Modern Praise: Worshipping the Almighty (Dollar)

Did you know that your church may be breaking the law every Sunday morning when they display the lyrics to the latest praise and worship song either in a leaflet or on a projector screen? Either that or they are paying out as much as $4,260 annually for the right to do so.

This is because 99% of new praise and worship music is released by professional artists who choose to release it behind the walls of U.S. copyright law rather than in the public domain. Not only that, but most new Christian music is written and released with the intent of capitalizing on the "praise and worship" fever that has been propping up the bloated CCM "genre," which in turn has been lining the pockets of secular recording executives for the past three decades. (For you Brian McClaren junkies, there is a YouTube link at the bottom of this post linking his thoughts on the matter, which I found very worthwhile).

As a college student who studied copyright law as it relates to media, I could fire off a fine lecture as to why U.S. copyright laws are unacceptably draconian and absolutely will not survive the new media revolution. However, the problems associated copyright law as they apply to music as a performance art are compounded even greater when applied to worship in the church.

The key issue is that--contrary to insistence of CCM marketing and even many churches--worship is not performance art. According to the Bible, music predicates the very existence of human beings and even the Earth itself. What is its true purpose? The book of Job tells us it is to worship and glorify God. This is reiterated explicitly and by example throughout Scripture. It is a precious gift that allows us to communicate intimately with our Creator. Western civilization has only recently co-opted it to create a multi-billion dollar industry that is now imploding under the weight of its own greed. Meanwhile, Christian musicians in the 21st century church have blindly invested their God-given talents and--I believe--mostly sincere efforts under the umbrella of this corrupt and collapsing corporate kingdom.

I am very sympathetic to church leaders who must deal with this mess, though I suspect that many of them merely ignore the law, as I have observed countless "church ministries" flagrantly violate copyright laws as a matter of course, even in domains outside of worship music. A friend of mine once related to me how a large Indianapolis church that employed him as a daycare worker would regularly show the children bootlegged movies. Moreover, I know very few Christian peers who show any moral backbone when it comes to illegally obtaining music and film over the Internet (in the spirit of full disclosure, I have been guilty of this and acknowledge that piracy is fueled as much by ignorant lawmakers and irresponsible media conglomerates as it is greedy consumers).

Thankfully, there are legitimate alternatives to either paying a money-hungry corporations to worship or ignoring the law, neither of which strike me as particularly honoring to God. The most popular solution is to use songs that have long been out of copyright. Unfortunately, unless you go to a fundamentalist church that already believes any music that doesn't come out of an 18th century hymnal is satanic, this is less than optimal. It is also worth mentioning that you are free to sing any song as part of a worship service, but you cannot legally display the lyrics. If you unfamiliar with the song... well, I guess it sucks to be you.

Finally, you can seek out music released into the public domain by musicians who are more interested in creating worship music that can freely be used according to its intended purpose than in making a quick buck. Unfortunately, the only modern album I know of released in such a way is "Take Me In" by an Australian artist named Murray Bunton. The good thing is that it is a stellar collection of songs, and the music and lyrics can be downloaded free of charge at www.youiseek.com. You can also freely copy all of the content for use in your church, home, car, or around the campfire when you get tired of Kumbaya.

"Take Me In" was released under the relatively new Creative Commons license, which allows intellectual property owners to cede all or some rights to public domain while not losing complete control of their work. Creative Commons has the potential to solve many the problems with traditional copyright law, which currently acts as a blunt "all or nothing" instrument. I had never heard of Murray Bunton, and I doubt that he commands the enormous income of guys like Chris Tomlin, but if Matthew 6 is to be believed, I'd say he's in pretty good standing in the Kingdom that actually matters.

For more information on this topic, feel free to peruse the following links:

http://www.youtube.co...

http://www.brotherhoo...

http://www.fni.com/wo...

http://en.wikipedia.o...

http://creativecommon...

http://youiseek.com/...

Dear Kyle,

Thank you so much for sharing with us "Take Me In" album by Murray Bunton and his band. It brought such joy and blessing to me ...

I also wanted to share with you all about Ryan Dean, another such musician, sharing his expression of worship without any commercial agenda:

http://www.ryandeanmu...

I have recently started a website to serve as a resource for worshipers, to make available non-commercial praise and worship music:

http://ccworshiparchi...

Our community is in constant search for musicians like Murray Bunton and Ryan Dean. Please feel free to share with us, if you come across any in the future:

ccworshiparchive at gmail dot com

Thanks,

ccWorshipArchive
http://ccworshiparchi...
http://ccworshiparchi...