AN ISSUE OF CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) magazine is typically a perfect snapshot of the Christian music industry, and none perhaps more than the most recent edition. The magazine’s cover proclaims the “year of the new artist” while incorporating a laundry-list of names you’ve likely never heard (Dalton, anyone? Decemberadio? Circleside?) into its design. Inside the cover, editor Jay Swartzendruber laments the death of adult contemporary artist that “built the industry.” Elsewhere, the Christian music rag introduces nearly 50 new bands debuting this year, discusses the “MySpace factor” and attempts to connect readers with Christian indie artists through a nine-page “special advertising section.” All while announcing the imminent retirements of veteran CCM stars Audio Adrenaline, 4HIM and Watermark.

Welcome to the year of the new artist, also known as the year where the dramatic upheavals that are changing the face of CCM are certain to continue. To be sure, the Christian music industry has never occupied a pasture beside still waters—it has been riddled with religious and musical debates since somewhere around Day One. While those who claim that the “rock beat” is of the devil may now be so few as to be irrelevant, the Christian music industry’s critics—inside and out—have no plans on going anywhere. Today, most of that criticism centers around the industry’s response to cultural and market trends.

Christian music, like many other industries, faces significant challenges in the personalized, increasingly fragmented media market. Its unique blend of faith, art, and commerce, however, opens CCM to challenges of the ideological variety as well. As it navigates trends and criticisms, the industry is grasping in the gray for a new identity to carry it forward.

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Christian music is literally exploding into hundreds of pieces. As the veteran names of the industry call it quits—dc Talk, Audio Adrenaline to name a couple—the young and the restless have arrived on the scene with new ideas about the kind of music they should play and who they should play it to.

The greatest upheaval facing CCM is the results of what is popularly known as the “Switchfoot effect,” though many bands tread the thin ice of crossing over long before the threesome—I mean foursome—I mean quintet—from Southern Cal was ever picking up guitars. Where it was formerly an undertaking riddled with controversy, Christian bands (or in their favored parlance, “bands of Christians”) are rushing for mainstream success like magazine-cover photographers after Nick Lachey. 

“Ten years ago, there was a common mentality among Christian youth that said that you should listen only to Christian music,” says Tyler Clark, managing editor of Relevant magazine, which covers Christian and mainstream artists. “The Christian music market was booming. Unfortunately, a lot of it was mindless, and it became too much of an isolated subculture. The result is that more Christians want to get out of that subculture. They want to interact with the world outside of the walls of the Church.”

The industry, and especially Christian music fans, have thus far praised the trend toward blurring the line between the “Christian band” and the well, regular band. The recent success of bands like Relient K, Switchfoot, and others has helped to break down the stereotype that Christian music equals pathetic mimicry. The problem for the CCM is that many talented new bands want little to do with the Christian industry, and, while they appeal to some of the CCM audience, they do not depend on the Christian industry for their success.

“If we’re shipping our best artists to the mainstream, does that mean that we’re nothing more than a minor league team, a place for players to get experience before moving on to the majors?” Clark says. “If our purpose is evangelical, we’re failing because non-Christians aren’t listening. If the purpose to make great art, why have we relegated it to its own industry?”

The explosion of growth has come with its pros and its cons. The talent pool has vastly expanded, and artists who have genuine talent are receiving the opportunity to prove to the world that not all music with Christian lyrics has to be wretched. On the other hand, the growth has caused increasing pursuit of profit, and the “safe” and “reliable” are accepted, the artistically risky and the edgy are turned away.

Brent Thomas, a teaching pastor and elder at Grace Community Church in Glen Rose, Texas, who speaks and blogs on Christians-and-culture issues, says that the industry’s growth “helps artists gain exposure, but it also limits the true creativity of many as money becomes a stronger driving factor and certain formulas are sought after rather than truly innovative artists.”

The poster boy for the great-Christian-musician-who-isn’t-one-of-us is Sufjan Stevens, whose Illinois made the 2005 top-records lists in nearly every major music publication worldwide. Stevens is a Christian college grad whose lyrics are explicitly confessional, but industry officials have publicly distanced themselves from his music. “He just doesn’t want to play the Christian music-market game,” Christian Music Trade Association President John Styll told Reuters.

Sure, Stevens earned his cred in New York clubs among indie rockers who love his music but wish his lyrics did not have to be so “religious,” and he never forged any connections in CCM. The industry has not been hostile to artists like Sufjan Stevens; it has simply ignored them. As a result, Stevens and a plethora of other artists fall into the category of “great Christian musicians who don’t have, and don’t want to have, anything to do with the Christian music industry.”

This indifference to Christian musicians who are gaining worldwide critical acclaim while openly professing Christ is difficult to explain, but is stems from several internal ideological conflicts within the industry. The CCM industry carries with it all sorts of moral dilemmas, real or imagined, that result from Christians combining faith and popular culture. Innovative artists aren’t limited only by fiscal conservatism, but by an apocryphal “moralism” that permeates the industry and some of CCM’s fan base.

Christian artists inside and outside the industry alike have long objected to this ‘code of conduct,’ saying that it is all about selling an image. Jaci Velasquez used to joke that her label required a certain number of “Gods-per-minute” in each single, while modern industry gadflies like Derek Webb regularly decry CCM’s lack of concern for artistry.

Thomas agrees with many artists’ consensus. “I think that the industry promotes mimicry,” he says. “It’s not that they’re intentionally promoting a lack of quality, but that is the natural byproduct. For so long the emphasis has been on the message over the medium. They are so concerned about the ‘content’ that they are on one hand not concerned with the packaging, and on the other hand, immensely concerned with the packaging. The thinking seems to have been that we’ll look at what all the ‘cool secular’ kids are listening to, and then we’ll put forward a ‘sanitized’ version; that way we’re sure to reach the widest audience.”

Writing in Christianity Today, Christian freelancer Kate Bowman said that the artists who are leaving CCM are subscribing to a completely different worldview. “Ultimately, this movement among Christian artists like Stevens is a theological one, linked to the same factors that brought about [several artists’] forays into the wild of independent music: a refusal to separate one’s faith from one’s involvement in the world at large, and a recognition that although the entire creation is broken, God’s grace and truth continue to permeate all spheres of life.”

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While new artists with newfangled ideas may be numbering the days of CCM as we know it, the industry still has its popular and extremely profitable collection of artists who solidly fall within the “contemporary Christian” genre. As the incoming troop of young bands focus on conquering the mainstream world while maintaining a tenuous relationship with CCM, the existing artists who are its heart and soul are taking a (fine, sort of) new direction: toward worship.

The industry’s brightest stars are now the artists formerly confined to the “praise and worship” section of the catalog. The differences between the annual WOW Hits and WOW Worship albums are ever decreasing. Chris Tomlin won Dove Awards this year for Male Vocalist, Artist, and Song of the year—a feat formerly unheard of for a guy who’s just part of a “worship band.” David Crowder, also a worship leader, is currently considered one of the best musicians in CCM; his band’s record A Collision was named Rock Album of the Year. And the rest of that Dove Awards list is populated by bands like MercyMe and Casting Crowns, who lean heavily toward what was formerly the “worship genre.”

While some longtime CCM fans lament the days of the “worship fad,” Chris Tomlin’s dominance of the Dove Awards is illustrative of a more fundamental shift. Veteran rockers like the Newsboys, Third Day, and Rebecca St. James have found a sincere passion in creating music for the church, and they aren’t at all bad at it. Newsboys cuts like “He Reigns” and “It is You” have become classics in many churches, and they stand notably above standard praise-chorus fare. The church needs great musicians, too, and CCM artists are increasingly filling that role.

“I think worship music is where Christian music best understands it purpose,” Clark says, and evidence suggests that he is on to something. Christian radio stations that formerly advertised their “hot new music” now bill themselves as “positive and uplifting.” And somehow, artists like Jaci Velasquez, Point of Grace, and Steven Curtis Chapman sound far more at home—far more believable—on stations that are aimed at thirty- and forty-something Christian adults. This is a somewhat radical departure from the approach of just a decade ago, when Jaci Velasquez was marketed as a “teen sensation” and Point of Grace’s leather skirts and knee boots just somehow looked out of place.

“The Christian fan base is very loyal,” Clark says. “They’ll leave you if you do something that they morally don’t agree with, but they’ll keep you otherwise. The mainstream market is much more fickle. You have a better shot of a 20-year career in Christian music than in mainstream music.”

Maybe the stars of CCM are just growing up, and their audience is growing up with them.

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It certainly seems that, at present, the CCM market has something a place for everyone, even it is a slightly uncomfortable one. It is the home of those who wish to create great art, those who wish to impact their culture by example, those who seek to minister to the church, and those who wish to profit off all of the above. How long everyone can stay together in the big melting pot of an industry that is figuring itself out again—that is the question.

The industry certainly isn’t going anywhere. Its base of fans who care for nothing but something uplifting to sing along with is large enough that it will always exist and possibly always be a profitable market. There will always be artists who want to play music for Christians and need a way to get it into their hands. No, the CCM industry will be around for the foreseeable future.

What CCM industry is one to watch. It is desperately trying to shed the “Christians make terrible art” stereotype while maintaining the marketing stance and moral attitudes that contributed to that very stereotype. From the splinters of the industry, the CCM artist to the Christian band who’s not a “Christian band,” perhaps a more clear direction will emerge.