Music Mondays

As I was trying to come up with a selection for this week, I couldn't even settle on a topic. 

Should I go with Christmas music? 
I did that last year and my friend Amy is doing a real good job on her blog on that anyway.

Should I go with the current Top 40 hit that has a lot of backstory but also some depth when you consider its message?

Maybe another day.

Well, what about something related to my sermon, which was on prayer?
There's not a whole lot that comes to mind (at least my mind), at least currently.

Sidetrack - I find it very fascinating how some old-school artists often made prayer a topic. 
Petra, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman...probably not a statement against current artists, just interesting.

Anyway, instead of going all-in about those old-school artists of the 70's, 80's, and 90's, I came across the selection below from a classic Christian artist and I knew this was it. 

To my chagrin, Keith Green hasn't been featured on this blog. Green was a force of nature in the early days as Christian music was becoming an industry. You can read his story here, but he was a prophetic voice who was passionate about waking up the church and calling people to Jesus. He was a talented artist with a litany of great songs despite having a short career. 

Technically though, this song was written by his wife. And it is a beautiful song of dedication and prayer:

Keith Green was cut from a different cloth than what you'll find these days. A man who had a different perspective and who passionately was calling us all to something better.

Music Mondays

On Sunday, we looked at Scripture's most extended description of heaven. 

So on this Music Monday, I had no better ideas but to feature some classic heaven-themed music. They represent what's true and good about Christian music. But they also represent what makes you cringe about Christian music. So try to ignore the hair, fashion, and over-dramatic acting and focus on the glory, wonder, encouragement, and joy of heaven that these songs communicate.

First a song I previously featured on one of my first posts, "Another Time, Another Place". An incredible and inspiring duet:

Next, an understated but poignant song by Steven Curtis Chapman that lifts our vision past the-here-and-now and towards eternity:

Finally, a fun, borderline silly song that captures the joy and frivolity that will undoubtedly characterize the New Heaven and the New Earth:

Music Mondays - Worst Christian Music Videos of All-Time

There are plenty of things within Christian culture that make me shake my head. Along with lame t-shirts and self-help books disguised as spirituality, Christian Music Videos have to be right up there.

There are good Christian music videos out there, and soon I will do a top 10 best list. But when you combine the comparitive lack of money invested with the generally lower quality of production and music (both in comparision to the music industry at-large), often the results are cringe-worthy.

So with this post, I will be ranking the worst, most cringe-worthy Christian Music Videos of all time. Here, in short, is my criteria:

Each video had to be from a well-known Christian artist. After that, I ranked each video based off of four categories, dated fashion (out of style haircuts, clothes), annoyance level of the song, strange-ness of the video concept, and how irrelevant the artist or group is now. Fashion (Fash.), Annoyance (Annoy.), and Video Concept (VC) were all ranked 1-10, with the higher the number, the worse it is. Artist Irrelevance (Art.Irr.) was on a scale of 1-5. This had a smaller scale because I felt like the more 'dated' a video, the more likely the artist is no longer popular and I didn't want to double-penalize some nominees. So each total score is based off of a range between 1-35.

So below is my countdown with scores and a brief explanation.

Honorable Mention:

Jesus is a Friend of Mine by Sonseed.

This doesn't make it because the cut because this group was never a well-known Christian artist in their time. But had they been, this would have scored a perfect 35. When I say "cringe-worthy" this really defines the term.

10. Jesus Will Still Be There by Point of Grace

Admittedly, this is a biased pick. I had to have a P.O.G. song on this list because they were the bane of my existence in high school, thanks to Word of Life Summer Camps constantly playing their music and the girls in our youth group celebrating them like the Beatles.
Their major infractions come with the areas of fashion and video concept. Are these women trapped in dungeon somewhere - is that the subliminal message being communicated here? Because it would really fit the theme of the song and the director should be considered a genius.
Total Score = 17 (Fash.- 5, Annoy.- 3, VC- 5, Art.Irr.- 4)