The great divide

A friend of mine told me me I should do more research about the P&W circuit just for my own personal development as I blog. It was a great suggestion.

What I found is that there is a lot on the Web about the definition of praise and worship and the distinction between the two. There are some P&W blogs out there, but they seemed to be buried or often exist as part of a larger source of information, like a church's Web site. There's a magazine called Worship Leader. I'd heard of it before, but it seems to be the only one of its kind. (I plan to subscribe so stay tuned for future reviews.) Finally, the biggest discovery that I made, and it does not surprise me, is that everything that I saw seems to pin P&W to contemporary Christian music, which by far featured white artists almost exclusively. This wasn't just a U.S. thing, but European as well.

I'm not going to go into the white vs. non-white, Christian vs. Gospel spiel, but I will say this: similar to how I tend to listen to mostly gospel artists, with the exception of the Christian worship songs that cross over, I postulate that white people tend to listen to mostly Christian worship artists, with the exception of the gospel songs that cross over. And I would guess Latinos do the same. I get it. Everyone's got preferences in their musical tastes.

Notwithstanding, I would love to see more diversity represented on public venues and I'm not just talking about race or genre of music. What about the perspective of P&W at a small church like mine, at rural churches, at churches that are very traditional, at liberal churches? What are they singing at each of these places? What are the musical influences found in their P&W? What are the things they love or the challenges experienced in ministry? What's it like writing a worship song and introducing it to a congregation?

Thanks to my friend, I will be looking into the contemporary Christian worship genre more carefully. I bet there are tons of Christian worship artists who I'd love if I were exposed to them.

I believe part of being good at your job is to see what others are doing. If I want to be a good P&W leader, I'm going to have to keep up with what's going on in the industry and expand my horizon. Perhaps we all should do the same.

Blessings