Apparently Chris Tomlin doesn't love the spotlight

In the evangelical subculture of my youth, there were three categories of pop music. There was secular music, the avoidance of which was, as with alcohol, a nonessential of the faith. (My parents’ approach was more tight regulation than outright ban.) There was Christian music, the Nashville-industry pop records that we heard on Christian radio during our school carpool and then saved our allowances up to buy. And then there was worship music, which we sang at church.

In those days I loved a good straightahead guitar-pop band, whether secular, weekday-sacred or Sunday-sacred. Nowadays I’d rather listen to almost anything else. So one big reason I avoid most praise music is that I personally don’t like the musical style, just like I don’t like fantasy literature or hamburgers. It’s a preference, not a critique.

As for actual critiques, a lot of people like me—by which I mean mainliners who love liturgy—go after praise music for its alleged fixation on individualism. But when I hear this I always wonder whether they’ve paid even less attention to this music than I have  in the last 15 or 20 years. This criticism just isn’t as true as it used to be. Not just because of corners of the evangelical world like the retuned hymns movement, as exciting as a lot of that stuff is. Because whether you like the music or not—and I do not—the words of “How Great Is Our God” are a huge improvement on “Shout to the Lord.”