my observations at City Church, one thing that became apparent to me was that worship leaders felt free to use virtually any piece of music as an evangelical tool, disregarding its original context or even its explicit content. This suggested to me that there is a clear pressure to attract new worshipers and an assumption that music is a key component in this process.
Indeed, it suggested music could be freely refashioned and reimagined in any way and that congregants would find this acceptable. This impression deepened as I discussed the Church’s mission with its leadership and they voiced an urgent need to bring young people to God, manifest particularly in the sacrament of baptism. Despite City Church’s local politics and idiosyncratic musical practices, this pressure directly connects the Church to the objectives of the
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broader evangelical world.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I understand that in the members’ lived experience there is no blurring (between the secular and sacred), but what they perceive is that other churches have reinforced the divide that need not exist. In an interview with Pastor Inserra he explains,
I think the gathering of the church is very important. . . . I don’t believe it’s more sacred. I don’t think there’s different rules for there than [here]—that’s why we can meet in a mall—than there is right now. So like if we can’t play popular music there [in church] that means we shouldn’t play popular music right here. You and I shouldn’t be in the car listening to it on the way to lunch if we can’t listen to it here.
City Church is trying to break the sacred and secular walls down. So as I understand this attempt
City Church has to blur the divide between the sacred and the mundane also extends to the
Church’s use of popular music that employs secular messages during worship services.
City Church’s push to increase its membership by using hip methods is a trend in contemporary evangelical communities throughout the United States. As mentioned in chapter two, the ideological underpinning of City Church is the urgency of gospel evangelism and social transformation among church participants. More than ever, evangelical churches in the United
States are modeling their services after secular, consumer-based approaches. Just as an individual is encouraged to express his or her individuality in the products that he or she consumes (such as a car, phone, and computer), so too do churches advertise themselves as images and experiences one can consume. For City Church, one of its products is the performance of popular songs, contributing to its front stage portrayal of a hip evangelical church that operates at a distance from more conservative, older, and arguably socially rigid faith communities. A consequence of this branding process is that the confluence of churches operating in this manner change the notion of Christianity is that they change the notion of Christianity from an established set of
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spiritual practices to a consumer product that may have an ephemeral, temporary impact upon an individual’s behaviors or identity formation. This consumerist ideology leads churches and individuals free to pick and choose elements of Christianity and worship styles that best suit their needs while disregarding other elements. For City Church, “Blurred Lines” was used to contribute to the Church’s hip image and worship style while disregarding the meaning and context of the song. The song promotes the objectification of women while the Bible teaches not to covet worldly things.66
Even though City Church and other churches strive to attract new members attracting members through hip performance practices, are they able to hold on to their new members for long periods of time? When investigating the backstage theological connections between City
Church and the Southern Baptist Convention in chapter two and their front stage transmission through song texts in chapter three, I began to question whether City Church’s continual search for emotional energy translates into member retention. In an interview with Matthew Robinson he confessed that one of City Church’s weaknesses is having their “front door as big as [their] backdoor.” This means that even though the Church gets a high volume of attendees on a Sunday, usually it is a different group of people every Sunday rather than a large consistent group of members. Randall Collins directly addresses the implication and function of charged emotional energy in evangelical settings, noting that,
66 1 John 2:16 states, “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (ESV).
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Conversion experiences—coming forward to be born again, or otherwise committing oneself to a life of religious dedication—happen primarily at big evangelical meetings. Personal presence in a crowd, worked up collectively to a strong shared emotions, gives the impetus for reshaping one’s identity. The downside of religious conversion confirms the pattern as well. A considerable proportion of persons who are born again drop out of religious participation within a year; many persons are born again numerous times (Collins 2004, 60–1) . . .
According to Collins, the collective emotional energy of a religious group is enough to influence individuals to better conform to the group. However, when the individual is no longer with the group, he or she is most likely to drop out due to the lack of collective emotional energy.
Thinking back to Robinson’s comment, “our front door as big as our backdoor,” I think City
Church and other churches experience this varied type of interest and commitment. Even though
City Church has baptized hundreds of persons within the past seven years and attendance has ballooned to almost 1,000 members, Church members struggle to maintain long-term collective religious vigor.
Furthermore, evidence suggests that many young Christians are starting to prefer more liturgically based services. A recent CNN blog post by Rachel Evans titled, “Why millennials are leaving the church” (2013), describes why young people are leaving hip evangelical churches for more liturgically based ones. Evans writes,
Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions—Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc.—precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic (Evans 2013).
This post suggests that for many young Christians, the question of “hipness” may be shifting from the City Church model to churches using more traditional forms of worship such as sung liturgy and hymns. Just as evangelical churches like City Church have reacted against traditional notions of “church” by using elements of mainstream culture within their services, so now are
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contemporary, young Christians reacting against what now seems to be an established norm for contemporary evangelical churches to appear cool and youthful. Young Christians are looking for a refreshed form of worship and seeking it in high Church traditions. This poses the ultimate question for the City Church community: Its saecular practices are currently effective in drawing a crowd, but for how long?
If marketers of a product are able to get young people to buy their brand, they are more likely to continue to do so throughout their lifetimes. Similarly, City Church and other evangelical churches are known for targeting younger audiences because they are more likely to stay loyal to that particular church. According to Mara Einstein, faith brands exist for three reasons:
(1) Religion must compete against other discretionary leisure activities; (2) religion must compete against the constant barrage of images and information in today’s culture and; (3) teens and 20- and 30-somethings are not as attracted to religion as their counterparts in previous generations (2008, 193).
The third point is perhaps the most crucial. Currently, evangelical churches are increasingly concerned about where the next generation of members will come from. In an effort to keep attracting young, white, middleclass people, churches are increasingly becoming privy to the entertainment and consumer-based materials targeted to this audience in the secular, contemporary world. Since young Christians are continuing to leave the evangelical church for other spiritual endeavors, will this method be sustainable in the near future? What new techniques will evangelical churches develop to re-attract the younger generation?
Similar to people, products have a lifecycle. They are launched, and if they are successful, they grow and mature until their gradual or immediate decline. If a company is innovative, it can
“resurrect” or rebrand a product (such as K-Mart and Apple) to meet a new consumer demand.
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For Christian denominations, this “resurrection” seems to be currently happening in liturgically based churches. According to Thomas Bergler, the Catholic Church is seeing a growth in its younger demographic. Some Catholic churches have started incorporating more contemporary forms of musical worship such as the use of rock instrumentation. When Bergler asked why young Catholics are attracted to this style of worship, they replied that they “like the ‘intense experience’ that serves as a ‘stress reliever’ and they love the music’” (2012, 209). This observation contributes to Bergler’s observations of the juvenilization67 of contemporary churches that was highlighted in the introduction, where like evangelicals have continuously marketed to the youth culture, so now are liturgical churches adopting similar marketing tactics to appeal to the same demographic.
As I view the current state of contemporary evangelicalism, I agree with some of the conclusions reached by scholar Heather Hendershot in her book, Shaking the World for Jesus:
Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture (2004). Hendershot notes that while evangelicals and non-evangelicals seem to be separated by broad distances, they are also connected in unique ways, specifically within the entertainment realm. As highlighted in chapter three, City Church leaders use popular music as part of their front stage hipness because both its members and non-
Christians have a taste for it. Broadly, the Christian industry has also taken measures to accommodate a large audience base while interweaving theological undertones in its products.
Hendershot writes,
67 Juvenilization is “the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages” (2012, 4).
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In other words, evangelicals, who strive to be “in but not of the world,” have produced media that overlap in interesting ways with unabashedly “worldly” media. For nonevangelicals, Christian media are uncanny: both distant and intimate, familiar and unfamiliar in their references. When nonevangelicals, for example, encounter a Christian film with apocalyptic themes, it rings true. Sort of. It’s a thriller formula we’ve seen a million times; as with any genre film, there are variations on plot twists that we can all spot a mile away (2004, 213).
But with both City Church and the Christian industry continually interweaving theological undertones within secular outlets (such as music and movies), where should the line be drawn when a “Christian” product is no longer Christian? How secular is too secular? For most contemporary evangelical churches, using popular songs within services is fine as long as churches attach an entertainment value over a sacred one.
This move from evangelical churches to more liturgical ones is also being chronicled by mainstream publications such as The Washington Post and Christianity Today. Most articles briefly comment on this switch as the “new” hip thing to do. If young Christians do not reject their upbringing in an evangelical environment altogether, they are likely to turn to a High-
Church atmosphere. Both results still yield a “reaction” against their families’ traditions. One article on a Christian-based blog additionally noted,
The kids who leave evangelical Protestantism are looking for something the world can’t give them. The world can give them hotter jeans, better coffee, bands, speakers, and book clubs than a congregation can. What it can’t give them is theology; membership in a group that transcends time, place and race; a historic rootedness; something greater than themselves; ordained men who will be spiritual leaders and not merely listeners and buddies and story-tellers (The Christian Pundit 2013).
In addition to reacting against parental preferences, young Christians seem to be interested in a worship style that is more upfront about its theological positions as well as intellectually challenging in the presentation of those positions. Some of those positions have political undertones but this thesis has not focused on evangelical political action but rather on hip
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evangelical identity. The broad evangelical culture is, in general, not politically neutral, specifically regarding City Church’s relationship to the Southern Baptist Convention, but it is not exclusively politically driven. As I highlighted in chapter two, members and church leaders must continually negotiate between front stage behaviors that telegraph coolness and social tolerance and a backstage theology predicated on biblical literalism that may not appeal to the broader City
Church community. For future scholarly research, these political stances and their connections to the Evangelical church backstage theology and its front stage presentation should be further explored.
As I illustrated how City Church’s use of worship music situates itself within the historical continuum of contemporary Christian music in chapter one, in an effort to subvert the typical “church” environment, City Church is choosing to incorporate secular music and text wholesale. This demonstrates how young, culturally relevant, and democratic City Church is in its creation of a worship service. Overall, I am unsure of the long-term sustainability of hip evangelical churches when it appears that a new demand for more liturgically based worship services is gradually emerging within contemporary youth culture. As Robert Orsi states,
“[Religions] are often inconsistent, even contradictory, and always include forbidden and outlawed beliefs and practices as well as those that are sanctioned” (McDannell 1995, 272).
However, what I see beyond City Church’s and other churches’ controversial use of popular music is that it is paved with good intentions to share the Christian gospel in creative news ways.
As David Stowe concluded, “In other words: sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll appear to be with us for the foreseeable future. But the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost show no sign of withering away. The dance continues” (2011, 249). For City Church, popular music continues to be an
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integral part of its worship practices even if the music’s lyrical content and cultural context is at odds with the Church’s theological positions.
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APPENDIX A
ARTISTS’ DISCOGRAPHIES
Amy Grant’s Discography Amy Grant (Myrrh/Reunion, 1977) My Father’s Eyes (Myrrh/Reunion, 1979) Never Alone (Myrrh/Reunion, 1980) In Concert (Myrrh/Reunion, 1981) In Concert Volume Two (Myrrh/Reunion, 1981) Age To Age (Myrrh/Reunion, 1982) A Christmas Album (Myrrh/Reunion, 1983) Straight Ahead (A&M, 1984) Unguarded (A&M, 1985) The Animals’ Christmas, with Art Garfunkel (Columbia, 1986) A Christmas Album (Myrrh/Reunion, 1988) Lead Me On (A&M, 1988) Heart In Motion (A&M, 1991) Home For Christmas (A&M, 1992) House Of Love (A&M, 1994) Behind The Eyes (A&M, 1997) A Christmas To Remember (A&M, 1999) Legacy: Hymns & Faith (A&M, 2002) Simply Things (A&M, 2003) Rock Of Ages…Hymns & Faith (Word/Curb, 2005) Time Again: Amy Grant Live (Word, 2006) Lead Me On 20th Anniversary Edition (EMI CMG, 2008) The Christmas Collection (EMI CMG, 2008) Somewhere Down The Road (EMI CMG, 2010) How Mercy Looks From Here (Capitol CMG, 2013)
Amy Grant’s Compilations The Collection (Myrrh/Reunion, 1986) Her Great Inspirational Songs (BMG Heritage/RCA, 2002) Greatest Hits 1986-2004 (A&M, 2004) Greatest Hits (EMI CMG, 2007)
Phil Keaggy’s Discography (Solo releases) What a Day (1974) Love Broke Thru (1976) Emerging (1977) The Master & The Musician (1978) Ph’lip Side (1980) Town to Town (1981) Play Thru Me (1982) Underground (1983)
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Getting Closer (1985) Way Back Home (1986) The Wind and the Wheat (1987) Sunday’s Child (Word Inc., 1988) What a Day/Love Broke Thru (1990) Ph’lip Side/Town to Town/Play Thru Me (1990) Find Me in these Fields (Word Inc., 1991) Beyond Nature (Word Inc., 1991) Crimson and Blue (Word Inc., 1993) Blue (1993) Revelator (Word Inc., 1993) Way Back Home (Sparrow Records, 1994) True Believer (Sparrow Records, 1995) Acoustic Sketches (1996) 220 (Sparrow Records, 1996) On the Fly (1997) Invention (Sparrow Records, 1997) A Christmas Gift (1998) Phil Keaggy (Word Entertainment, A Division of Word Music Group, Inc., 1998) Premium Jams (1999) Majesty and Wonder (Word Entertainment, A Division of Word Music Group, Inc., 1999) Music to Paint by Brushstrokes (1999) Music to Paint by Splash (1999) Music to Paint by Electric Blue (1999) Music to Paint by Still Life (1999) Re-Emerging (2000) Inseparable (Word Entertainment, A Division of Word Music Group, Inc., 2000) Zion (2000) Lights of Madrid (Word Entertainment, A Division of Word Music Group, Inc., 2000) Uncle Duke (2000) Cinemascapes (Word Entertainment, A Division of Word Music Group, Inc., 2001) In the Quiet Hours (Word Entertainment, A Division of Word Music Group, Inc., 2001) Hymnsongs (Word Entertainment, A Division of Word Music Group, Inc., 2002) Freehand: Acoustic Sketches 2 (Boondoggie Records, 2003) Special Occasions (2003) It’s Personal (Tag Artist Group, 2004) The Uncle Duke Project (2005) Jammed (Phil Keaggy Music, 2006) Roundabout (Strobie Records, 2006) Two of Us (Solid Air Records, 2006) Dream Again (Strobie Records, 2006) Acoustic Café (Greenhill Productions, 2007) The Song Within (Autumn Records, 2007) Phantasmagorical (Phil Keaggy Music, 2008) Mystery Highway (Oddbody, 2009) Frio Suite (Ark Records, 2009)
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Welcome Inn (Strobie Records, 2009) Interdimensional Traveler (2010) The Cover of Love (Phil Keaggy Music, 2012) Cosmic Rumpus (2012)
Phil Keaggy’s Compilations Time: Volume 1 (1995) Time: Volume 2 (1995) History Makers (2003)
Sufjan Stevens’ Discography Enjoy Your Rabbit (Asthmatic Kitty, 2001) Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State (Asthmatic Kitty, 2003) A Sun Came (Asthmatic Kitty, 2004) Seven Swans (Sounds, 2004) Come On Feel The Illinoise (Asthmatic Kitty, 2005) The Avalanche: Outtakes And Extras From The Illinois Album! (Asthmatic Kitty, 2006) The BQE (Asthmatic Kitty, 2009) All Delighted People (EP) (Asthmatic Kitty, 2010) The Age of Adz (Asthmatic Kitty, 2010)
Sufjan Stevens’s Compilations Songs For Christmas (Asthmatic Kitty, 2006) Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas (Noisetrader, 2012)
Switchfoot’s Discography The Legend Of Chin (re: Think, 1997) New Way To Be Human (re: Think, 1999) Learning To Breathe (re: Think, 2000) The Beautiful Letdown (Red Ink/Columbia, 2003) Nothing Is Sound (Columbia, 2005) Oh! Gravity (Columbia, 2006) Hello Hurricane (Atlantic, 2009) Vice Verses (Atlantic, 2011) Fading West (Atlantic, 2013)
Switchfoot’s Compilation The Best Yet (Columbia, 2008)
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APPENDIX B
WATT’S HYMN “JOY TO THE WORLD” 68
Joy to the World CHRISTMAS Words: Isaac Watts, 1719. Music: ’Antioch’ pieced together from "Messiah" George F. Handel, 1741. Setting: Lowell Mason, 1836. copyright: public domain. This score is a part of the Open Hymnal Project, 2005 Revision. = 80 2 4
1. Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth re ceive her King; 2. Joy to the earth, the Sa vior reigns! Let men their songs em ploy; 3. No more let sins and sor rows grow, Nor thorns in fest the ground; 4. He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the na tions prove
2 4
Let ev ’ry heart pre pare Him room, And Heav’n and na ture sing, While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains Re peat the sound ing joy, He comes to make His bless ings flow Far as the curse is found, The glo ries of His right eous ness, And won ders of His love,
And Heav’n and na ture sing, And Heav’n, and Heav’n, and na ture sing. Re peat the sound ing joy, Re peat, re peat, the sound ing joy. Far as the curse is found, Far as, far as, the curse is found. And won ders of His love, And won ders, won ders, of His love.
Lk 2:10, Ps 97:1, 98:4-9 8 6 8 6 6 8
68 “Joy to the World.” Originally composed by Isaac Watts. Open Hymnal Project.
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APPENDIX C
IRB APPROVAL MEMORANDUM
Date: 5/17/2013 To: Katelyn Medic Dept.: MUSIC SCHOOL From: Thomas L. Jacobson, Chair Re: Use of Human Subjects in Research Contemporary Christian Worship Music
The application that you submitted to this office in regard to the use of human subjects in the proposal referenced above have been reviewed by the Secretary, the Chair, and one member of the Human Subjects Committee. Your project is determined to be Expedited per per 45 CFR § 46.110(7) and has been approved by an expedited review process.
The Human Subjects Committee has not evaluated your proposal for scientific merit, except to weigh the risk to the human participants and the aspects of the proposal related to potential risk and benefit. This approval does not replace any departmental or other approvals, which may be required.
If you submitted a proposed consent form with your application, the approved stamped consent form is attached to this approval notice. Only the stamped version of the consent form may be used in recruiting research subjects.
If the project has not been completed by 5/16/2014 you must request a renewal of approval for continuation of the project. As a courtesy, a renewal notice will be sent to you prior to your expiration date; however, it is your responsibility as the Principal Investigator to timely request renewal of your approval from the Committee.
You are advised that any change in protocol for this project must be reviewed and approved by the Committee prior to implementation of the proposed change in the protocol. A protocol change/amendment form is required to be submitted for approval by the Committee. In addition, federal regulations require that the Principal Investigator promptly report, in writing any unanticipated problems or adverse events involving risks to research subjects or others.
By copy of this memorandum, the Chair of your department and/or your major professor is reminded that he/she is responsible for being informed concerning research projects involving human subjects in the department, and should review protocols as often as needed to insure that the project is being conducted in compliance with our institution and with DHHS regulations.
This institution has an Assurance on file with the Office for Human Research Protection. The Assurance Number is FWA00000168/IRB number IRB00000446.
Cc: Margaret Jackson, Advisor HSC No. 2013.10312
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APPENDIX D
ADULT INFORMED CONSENT FORM
I voluntarily consent to participate in the “Contemporary Christian Worship Music” research project.
Background Information: This research is being conducted by Katelyn Medic who is a Master’s student in Ethnomusicology in the College of Music at Florida State University. I understand the aim of her research is to better understand the local church’s motivations of using contemporary Christian worship music within regular Sunday services at City Church in Tallahassee, FL.
Procedure: I understand that if I agree to participate in this research I will be asked questions relating to this purpose. The duration of this conversation and observation will take approximately one hour. I understand that my responses to these questions will be video taped and audio recorded for note-taking purposes. I understand that these recordings will be utilized for research uses only.
Benefits/Risks of the Study: I understand that my participation in this research will contribute to a greater understanding of the uses of contemporary Christian worship music within congregational settings. However I understand that there are no anticipated benefits and risks in my participation of this study.
Compensation: I understand that there is no compensation for my participation in this study.
Confidentiality: I may choose to either use a pseudonym or my real name during the interview. However, because the location of this research will be identified in publications concerning this study, there is a possibility of others identifying me, even if I choose to use a pseudonym. I understand that these records will be stored securely in password-protected digital storage, where the researcher, Katelyn Medic, and her faculty advisor, Dr. Margaret Jackson, will have use to this information. These recordings will be used for educational purposes at Florida State University as part of the thesis requirements for the Master’s in Music in Ethnomusicology and may be published.
Voluntary Nature of the Study: I understand that my participation is voluntary. If I decide to participant, I have the right to not answer any question(s) or to withdraw at any moment without consequence.
Contacts and Questions: The researcher conducting this study is Katelyn Medic. I may ask her questions now pertaining to this research and/or mentioned rights explained above. If I have questions after my participation, I am encouraged to contact her and/or her advisor, Dr. Margaret Jackson, at Florida State University, School of Music, Tallahassee FL, 32306.
If I have any questions or concerns regarding this research and would like to talk to someone other than the researcher, I am encouraged to contact the FSU IRB at 2010 Levy Street, Research
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Building B, Suite 276, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2742, or 850-644-8633, or by email at [email protected].
I will be given a copy of this information to keep for my records.
Statement of Consent:
I ______give consent to participate in the above study. I understand that I will be recorded (audio and visual) by the researcher Katelyn Medic. These recordings will be kept in password-protected digital storage indefinitely. I understand that only the researcher and her faculty advisor, Dr. Margaret Jackson, will have access to the recordings.
☐ I choose to be on record using my name.
☐ I choose to be on record using a pseudonym. Name: ______
______Signature Date
______Signature of Researcher Date
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Katelyn Medic is a masters student in ethnomusicology at Florida State University. She will receive Master in Music degrees in ethnomusicology and clarinet performance in Spring 2014.
She received her Bachelor in Music degree in clarinet performance as well as a minor in theology and a certificate in urban studies at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Her research interest is focused on the relationship between religion, music, and the contemporary world.
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