Gospel vs. CCM: The Great Divide

Maverick City is on the fire again because its co-owner Norman John Fee just shook the tables. And I've been seeing so much come out of the social streams. People calling him Antichrist, anti-gospel, anti-Black, so many different things. And a part of the reason why is because people didn't watch the full video. Many people are calling it judging fruits when it's really just first impressions, right? I'll say no more. But one of the things that were mentioned in the interview is worth discussing, actually two things. For us to have a productive conversation in the body of Christ, we need to focus on now what? Tables have been shook, feathers have been ruffled, now what? There are two things that I think we need to do. Number one, we need to understand the generational and cultural shifts that are impacting, that has been impacting the body of Christ since the very beginning. When you think about Acts chapter 2 and the day of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit came and there were about 15 different ethnicities in the locality and they all heard the gospel in their own language. So these are people that have different languages, different cultural beliefs, different background, but when it comes to the gospel, they had everything in common. We've lost that with the center of focus being culture and not the center of focus being Christ. Number 2, Christians in the marketplace. We think that there are certain gifts that can be monetized and certain gifts that cannot. So for example, if a believer is a really good photographer, a really good videographer, them getting compensated for their work, no questions asked, right? But if somebody is equally gifted at singing or playing the guitar, their gifts cannot be monetized, right? Because they're ministering unto the Lord. But as I think about it, all gifts come from God, all gifts return to God. And if you think that the only gifts that shouldn't be used in the house of the Lord are preaching and singing, then I think we have messed up why these gifts have been given. What does that have to do with gospel and Christian music? Now, the first thing that blows my mind is I was watching a video that Norman John Fee and Kirk Franklin did together that broke down the differences between gospel and Christian music in a way that I've never heard explicitly, but I think is worth talking about as we consider the cultural implications of what is happening in the world today. So I'm going to play this video. This video is from Earn Your Leisure. It's a thing. Let's not just take excerpts and then run away with it, but they broke down gospel and Christian music in a way that I've never heard it before. But I understand why the tables are being shaken. So let's listen.

And the unique thing about Maverick City was that we prioritized diversity. And so we were able to build one of the first groups that had African Americans in it that was able to be played on what we consider CCM radio. So much like pop and R&B in the Christian space, we have Christian pop and R&B.

Now it's going to be important that you remember that in the coming section. I'm going to talk about that.

And you have gospel. That means white and black.

Christian music is white, gospel music is black.

Yes, 100%.

Yeah.

So if you hear Christian music, you're going to have a white person.

And there's no ambiguity to what he said. The fact that Kirk Franklin, who is in a sense a mogul in the gospel music industry, is stamping and affirming that there's no ambiguity and Christian contemporary music being white and gospel music being black lets us know that the thing that we all are uncomfortable with here is culture. I've heard somebody that is trying to mask— they wanted to sound deep and they said that Maverick City has no anointing, they only have money. And it's just a silly take, right, to discredit the work that these people have been doing as it relates to their service to God, their ministering to God, their investment in their gifts and talents and trying to return multifold back to God and saying that there's no anointing, there's just money is ridiculous. And it lets us know that there's a cultural stigma that is here. Now, if you want to think about how music as it relates to our faith began, you can take it all the way back to Exodus when God helped the Israelites through the wilderness, right? Or through the Egypt slave period. And Moses then rendered a song unto the Lord, right? The Song of Moses. Or even his sister rendering a song unto the Lord, the Song of Miriam. You read all of Psalms and you David was ministering unto the Lord in song. And there are two different ways that you can see ministering unto the Lord all throughout the Bible, and that's vertically or horizontally. But first, I want to show us a music map, right? And in this music map, we're going to talk about how gospel music got to where it is today. So when you think about gospel music as it relates to the Western culture, particularly in America, you can't talk about it without talking about Africa. When the Africans were brought to America in slave ships and they were put in this bondage and this torment, one of the ways that they helped each other get through was what we call Negro spirituals. This is this deep soul, right? Is this deep groan, this expression of pain and suffering, but helping one another, right? This horizontal form of expression, help each other get through the struggle, right? So from the 1600s to the 1800s, you hear about this Negro spiritual. And I want us to show this chart that begins roughly about 1800 or so. From the top is the oldest, so this is starting about like maybe 1880. And you see the very thing here is you see gospel, and that's because gospel was very essential in the birth of other sounds, starting with the Negro spiritual. And then from there, two streams come from like this deep groan, right? From the left here, the blue car is is the blues, right? There's the blue sounds. On the left you have the traditional blues, and on the right you have jazz. Now, the only difference between blues and jazz is that blues was focused more on the story of struggle, the story of pain, the story of issue, and how we're going to get through that. And jazz essentially just took the sounds of the struggle and kept the instruments and removed the voices. So we're going to focus on the left side, the blues. After a while, rhythm was added to blues and created what we call rhythm and blues, or R&B. So if you think about it from the top down, there's struggle and there's pain. On one hand, people turn to God to express the struggle and this pain of getting through certain situations, trials and tribulations, and we call that gospel. On the other hand, people turn to the world with this pain and this struggle, and they minister to one another to help us get through to that. And we called that blues. And then rhythm and blues was just a deviation of that that added certain sounds and steps into a category that was predicated on pain and suffering and how we're going to get through that. So you see how that has deep ties to this horizontal expression of worship based on how we needed to help each other get through the situation. Now, by the 19— 30s, you start to see gospel take off, and you start to see it evolve with choirs and harmonies. And so coming, the sound of the faith in the Black church, it started to grow and grow. And then the R&B stream, it took off on its own. You guys know what the current R&B sounds like, and then you know what the current gospel sounds like. And later on, something happened. A different stream was introduced to the church. Traditional gospel is then taking us to modern gospel. Modern gospel is then taking us to CCM. And something interesting happened. There's a different stream that is not blues, that is not R&B, that now came into CCM, and that is country, pop, and rock. So there's a different cultural stream that was introduced to CCM And now you mix that with the stream that came from the cultural aspect of we need to help each other get through the struggle. This other stream, pop, didn't really have that struggle. So now you have this blend of horizontal and vertical worship all being composed together in the same sound. So that's when you get the Maverick City type of music that has people that can worship horizontally and have people that can worship vertically. And they said, hey, can we create something that allows everybody to worship God together? A sound that any and everybody who comes to the faith can sing. This is what I mean when I says there are cultural significance and implications to the shift that is occurring, because now we're shifting to a culture where people are trying to make Christ the center of everything instead of culture. There's so much dialogue about you don't have to replace your culture, you don't have to put your culture aside to follow Christ, when that's not biblical. In a sense, if you're going to follow Christ, you're going to leave everything behind. You're going to leave your old self. The old you has to die. All things pass away. Behold, you are a new creation. Now I know a lot of people are not going to want to listen to me because of my cultural background, but I'm Nigerian. And when you hear about that African gospel, I hate introducing just different types of words that has to go before gospel. It should just be gospel. We're singing to God. But when you think about the sounds that are coming from the continent of Africa, you understand that a part of it is also focused on this horizontal and vertical expression. So it's not just Maverick City, it's a component of, man, we went through some things, we need to help each other get through some things, but ultimately God is the only one that can help us. As culture shifts, and I asked this question to some people in my own church, how do you shift culture without shifting the impact of the Spirit? And it's a very difficult question to answer, but the only thing that I can bring to our attention is Scripture, right? So let's read from Ephesians chapter 5, verse 19. Regardless of how we feel, regardless of our emotions, Scripture reigns and rules above every opinion that men can have. And this is what Scripture teaches. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 19. The Bible teaches us here, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. So that's horizontal. Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. That's vertical. It tells us to do both. So we are having this conversation about whether we should be worshiping horizontally or whether we should be worshiping vertically. And the ultimate thing that I have to bring to you is just, let's just worship. If somebody is worshiping, I'm okay with that. If you need horizontal worship, if you need vertical worship, let's just remove the titles. Let's remove all the things that we're putting before worship, that we're putting before gospel, black gospel, white gospel. And I know many people are not going to like this, but man, I just want it to be for Christ. If somebody is ministering to the Lord and God is looking at their heart and receiving their praise and receiving their worship, that's good enough for me. That's good enough for me. So if you want to have an honest opinion about how the gospel industry should move forward, it should be moving people to the feet of Jesus. And if it's not doing that, I don't care if it's making money or if it's losing money. I don't care if it's using the greatest vocalist or the worst vocalist. I don't care if you can sing or can't sing. I don't care if you're using piano or using guitar. If you are moving people towards the feet of Jesus, then it's good enough for me. I hope that's good enough for you too. All right, I'm gonna spend the next video talking about Christians in the marketplace and whether or not certain gifts should be monetized and certain gifts should not be monetized.