Lack of Outward Faith in Contemporary Christian Music

I don't know why it's taken me so long to really notice this, but I had a bit of a light go on this morning as we were preparing for our Prayz! service. The sermon today was about the Good Samaritan, which of course is a very well-known story. As I was reviewing our song lineup, I realized that none of the songs spoke about showing God's mercy and love to others. Instead, the songs were about a personal relationship with God/Jesus. I quickly ran through our songs and noticed that out of about 100 songs that we do in the worship service, there are maybe 2 that talk about sharing God's love and showing grace to others. Isn't that sad? Even when I turn on the Christian radio station, those types of songs are all that I hear. Since when does contemporary or modern Christian music speak about nothing but an individual "me and Thee" faith and not a faith that tells us to "go and do likewise"? You would think that in our emerging culture with young adults lacking in the church, that Christian artists would be making more attempts to write songs about social action and putting our faith into more than just words or telling us that it's more than a "me and Thee" relationship. I wonder if that is part of the problem. Music is such a big part of our faith, whether it's singing from the hymnal or singing along with a praise band on Sunday mornings. The songs are their own sermon in a way. So where is the message of Christ within our more modern music? What does this say about contemporary worship? I don't have much experience with the emergent movement, so I am hoping to be enlightened about even more modern ways that church is doing music. We are really about 10 years behind in some of the music that we do at Memorial. Still, I find it sad that we can pick a handful of hymns from the hymnal that speak to us about loving our neighbor, but we cannot find hardly any from our contemporary songbook. I am troubled by this, and will have to sit down soon and pick some songs for us to learn that focus on more outward faith rather than inward faith. I believe that both are important, but both also need to be highlighted and heard if we are to be a church that truly wants to open our doors and reach out to all.

In unrelated news, I officiated my first wedding out of 3 weddings that I have this month. I am already tired!

I am also reading a book called Jesus For President, which is really fascinating. I will hopefully post about it once I finish.

We are also still recruiting for our Holy Land trip!

And "Joseph" is coming up really soon...I just hope it all comes together!