Treasure in Earthen Vessels

Interesting interview (via Thunderstruck) with Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay, who just released an album of re-worked traditonal hymns:

“Redemption Songs” includes in-your-face messages about God and Jesus and faith, which is a lot different from the music your audience is accustomed to. Did you want to appeal to a new audience—the worship audience?

We definitely wanted to be able to contribute to the worship audience. There is a part of the post-modern church that is desperately trying to rid itself of what might be called organized religion. But they’ve cut themselves off from a lot of the good, rich traditions of the church. What we hope to do is present this record and say “These are people [from] 300 years ago [who] are asking the same questions that we’re asking today.” They’re important questions and we benefit from hearing how people wrestled with them and what conclusions they’ve come to or couldn’t get to 300 years ago. That’s the roots of our faith. The roots of these traditions are what actually give us the ability to move forward.

[…]

What’s wrong with the Christian music industry today?

There’s a lot of different things that don’t seem to be working that should in the music industry. It’s a hard thing—selling the Christian message [in pop music], because pop music is telling people what they want to hear and packaging it in a way that’s familiar to them.

The Gospel is the most offensive thing anybody would want to hear. It’s telling you that apart from God you are nothing, that you need God in order to exist, in order to have life. And pop music would say, “Yeah, you’re amazing.” It wants to build us up when the Gospel wants to tear us down in a way that says ‘You need God. With God you are everything, without God you are nothing.’ How do you marry that with pop music? It’s a contradiction in and of itself.

I’ve never been much for “CCM” myself; my musical tastes were formed (thankfully?) completely outside of any kind of Christian subculture. But I do like JoC quite a bit.