Introduction

Welcome to my companion blog for the article I write for Examiner.com!

In this blog, I'm going to write about all facets of Christian music.  I am a Christian and God has let me be a part of so much and so many varied aspects of Christian music so I set this up just to share some of the things I've experienced and/or thought about music, worship and everything in between.  Let me give you a bit of history with myself and Christian music:

I didn't like it at first.  Not at all.

Christian music seemed very uncool when I was growing up probably because my parents were really into it.  I mean, if your parents did something when you were a kid, you probably thought it was lame, too.  I, for one, had too much of the Amy Grant controversy surrounding her "Baby, Baby" single and whether or not she had offended all church-goers by "going mainstream."  She could baby, baby whatever she wanted for all I cared.

In light of that, my first album purchased was indeed Michael W. Smith's "Go West Young Man," which was pretty awesome, musically.  The title track and "My Place in This World" (which placed as high as number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 1991 -wikipedia.org) still stick with me to this day.  However, it would be my last Christian music purchase for some time as I turned into a heavy listener of blues artists.  It was my Blues Period (too easy?). 

During that time when my Christian music ear lay dormant, I was listening to old Eric Clapton, B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan records while my fellow Jr. High and High School students were listening to the dawning of gangsta rap, namely, Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and Snoop (Doggy, as he was known at that time) Dogg. 

Then, in college, where most people branch out and try different things, I started hearing interesting things coming out of the, now, very robust, Christian music industry.  I was surprised and encouraged to hear big guitars with a lot of distortion and even weirder noises coming from the songs of David Crowder!  Truly, Chris Tomlin and David Crowder Band reignited an interest in Christian music, but what's more:  Worship music. 

I had played guitar all throughout high school and did okay with my four chords that I knew, but I felt like this new worship music something I could actually invest in because it had a great back-beat and interesting instrumentation.  This is not to say that Christian music on the whole does not serve a good purpose, but for once, my guitar-centric ears had perked up.  This led me to discover more worship artists:  Matt Redman, Paul Baloche and Tommy Walker, just to name a few.  True, some of these artists have been around for a long time, but in my defense, I am usually late to latch on to new things.  When I finally got into Dave Matthews Band, everyone else was seemingly over it. 

In short (which this post has not really been), I'm on a journey that involves music and I'm going to be documenting it here and at the Examiner.com (although my Examiner article will be a little more formal).  I lead worship at a church and have many different musician friends who are involved in Christian music in one way or another.  I look forward to sharing all of that here through a God-centric lens. 

Check out below to see what some of my favorite Christian music artists have been up to lately:

This is David Crowder Band's latest video, although it's been out for a while.  But the aesthetic is fantastic!  It's been featured in a lot of news outlets and it's an amazing story. 

This is one of my favorite songs that has been written by Chris Tomlin.