Here's the current top 10 praise and worship songs in America this week according to CCLI. Interesting that Chris Tomlin has 5 out of 10. Has that ever happened in secular music? Did the Beatles ever have 5 top 10 songs at once? Madonna? Michael Jackson? The pool of people contributing to the praise and worship genre is probably quite a bit smaller, and I imagine the shelf life of a worship song is much longer, but it's still an amazing feat.
(so to Josh )
1 How Great Is Our God / Tomlin, Reeves, Cash
2 Blessed Be Your Name / Redman
3 Here I Am To Worship / Hughes
4 Open The Eyes Of My Heart / Baloche
5 You Are My King / Foote
6 Holy Is The Lord / Tomlin, Giglio
7 We Fall Down / Tomlin
8 Forever / Tomlin
9 Lord I Lift Your Name On High / Founds
10 The Wonderful Cross / Reeves, Tomlin, Walt
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7 comments:
I can't believe that Lord I lift your name on high is still on that list. It is honestly painful for me to listen to that song we sang it way to many times when I was in Jr. High and High School (don't worry Kurt this was far before your time here)
What does that list say about how the Church in general is nurturing and valuing creativity?
If I understand you correctly, this list is not radio airplay, but music being used in worship in churches. Just like there are churches that have services that are traditional or liturgical because "we like it that way", there are contemporary worship services that continue to use older songs because "everyone knows them and everyone likes them".
Lets face it, most people don't like to be challenged by the pastor's message. How much less so do they want to be challenged with new music? I don't think it is a creativity thing, I think it is a comfort thing.
Jeff, that's interesting. Because I didn't actually see the list, I don't know if it's SALES related or more of a survey of what people are singing in church. That makes more sense seeing as many of the songs are so old. If that's the case, I would tend to agree with your assessement.
Well, I might not have thought of that before I was at this church. My third Sunday here, our "contemporary" worship music lineup did not have a single song written during the lifetimes of any of my students (I have birth through college age).
Wait - scratch that - we did have one song, our creed, that was published in 1992, it only sounds like it was written in the 70's.
"Sing to the Lord a NEW song." Psalm 33:3
Psalm 40:3
Psalm 96:1
Psalm 98:1
Psalm 144:9
Psalm 149:1
Isaiah 42:10
Perhaps we've forgotten these verses.
jeff's right about what CCLI actually is. this list refers to the songs most frequently used in set lists for worship services -- as reported by CCLI members. of course, not every church reports their songs, but they're supposed to as part of the CCLI license.
i'm not as disappointed with this list as some people. yea, "lord i lift" was written back in 1989. yea, we can label it as "older." yea, most of the worship stuff i like -- for our youth, for our adults and for me personally -- has been written since 1995 or so.
but to say the church is struggling to nurture and value creativity just because of the top 10 CCLI list is a big of a leap.
imagine that each church uses 5-6 of these top 10 songs. obviously, the repertorie for that congregation is going to be much, much deeper. our youth band has a rather shallow repertoire, IMHO, and we still have dozens and dozens of songs that we sing.
i expect that if you had the complete list of CCLI songs and could see what every single church sings, you'd be surprised how many mix "pop" worship tunes with their own original songs. and to me, when a church writes its own songs and uses those songs in their worship "mix," that's evidence of God releasing a "new song" in a body of believers.
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