Money-Driven Worship:  How Song Writers Have Prostituted Our Worship Services

Orginally published on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 at 7:32 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Attention-grabbing title, I know. But that's, essentially, the thesis put down by Warren Smith (a guest writer over at Dan Burrell's blog recently.) Warren writes that in the church worship music arena "money is the real driving force, and most evangelicals don’t even know it..."

Smith continues…

“To understand this, consider that when a congregation sings Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” no money changes hands.  But when that same congregation sings “God of Wonders,” written by Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd, both men – and their music publishing company, get a small payday.  Why is that?  Because “A Mighty Fortress” is in the public domain, but “God of Wonders” is owned by Hindalong and Burd and both they and their publishers have an economic self interest in seeing that these songs are sung and played in churches around the country.”

This phenomenon of Sunday morning worship becoming not a day of praise, but a day of pay, is a recent one.  It can be traced to the birth of an organization called Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI).  CCLI collects fees from churches and then pays the copyright holders – keeping a percentage for itself, of course.  The size of the copyright fee depends on the size of the church, but a 500-member church would pay about $300 per year.  Currently, approximately 140,000 churches are CCLI license holders.  That means that $40- to $50-million per year is collected and re-distributed to copyright owners.

...Now, a kind of unholy trinity exists that has turned the ministry of Christian music into the industry of Christian music.  Christian radio promotes the songs, the churches use them in worship, and CCLI collects fees for the copyright holders.  The big winners are the Christian record companies, many of them now owned by secular corporations, who sell records into the millions.  The big loser is the church itself, which now pays to have itself marketed to every Sunday morning at 11 am.

Contrast this with the “old” method.  Hymn books contain songs that are mostly in the public domain and have little or no licensing fees.  They have historically been published by denominational publishers who make them available to congregations more or less at cost.  They were not aggressively marketed or promoted because they are typically denominationally specific, reflecting the doctrine and liturgy of a particular church.  But that is a key point:  the hymnals are informed by and reinforce the theology of the church.  Said plainly, hymnals are discipleship tools.

Contemporary worship songs, on the other hand, are a revenue stream for copyright holders and music publishers.  They are aggressively promoted and now make up a significant share of the $4.5-billion Christian retail market.”

Todd comments:  I’m no copyright lawyer, but copyrights in Christian music have been around far before 1984 with the inception of CCLI. 

For example, Great is Thy Faithfulness was first copyrighted in 1923 and is still copyrighted.

People like Ralph Carmichael and Bill Gaither were very pre-1984.  (Don’t you remember the line, “God wrote the song, but Bill Gaither owns the copyright?”

In fact, many denominations hold copyrights on some of the hymns they publish.  Concordia (the Lutheran Publishing House) and the United Methodist Publishing house are just two examples.

For example:  “Why should we pay Concordia Publishing House a fee for use of a copyrighted work?” Answer:  Permission fees compensate the copyright holder for the use of creative material.

Last time I looked, Concordia wasn’t pumping out too much ‘contemporary’ worship music.

As a former worship leader, I know that noone was putting a gun to my head to make me use “God of Wonders” in the services I arranged.  And when I filled out my CCLI report, I didn’t get any more credit, and absolutely not more kick-back for choosing “God of Wonders” over “Great is Thy Faithfulness”.

Truth be told:  I don’t even know Steve Hindalong OR Marc Byrd.

Possibly even more embarrassing:  I didn’t even know they wrote the song.  (I was thinking, maybe, Paul Baloche).

Warren ends his article with this statement after lamenting that most large churches do not even have a traditional service these days:  “And that, my friends, is a tragedy – another triumph of Mammon in the modern evangelical church.”

Sorry, Warren… but I must disagree.

PS—I wonder how many people who would agree with Warren Smith’s assessment secretly harbor a stash of Bill Gaither Homecoming Videos at home?  Bill’s been the marketing genius (far more than most ‘contemporary’ worship writers) in making gospel music profitable.

What are your thoughts?

Todd

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.

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