By Bro. John L. Cash
Pork chops are not my favorite food. I don’t hate pork chops. If I sit down to a meal and the main course is a pork chop, I’ll eat it. No problem. But if I were going through a buffet line and the two choices of entrée were pork chops or something else, I’d probably choose the something else. It’s just a matter of personal taste.
That’s kind of the same way I feel about contemporary Christian music. It’s not my favorite style of music. I don’t complain when other people play it. I sing it when our choir director picks it out. But—just to give you an example–we used to have two Christian radio stations on satellite radio. One station played contemporary Christian music, and the other played hymns. I always listened to the one that played traditional church songs and hymns. It’s just a matter of my personal taste.
Lately, however, I’ve become a bigger fan of contemporary Christian music than I was in the past. I’m a public educator, and I’m in and out of a lot of classrooms all over the place. I’ve been in two classrooms lately where the students were allowed to listen to the radio while they were working on written classwork. The students chose the station, and the one they picked was K-LOVE Radio.
I noticed that the kids really knew the Christian songs, and they’d learned the words. The other thing I noticed was that these teenagers are very loving, kind, and respectful kids. Their classroom had a peaceful ambience and a joyful vibe. The world could use a whole lot more of what these young people have.
I’ve been working in the Church a long time. Something I’ve come to realize is that the world is a big place, and Christianity is a really big religion. There are as many difference ways to express love for Christ as there are individual Christians. Because of that, I’m trying to be careful not to let my personal preferences discourage another Christian from enjoying something that is not my first choice. This modern Christian music still isn’t my favorite. But I hope and pray that the world gets a lot more of it.
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 30 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. (On week days has a desk-job at a public school, where he used to teach Latin on closed-circuit-television.) He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church. Their kids include Spencer (age 25), his wife Madeline (age 24), and Seth (age 21). You can send him a note at brotherjohn@ilovechurchcamp.com.
