Here are some reasons I'm pretty angry about the concept of licensing worship music. Feel free to disagree with them, they are just my reasons. I'd love to know other people's opinions on the matter too. NB: I'm just referring to the church-on-a-Sunday type of music (i.e. "Christian music" rather than "music made by Christians" if that makes sense).
Firstly, paying Christian songwriters for their lyrical content is a joke: 90% of worship is directly lifted from the Bible, and probably 75% of that from Psalms alone, so unless King David has employed Redman, Hughes & Co. as his collectors, I'm not sure entirely why we're paying them.
Of course, I understand that these writers need to live, but very few (I think - could be wrong) are full-time worship leaders. I assume that many of them hold another 'day job,' so to speak, and/or they hold another position within the Church. Conversely, if they are a full-time worship leader, surely they're being paid for that? And of course, there are sales of CDs to take into account (many of you will know my opinion on the pricing of Christian CDs, but let's not go there), which should provide income as well.
I point out at this juncture that for CU purposes, we would literally only be paying for the song rights, not the performance rights (as we are the performers, and we're certainly not making any money!).
I think my main reason for why I think it so appalling, however, is that if we are paying to use music that was written primarily (I hope) for people to sing worship, surely we are - directly or indirectly - paying to worship. Now that is a concept I am extremely angry about.
Paying to worship.
Thoughts? I'm interested in hearing other opinions (he said, throwing a match into the petrol canister).
j.r.
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