"You're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock and roll worse" -H. Hill.
How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
31–40 of 166 posts
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all about culture. If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship. The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.
That's a very modern perspective, not necessarily consistent with Christian theology at all. The notion that people in the ancient world or simply older people today enjoy church music out of preference seems to ignore the fact that street music and folk music were NEVER comparable to church music. The idea behind unique liturgical music was that the structure of the music itself revealed something about the nature o…
How is that inconsistent with Christian theology? Theology is diverse and different schools hold different, often contradictory views on any given topic. Usually what is called “Christian theology” is that for which there is a general consensus among theologians, and I’m unaware of any such consensus on this particular subject.
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#33Huh,
tobymac - 26M views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeBv9r92VQ0
Skillet - 242M views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjlM_RnsVE
So, if aggresive/suicidal/depressive music is popular, why christian bands may be in underground?
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#34Good interview with Carl Lentz on Bill Simmon’s podcast:
https://www.theringer.com/2017/11/8/16623902/pastor-carl-len...
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#35Hillsong music is simple, catchy, and easy to play. If a teenager can pick up a guitar and lead their friends to sing along with easy lyrics, it'll be a hit. A satirical take on this is How to Write a Worship Song (In 5 Minutes or Less). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhYuA0Cz8ls Translations of Hillsong music into other languages are also popular. 約書亞樂團 Joshuaband translate some songs into Chinese, and it was a hug…
> Hillsong music is simple, catchy, and easy to play
I provided the example [above](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18283308) of popular non-(simple, catchy, and easy to play) tracks.
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#36As a conservative, I've never really paid any attention to Hillsong stuff. What I did hear of typical pentecostal music struck me as pretty shallow and.....commercial. Admittedly as an ignoramus, I do wonder how they get around tax exemption while they rake this all in. I know you can't brush everyone with the same stroke, but it feels reminiscent of those mega-pastors that fly around in their private jets to shake h…
Uneasy is the word I'd use as well. And in saying this I have to be honest and admit that I can't point to anything specific that's wrong . Hillsong often get the plaudits (and the rap), but there are other similar movements. Worship Central and HTB here in the UK spring immediately to mind. I do go to these kinds of places from time to time and, whatever the organisation, you talk to the people involved: they're app…
For me, the big problem with this kind of musical/theatrical production is that you're doing one thing — provoking excited emotions and feelings in a group context, just as would happen at a well-produced secular concert, or a moving, personal comedy show — and implicitly or explicitly claiming that it is a personal religious experience. Many times with young people who don't know the difference.
I suppose it might be fair to include music-induced group ecstatic experiences in your definition of “religious”. But I find the mix-n-match, the implied claim that the emotion of the large-context experience is actually a result of some kind of personal, relational connection to God, to be a heavily loaded and ambiguous possible untruth.
ymmv — I definitely have religion issues :-)
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#37Hillsong is influential, no doubt. But I bet in the long run, even more influential will be the music from 'Veggietales'. (Sort of like 'Schoolhouse Rock'. Very catchy, and popular with all ages.)
The catchy Veggie Tales songs are the "Silly Songs" though.
Such great classics as "Dance of the Cucumber"[1], "Monkey or Ape"[2], and "Song of the Cebu"[3]...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13DvXLdr_H4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--szrOHtR6U [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uv8Ej4CEoQ
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#38If you read anxiously through the whole article like I did thinking: "Yeah I get it but what are the numbers?" From 2015 article: "The Hillsong empire they founded (she, too, is a senior pastor) pulled in tax-free revenues of nearly $80 million in Australia last year and more than $100 million internationally." https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/inside-the-hillsong-churchs...
Mega-churches remind me of this warning from Jesus: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it."
Be careful with that: it occurs at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. That sermon isn't so much a statement of how people in general should behave as a statement of how believers are to behave as compared to those who consider themselves religious. I don't get the impression Jesus was picking on one or other religious party in particular.
Morever, in the UK at least, depending on where you look, around 5-10% of the population attend church[1][2] - that's about 3.3-6.02 million people. Of these, one third attend churches with a congregation of at least 350 people[3]. There are churches with thousands, which would traditionally be referred to as megachurches, but these are a small proportion of the whole. Anyway, that's somewhere between 1 and 2 million people attending larger churches (including megachurches), which puts them solidly in the minority - definitely not "the many".
I don't have accurate figures for churches >1000 people primarily because the third source doesn't include figures for the Catholic church. Still, the 23 protestant churches listed account for The perspective that might support what you're suggesting here is that Jesus often seems to be comparing with those who are conspicuously religious, who one would suppose are often figures of authority (although there's plenty of content on how we're to deal with those much closer to us as well). Seen in that context the leaders of megachurches are certainly conspicuously religious, but they are far from the majority of church leaders, and the third source suggests that the vast majority of leaders in the ~37,500 churches in the UK labour substantially in obscurity regardless of their character.
[1] https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html
[2] https://www.compassionuk.org/02-million-people-attending-chu...
[3] http://www.lausanneworldpulse.com/perspectives-php/1109/03-2...
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not a Christian, but I feel like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s is far more divine sounding then someone with a guitar as in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io2WOQ-3aVs . Sadly my faith tradition is stuck with Debbie Freedman.
It's all about culture. If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship. The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.
High-Church sounds fun. I would go if Angie from Sweden went to that church. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdGgljB_hYvI7ZXTfebLymw
She writes really cat-chy schlock that I love and sing along to "I get high, eat pussy every day, and every day is kind of the same" Encapsulates the world in which I would want to live. I think that by saying that a church service is not a concert for entertainment is disingenuous or at least profoundly lacking in introspection. Music and lies go together but also music and entertainment.. Never ever do you have music and fear and jealousy - that has to be communicated with the sermon.
Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
#40What relevance does this have to Hacker News?