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Is profit a problem in Christian music? Some in the industry wonder whether money clouds the message Sunday, February 13, 2000 By Rebecca Sodergren, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
"Would Jesus move to Nashville for a record deal?
Sounds preposterous, doesn't it: Jesus Christ, with his name in flashing lights and even requiring, as the above-quoted song goes on to say, "a $50 ticket just to get you through the door."
Yet that's the charge that some have leveled against the rapidly growing contemporary Christian music industry: As it gains market share, it takes on the flavor of the world, with singers wanting their names in lights and agents and labels hungry for the big bucks. Jesus, the critics would say, has indeed moved to Nashville.
But has he?
A growing industry
The reference to Nashville is not arbitrary. In addition to being the country music recording hub of the nation, it's also the Christian recording hub.
The Christian and country genres may share a recording city, but they don't share the same growth trends. Country does hold a higher market share, selling around 70 million units (albums or singles) each of the past three years. But Christian music has by far the greater growth pattern. About 33.3 million Christian and gospel units were sold in 1996; in 1999, 49.8 million units were sold -- nearly a 50 percent rise.
Last year, Christian music sales grew by 11.5 percent over 1998, while the music industry's sales as a whole grew by only 6.2 percent. The industry's fifth-highest-selling genre in 1999, Christian/gospel sold more albums than classical, jazz and New Age combined.
The growth can also be seen in Christian concerts, which now have all the glitter of mainstream concerts -- and that means they can no longer be financed by "love offerings."
When Michael W. Smith comes to Orchard Hill Church in Wexford on Thursday, each patron will pay $32.50 to attend a concert that has lights, speakers and pre-concert advertising reminiscent of a pop show.
Of about 75 national-act concerts scheduled through June in the Pittsburgh area, only one -- excluding shows with dinner included -- costs more than Smith's: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, March 18 at the Civic Arena ($41 to $201.50). One other concert -- Paula Cole, March 18 at Rosebud -- costs roughly the same amount at $30 for advance tickets and $33 at the door.
To be sure, at 1,200 seats, Orchard Hill is a rather small venue, which can sometimes drive ticket prices up.
Ed Traversari, a partner at DiCesare-Engler and the promoter for the Smith show, said tickets for his company's contemporary Christian shows are "usually under $20 -- less expensive than most." Current examples include Jennifer Knapp and Third Day at Orchard Hill March 17, charging $12-$18; O.C. Supertones, a Christian ska group at Club Laga April 4, $13-$16. But when Steven Curtis Chapman was at Orchard Hill in December, tickets, as for the Smith concert, were $32.50.
Beauty vs. bread
As the industry keeps making more money, is there a point at which it becomes driven by money? Or do its motives and message remain pure?
There's a wide variety of opinion on that subject, among artists, label personnel and virtually everyone who draws a paycheck from the industry. Despite their differences, most of them agree on one thing: that business and Christian message do, indeed, pose a conflict.
As Reed Arvin, a former Christian music producer, writes in "Getting Started in Christian Music," a Harvest House Publishers book to be released this month: "There is only one type of person to mistrust: ... those who will not or cannot see a conflict."
When John Mays, president of Benson Music Group, a Christian label, thinks about this conflict, he often refers to a letter that Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother, in which van Gogh mused, "Do I paint because I see beauty or because I need to buy bread?"
Though he struggles daily with the conflict, Mays believes beauty and bread do work together in his field: "It seems that God uses two opposing ends to do good things," he says. "This is a very unusual but seemingly God-ordained collision."
Frank Breeden, president of the Gospel Music Association and the Christian Music Trade Association, sees some conflict but believes that business and Christianity are "not mutually exclusive -- Christ used business principles in his parables." He referred to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, in which servants are given "talents" (money) to invest for their master.
But Steve Camp, a singer who has left his Christian music label, would disagree. The singer wrote a handout that's also available on the Internet titled "107 Theses" -- a reference to Martin Luther's 95 Theses, which denounced papal abuses and led to the Reformation Camp, calling for the reformation of the Christian music industry, quotes 2 Corinthians 2:17, in which Paul defends his ministry against his accusers by saying, "For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God ..."
As Camp sees it, money and Christianity are mutually exclusive, and to try to marry the two leaves people "peddling the word of God" for financial gain.
"The gospel is for anyone, anytime, without charge," Camp said.
Christian content
Most people in the industry acknowledge that money affects business decisions, but they would stop short of saying that money controls the music's content.
Breeden said that money plays a part in deciding which artists are signed, how much capital is invested in a particular act and how albums are marketed. "But as far as the message is concerned, I don't think it has any control," he said.
Brad O'Donnell, director of A&R ("Artists & Repertoire," the division that helps decide what songs an artist will perform and record) for Myrrh Records, believes that making Christian music for profit is justifiable. "We don't do anyone a favor by putting out a mediocre record or one that doesn't or won't sell; the artists won't have a platform from which to talk about their faith, and the record label won't stay in business."
But does that mean a record's message is crafted first and foremost for marketability or for something deeper?
Breeden describes record-making as a "partnership effort between A&R departments and their talent" (singers and songwriters). Those people, he says, have the most control over song content, but "we're accountable to the marketplace. You have to ask the masses what they want if the masses are who you're asking to buy" the record.
Mays, who used to work as an A&R director, conjectures that on rare occasions, those seeking a more mainstream hit may have exchanged specifically Christian language -- "Jesus," "cross," "blood," etc. -- for more general terms. But personally, he never did that or saw that happen.
More typically, he thinks songs might be changed because the average Christian consumer "won't get it."
"Most genuine artists I know are dark and moody and asking the hard questions," Mays said. "But much of the consumer base doesn't want to hear that. ... They want to tap their foot on the way to drop their kids off at school."
Labels also work to please the bookstore chains that sell their albums. Arvin notes that while labels have control over what they make, bookstore chains can impose limits by saying, "If you do this, we'll send it back."
"The bookstore chains have to be responsive to the most conservative sector of their market, so [the power essentially extends] back to the consumer," Arvin said.
Camp's problem with this focus on pleasing the consumer is that the consumer -- not the Bible -- ends up setting the standards for songs. "We are producing a generation of people who feel their God but do not know their God," Camp says, because songs are based more on feelings than on scripture.
Secular parents
Another wrench thrown into the equation is that secular parent companies now own all the major Christian labels.
Around the early '90s, secular companies were acquiring Christian music labels left and right, convinced that Christian music was going to be the "next big thing," Arvin said. He believes this was largely the result of successful crossover music by "Amy and Michael" --referring to Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith, crossover stars who, in the Christian music world, need no last names.
Camp is perhaps more outspoken about secular labels than about any other aspect of the industry. "True restitution demands that Christian music be owned and operated only by believers whose aim is the glory of God," Camp wrote in the introduction to his "107 Theses." "This means that the current labels return all the money they have received to their respective secular counterparts that purchased them and divorce alliances with them."
This is why Camp felt he had to "divorce alliances" with his own label, leaving it about five years ago. He recorded nothing until finally doing an independent project, "Abandoned to God," released last year.
Mays, too, admits that as he struggled with the "buying bread" side of the conflict, he wondered whether he should start an independent label. But faced with borrowing stunning amounts of money from friends -- who, just like secular parent companies, would expect a return for their investments -- he felt he wouldn't be gaining any freedom. And as he sees it, secular parent companies -- in his case, Zomba, which owns Benson Music Group -- are not terribly intrusive. "If I get any message [from Zomba], it's, 'Don't worry about us. Let us create the Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys; you do your thing."
The secular companies' ownership has even been an asset by providing greater efficiency and more capital for marketing, resulting in more radio play and a stronger presence in mainstream media, Breeden says. In fact, the number of radio stations playing contemporary Christian music has increased. M Street Corp., which charts stations and formats throughout the country, notes that in 1995, there were 85 stations playing such music; by 1999, there were 108.
The 'crossover' phenomenon
Yet the reality exists that even though Christian label executives feel free to do their jobs their own way, the financial picture of a label changes entirely if it gets a "crossover" hit -- a song from a Christian artist that reaches the mainstream charts. Examples abound -- Bob Carlisle's "Butterfly Kisses," Michael W. Smith's "Place in This World" and many hits by Amy Grant and, more recently, Jars of Clay and Sixpence None the Richer.
Record companies aren't necessarily pushing for such hits -- as Arvin says, "The industry is responsive to the integrity of an artist; they'd be ill-advised to make a guy who's singing worship music into a pop singer." But he points out that the sale of 150,000 units for a new Christian recording artist is considered perfectly respectable, but "in the pop market, that would be an all-consuming failure."
Michael W. Smith -- who may have the latest crossover hit in the title song of his new album, "This Is Your Time," about Cassie Bernall's reported confession of God before her death at Columbine High School -- sees crossing over as not only permissible but desirable. In the Christian music industry, "we have our own little country club, singing songs to each other, and we have no impact on the culture," he said.
Camp agrees that crossover music is acceptable. "If I write a love song, it can be honorable to the Lord," he said. "It doesn't have to quote scripture chapter and verse, but it must be moral and ethical." The problem he sees is that when work is consecrated to the Lord, it should be the best it can possibly be -- and "we're not seeing anything [coming out of Christian crossovers] with the clever insightfulness of a Billy Joel or a Jackson Browne, or the ballad-writing skills of a Carole King. It's just 'baby, baby.' "
Michael Card, a Christian singer-songwriter with a 20-year career, notes that "crossovers" only move one way these days, but when contemporary Christian music started around the 1960s and '70s, singers were leaving promising secular careers to become Christian singers. Keith Green -- one of the industry's pioneers, who was killed in a plane crash in 1982 -- and John Michael Talbot, who recorded one album with Card, were two such artists.
Christian music through the decades has been an amalgamation of styles, with artists "crossing" all over the place. Contemporary Christian music has its roots in -- among other things -- gospel choirs, black gospel, white gospel, country music, praise choruses and converted hippies who made up the 1960s Jesus Movement.
Fame and fortune
Now that contemporary Christian music has grown large enough to produce stars and a multimillion-dollar industry, it faces a new challenge: the effects of fame and fortune on the artists.
Speaking frequently at conventions for young people who want to become Christian singers, Arvin sees many who openly desire fame, "a drug so addicting that they're addicted before they've even tried it." He notes that Christian music stars are often so young that they haven't yet gained enough self-awareness to handle fame. That very thing happens to the main character in Arvin's 1994 novel, "The Wind in the Wheat," about a backwoods Christian kid with amazing musical talent who gets "discovered" and sucked into the Christian music industry before he's mature enough to deal with it.
Rich Mullins, a singer who died in a car wreck in 1997, recognized the equally addictive power of money. He had all his earnings sent to elders at his church, who paid him an average American worker's salary and donated the rest to charity. By the end of his life, Mullins was getting $1,000 a month and living in a trailer on a Native American reservation, teaching children music. He never even knew how much money he was making. When Arvin, who produced several of his records, asked Mullins why, Mullins answered, "Because if I knew, it would be so much harder to give away."
While all their actions may not be as radical as Mullins', other artists have also seen the dangers of fame and money and sought to distance themselves from them. Twila Paris found that for her, the key lay in moving out of the industry hub in Nashville and back home to Arkansas. "I'm surrounded by my family and my church fellowship -- these are people who knew me before I ever recorded a note" and are therefore more likely to treat her more as an equal than as a celebrity.
When Card saw 10 years ago how much the industry was taking out of him, "I realized my life wasn't jibing with what I said I believed," he said, noting the effects on his wife and children could have been especially harrowing had he not scaled back. So he defied the industry, and instead of doing 150 concerts a year -- which meant "300 days on the road and the other 65 in the recording studio" -- he scaled back to 60 concerts or less.
"Has it hurt record sales? Yeah, probably," he admitted.
Camp, in addition to going independent, also stopped charging for concerts and merchandise sold at concerts five years ago, relying instead on offerings. At a recent concert in Ohio, a family of six who had never been able to afford to attend a concert approached him and said, "Thank you for your ministry to the poor."
"Income has suffered dramatically" as a result of this decision, Camp admitted. "But would I trade this for anything in the world? No."
The 'giving away' business
In the introduction to his "107 Theses," Camp admitted that he, too, had been lured by money and fame early in his career. As a result, he believes business should be supplanted by Christ's instruction in Matthew 10:8: "Freely you have received; freely give."
There's a reason that business and gospel will always collide. Arvin's chapter in "Getting Started in Christian Music" expresses it this way: "Jesus wasn't in the selling business. Jesus was completely and utterly in the 'giving away' business."
Perhaps the Bible itself makes the division between gospel and business the clearest when it states, "You cannot serve both God and money" (Matt. 6:24).
So would Jesus move to Nashville?
No, but people already have, and their dilemma isn't likely to subside anytime soon. Those employed in the contemporary Christian music industry can work to keep money from becoming their master, but they can't eliminate money from their lives entirely. Even those with the grandest visions of beauty still need their bread.
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