God Gave Rock and Roll to You by Leah Payne

Author:Leah Payne [Payne, Leah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The “Personality Trend” in Worship

Maranatha!, Integrity, and Vineyard produced a steady stream of profitable praise-and-worship albums in the early 1990s that rarely sold enough to chart in CCM Magazine. In the early 1990s, they were made mostly by and for Pentecostal and Charismatic congregations. As such, they had limited appeal to Baptists or Presbyterians. Nondenominational Charismatic congregations, tied together loosely through worship-music networks, were growing quickly, however, and C. Peter Wagner argued in the 1990s that the future of Christianity itself was Charismatic and “Post-Denominational.” Wagner’s argument for independent Charismatic congregations led by “modern-day apostles,” which Wagner dubbed a “New Apostolic Reformation,” was not accepted in all corners of Pentecostal or Charismatic Christianity, but there was no denying that the music of Charismatic congregations was spreading far beyond denominational boundaries. As Pentecostal and Charismatic worship styles steadily won the “worship wars,” which pitted liturgical norms of hymnals, congregational choirs, and organ music against rock band instruments and sensibilities, their influence expanded.

CCM entertainers were mostly white, male, and from the United States, but top-selling worship albums captured transnational, multicultural Charismatic fervor and stylistic variety. Black Gospel choir sensation Kirk Franklin and the Family brought “new traditional gospel worship and praise” from Fort Worth, Texas, to the number one spot on the Billboard Christian music charts.11 Ron Kenoly, a Black Charismatic worship leader based in California, had a string of 1990s worship hits that transcended racial and denominational boundaries. In Rejoice Africa (1993), Lionel Peterson, a Black South African worship leader at Rhema Bible Church in Johannesburg, triumphantly celebrated the end of apartheid and the Second Coming. The Toronto Vineyard Church’s 1994 “Pour Out My Heart” updated the Jesus people’s hippiezed desire for intimacy with God and became a standard in evangelical services. In 1996, “Shout to the Lord” took Assemblies of God triumphalism from female worship leader Darlene Zschech and “Hillsong,” the worship band at Hills Christian Life Centre in Sydney, Australia, to the United States and beyond.

They were missing from the US-centric CCM charts, but Charismatic and Pentecostal praise bands had been for decades steadily taking over Protestant worship in the Americas, thanks to rapidly developing worship networks between predominately white, United States–based Charismatic Bible colleges and congregations, and Latin American practitioners. Guatemalan worship leader Juan Carlos Alvarado began producing successful Spanish-language albums in the 1980s as music minister at Palabra En Acción in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, a congregation pastored by Wes Spencer, graduate of Rhema Bible College in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Mexican worship leader Jorge Lozano was introduced to praise bands in the 1970s as a student at Christ for the Nations, a charismatic Bible college in Dallas, Texas.

Lozano mentored Marcos Witt, a child of white American Pentecostal missionaries to Durango, Mexico, who brought high-production-value, rock-driven praise music to Spanish-speaking audiences in the 1990s with praise-and-worship albums like Proyecto Alabanza y Adoración on Word Records and Te Exaltamos (En vivo) on Hosanna! Integrity. Prior to the arrival of praise bands, Spanish-speaking Pentecostal and Charismatic communities in Latin America worshiped mostly with coritos, choruses that were easy to learn and simple to play on the guitar.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.