For a musician all but unknown in New York or Los Angeles, Christian rocker Chris Tomlin had a standout December. As his new album, And If God Is With Us, climbed up the charts early in the month, his year-old Christmas album caught a seasonal updraft, giving Tomlin two albums in Billboard magazine's top 20 at the same time.
Tomlin's rare distinction represents a first for the Christian music industry, and cements the dominance of the subcategory of Christian rock called Praise & Worship, of which Tomlin is the undisputed leader. And it is another milestone for a multimedia, hydra-headed organization known as Passion, which gave Tomlin his start and whose in-house label, Six Steps Records, produces his albums.
Part revival meeting, part charity event, part national networking session, Passion drew some 22,000 college kids this week to Atlanta, where they filled Philips Arena and the nearby Georgia World Congress Center for four days of prayer, preaching, philanthropy and, of course, music. Besides the David Crowder Band and British praise rocker Matt Redman, Tomlin, capping his astonishing run, played to roaring throngs who chanted along with every word of his songs. A companion event, with room for 8,000 attendees, will be held in April in Forth Worth, Texas.
The Fort Worth event represents a return to Passion's Texas origins. Tomlin was a student at Texas A&M in College Station in the early 1990s when he heard about a Monday-night Bible study at Baylor University in Waco, run by a 30-something seminary student named Louie Giglio. Soon Tomlin was making the hour-and-a-half drive to Waco every week to hear Giglio teach. "He was talking about things in a way that made you want to bring glory to God," Tomlin recalls. By 1995, Giglio's study sessions were attended by some 1,100 kids, about 10 percent of the Baylor student body.
Giglio's Bible study also included a lot of music, mixing traditional hymns with a style of rock-based worship songs that featured plenty of repetition in the lyrics, making them easy to sing along with and easy to remember. Tomlin began writing music that fit the format. "I never wanted to be an entertainer," he says. "I didn't want people staring at me while I sang. I wanted them to sing along."
The mantra-like repetition of praise music has invited scorn from some music critics (Tomlin, of course, begs to differ, and in a phone interview shortly after Christmas, offered a defense by belting out the refrain of the Beatles' "Let It Be"), but its usefulness, and power, as church music is undeniable. Tomlin tells of playing in an AIDS orphanage "in the middle of the bush in Africa," where he was stunned to find that the children knew his hit "How Great Is Our God" by heart.
In 1995, Giglio and his wife, Shelley, moved to Atlanta to tend to Giglio's ailing father, but college students remained his primary mission. The first Passion conference, in 1997, drew 2,000 students to Austin, Texas. A year later, they hosted 5,000. In 2000, more than 40,000 kids came to a one-day meeting in Memphis. In 2005, Tomlin, who had been listening to others perform his music at Passion, began to take the stage himself. He has accompanied the Passion crew on two world tours.
Besides Tomlin's platinum best sellers, Six Steps' 12 live recordings of Passion music have sold more than a million CDs -- enough to create a common misconception that Passion is only the music it creates. "It's ironic," Giglio said in an e-mail just before Passion 2011 kicked off. "We're a theological movement from which the songs and music spring."
In that sense, Passion is an emblem of the youth movement that has recharged evangelical Christianity over the past few decades. As in the mainstream's revolution of the 1960s and '70s, it's difficult to separate the musical phenomenon from the spiritual one, or to measure the long term effect of guitar-heavy, ecstatic gatherings like Passion.
For outsiders, the purpose of Passion can be hard to grasp. The focus of the four days is honoring Jesus Christ -- in Giglio's words, "to make him famous, as in make him known among all people." But most everyone at Passion seems to be a fan already. There is no altar call for conversions, and no follow up when the students return to campus.
"It's not a Billy Graham crusade," says Tomlin. "It's gathering people to inspire and ignite a flame."
Other Passion organizers say they bring college-age Christians together for mutual support at a time of intense change and self-definition. "It reminds them that they are not alone," says Mike McCloskey, a Six Steps executive who is one of 17 full-time planners for Passion events. "It's realizing that we can do more and should do more."
But the kids themselves have something simpler on their minds. As one Passion 2011 attendee, a 20-year-old woman from Waveland, Miss., explained to a Christian website as the conference ended, "I came expecting God to do something great."
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As far as the point of music goes, I actually agree. Most "Christian" music - music labeled as such, I can't listen to. It gets kitschy. Now, listening to Chris Tomlin and being engaged in a worship frame of mind - I love. I can sing and worship and it's great. But I really don't like "Christian" music that's blatantly Christian all the time. The music shouldn't have that label. I love Anberlin (made up of Christians, but their lyrics are subtle) and Thrice (one Christian member with lyrics that reflect Christianity on occasion). Praise and worship music won't convert anyone - it's FOR Christians. And sometimes I find it shallow, too, I'll admit. I get sick of it because it seems like a pretense. I'd rather listen to music that tells the whole truth instead of sunshine and "Jesus Loves You" all the time. Does He? Yeah. But there's more to Christianity than that.
Yeah, 'South Park' made this point rather brilliantly.
Also, easy to fall prey to subliminal messages of "convert or die" Hank Hill: Can't you see you're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock and roll worse?
My "Sacred Secular " mix:
A Simple Prayer - Jeffrey Gaines
Day By Day - Godspell OST
The Horse -> Silent in the Morning - Phish
Everything's Alright - Jesus Christ Superstar OST
The Word - The Beatles
Somebody's Coming - Todd Snider
Get What It's About - Jon Brion
Selling the Drama - Live
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2 (Rattle & Hum live version)
All You Need Is Love - The Beatles
Instant Karma - John Lennon
Presence of the Lord - Blind Faith
Gotta Serve Somebody - Bob Dylan
Have a Talk With God - Stevie Wonder
In This Lifetime - Jeffrey Gaines
The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
Knock Yourself Out - Jon Brion
My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
Do You Realize?? - The Flaming Lips
Krishna - Colonial Cousins
Fledgling - John Popper
Over Our Heads - Jon Brion
Here Comes The Flood - Peter Gabriel
Better Than Ever Blues pt. 2 - Todd Snider
Be - Lenny Kravitz
Pastime Paradise - Stevie Wonder
Aquarius - Hair OST
Walk On - U2
As - Stevie Wonder
Golden Age - TV on the Radio
What is the Light? - The Flaming Lips
It All Adds Up - Todd Snider
The Inner Light - The
John Patitucci is arguably the best jazz bassist on the planet
Alex Acuna is the best percussion ist in the world
Phil Keaggy was voted Acoustic Guitairst of the year
Christpher Parkening was hailed as one of the greatest classical guitarist by none other then Segovia
Jason Garcia ( a pastor in Atlanta Georgia) walked away from touring opportunity's from the likes of John Mclaughlin, Jeff Beck and other fusion greats.
Alex Acuna - Jazz
Phil Keaggy - Kind of random mish-mash diletante
Christpher Parkening - Classical
Jason Garcia - Not a clue, did he walk away from being a roadie for those others? ;)
So on the topic of Rock music you present a list of people who aren't Rock musicians, could you perhaps post on topic or is that beyond you?
oh yeah...Joy to the World makes me....smile.
All of the bands I just mentioned are essentially too much for most non christians and christians over the age of 35. (I suppose bands whose songs contain alot or a majority of screaming vocals are too sensitive for anyone in the older generation.) I'd prefer this kind of worship in a sense to the traditional hymns anyway. (Yes, and Hillsong.)