My story
by Dan Lucarini
Why I had
to
leave
Now I want to summarize the reasons I had to leave the CCM
scene. Firstly, I could no longer accept the premises
under girding the CCM philosophy. In other words, the
piles holding up the pier turned out to be rotten and
crumbling. Our key premises were that music is amoral; God
accepts all music styles; and no one should judge
another's preference or tastes. As I dug into the Bible to
prove them right, instead I saw that they were
man-centered, illogical, and misrepresentations of basic
biblical principles. I will cover these issues in detail
later.
Secondly, when I saw what the Bible teaches about true
worship and what it really means to be in the presence of
God, I became sickened at the way my generation so glibly
used profane and vulgar music accompanied by vulgar dress
to offer up worship and praise to a holy God! And no one
involved seemed to notice what we were doing. Thirdly, to
preserve my marriage and to be faithful to God in all
things, I needed to separate from the temptations that
were ever-present in the CCM setting: the ego
gratification and attraction to the female members of the
worship team.
Fourthly, I saw that we were in danger of becoming the
same hypocrites we accused the
Traditionals of being. For example, one of our main
charges against conservative church music and services was
that they lacked spontaneity; they were boring and
predictable. But somehow we did not notice that
our own
CCM
services had become numbingly the same, week after week.
The typical ex-Baptist, evangelical, community church,
seeker-sensitive services were all starting to sound the
same, like a group of Integrity Hosanna or
Maranatha Praise clones. We
managed to create a unique musical style in CCM P&W and
now we have thousands of churches copying it. It's still
rock but not as 'hard' as the latest secular versions. It
is more laid back with a hint of the Eagles. The worship
sets have fallen into a familiar (boring?) order of
service. The Traditionals had
some guidelines to restrain them, but Contemporaries have
no
rules, so when things become too familiar they bring in
louder, jazzier and more questionable material. That is
one of the curses upon CCM: the music will continually be
on this slippery slope and worship leaders will be forced
to accept any
musical style, no matter how disgraceful. I had to get
away from that.
We
are currently members of a church where the pastors and
other leaders have taken a strong stand against the use of
all rock-influenced contemporary music styles in the
church service. Musically speaking, I have come full
circle as a Christian; back to a church with a similar
musical philosophy as the one I attended when I was saved.
I suppose the happy ending to my story would be to say
that I am once again busily involved in the music ministry
at this church. But I am not.
Consequences
There were consequences left over from my years as a
Contemporary worship leader. At our new church, at first
I was very critical about every aspect of the worship
service and the leaders. I kept this criticism to myself
or shared it only with Judy, but still I harbored it in my
spirit. In hindsight, I can see that the Lord was showing
me that genuine worship and enthusiastic praise could
still exist in a Traditional service. This reality
conflicted with the views I had embraced for so many
years, and I believe that conflict contributed much to my
critical spirit.
I
was also afraid of being involved in music ministry again.
I told no one of my musical abilities and I avoided the
music pastor. Because of my background and my tendencies,
I felt musically unreliable to join a Traditional music
program and believed I could well become a corrupting
influence on it. 'Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it!'
Instinctively I turned all music styles into my brand of
pop/ rock. When I played the keyboards, I unconsciously
rearranged the tune into a pop/rock feel and beat. When I
opened my mouth to sing, years of CCM-style vocals left me
sounding too much like the rock musicians I once worked
hard to imitate.
Twenty years after my conversion to Christ, I have once
again asked the Lord to give me a
new song
with which to praise him, but this time I am praying that
the song will be free from my old rock music
styles.
by Evangelical Press
