Stones Cry Out

I was a hard-core metal head when I got saved as a teenager at a Christian Music Festival. Christian Metal music was a critical component in my early walk with Christ.

I found the article incoherent. It charges legalism, yet sites grievances that are themselves legalistic in nature. So what if portions of CCM have a profit motive? So what if they use marketing practices? Does that make it all a lie? I found the whining about the cost of CD’s particularly childish. It’s a free market. They are free to charge whatever it will bear. If the author doesn’t like it, he can a join record club, or start his own recording label.

There are many, many church bands and traveling ministries within the CCM world that do NOT have a profit motive and are NOT guilty of his charges. My wife played sax in such a band, and none of them ever received a dime. I can also give you names of people that have passed on opportunities to be on the big labels in order to focus on their families and on their local churches. They do it to glorify God. For them, these attacks are clearly unfair.

His final charge was over the top. “These profits are made at the cost of the truth and the lives of those who swallow the whole pathetic charade.”

That’s pretty dramatic. CCM does not ‘cost lives’, it saves them. (OK – theologically, Christ’s blood does the saving, but God uses CCM to draw people toward Him). I’ve seen many, many people commit their lives to Christ at similar types of festivals to the one I attended. The fruit of CCM is clear, and the author’s bitterness is petty.