Jimmy swaggart music the waters are troubled
“They were held together with duct tape and prayer,” Audio Adrenaline’s Mark Stuart said in the doc. In the 1990s, DC Talk was perhaps the pinnacle of the CCM, named in 2002 as “the most popular openly Christian act of all time” by the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music.īut as DC Talk members TobyMac, Michael Tait, and Kevin Max sang to God, they were fighting each other. Grant became CCM’s first true star in the 1980s, and his popularity has grown steadily. In the 1980s, Christian hair metal band Stryper made their debut on MTV. Soon, artists like Keith Green and Larry Norman caught the attention of the general public. “ all so underground, ”she says in the doc. Singer-songwriter Amy Grant discovered it as far as Tennessee, where Christian songs traveled by word of mouth. Soon, this music began to spread from its California base. “The hippies started to accept Jesus,” Styll says. It started as a movement– a rejection of Woodstock’s broken promises and an effort to embrace something truly eternal. Great beginningsĬontemporary Christian music didn’t start out as an industry, The music of Jesus tell us. And that’s when the document is most convincing. The Erwin brothers give us a truly delightful, often inspiring look at music and its artists, but he does not shy away from the paradoxes inherent in its folds. Jesus’ music traces the history of contemporary Christian music from its beginnings in the post-flower power era to its early cross-sectional successes to the massive industry it is today. “If I had to remove from the magazine all those who have had a sin problem in their life”, CCM Review founder John Styll remembers saying to a musician, “we would publish blank paper.” “I don’t think you’re ever ready for a lot of success quickly,” says CCM superstar TobyMac. “When the world of success came to me, it became too much for me,” says gospel artist Kirk Franklin. Jesus’ music, an excellent documentary directed by Andrew and Jon Erwin (and in theaters starting today, October 1), underscores this paradox again and again.
God’s blessings can lead us away from God Himself.
We see that even in Christianity, maybe especially in Christianity. Success can shape us in ways we’ve never wanted, and its pressures can push us away from ourselves. Nothing prepares you for failure like success.