This headline seems a bit redundant. After all, I’m a Christian and, of course, I’d love Christian music. But this is not always the case. In fact if you listen to a lot of the conversations young Christians are having today, you’d find that Christian music is a kind of punching bag. It’s fashionable for us to take a sledgehammer and bash, with great glee, the art that our brothers and sisters are creating.

To be sure, there are songs for the Christian that are worth rejecting. Songs that have little or no theological teeth and songs that create a kind of Christian subculture, yada, yada, yada. But I think we’re often really, really unfair to Christian music artists. Peter Chin’s recent article at Christianity Today is a good place to start. Sometimes our critiques are legitimate. Other times, I suspect, we’re out to prove how sophisticated we are or how “unlike those other kinds of Christians” we are.

Christian music has had a powerful effect on my own heart. I’ll give a couple of examples.

Several years ago I endured perhaps the most significant trial of my life. I was in the midst of my pastorate in the Chicago suburbs. I had been unfairly and unjustly attacked by people I loved and respected. Not only did they betray me, they publically slandered me, threatened my ministry, and attacked my character. To make matters worse, my wife was out of town with our kids, helping a friend whose husband had just died from cancer. I have never felt so low in my life.

After a meeting in which things went really badly, I retreated to my office at the church, stunned, angry, and unsure of what to do. The first thing I did was turn on a Pandora channel on my laptop. The first song that played was Chris Rice’s song, “Come to Jesus.” I don’t know if you like this song or not. I don’t know if you think it’s shallow or brilliant or whatever. But this song, in that moment, ministered to my heart in a way that I will never forget. I will never forget the tears that ran down my face and the reassurance the Holy Spirit gave me in that moment, reminding me that this wasn’t Jesus attacking me, this was Christians. So I ran to Jesus and found life, away from the hurt caused by people I loved.

I don’t know what was going through Chris Rice’s mind when he sat down to pen those lyrics. I don’t know what his motivation was. But I do know that his application of his heart and mind to music was a gift to me at that time.

To write music, to produce any kind of art, is difficult. The artist is vulnerable in that moment, when he puts pen to paper and exposes his thoughts to the world. He can be subject to endless critiques and mockery. But he also has the potential to be used by the Spirit of God to minister to people he will never meet. We should be grateful for artists who write songs for the Church.

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