I’m not a conspiracy kinda guy, so I don’t for a minute believe that the producers of The Jesus Revolution, releasing this weekend in theatres, were in any way involved in the revival which broke out on February 8th in Wilmore, Kentucky at Asbury University. But it’s an interesting convergence; it’s excellent timing The Jesus Revolution was the cover story in TIME Magazine in June, 1971. Explo ’72, the first major Christian festival, happened in the year it’s named after. But if we stretch a bit, we could say that by 1973, The Jesus People, Jesus Music and The Jesus Movement really started to ..read more

Periodically this blog emerges from its cocoon when something happens that would have been relevant to readers during the twelve years when we posted fresh content every day. This year’s Grammy Awards nominees in the Gospel category noted the artists Christian music fans know and love, but none of that was reflected in the list of winners. In the past we tracked the results with great interest. But downloading, streaming services, and today’s emphasis on the “single” instead of albums, means that over the past months you’ve watched the music departments at any remaining Christian bookstores (a ..read more

Today on Christianity 201, I used a very, very old song as a springboard for the discussion which followed. I’ve left some of the introduction intact below, but this won’t be a mirror of what appears there later today. [Ed. note: He changed his mind on that!] The song was written by Ralph Carmichael. It’s called “A Quiet Place” Below is the original, though I used a different group at C201 today because the volume seemed low on this one. Musically it’s almost elevator music by today’s standards. But then, it was the beginning of something new. Released through Light Records there was a small ..read more

Tonight is a pretty big deal. Compassion, World Vision and Food for the Hungry are combining to present “Unite to Fight Poverty,” a two-hour music saturated fundraiser streaming live on YouTube, Facebook, PureFlix, and Daystar, with the audio portion also heard on The Message channel on Sirius Radio. It starts at 8:30 PM Eastern, 7:30 Central. I love that these organizations are joining forces for the event, and that so many musicians are cooperating. I hope they do well financially. And I hope that Contemporary Christian Music fans are excited to see their favorite artists, especially in lig ..read more

My wife uploaded a church service video which included her congregation singing, “It Is Well with My Soul.” Although the song wasn’t annotated, the YouTube bots scanned the video and recognize the lyrics and tune and immediately informed her that the entire video would be banned in one European country, which raises the specter of more blocking to follow. While she was staring at her screen in disbelief, I went to Wikipedia on my screen; a source I find offering increased reliability at a time when general search results can be misleading. True enough, the song pretty much has to be in public ..read more

It’s been many months since we did Wednesday Connect, and I would like to think that a few of you miss the ♫ New Music ♫ featured links.  Since we don’t have a column of news we can embed the videos today. (Let me know how this works on various devices, and if any songs are blocked in your region.) This is primarily contemporary and or modern worship. Suggestions from Spiritual Sounding Board Sunday Gathering, Life 100.3 in Canada, Praise Charts, CCLI UK, New Release Today. Songs available wherever you buy music. Still here at the bottom of the list? Looking for more new tunes ..read more

I had so many of these on file I decided to make a special extension of Wednesday Connect. We could call it Thursday Tunes. But we won’t. I decided to embed the videos instead of just linking them. Not sure how this works out on your various mobile devices, but let me know. Also, there are a couple of names here you might not have heard in a long time. Rachel Lampa is back: J. J. Heller: How could it be that a stable so small Could somehow contain enough room for us all? It’s a story that turned the whole world upside-down. Giving birth to a kingdom where lost hopes are found. Hollyn: Plumb ..read more

If this graphic image doesn’t look familiar, click the links at the bottom of this piece for two recent rants about Christian music on radio, and modern worship in churches. All this weekend, K-LOVE has been offering an online feed called “K-LOVE Classis: 80s, 90s and Early 2000s.” You can catch it at this link. It’s in some respects, the K-LOVE that never was, though the station’s beginnings trace back to 1980. There were a lot of people doing a lot of creative things in the earlier days of what we call CCM, but like K-LOVE itself, this is a rather safe, sanitized version of another generat ..read more