I'm not the only one who thinks some worship music is garbage!

Editor: Your website includes a message board where people are lamenting the lack of depth in modern worship music. You chimed in, saying that one big reason for that is "simply that the art itself has been devalued and sacrificed to the god of the seeker-friendly pop culture churches and radio stations. But when a 'lowest common denominator' aesthetic precludes any serious thought about art and excellence, the result will be music that tickles the ear and animates the body but rarely will it provide access to the interior castle wherein the King of Peace resides." That's quite a statement.

Bell: I'll be very surprised if this season isn't one of the low points in the history of music writing. It's all because of an unbridled market economy where absolutely everything gets commodified within seconds—no matter what you do, it is a product in a very short time. Everything becomes cheapened and market-driven. That's what happened in worship music—it's been commodified, and the same forces that are driving the market are driving the music. That always, always means dumbing down—it's a homogenization, a flattening of imagination. And when sales become the indicator that something is good, right away it's sort of the death of the form.
I get a little Gandhian about this sometimes. If we buy it, they'll sell it to us. But if we stop buying it, it will force them to go back to art again. As long as we're just firing our money at the industry every time they give us something with a shiny picture on the front, in the end we are still choosing this. It's really easy to get all upset about the industry or CCM, and I wish they had more scruples about art. But they don't, because it's not about art. It's about business. Fine. Then it's up to us to control. If we didn't eat at McDonald's, McDonald's would have to change. Right? If we didn't watch crap on TV, they'd give us better shows.

Editor: But that type of thinking is apparently in the minority. So how can we effect change?

Bell: I think it needs to start with the seminaries. I think pastors have to get a little bit more bold to say we do not support poor work, poor theology, poor poetry, poor melody. There's nothing about the music that's coming out that's even remotely reflective of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There's no mystery. There's no nothing. It's just all platitude after platitude after platitude. And half the time one line actually is not a logical flow of the last one. It's just bizarre—but it sounds right, so everybody goes for it.
I get very upset about this whole thing. I have a very difficult time going to church because I can barely get through the worship part. And I'm finding that there's more of us than you think. People are feeling like, "What's wrong with me? I hate this music." Well, that's because it's not sustaining music. It's not leading us into the mystery of God—or the mystery of humanity and human interaction and suffering and joy.

Editor:You're on a roll. What else concerns you about modern worship?

Bell: Another part of the problem is the cult of the young, letting 17-year-olds write worship songs. I'm not saying that young people can't write great music. But for the most part, great music takes work, and it takes discipline and it takes years. And our culture will not reward that work for the most part.
My own story illustrates it perfectly. About 10 years ago, a Nashville A&R guy got hold of my music and loved it and shopped to several major record labels. He was in tight with all these record companies. Two weeks later, he calls and he's all embarrassed. "I'm sorry," he says. "Nobody listened to your music. Every meeting started with the question 'How old is he?' And when I said 'Thirty-five,' you were done." I was dismissed by five major record labels because I was 35 years old. He could not convince one of them to break cellophane and listen to a CD, just on the basis of my age.

Editor: That's incredible.

Bell: Isn't that stunning? I think that was the point where I went, "OK, this is not a community that it's going to bother me that I've been passed by."

Editor: Let's get back to your message board. You said you'd asked some songwriters what they'd been reading lately, and you got a bunch of blank stares.

Bell: Yeah. I was with a bunch of songwriters. I won't say who, but you'd know a bunch of them. Anyway, I was just very keen to find out what they were drawing on. It wasn't a sucker punch at all. I was just looking for good leads.
There was one fellow who's turned out a lot of songs, and the guy just didn't read. I think that says something when you're supposed to be a person who is making, ostensibly, meaningful music. I want to ask, "What are you drawing from?" For someone who's supposedly doing meaningful art to not be in the discipline of reading, I don't know . . .