Hillsong music is simple, catchy, and easy to play. If a teenager can pick up a guitar and lead their friends to sing along with easy lyrics, it'll be a hit.
A satirical take on this is How to Write a Worship Song (In 5 Minutes or Less).
Translations of Hillsong music into other languages are also popular. 約書亞樂團 Joshuaband translate some songs into Chinese, and it was a huge help for me learning Mandarin. I also know about illegal translations of a lot more songs, in Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hungarian. It's illegal because CCLI doesn't operate in those countries, so there's no way to license the song translations officially. Email me if you want to know where to get the chords/PPT/OpenSong/sheet music/MP3s.
For other languages, there's Hillsong Global Project for German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Korean, Indonesian, French, and Chinese.
Well, at least "Personal Jesus" kinda works in a gospel context if you read it as aspirational (think "WWJD"). "Spirit in the sky" on the other hand is New Age at best and cynical parody at worst -- the entire idea behind that song was "gospel songs seem easy to write, I bet I could do that".
I guess it's the musical equivalent of Poe's law: it's over the top and a bit insencere but the medium it mimics is already so over the top it fits right in and nobody bats an eye.
It's all about culture. If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns.
People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship.
The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.
Tend to agree. Most Christian music sounds very samey to me and simply doesn't stir my soul.
I realise this is a very personal perspective, but I find a lot of "secular" music better for worship: Hendrix, Led Zep, Guns 'N' Roses, Soundgarden, Hybrid, She, Pendulum, and of course plenty of orchestral and ensemble music from earlier eras. This stuff stirs my soul.
I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag, and I'm definitely not suggesting that Christian music needs to change for my benefit (it really doesn't). That's all totally OK: it's just me saying that after 22 years of being a Christian I know who I am.
> I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag
We forget that people are extremely varied, there is room for everybody. An infinite God probably doesn't create only ~3 "right" ways of worshipping, living, serving, teaching, etc.
This is one of those ancient church debates that goes back centuries. Should 'church' music be something that you listen to in silence and revel in its beauty or something that your participate and by doing so praise God with your voice. If you want everybody to play/sing along with gusto you better make the music easy to sing and play.
you're right and it tends to become more and more like that. On the other hand they are so simple you can pretty much pick up any song after the first couple of lines.
That's a very modern perspective, not necessarily consistent with Christian theology at all. The notion that people in the ancient world or simply older people today enjoy church music out of preference seems to ignore the fact that street music and folk music were NEVER comparable to church music. The idea behind unique liturgical music was that the structure of the music itself revealed something about the nature of creation that was worth LEARNING to like, even though it was alien. The notion that people can and should just gravitate to whatever suits their personal tastes implies that their tastes do not need redemption.
How is that inconsistent with Christian theology? Theology is diverse and different schools hold different, often contradictory views on any given topic. Usually what is called “Christian theology” is that for which there is a general consensus among theologians, and I’m unaware of any such consensus on this particular subject.
In the year 2018, Christian theology is almost infinitely diverse, but it wasn't always so. That diversity is very modern. For the vast majority of Christian history, the sacramental role of music in Christianity was essentially a universal given. It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that anyone even considered divorcing music from sacramental theology and it wasn't until the mid-20th century that the idea of church music as a matter of preference even arose. To speak authoritatively of "Christian theology" in the context of music in any meaningful sense, a "vote" needs to be given to every generation of Christians, not just the current one. And in that sense, there really is a consensus.
> To speak authoritatively of "Christian theology" in the context of music in any meaningful sense, a "vote" needs to be given to every generation of Christians, not just the current one.
Definitely, but we also need to consider that before the industrial revolution, Christians were limited in their options (most folks were very poor by modern standards, there isn't much diversity in music in general, and there is a comparatively narrow [and at various times, more corrupt] group of people making decisions on theology and music). So we need to consider history, but we don't weight all history evenly--there is such a thing as 'progress', after all.
That's a bold claim that too many people accept without question and about which too few actually consider the implications.
Progress is improvement. It's moving forward. The notion requires accepting the idea that you were at one point behind where you are now or not as developed/complete/refined. That's fine if you are talking about technology or some other mundane topic, but to make that claim in the context of Christianity - a religion ENTIRELY dependent upon the veracity and completeness of the stories and traditions it is based upon - is to call into question the entire faith.
You've got it switched. Progress in the context of Christianity logically follows from the notion that some things are better/truer/holier than other things. If you can accept that anything has gotten better/truer/holier over time, then you believe in progress. Specifically, if you believe it's good that the Church is no longer teaching poor people that they have to pay for their family to go to heaven, then you believe in progress. If you don't believe in progress, then you don't believe in truth/goodness/holiness, then you are actually questioning the entire faith and we can't have a meaningful conversation.
By using something like indulgences as an example, you're making a false equivalency. It's certainly possible to call it progress if you are RECOVERING from a fall. You start high, dip down, progress back up to where you were. Indulgences did not exist in the early church and didn't even exist outside of the European church when they were a thing. In that context, the recovery of what was true was not progress, it was repair.
But to imply that from the BEGINNING Christians were incorrect on something as important as sacramental theology and the role of music in sacramental theology is a completely separate claim with severe implications, as I described above.
I don’t know what you mean by “from the beginning”, but in any case there is no existential faith crisis in rejecting even very early traditions or beliefs which were not part of scripture, as evidenced by the prolific success of Bible-focused denominations. The idea that hymns are the one true way to worship is utter nonsense.
As with all things, this is complicated, and your description is only one facet of the history of music in the church.
For instance, a major component of the Protestant Reformation was encouraging congregational singing, and (particularly Calvanist) church composers of the era brought the music of the church much closer to the contemporary "popular" music of the day.
Given the fact that the Protestant Reformation encompasses roughly a quarter of the lifespan of the Christian church, I'm not sure it's fair to call it "exclusively modern".
Timespan is not as important as the shared perspective that defines modern religious thought, but even if it were, 25% is still far from a majority and, at least for most of that timeframe, Protestants were a small minority of Christians in the world (and they still are a minority).
I never claimed it was a "majority". My point is that the history of the Church is complicated, and Protestantism (representing roughly of a quarter of the catholic Church in terms of both time and people). Anything that encompasses 25-35% of a whole is significant enough to not be written off as "exclusively" anything.
High-Church sounds fun. I would go if Angie from Sweden went to that church. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdGgljB_hYvI7ZXTfebLymw
She writes really cat-chy schlock that I love and sing along to "I get high, eat pussy every day, and every day is kind of the same" Encapsulates the world in which I would want to live. I think that by saying that a church service is not a concert for entertainment is disingenuous or at least profoundly lacking in introspection. Music and lies go together but also music and entertainment.. Never ever do you have music and fear and jealousy - that has to be communicated with the sermon.
Stanley Hauerwas (theologian) had this to say about music in worship:
One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.
I knew Stanley several years ago when we attended the same church. I'm not a psychopath and neither were the other folks in our congregation. Stanley was a good teacher but a bit of a monotone during the songs. I hope he is still doing well. Good man.
Well, Stanley is known for overstatement, and there's a good chance this is hagiographic. But, I take the point to be that we need to be on guard about what we call worship because it does form us.
Let me add some texture to my comment. When I flip through radio stations in the car, I can always identify the contemporary christian station by the music style regardless of if I've heard the song before. It's not about not hearing enough of the music to differentiate songs. It's that they all have the same elements...like Taco Bell, it's only 7 ingredients.
> If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns.
Counterpoint: Lots of people, especially those who had not-great experiences growing up in the church, tend to go hard in a different direction when they grow up.
In "Blue Like Jazz", Donald Miller talks about how he thinks it would be super cool to belong to a relatively obscure (in the US) denomination like the Greek Orthodox --- that is, unless he had grown up Greek Orthodox. Then he thinks it would be totally lame and predictable.
While you are right that this is indeed some of the "sacred music from this time period", there are some significant style differences.
The Hillsong song still is very pop chord-cyclic. Much of the song is dominated by a variation of a C minor - E flat major - B flat major - A flat style cycle -- essentially, I would call it vi I IV V (to my ears at first listen the song's "home base" is E flat at least). The chord pattern shifts a little bit from time to time and there is some occasional variation in chord choice -- for instance, later in the song the A flat gets substituted with a F minor (ii) -- and some chord order variation. But Hillsong (like a lot of modern pop music) more relies on texture and instrument density (or lack thereof) for their expression . (Here the repetitive nature itself also can be thought of as an element of expression I'm sure, repetitive chant is a well known element of various religious cultures.)
Bach's tunes were written in the counterpoint style, which is an entirely different way of composing (very much a voice leading dominated style, with a clearly defined function for various chords -- tonics, dominants, etc.). The Bach cantatas honestly are not comparable to Hillsong in some ways as I think they were more meant to be performed, not sung along with by the entire church. But the older unison singalong hymns also did not tend to lean on chord loops like modern pop.
Take Adolphe Adam's "O Holy Night" aka Cantique de Noel (link to a French choral-orchestral version found on Youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNCFvg5M-yA). It "loops", but like most older hymns the loop is more verse-chorus oriented. You can have simple tunes with this structure ("Silent Night" is just three chords), but "O Holy Night" IMHO has a fair bit more complex chord progressions while still retaining enough simplicity to be a sing-along. Just to give one example, instead of repeating the chords at the end of the first part of the verse (I-V-I), the second part ends with a iii-VII7-iii so it can transition to the next section (in the Youtube version which appears to be in Eb major, that would be G minor - D7 major - G minor). The chorus goes through another set of chords entirely.
Personally, too often I find the Hillsong style of composing (which actually is very typical of modern secular pop as well) too repetitive for my personal taste, and lean more toward the older style. But this obviously is just my opinion. Hillsong is obviously popular, as is the modern pop style that they are written in.
The Bach Cantata here is marvelously moving, so let me put in my $0.02. When Bach wrote his music, he was also at the cutting edge of the technology of his age. The pipe organs were great accomplishments of that mechanical age. The churches then embraced the technology and music as new wave churches of our age (and with similar resistance).
Bach was an ultimate nerd, adept in technology of his generation. He knew about organ construction like few did and he earned an income as consultant from pipe organ construction projects that required much risk taking and investment. One has to be technical enough to know a lot about the physics of sound producing, metallurgy (look into the tin/copper content of the pipes to make sure the builder hasn't taken shortcuts etc. ), inspect bellows, air controllers, and suggest design changes, etc.
To the ordinary towns people this might have looked like Moog synthesizer or Hillsong innovations of today. Lets not forget that Bach faced significant career threatening opposition on the musical structure of these very Cantatas that were composed when he was Cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig where he taught music. His music was too new for most of them too...
Organs were widely used in chapels and then churches from the 9th Century onwards. Bach was working in a musical and technological context that was already centuries old.
Meanwhile Hillsong is repackaged millennial pop/country/hints-of-EDM with all rough edges sanded down to a glossy frictionless finish. It's slick and corporate and essentially parasitic on popular music stylings, visual imagery, and performance tropes.
There's nothing nerdy or edgy about it (unless you include some of the criminal allegations that surround Hillsong - which everyone probably should).
So I think comparing it to the output of a technical genius like Bach is pushing the truth envelope a little too far to be completely convincing.
A detailed comparison with modern music comes from a recent author whose name slips my mind. He taught at Columbia University, a journalist, his entire book is on the relationship of Bach with all kinds of recorded music in digital age.
Couple of points on this.. it's interesting how ideological context perculates (and reverse perculate) through a movement.
(A) Catholic (an example, for contrast) music tends to be institutional: choirs, organs... Formal. You don't just play the organ for fun, it's a scheduled, authorized activity. It's not something that spreads or something that exists outside of its preallocated box.
(B) Hillsong's kind of music is also accessible. You don't need much exposure to play or appreciate it. This isn't exotic tribal music, for and by some specific culture of people (think of Jewish kleizmer for example). It's pop, the stuff anyone can listen to or play.
Ie, you can tell from the music that Hillsong is new/modern, youth oriented, and mainstream-oriented and international/multicultural.
You can tell from catholic music that it's tradition and institution oriented. You can tell from Jewish music that it's tribally oriented. All ideological linchpins of those communities.
I knew someone that would play Catholic organ music for fun. She'd stream herself at the church she played at after hours. She wasn't Catholic or even Christian but she was good at it and got a gig playing it. She would play classical and her own compositions as well. She would also pull her boobs out and smoke meth on stream too. I think she ended up getting doxxed and kicked out of her parents house.
Punk with an organ? Link, please! I like the cultural crossovers that are made in all the sub-genres of rock (whether it's Christian rock, Mongolian throat singing metal, or Taiwanese post-punk). If it's got four chords, count me in.
In Germany we have Albert Frey, a Catholic singer and songwriter. I didn't know for years that he was Catholic since he is a major source of worship songs in evangelical churches and beyond.
If you read anxiously through the whole article like I did thinking: "Yeah I get it but what are the numbers?"
From 2015 article: "The Hillsong empire they founded (she, too, is a senior pastor) pulled in tax-free revenues of nearly $80 million in Australia last year and more than $100 million internationally."
That's not an apt comparison. Non-profits are still taxed, and only eligible for some sales tax exemptions (depending on the state - very few in some).
Religious organizations are considered tax-exempt.
Many non-profits are simply corporates who don't pay tax. They often suffer from the same issues of pay disparity paying the executives large salaries while the workers at the bottom are often volunteers.
While most non-profits don't simply exist to fund someone's lifestyle (some do) and do provide benefits to society they should have a greater level of scrutiny to receive tax free status. Same should go for churches - particularly ones who preach "give freely and you will receive back 10 fold".
There's a weird crossover between Amway and other multilevel marketing organisations and the Pentecostals. Not just the mega concert style of their events but the language they use and the attitudes you come across.
Mega-churches remind me of this warning from Jesus: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it."
Be careful with that: it occurs at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. That sermon isn't so much a statement of how people in general should behave as a statement of how believers are to behave as compared to those who consider themselves religious. I don't get the impression Jesus was picking on one or other religious party in particular.
Morever, in the UK at least, depending on where you look, around 5-10% of the population attend church[1][2] - that's about 3.3-6.02 million people. Of these, one third attend churches with a congregation of at least 350 people[3]. There are churches with thousands, which would traditionally be referred to as megachurches, but these are a small proportion of the whole. Anyway, that's somewhere between 1 and 2 million people attending larger churches (including megachurches), which puts them solidly in the minority - definitely not "the many".
I don't have accurate figures for churches >1000 people primarily because the third source doesn't include figures for the Catholic church. Still, the 23 protestant churches listed account for <100k people, so not even "the many" as compared to the number of people attending larger churches.
The perspective that might support what you're suggesting here is that Jesus often seems to be comparing with those who are conspicuously religious, who one would suppose are often figures of authority (although there's plenty of content on how we're to deal with those much closer to us as well). Seen in that context the leaders of megachurches are certainly conspicuously religious, but they are far from the majority of church leaders, and the third source suggests that the vast majority of leaders in the ~37,500 churches in the UK labour substantially in obscurity regardless of their character.
I am more skeptical about mega churches. But big or small, the thing I look for is the message. Is it a feel good, everybody is okay type of message? Or do they actually talk about sin, repentance and salvation? Jesus said that believers would be hated by everyone for spreading his message. So I have a more skeptical eye towards mega churches. But you can find the gospel in some large churches, and the feel good pop psychology messages in some smaller churches. So size is not an absolute inverse index.
Would you mind elaborating? I personally enjoy the music Hillsong puts out, but am always curious about the inner workings of an organization such as theirs.
Cult activities — they teach exclusion and isolation of their members against non-subscribers. Submission of financial independence of members, they must actually tithe of 10% their wage to the cult and this is actually audited by them; they hate the LGBT community (they are hateful anti-gay cult); tax free status, they make big dollars from victims and pay nothing toward society. Evil scum.
They share a bit of commonalities with IHOP. I think they might mean their "internship" program is a scam. Look into how IHOP is a cult / scams young people. Its a lot of fluff. My cousin too joined one of the internships but for her own reasons and thankfully she knew better so by the time she got out she just knew we were right about them, except she knew the whole enchilada.
In the case of IHOP they have sexualized lyrics which they front as worship music by over emphasizing being the Bride of Christ. This leads sexually frustrated / confused (in a Christian viewpoint / sense) youths even more confused about Jesus and their relationship with Him. Its a lot to take all at once so research it and pray about it and take your time. I just personally avoid IHOP / Hillsong for multiple reasons. The other thing to remember is they are not all at fault some are just there genuinely or misled into being there.
As a conservative, I've never really paid any attention to Hillsong stuff. What I did hear of typical pentecostal music struck me as pretty shallow and.....commercial. Admittedly as an ignoramus, I do wonder how they get around tax exemption while they rake this all in.
I know you can't brush everyone with the same stroke, but it feels reminiscent of those mega-pastors that fly around in their private jets to shake hands and take selfies with the poor - the message becomes a sideshow to the brand. It makes me uneasy - but, disclaimer, I don't really know on the pentecostal spectrum of commercialism where they lie.
Uneasy is the word I'd use as well. And in saying this I have to be honest and admit that I can't point to anything specific that's wrong.
Hillsong often get the plaudits (and the rap), but there are other similar movements. Worship Central and HTB here in the UK spring immediately to mind. I do go to these kinds of places from time to time and, whatever the organisation, you talk to the people involved: they're approachable and seem genuine, and they talk about empowering and benefitting the church and Christians at large, and I have no evidence to the contrary. All of which just leaves me feeling guilty about my discomfort, and maybe that's OK because maybe I'm wrong.
On the flip-side everything is so shiny: everyone you see ministering is beautiful and/or handsome and, although the quality of the music and lyrics might be questionable, the production values are excruciatingly high, and you're surrounded by people - particularly at the front - who appear to be going out of their way to model this kind of aching hyperreal trendiness.
Compare this with the composition of the average congregation (of any denomination) in the UK[1]. Even stepping past the issue of ageing congregations in many places, we're (and I mean no unkindness in saying this) a pretty miscellaneous bunch. In lots of churches you end up with all sorts having to get involved in making it work, not just those who are good-looking or loaded or "good people". There's space for everyone, and all can contribute, or at least that's what we aspire to - we believe in a God who calls the things who are not as though they are.
Possibly that last observation is rose-tinted when compared with reality, and possibly unfair on Hillsong and its imitators. Still, the contrast between Hillsong-like and most other churches does feel jarring and leaves me with that lingering unease.
Sorry: this ended up a lot longer than I expected.
[1] Note that I deliberately haven't gone down the route of comparing with the lives and lifestyles of Jesus and the Apostles, not because I necessarily think the comparison is invalid, but because: one, for many people I think there's a lack of familiarity with the source material that may render the comparison meaningless to them, and, two, because the societal and cultural situations are radically different, which makes any such comparison much more complex.
For me, the big problem with this kind of musical/theatrical production is that you're doing one thing — provoking excited emotions and feelings in a group context, just as would happen at a well-produced secular concert, or a moving, personal comedy show — and implicitly or explicitly claiming that it is a personal religious experience. Many times with young people who don't know the difference.
I suppose it might be fair to include music-induced group ecstatic experiences in your definition of “religious”. But I find the mix-n-match, the implied claim that the emotion of the large-context experience is actually a result of some kind of personal, relational connection to God, to be a heavily loaded and ambiguous possible untruth.
> you're doing one thing — provoking excited emotions and feelings in a group context, just as would happen at a well-produced secular concert, or a moving, personal comedy show — and implicitly or explicitly claiming that it is a personal religious experience. Many times with young people who don't know the difference.
That is a very thought-provoking perspective, which I think I'll probably be chewing over for a while - thanks for sharing it.
I would stringently urge any evangelical who hasn't attended a high energy secular concert - a good one - to go. After you've had that kind of experience, it is like subtracting the noise from the signal.
gave me a permanent distaste for "concerts" at church.
Yeah, that's an oldie but a goodie, from North Point here in Atlanta. Everyone's welcome there, unless you try something crazy, like being gay and doing child care at the same time.
I attend a small (100-150 person) church in SF, and it's super trendy. People are dressed fashionably, the music is current (including a ton of hillsong), the church has a great instagram, pour over coffee beforehand etc. But at least in the case of my church, that's a reflection of the people that go there and make up the congregation and their talents, alongside what people do for their day jobs and have trained professionally to do.
I think it's similar with churches like Mosaic in LA and Hillsong broadly speaking - they attract a lot of young people who are skilled in these areas and then those young people go on to use their talents in service to the church.
But that's not the point and it should never be the point. The teaching, the community, these things are far more important than the production values. I guess my thinking is that this polish is fine, as long as it's due to the talents of people in the church, rather than a need to impress others and put on a show so to speak.
To explain my username, I'm an organist. I'm not interested in going to a service that's nothing but a rock concert, but we've successfully incorporated some of these songs (Shout to the Lord comes to mind) successfully into a service that also includes standard liturgy, and I definitely enjoy them in that context. I'm not saying the genre isn't full of empty songs, but there are a few with merit in the lyrics.
I'm a former organist myself, went through this some years ago before I got out of the business.
I was always disappointed that there wasn't more efforts like Marty Haugen's Holden Evening Prayer, which really does a good job of keeping the liturgical structure but updating it to use some new instruments and be applicable in some new ways.
I was always supportive of adding new and different music, in fact I spearheaded it in a lot of cases, but the further along we went the more the new music just seemed repetitive and empty. (I can't imagine what it is now, about 9 years since I last played a service.)
In the Christian sense it isnt proper worship if people are more excited about a band (or their music) in church than they are about God or Jesus. The word for that becomes idolatry and most people partaking in it do not even realize it. They definitely are right there with the megapastors. Megaworship sounds like an appropriate title for them.
> What I did hear of typical pentecostal music struck me as pretty shallow and.....commercial
I noted this past sunday that one of the songs had "I" statements for the vast majority of lines. Funny that a song which is intended to speak to God's position (ie, worthy of worship) was so focused on self. Not surprising from one of the most selfish societies to ever have existed.
Hillsong is influential, no doubt. But I bet in the long run, even more influential will be the music from 'Veggietales'. (Sort of like 'Schoolhouse Rock'. Very catchy, and popular with all ages.)
Had to replace the batteries in one of their books. I get the feeling it will not be a one off event. Catholic school gave one of the books to my niece.
Amazing. How have I never seen that before? Made me laugh primarily because it resonates quite strongly for me (although I suspect not for everyone).
There are Christian artists I've really enjoyed. Iona spring immediately to mind, although I haven't listened to them regularly in years, but the relevant points are:
1) Their lyrics tend to have more substance to them.
2) Even if the style isn't your cup of tea, there's some real and undeniable musicianship on display.
Although way poppier, and with edgier lyrics, I'd probably put Switchfoot in the same category.
Hank Hill had another great set of lines at the end of that episode (S08E02, I believe) where he gets out a box of Bobby's old toys that he's lost interest in. Hank tells him that he doesn't want Jesus to become like one of those once-fashionable toys that quickly loses its appeal. I was quite surprised to find that much theological profundity in an episode of KoTH.
Edit: Also the bit with the rocker's dad about the fifth commandment.
I laughed, but try playing the guitar solo in Drop-D from the track _Wonder_ for 10m while the preacher gets excited and leads an extended prayer :D Holy hand cramps batman
It’s a pretty clever business niche and a way to run tax-free. The end result is a cultural machine that may well have changed the nature of Christian worship. Interesting, no?
I would argue that all religious tax-dodges are scams if you're an atheist. My businesses and lack of faith don't get a free-ride, but I have to subsidize that of somebody else's?
By this logic, it's a cool business hack to run a megachurch and buy your own 737 without paying taxes, not a scam?
Well, it most certainly is, isn’t it? You get an additional double digit percentage. That’s going to help your margins.
They aren’t scammers, though, because most people want this. Of course it is unfair to you, but most countries have their laws originate in their dominant religious culture and consequently favour that culture.
For instance, the San Francisco MTA legalized parking along the median on the street for church services. It’s just the way that people want it to be, and in democracies, they will inevitably get their way so it’s best to take advantage of the laws they make. Being upset is less profitable than playing the game.
You aren't really subsidising it, unless you're making the argument that if organisations - such as Hillsong - paid taxes the overall tax rate would be lowered for all? Ideally this might be true but the cynic in me suggests it wouldn't... well, that and the fact that their income within a given country is relatively insignificant as compared to GDP within that country.
Moreover:
1) Hillsong runs substantially on donations and purchases of their merchandise (including music). Most of the people who give or buy their merchandise are taxpayers themselves.
2) Anyone paid as an employee by Hillsong will pay taxes, just like everyone else. I don't know much about the lifestyles of their senior employees/leaders - maybe it's a televangelist-style Gulfstream-and-champagne-fest, maybe not.
3) We know Hillsong earn a lot of money but we don't know that they keep very much of it[1]. If they're anything like HTB, they quite likely don't[2]: the vast majority will be spent on staffing, ministry, along with a chunk given to support other organisations and causes. Ministry means everything from what you see on a Sunday and special events through to social initiatives such as food banks, homeless shelters, childrens' work, soup kitchens, and educational initiatives (and more) that many churches either support or run.
Point (3) is important because it's the point that makes a church a net good within society (or not, in the absence of it). If they're not a net good then I'd be more inclined to agree that, yes, they should be taxed as businesses rather than not taxed as though they're charities. Quantifying that is obviously non-trivial.
[1] It's possible they do but I don't have any information to hand on this.
[2] At a pure numbers level this is something that distinguishes a charity from a (healthy) business: one does not generate a profit (which is not to say the money shouldn't be used carefully and beneficially: clearly it should), whilst the other does.
> I don't know much about the lifestyles of their senior employees/leaders - maybe it's a televangelist-style Gulfstream-and-champagne-fest, maybe not.
Can you please tell me whose abortion you've actually paying for lately? The laws around Planned Parenthood's funding are quite clear, and government money does not pay for abortions, which is misfortunate. Planned Parenthood is audited more frequently than any other organization in the United States.
What do your tax dollars pay for in regards to Planned Parenthood? Things that Medicare should be paying for, but fails at, specifically, reproductive care for women, including obstetrics, which should go well with your pro-birth agenda (I'm not going to dignify it with the phrase "pro-life" because once the baby comes out, the "pro-lifers" seem to run for cover)
Meanwhile, when it comes to giving my tax dollars as welfare to your religion, your conservative agenda infringes upon my constitutional rights established under the 1st amendment to our constitution (in case of the USA).
Just think of the headline being: "How I leveraged music tempo and celebrity endorsements to bootstrap my startup from nothing to $85 million+ per year without paying a penny in tax." Its a business, maybe not one that you or I may engage in but that level of success is at least worth a headline news link.
> If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
It seems perfectly possible to me to be curious about worship music, and specifically how Hillsong got to be such a 900 pound gorilla in the field.
Speaking as a Christian who has very mixed feelings about Hillsong, I certainly am.
That said, the article had little substance, in my view. It recounted the church's history but didn't really touch on why they're so influential, which is really what I'm curious about.
I went to a few Hillsong events about 10 years ago, when the church was becoming very obvious cultural influence Australia-wide. There is a lot that's very entrepreneurial about this church. They also started Gloria Jean's, a big, international Starbucks competitor. Like the music stuff, this had to do with youth culture and creating social aspects to the movement.
In Australia a lot of people called the denomination "charismatic churches" which is largely overlapping with "evangelical" in the states, where it comes from. The larger family of denominations has been growing and internationalising at a serious pace.
In any case, when it comes to religion, opinions are.. sensitive. But, I think the recent history of this religion is worth learning about, for those interested, just because they've been "making things happen". Religions are pretty diverse structurally, from one another.
Hillsong and related movements (mostly descendants of American evangelical denominations) tend to be quite decentralised. The Church (institution) and the church (building/parish) are almost the same thing. They don't have a traditional, top-heavy hierarchy (bishops, cardinals) and they don't have a traditional local parochial structure.
> just because they've been "making things happen".
Actually, my biggest fear about Christianity in the USA today is that it's NOT "making things happen" Or, perhaps more accurately, the things that it's making happen are businesses.
The mainline congregations and Catholics of the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries made serious contributions to:
1. Education. In addition to the obvious middle and high schools, they started colleges and universities. There are literally hundreds of catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. colleges dotting rural America. There are also many more that have since shaken the affiliation but were originally started as schools for pastors and teachers. These christian educational institutions touched more than just the churches; e.g., Fred Rogers was educated at a college founded by Congregationalists and a seminary founded by Presbyterians.
2. Pastoral training/care. Aside from the above-mentioned colleges and universities, these congregations also started/supported seminaries and -- perhaps more importantly -- insisted on well-trained pastoral leadership that understood the church's teachings.
3. Congregational care. This included everything from helping out a sick congregant, to gardening, to helping keep the church building in working condition.
4. Community care. Everything from running food pantries to setting up and staffing health clinics, and sometimes even entire hospitals.
Many modern christian churches aren't much more than tax-free concert venues with a self-help workshop on the side run by charismatic communications majors. They'll take the parsonage exemption, but don't seriously engage in any of the traditional Christian charity work: education, healthcare, caring for the homeless and elderly, or even teaching the gospel.
Even the congregation's own members seem to have become not much more than leads for related businesses; e.g., the charismatic church a family friend attends runs a (very profitable) counseling center and refers its members there for basically every problem mentioned to a pastor or other staff member. Not a casserole in sight when she threw out her back, though.
Which I suppose is reasonable. After all, running a lead-generating combination concert/lecture venue is already a full-time job.
Agreed. When I moved into a new area and was "church hunting", one of my stops was the largest church in the area, with multiple satellite campuses. I realized why it was so popular: every Sunday was a big production. People were going to be entertained, not engaged.
There's definitely a continuum, though. There are small churches doing the traditional thing just as there's megachurches doing God, Inc. The church I attend now has a definite focus on the fundamentals you listed above.
Semi-related: How are the scout troops out of those two types of churches? Is there a big difference between the mega and the regular church sponsored scout troops? We're starting to look for a good one and would love to know what to look out for, if anything.
With the larger churches you can get more people showing up so that can be good, but it depends how it's run.
There are some that break down every non-Sunday-sermon level thing into a "small group" level of organization, and the quality varies by who leads. They also could have more budget to do better trips or activities.
Smaller venues trade population for intimacy. More one on one time to invest.
When you get down to it, my (albeit limited) experience has been the size doesn't matter as much as the people involved. Hopefully that helps!
Big churches that are charismatic and feel like concert venues (The Rock Church here in San Diego for instance) I don't feel are necessarily bad. If that is the door into religion then one could find their way to another congregation like the Methodists who truly focus on good works (help for those recently out of prisons, etc).
I am looking at this as an outsider. I'm European, and even though charismatic churches are global, their history is american.
Anyway... I see your point. It's true.
But, you need to remember that american catholic and "mainline protestant" churches mostly descend from a state religion origin. The american revolution's secularism totally changed the role of the church. The church-state seperation (which is still very partial in most of europe) basically took away their roles in these capacities.
In europe, these churches were (and still are) recipients of tax/public funds (whether direct, formal or indirect) and providers of public services.
Churches often ran the health systems, school systems, orphanages, mother-infant homes, poorhouses and such. They also had/have much more formal, power wielding roles as community leaders, representatives.
This is a good point when comparing USA churches with their European counter-parts.
However, the comparison I was making was specifically about the USA.
Even without tax/public funds (or preferential tax treatment), American christian churches did engage in all of the things you list.
There are hundreds of private, non-tax-funded middle schools, high schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries in the USA.
Many of our hospital systems (that have long sense become beasts unto themselves) were started as religious charities without state funding.
Almost all non-state-owned orphanages and homeless shelters were religiously affiliated charities that did not receive state funds.
And many of these things were done by home-grown congregations.
In an American context, the fact that the church did fill these roles even without preferential state support -- in fact, in a country where preferential state support was explicitly forbidden -- just makes the "then vs. now" comparison that much more concerning.
I was suggesting that cultural origins play a role. The catholic church's culture in the US is heavily influenced by the catholic church globally and its history globally. So, they see those schools & hospitals as a part of what the church is, what it does and its role in society.
Anyway... personally, I'm more worried about secular/non-religious bodies inability to perform functions historically provided by churches.
For-profit, non-profit & public bodies can do hospitals & schools, and do. They don't do pastoral care very well. They don't build communities very well. .. That, IMO is where the crack is, that separation of church and state has left.
I think it's also a result in a shift of the faith traditions. I'm not very religious, so I'm going to get some of this wrong but: there's been a shift in theological thinking in the US, where in the past good deeds were required as a demonstration of faith. With a lot of the mainstream evangelical churches, the belief is that accepting Jesus is the only requirement for salvation. I think that's why so much of #1 and #4 don't happen as much anymore.
(corrections welcome, and I know there's a succinct summary for this contrast that I'm blanking on)
In the Christian tradition, good deeds should result from one's faith, not be the foundation or requirement for it.
There has been great controversy over this between varying denominations, both in terminology and in belief -- it's not a universal belief among the varying faith traditions and hasn't been universal at any time in the past to now.
As a Christian, I can honestly say your comment is the cold hard truth; unfortunate, but true. Many churches today have gone from preaching the unadulterated truth to being nothing more than motivational speakers and social clubs. There's also many who haven't compromised and continue down the straight and narrow, but the trend has certainly been in the opposite direction. Thank you for posting your insight - very helpful.
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you".
If you're going to reach the kids and young adults of the 21st century, your church can't act like it's still the 19th.
If all you care about is your existing congregation of late-stage adults and senior citizens, then perhaps organ music and "the unadulterated truth" are just fine. But it means your church has an expiration date.
Where does my comment mention anything about worship style? I find debates about worship style mostly uninteresting and irrelevant.
My comment focuses on a general disinterest in caring for the congregation and its surrounding community. In other words, churches that "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" but which do NOT "teach them to observe all that I have commanded you".
I think scripture makes it abundantly clear which of those is the more important commandment. In fact, on multiple occasions, Jesus and his apostles specifically call out churches that do the former without doing the latter.
Christianity can thrive with contemporary worship styles, and arguments to the contrary are silly. That's why I didn't make a single comment about worship style.
However, if the kids and young adults of the 21st century are disinterested in obeying commandments to care for their follow congregants, to care for the downtrodden in their communities, to care for their clergy, etc., then the Christian church is atrophied. Regardless of how many people show up to Sunday worship or how many counseling sessions/MP3 downloads/lattes are sold.
In other words, the "thing" that churches should be "making happen" is the following of God's teachings. Success in more secular terms is irrelevant to the measure of a church, even if it is interesting to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Actually, my biggest fear about Christianity in the USA today is that it's NOT "making things happen" Or, perhaps more accurately, the things that it's making happen are businesses.
I think it depends on which branches of Christianity you care about.
I'm not Mormon, but I get Salt Lake City television where I live, and have some Mormon neighbors, and the things that the LDS does to change lives around the world are incredible. It is truly a world-changing organization. But unless you're in or adjacent to that sphere, most people don't know about it.
Similarly, the Roman Catholic church is almost exclusively known by the general public in recent years for scandal. But I saw a report a few years ago that the Church had already spent a trillion (yes, with a T) dollars fighting human trafficking and helping the victims of human trafficking around the world.
Again, if you're not tuned in to Catholic media, or only consume media from the usual North America and European sources, you wouldn't know about these sorts of things.
Disgusting money grubbing cult. Not actually Christian, but a scam to separate money from fools. Has ATMs in the lobby. Ya know — Jesus kicked the money lenders out of the temple. You would think they would follow his example. Get this trash off HN.
Hillsong NYC volunteer software engineer here. We’re passionate about using our skills to serve the local community in addition to our church. Shoot me an email if you’re in the area and would like to chat about helping local nonprofits with code. e at emersonhall dot com
Your church is also passionate about alienating its members from non-believers, and oppressing LGBT folk. All while ignoring the actual message of your deity. Keep you help to yourself buddy.
The other 900lb gorilla in the contemporary Christian music world today is Bethel Church, in Redding CA. They've put out as much if not more of than Hillsong in terms of the music played in contemporary churches these days. Too bad their great music hides some "interesting" theology, IMHO.
oh, Passion is a good one. I don't normally associate Tomlin, etc. with them because they're all such huge solo artists these days (vs. someone like Kristian Stanfill).
Chris Tomlin is especially big in terms of writing songs that modern churches play. There's a reason we called it "Good Good Grief, We're Playing This Again?" on my worship team :-)
I've been playing in worship groups for +20 years now and I'm currently leading the youth band in a very small church and here are two things that I've been noting recently:
Hillsong's music and most "mainstream" music that come from white english-spoken megachurches have lyrics that talk about "grace","love" and "God accepting you as you are". While the themes on worship music coming from South America (and I think black churches in US too) are more about "Joy", "Freedom" and "God, the mighty warrior defeating his enemies and delivering his people". I found that really interesting.
The other thing is that even while Hillsong's and similar music is very shallow and simplistic, it is becoming increasingly difficult to perform with simple, cheap instruments. So small and poor bands like ours lose appeal against the ones in megachurches with lots of instruments, talent-pool and technology.
I, for one, I'm embracing this and going for a rock-punk attitude for my little worship band.
The difference in emphasis you noticed (grace, love, and acceptance vs. joy, freedom, and deliverance) has deep historical roots that go back much further than colonial history. As an exercise, even the apostles -- and the prophets before them -- can be read in terms of which side of this dichotomy they preferred in their rhetoric. If you read the bible every year and choose a list of themes/topics to focus on, this is an interesting one.
Another really interesting fact: this difference in style correlates much better with demographics than with doctrine/dogma/congregation. There was a dissertation or maybe book about this, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.
The Book "Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes" reveals how cultural biases influence how we interpret/misinterpret the Bible. One of the examples given was the difference between our (western) individualistic culture and the collectivist culture which the Bible was written.
There's another interesting language difference to look at, both within the history of Western worship, and in various countries.
Western worship has become heavily "I/Me" based, where historically it was more "Us/We" based. To the point it's starting to drive me crazy. Worship is becoming almost entirely selfish. A group of individuals having an individual experience, instead of a group of people having a collective, binding, experience with God.
I'm reminded of two things. First, Knuth's article "On the Complexity of Songs", which features K. C. and the Sunshine band's "That's the way..." (Knuth, btw, is a Christian). Second, many years ago, a music minister and I were goofing around with worship songs set to disco music. I did, "That's the way, uh huh, huh huh, I praise Him, uh huh, uh huh..." This was, partly, to express my discontent with I-focused worship and banal lyrics. He responded with an amazing, impromptu version of the Bee Gee's "Staying Alive" with the lyrics "He is alive! He is alive!".
Lost and Found (band) I think has some nice song books if you've never come across them. Two piece band, guitar and piano, simple music, large variety of subject matter, very different sound.
> The other thing is that even while Hillsong's and similar music is very shallow and simplistic, it is becoming increasingly difficult to perform with simple, cheap instruments. So small and poor bands like ours lose appeal against the ones in megachurches with lots of instruments, talent-pool and technology.
Generally a good song can hold up when performed on a single piano or acoustic guitar, and obviously with a singer[1]. The problem here is not you: it's the songs.
Assuming you're half competent musicians, which you sound like you are, they don't sound good when you play them, not because your instruments are cheap and your band is small, but because they don't hold up as songs. They're not strong enough to carry themselves with a simple arrangement. I suspect it's not a conscious effort but what Hillsong (and others) are doing is using an impressive production to disguise weak songs.
And even if in some cases I'm wrong, songs that require a massive production aren't necessarily that helpful to the church at large. For smaller churches, how is it useful to have songs that require 10 musicians to pull off to even a borderline acceptable standard?
Your comment about rock-punk attitude is bang on. Hillsong is the overblown self-indulgent rock music of the early-mid 1970s (I mean, think how long some of their songs go on nowadays): it is time, and over-time, for the punks to take over.
I think there's a real opportunity here for strong songwriting and simplified arrangements to win through and displace the turgid mega-productions we're being submitted to with something - at the risk of being accused of rank hipsterism - a little more authentic.
Just think how many great bands over the years have been three, four, or five pieces with no massive productions (until, perhaps, later on): The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Blondie, The Police, The Pretenders, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Manic Street Preachers, Cranberries, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Garbage, U2 (yeah, I know, everybody loves to hate Bono), Metallica, AC/DC, GnR, REM, Radiohead, Paramore, and the list goes on - even Fleetwood Mac were pretty basic to start off with. I'd rather listen to any of these (and many more) than Hillsong or similar.
You can do a heck of a lot with an acoustic (or even electric) guitar or two, some percussion, and a couple of voices. If you can add a bass in there, more power to you.
[1] There are, obviously, exceptions. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't really work as anything other than a big production. Neither does Beethoven's Ode To Joy. The interesting thing about Ode To Joy though is that, if you strip away the massive production, the tune is kind of crappy - it doesn't hold up on its own.
> Generally a good song can hold up when performed on a single piano or acoustic guitar, and obviously with a singer[1]. The problem here is not you: it's the songs [...] using an impressive production to disguise weak songs.
I was going to take exception to this and say that a lot of choral music doesn't really fall under this because a soprano line on its own is often not great, but I think instead there's a different point to be made: don't try to take 3-4 parts verbatim out of a larger arrangement and expect it to work.
A piano, for example, does not play the same arrangement with just a choir as it would with a choir+orchestra. Similarly, a good 2-part version of a 4-part song with soprano melody[1] is rarely obtained by taking the 'soprano+alto', 'soprano+tenor', or 'soprano+bass' parts of the 4-part, but instead by using 'soprano+alto/tenor/bass' or even 'soprano+all new harmony'.
Basically, don't judge a song by how good a 1-2 parts sounds on its own. (Said differently: the important harmony or even the melody can move between singers/instruments throughout the song)
[1] Of course, for complex songs the best 2-part version of 4 parts can approach 'S/A/T/B+S/A/T/B' as the melody moves around.
While not directly rated to Hillsong, there's an interesting series of episodes from Gimlet Media's StartUp podcast called Church Planting that dives down to reveal more day to day operations on how church plants that start small like Hillsong grow into bigger churches. Lot of the aspects of pitching to established investor churches, growth hacking, etc. have a lot more in common to a startup company than a church and pastors more like founders. Church plants that can adapt have a more successful growth. I think it provides an interesting perspective into how "successful" churches like Hillsong that started by meeting in a high school end up turning into megachurches across 6 continents.
I just wanna say, I clicked through to the comments expecting this to be a diatribe against christians and christianity, and I am thoroughly pleased to see that's not the case.
As a (struggling with faith) christian, I tend to think my fellow tech heads will mock me if it comes up. And yet this post has been really respectful, largely just debating the merits of the article rather than as an opportunity to attack.
Kudos, hackers, for proving civility still exists. I'm tickled pink.
Dude, I totally second your comment. That's the very first thing I thought as I initially scrolled through the comments. I tip my hat, both to Christians for not being scared to express their beliefs, and to non-Christians for showing respect.
I'm having a hard time absorbing and getting through all the high-quality insights and contributions. There's no doubt that there are a lot of very intelligent people here.
Your account had very low karma. There is a minimum threshold of karma required in order to down vote (in order to encourage participation in the conversation, rather than just downvoting topics you don't like).
I didn't say I was going to use them downvoters!!! But if I'm going to hell anyway I do think 'Conquered the music industry' to be a wee bit strong, no?
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadwe're sorry
- Australia
(well SOME of us are)
A satirical take on this is How to Write a Worship Song (In 5 Minutes or Less).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhYuA0Cz8ls
Translations of Hillsong music into other languages are also popular. 約書亞樂團 Joshuaband translate some songs into Chinese, and it was a huge help for me learning Mandarin. I also know about illegal translations of a lot more songs, in Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hungarian. It's illegal because CCLI doesn't operate in those countries, so there's no way to license the song translations officially. Email me if you want to know where to get the chords/PPT/OpenSong/sheet music/MP3s.
For other languages, there's Hillsong Global Project for German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Korean, Indonesian, French, and Chinese.
I guess it's the musical equivalent of Poe's law: it's over the top and a bit insencere but the medium it mimics is already so over the top it fits right in and nobody bats an eye.
People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship.
The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.
I realise this is a very personal perspective, but I find a lot of "secular" music better for worship: Hendrix, Led Zep, Guns 'N' Roses, Soundgarden, Hybrid, She, Pendulum, and of course plenty of orchestral and ensemble music from earlier eras. This stuff stirs my soul.
I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag, and I'm definitely not suggesting that Christian music needs to change for my benefit (it really doesn't). That's all totally OK: it's just me saying that after 22 years of being a Christian I know who I am.
We forget that people are extremely varied, there is room for everybody. An infinite God probably doesn't create only ~3 "right" ways of worshipping, living, serving, teaching, etc.
Definitely, but we also need to consider that before the industrial revolution, Christians were limited in their options (most folks were very poor by modern standards, there isn't much diversity in music in general, and there is a comparatively narrow [and at various times, more corrupt] group of people making decisions on theology and music). So we need to consider history, but we don't weight all history evenly--there is such a thing as 'progress', after all.
That's a bold claim that too many people accept without question and about which too few actually consider the implications.
Progress is improvement. It's moving forward. The notion requires accepting the idea that you were at one point behind where you are now or not as developed/complete/refined. That's fine if you are talking about technology or some other mundane topic, but to make that claim in the context of Christianity - a religion ENTIRELY dependent upon the veracity and completeness of the stories and traditions it is based upon - is to call into question the entire faith.
But to imply that from the BEGINNING Christians were incorrect on something as important as sacramental theology and the role of music in sacramental theology is a completely separate claim with severe implications, as I described above.
For instance, a major component of the Protestant Reformation was encouraging congregational singing, and (particularly Calvanist) church composers of the era brought the music of the church much closer to the contemporary "popular" music of the day.
One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.
For those interested in this sort of thing, Minnesota Public Radio's app has an entire streaming channel of choral music.
Counterpoint: Lots of people, especially those who had not-great experiences growing up in the church, tend to go hard in a different direction when they grow up.
In "Blue Like Jazz", Donald Miller talks about how he thinks it would be super cool to belong to a relatively obscure (in the US) denomination like the Greek Orthodox --- that is, unless he had grown up Greek Orthodox. Then he thinks it would be totally lame and predictable.
I expect that history will look back and see Hillsong as an example of sacred music from this time period.
The Hillsong song still is very pop chord-cyclic. Much of the song is dominated by a variation of a C minor - E flat major - B flat major - A flat style cycle -- essentially, I would call it vi I IV V (to my ears at first listen the song's "home base" is E flat at least). The chord pattern shifts a little bit from time to time and there is some occasional variation in chord choice -- for instance, later in the song the A flat gets substituted with a F minor (ii) -- and some chord order variation. But Hillsong (like a lot of modern pop music) more relies on texture and instrument density (or lack thereof) for their expression . (Here the repetitive nature itself also can be thought of as an element of expression I'm sure, repetitive chant is a well known element of various religious cultures.)
Bach's tunes were written in the counterpoint style, which is an entirely different way of composing (very much a voice leading dominated style, with a clearly defined function for various chords -- tonics, dominants, etc.). The Bach cantatas honestly are not comparable to Hillsong in some ways as I think they were more meant to be performed, not sung along with by the entire church. But the older unison singalong hymns also did not tend to lean on chord loops like modern pop.
Take Adolphe Adam's "O Holy Night" aka Cantique de Noel (link to a French choral-orchestral version found on Youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNCFvg5M-yA). It "loops", but like most older hymns the loop is more verse-chorus oriented. You can have simple tunes with this structure ("Silent Night" is just three chords), but "O Holy Night" IMHO has a fair bit more complex chord progressions while still retaining enough simplicity to be a sing-along. Just to give one example, instead of repeating the chords at the end of the first part of the verse (I-V-I), the second part ends with a iii-VII7-iii so it can transition to the next section (in the Youtube version which appears to be in Eb major, that would be G minor - D7 major - G minor). The chorus goes through another set of chords entirely.
Personally, too often I find the Hillsong style of composing (which actually is very typical of modern secular pop as well) too repetitive for my personal taste, and lean more toward the older style. But this obviously is just my opinion. Hillsong is obviously popular, as is the modern pop style that they are written in.
Bach was an ultimate nerd, adept in technology of his generation. He knew about organ construction like few did and he earned an income as consultant from pipe organ construction projects that required much risk taking and investment. One has to be technical enough to know a lot about the physics of sound producing, metallurgy (look into the tin/copper content of the pipes to make sure the builder hasn't taken shortcuts etc. ), inspect bellows, air controllers, and suggest design changes, etc.
To the ordinary towns people this might have looked like Moog synthesizer or Hillsong innovations of today. Lets not forget that Bach faced significant career threatening opposition on the musical structure of these very Cantatas that were composed when he was Cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig where he taught music. His music was too new for most of them too...
Meanwhile Hillsong is repackaged millennial pop/country/hints-of-EDM with all rough edges sanded down to a glossy frictionless finish. It's slick and corporate and essentially parasitic on popular music stylings, visual imagery, and performance tropes.
There's nothing nerdy or edgy about it (unless you include some of the criminal allegations that surround Hillsong - which everyone probably should).
So I think comparing it to the output of a technical genius like Bach is pushing the truth envelope a little too far to be completely convincing.
"Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven" by John Eliot Gardiner. He is a reliable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eliot_Gardiner
A detailed comparison with modern music comes from a recent author whose name slips my mind. He taught at Columbia University, a journalist, his entire book is on the relationship of Bach with all kinds of recorded music in digital age.
I provided the example [above](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18283308) of popular non-(simple, catchy, and easy to play) tracks.
(A) Catholic (an example, for contrast) music tends to be institutional: choirs, organs... Formal. You don't just play the organ for fun, it's a scheduled, authorized activity. It's not something that spreads or something that exists outside of its preallocated box.
(B) Hillsong's kind of music is also accessible. You don't need much exposure to play or appreciate it. This isn't exotic tribal music, for and by some specific culture of people (think of Jewish kleizmer for example). It's pop, the stuff anyone can listen to or play.
Ie, you can tell from the music that Hillsong is new/modern, youth oriented, and mainstream-oriented and international/multicultural.
You can tell from catholic music that it's tradition and institution oriented. You can tell from Jewish music that it's tribally oriented. All ideological linchpins of those communities.
From 2015 article: "The Hillsong empire they founded (she, too, is a senior pastor) pulled in tax-free revenues of nearly $80 million in Australia last year and more than $100 million internationally."
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/inside-the-hillsong-churchs...
Girl Scouts, a non-profit, bring in 700 million from selling their cookies. United Way Worldwide, another non-profit, has a revenue of 3.9 Billion.
Religious organizations are considered tax-exempt.
edit: In Canada, I meant to say.
While most non-profits don't simply exist to fund someone's lifestyle (some do) and do provide benefits to society they should have a greater level of scrutiny to receive tax free status. Same should go for churches - particularly ones who preach "give freely and you will receive back 10 fold". There's a weird crossover between Amway and other multilevel marketing organisations and the Pentecostals. Not just the mega concert style of their events but the language they use and the attitudes you come across.
Morever, in the UK at least, depending on where you look, around 5-10% of the population attend church[1][2] - that's about 3.3-6.02 million people. Of these, one third attend churches with a congregation of at least 350 people[3]. There are churches with thousands, which would traditionally be referred to as megachurches, but these are a small proportion of the whole. Anyway, that's somewhere between 1 and 2 million people attending larger churches (including megachurches), which puts them solidly in the minority - definitely not "the many".
I don't have accurate figures for churches >1000 people primarily because the third source doesn't include figures for the Catholic church. Still, the 23 protestant churches listed account for <100k people, so not even "the many" as compared to the number of people attending larger churches.
The perspective that might support what you're suggesting here is that Jesus often seems to be comparing with those who are conspicuously religious, who one would suppose are often figures of authority (although there's plenty of content on how we're to deal with those much closer to us as well). Seen in that context the leaders of megachurches are certainly conspicuously religious, but they are far from the majority of church leaders, and the third source suggests that the vast majority of leaders in the ~37,500 churches in the UK labour substantially in obscurity regardless of their character.
[1] https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html
[2] https://www.compassionuk.org/02-million-people-attending-chu...
[3] http://www.lausanneworldpulse.com/perspectives-php/1109/03-2...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In the case of IHOP they have sexualized lyrics which they front as worship music by over emphasizing being the Bride of Christ. This leads sexually frustrated / confused (in a Christian viewpoint / sense) youths even more confused about Jesus and their relationship with Him. Its a lot to take all at once so research it and pray about it and take your time. I just personally avoid IHOP / Hillsong for multiple reasons. The other thing to remember is they are not all at fault some are just there genuinely or misled into being there.
I know you can't brush everyone with the same stroke, but it feels reminiscent of those mega-pastors that fly around in their private jets to shake hands and take selfies with the poor - the message becomes a sideshow to the brand. It makes me uneasy - but, disclaimer, I don't really know on the pentecostal spectrum of commercialism where they lie.
Hillsong often get the plaudits (and the rap), but there are other similar movements. Worship Central and HTB here in the UK spring immediately to mind. I do go to these kinds of places from time to time and, whatever the organisation, you talk to the people involved: they're approachable and seem genuine, and they talk about empowering and benefitting the church and Christians at large, and I have no evidence to the contrary. All of which just leaves me feeling guilty about my discomfort, and maybe that's OK because maybe I'm wrong.
On the flip-side everything is so shiny: everyone you see ministering is beautiful and/or handsome and, although the quality of the music and lyrics might be questionable, the production values are excruciatingly high, and you're surrounded by people - particularly at the front - who appear to be going out of their way to model this kind of aching hyperreal trendiness.
Compare this with the composition of the average congregation (of any denomination) in the UK[1]. Even stepping past the issue of ageing congregations in many places, we're (and I mean no unkindness in saying this) a pretty miscellaneous bunch. In lots of churches you end up with all sorts having to get involved in making it work, not just those who are good-looking or loaded or "good people". There's space for everyone, and all can contribute, or at least that's what we aspire to - we believe in a God who calls the things who are not as though they are.
Possibly that last observation is rose-tinted when compared with reality, and possibly unfair on Hillsong and its imitators. Still, the contrast between Hillsong-like and most other churches does feel jarring and leaves me with that lingering unease.
Sorry: this ended up a lot longer than I expected.
[1] Note that I deliberately haven't gone down the route of comparing with the lives and lifestyles of Jesus and the Apostles, not because I necessarily think the comparison is invalid, but because: one, for many people I think there's a lack of familiarity with the source material that may render the comparison meaningless to them, and, two, because the societal and cultural situations are radically different, which makes any such comparison much more complex.
I suppose it might be fair to include music-induced group ecstatic experiences in your definition of “religious”. But I find the mix-n-match, the implied claim that the emotion of the large-context experience is actually a result of some kind of personal, relational connection to God, to be a heavily loaded and ambiguous possible untruth.
ymmv — I definitely have religion issues :-)
That is a very thought-provoking perspective, which I think I'll probably be chewing over for a while - thanks for sharing it.
gave me a permanent distaste for "concerts" at church.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys4Nx0rNlAM
I think it's similar with churches like Mosaic in LA and Hillsong broadly speaking - they attract a lot of young people who are skilled in these areas and then those young people go on to use their talents in service to the church.
But that's not the point and it should never be the point. The teaching, the community, these things are far more important than the production values. I guess my thinking is that this polish is fine, as long as it's due to the talents of people in the church, rather than a need to impress others and put on a show so to speak.
I was always disappointed that there wasn't more efforts like Marty Haugen's Holden Evening Prayer, which really does a good job of keeping the liturgical structure but updating it to use some new instruments and be applicable in some new ways.
I was always supportive of adding new and different music, in fact I spearheaded it in a lot of cases, but the further along we went the more the new music just seemed repetitive and empty. (I can't imagine what it is now, about 9 years since I last played a service.)
I noted this past sunday that one of the songs had "I" statements for the vast majority of lines. Funny that a song which is intended to speak to God's position (ie, worthy of worship) was so focused on self. Not surprising from one of the most selfish societies to ever have existed.
Such great classics as "Dance of the Cucumber"[1], "Monkey or Ape"[2], and "Song of the Cebu"[3]...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13DvXLdr_H4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--szrOHtR6U [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uv8Ej4CEoQ
https://i.redd.it/5iqvu91yz0ly.jpg
There are Christian artists I've really enjoyed. Iona spring immediately to mind, although I haven't listened to them regularly in years, but the relevant points are:
1) Their lyrics tend to have more substance to them.
2) Even if the style isn't your cup of tea, there's some real and undeniable musicianship on display.
Although way poppier, and with edgier lyrics, I'd probably put Switchfoot in the same category.
You would probably also appreciate Jon Foreman's (Switchfoot founder) solo work too.
Edit: Also the bit with the rocker's dad about the fifth commandment.
tobymac - 26M views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeBv9r92VQ0
Skillet - 242M views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjlM_RnsVE
So, if aggresive/suicidal/depressive music is popular, why christian bands may be in underground?
https://www.theringer.com/2017/11/8/16623902/pastor-carl-len...
tl;dr: Christian organization scams tax payers, recent conservative trends on Hacker News somehow makes this interesting?
I don’t think this is interesting because any conservative trend. It’s a cool business hack that allows you to make money without taxes.
By this logic, it's a cool business hack to run a megachurch and buy your own 737 without paying taxes, not a scam?
They aren’t scammers, though, because most people want this. Of course it is unfair to you, but most countries have their laws originate in their dominant religious culture and consequently favour that culture.
For instance, the San Francisco MTA legalized parking along the median on the street for church services. It’s just the way that people want it to be, and in democracies, they will inevitably get their way so it’s best to take advantage of the laws they make. Being upset is less profitable than playing the game.
Moreover:
1) Hillsong runs substantially on donations and purchases of their merchandise (including music). Most of the people who give or buy their merchandise are taxpayers themselves.
2) Anyone paid as an employee by Hillsong will pay taxes, just like everyone else. I don't know much about the lifestyles of their senior employees/leaders - maybe it's a televangelist-style Gulfstream-and-champagne-fest, maybe not.
3) We know Hillsong earn a lot of money but we don't know that they keep very much of it[1]. If they're anything like HTB, they quite likely don't[2]: the vast majority will be spent on staffing, ministry, along with a chunk given to support other organisations and causes. Ministry means everything from what you see on a Sunday and special events through to social initiatives such as food banks, homeless shelters, childrens' work, soup kitchens, and educational initiatives (and more) that many churches either support or run.
Point (3) is important because it's the point that makes a church a net good within society (or not, in the absence of it). If they're not a net good then I'd be more inclined to agree that, yes, they should be taxed as businesses rather than not taxed as though they're charities. Quantifying that is obviously non-trivial.
[1] It's possible they do but I don't have any information to hand on this.
[2] At a pure numbers level this is something that distinguishes a charity from a (healthy) business: one does not generate a profit (which is not to say the money shouldn't be used carefully and beneficially: clearly it should), whilst the other does.
Sadly, if this article is accurate, it may be closer to the above than I'd thought: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/taxpayers-support-lavish-h...
What do your tax dollars pay for in regards to Planned Parenthood? Things that Medicare should be paying for, but fails at, specifically, reproductive care for women, including obstetrics, which should go well with your pro-birth agenda (I'm not going to dignify it with the phrase "pro-life" because once the baby comes out, the "pro-lifers" seem to run for cover)
Meanwhile, when it comes to giving my tax dollars as welfare to your religion, your conservative agenda infringes upon my constitutional rights established under the 1st amendment to our constitution (in case of the USA).
> If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
It seems perfectly possible to me to be curious about worship music, and specifically how Hillsong got to be such a 900 pound gorilla in the field.
Speaking as a Christian who has very mixed feelings about Hillsong, I certainly am.
That said, the article had little substance, in my view. It recounted the church's history but didn't really touch on why they're so influential, which is really what I'm curious about.
In Australia a lot of people called the denomination "charismatic churches" which is largely overlapping with "evangelical" in the states, where it comes from. The larger family of denominations has been growing and internationalising at a serious pace.
In any case, when it comes to religion, opinions are.. sensitive. But, I think the recent history of this religion is worth learning about, for those interested, just because they've been "making things happen". Religions are pretty diverse structurally, from one another.
Hillsong and related movements (mostly descendants of American evangelical denominations) tend to be quite decentralised. The Church (institution) and the church (building/parish) are almost the same thing. They don't have a traditional, top-heavy hierarchy (bishops, cardinals) and they don't have a traditional local parochial structure.
Actually, my biggest fear about Christianity in the USA today is that it's NOT "making things happen" Or, perhaps more accurately, the things that it's making happen are businesses.
The mainline congregations and Catholics of the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries made serious contributions to:
1. Education. In addition to the obvious middle and high schools, they started colleges and universities. There are literally hundreds of catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. colleges dotting rural America. There are also many more that have since shaken the affiliation but were originally started as schools for pastors and teachers. These christian educational institutions touched more than just the churches; e.g., Fred Rogers was educated at a college founded by Congregationalists and a seminary founded by Presbyterians.
2. Pastoral training/care. Aside from the above-mentioned colleges and universities, these congregations also started/supported seminaries and -- perhaps more importantly -- insisted on well-trained pastoral leadership that understood the church's teachings.
3. Congregational care. This included everything from helping out a sick congregant, to gardening, to helping keep the church building in working condition.
4. Community care. Everything from running food pantries to setting up and staffing health clinics, and sometimes even entire hospitals.
Many modern christian churches aren't much more than tax-free concert venues with a self-help workshop on the side run by charismatic communications majors. They'll take the parsonage exemption, but don't seriously engage in any of the traditional Christian charity work: education, healthcare, caring for the homeless and elderly, or even teaching the gospel.
Even the congregation's own members seem to have become not much more than leads for related businesses; e.g., the charismatic church a family friend attends runs a (very profitable) counseling center and refers its members there for basically every problem mentioned to a pastor or other staff member. Not a casserole in sight when she threw out her back, though.
Which I suppose is reasonable. After all, running a lead-generating combination concert/lecture venue is already a full-time job.
There's definitely a continuum, though. There are small churches doing the traditional thing just as there's megachurches doing God, Inc. The church I attend now has a definite focus on the fundamentals you listed above.
There are some that break down every non-Sunday-sermon level thing into a "small group" level of organization, and the quality varies by who leads. They also could have more budget to do better trips or activities.
Smaller venues trade population for intimacy. More one on one time to invest.
When you get down to it, my (albeit limited) experience has been the size doesn't matter as much as the people involved. Hopefully that helps!
I've been attending a Rock & Roll Jesus church. Partially out of curiousity. It's been weird.
Anyway... I see your point. It's true.
But, you need to remember that american catholic and "mainline protestant" churches mostly descend from a state religion origin. The american revolution's secularism totally changed the role of the church. The church-state seperation (which is still very partial in most of europe) basically took away their roles in these capacities.
In europe, these churches were (and still are) recipients of tax/public funds (whether direct, formal or indirect) and providers of public services.
Churches often ran the health systems, school systems, orphanages, mother-infant homes, poorhouses and such. They also had/have much more formal, power wielding roles as community leaders, representatives.
However, the comparison I was making was specifically about the USA.
Even without tax/public funds (or preferential tax treatment), American christian churches did engage in all of the things you list.
There are hundreds of private, non-tax-funded middle schools, high schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries in the USA.
Many of our hospital systems (that have long sense become beasts unto themselves) were started as religious charities without state funding.
Almost all non-state-owned orphanages and homeless shelters were religiously affiliated charities that did not receive state funds.
And many of these things were done by home-grown congregations.
In an American context, the fact that the church did fill these roles even without preferential state support -- in fact, in a country where preferential state support was explicitly forbidden -- just makes the "then vs. now" comparison that much more concerning.
I was suggesting that cultural origins play a role. The catholic church's culture in the US is heavily influenced by the catholic church globally and its history globally. So, they see those schools & hospitals as a part of what the church is, what it does and its role in society.
Anyway... personally, I'm more worried about secular/non-religious bodies inability to perform functions historically provided by churches.
For-profit, non-profit & public bodies can do hospitals & schools, and do. They don't do pastoral care very well. They don't build communities very well. .. That, IMO is where the crack is, that separation of church and state has left.
(corrections welcome, and I know there's a succinct summary for this contrast that I'm blanking on)
There has been great controversy over this between varying denominations, both in terminology and in belief -- it's not a universal belief among the varying faith traditions and hasn't been universal at any time in the past to now.
If you're going to reach the kids and young adults of the 21st century, your church can't act like it's still the 19th.
If all you care about is your existing congregation of late-stage adults and senior citizens, then perhaps organ music and "the unadulterated truth" are just fine. But it means your church has an expiration date.
My comment focuses on a general disinterest in caring for the congregation and its surrounding community. In other words, churches that "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" but which do NOT "teach them to observe all that I have commanded you".
I think scripture makes it abundantly clear which of those is the more important commandment. In fact, on multiple occasions, Jesus and his apostles specifically call out churches that do the former without doing the latter.
Christianity can thrive with contemporary worship styles, and arguments to the contrary are silly. That's why I didn't make a single comment about worship style.
However, if the kids and young adults of the 21st century are disinterested in obeying commandments to care for their follow congregants, to care for the downtrodden in their communities, to care for their clergy, etc., then the Christian church is atrophied. Regardless of how many people show up to Sunday worship or how many counseling sessions/MP3 downloads/lattes are sold.
In other words, the "thing" that churches should be "making happen" is the following of God's teachings. Success in more secular terms is irrelevant to the measure of a church, even if it is interesting to aspiring entrepreneurs.
I think it depends on which branches of Christianity you care about.
I'm not Mormon, but I get Salt Lake City television where I live, and have some Mormon neighbors, and the things that the LDS does to change lives around the world are incredible. It is truly a world-changing organization. But unless you're in or adjacent to that sphere, most people don't know about it.
Similarly, the Roman Catholic church is almost exclusively known by the general public in recent years for scandal. But I saw a report a few years ago that the Church had already spent a trillion (yes, with a T) dollars fighting human trafficking and helping the victims of human trafficking around the world.
Again, if you're not tuned in to Catholic media, or only consume media from the usual North America and European sources, you wouldn't know about these sorts of things.
Chris Tomlin is especially big in terms of writing songs that modern churches play. There's a reason we called it "Good Good Grief, We're Playing This Again?" on my worship team :-)
Hillsong's music and most "mainstream" music that come from white english-spoken megachurches have lyrics that talk about "grace","love" and "God accepting you as you are". While the themes on worship music coming from South America (and I think black churches in US too) are more about "Joy", "Freedom" and "God, the mighty warrior defeating his enemies and delivering his people". I found that really interesting.
The other thing is that even while Hillsong's and similar music is very shallow and simplistic, it is becoming increasingly difficult to perform with simple, cheap instruments. So small and poor bands like ours lose appeal against the ones in megachurches with lots of instruments, talent-pool and technology.
I, for one, I'm embracing this and going for a rock-punk attitude for my little worship band.
Another really interesting fact: this difference in style correlates much better with demographics than with doctrine/dogma/congregation. There was a dissertation or maybe book about this, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.
Western worship has become heavily "I/Me" based, where historically it was more "Us/We" based. To the point it's starting to drive me crazy. Worship is becoming almost entirely selfish. A group of individuals having an individual experience, instead of a group of people having a collective, binding, experience with God.
Generally a good song can hold up when performed on a single piano or acoustic guitar, and obviously with a singer[1]. The problem here is not you: it's the songs.
Assuming you're half competent musicians, which you sound like you are, they don't sound good when you play them, not because your instruments are cheap and your band is small, but because they don't hold up as songs. They're not strong enough to carry themselves with a simple arrangement. I suspect it's not a conscious effort but what Hillsong (and others) are doing is using an impressive production to disguise weak songs.
And even if in some cases I'm wrong, songs that require a massive production aren't necessarily that helpful to the church at large. For smaller churches, how is it useful to have songs that require 10 musicians to pull off to even a borderline acceptable standard?
Your comment about rock-punk attitude is bang on. Hillsong is the overblown self-indulgent rock music of the early-mid 1970s (I mean, think how long some of their songs go on nowadays): it is time, and over-time, for the punks to take over.
I think there's a real opportunity here for strong songwriting and simplified arrangements to win through and displace the turgid mega-productions we're being submitted to with something - at the risk of being accused of rank hipsterism - a little more authentic.
Just think how many great bands over the years have been three, four, or five pieces with no massive productions (until, perhaps, later on): The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Blondie, The Police, The Pretenders, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Manic Street Preachers, Cranberries, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Garbage, U2 (yeah, I know, everybody loves to hate Bono), Metallica, AC/DC, GnR, REM, Radiohead, Paramore, and the list goes on - even Fleetwood Mac were pretty basic to start off with. I'd rather listen to any of these (and many more) than Hillsong or similar.
You can do a heck of a lot with an acoustic (or even electric) guitar or two, some percussion, and a couple of voices. If you can add a bass in there, more power to you.
[1] There are, obviously, exceptions. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't really work as anything other than a big production. Neither does Beethoven's Ode To Joy. The interesting thing about Ode To Joy though is that, if you strip away the massive production, the tune is kind of crappy - it doesn't hold up on its own.
I was going to take exception to this and say that a lot of choral music doesn't really fall under this because a soprano line on its own is often not great, but I think instead there's a different point to be made: don't try to take 3-4 parts verbatim out of a larger arrangement and expect it to work.
A piano, for example, does not play the same arrangement with just a choir as it would with a choir+orchestra. Similarly, a good 2-part version of a 4-part song with soprano melody[1] is rarely obtained by taking the 'soprano+alto', 'soprano+tenor', or 'soprano+bass' parts of the 4-part, but instead by using 'soprano+alto/tenor/bass' or even 'soprano+all new harmony'.
Basically, don't judge a song by how good a 1-2 parts sounds on its own. (Said differently: the important harmony or even the melody can move between singers/instruments throughout the song)
[1] Of course, for complex songs the best 2-part version of 4 parts can approach 'S/A/T/B+S/A/T/B' as the melody moves around.
As a (struggling with faith) christian, I tend to think my fellow tech heads will mock me if it comes up. And yet this post has been really respectful, largely just debating the merits of the article rather than as an opportunity to attack.
Kudos, hackers, for proving civility still exists. I'm tickled pink.
In the 80s we had lively songs and pensive songs. I enjoy the modern style of quiet songs which become epic anthems.
Very happy to be a part of this community.