This is the first from a serie of articles about what I call “The Big Worship Four” - the churches and their modern worship music - Bethel, Jesus Culture, Planetshakers and Hillsong.

I will dive into those separately, talking mostly about music, but I will also cover a little of their business and marketing.

But first, let me start with my personal story with the worship music to give you some perspective.

Intro

I listened to pretty much all kinds of music since I was 7, started my first band when I was 9. In 2006, when I was a teenage punk, I played drums in a rock band and my life was a classic rock and roll cliché. Ditching school so I can practice on drums or drink alcohol with my friends was a daily routine. 

I just discovered weed few months ago when I got a call from leader of a local gospel choir. He was putting together a band that would back around 40 vocalists. I went to the meeting out of decency, basically to tell him I appreciate it, but I don’t really think that I’m the right choice for gospel music. 

Kind of a cool looking dude smiled at me and said just sit your ass down for a minute and let me show you something. He put a laptop in front of me, gave me headphones and played a video.

20 minutes later I’m sitting there with my jaw on the floor (I did burn a doobie right before the meeting) and I go like man, what the hell is that?

It was Hillsong + Delirious: Unified Praise live concert. I thought I have heard all the cool kinds of music out there, but I would never consider to give a listen to some Christian pop music.

That day I left with a CD loaded with songs by artists I have never heard of. 
There was a single word written on that CD with a bold black marker - worship. 


Two idiots worshipping

By the year of 2006 I’ve never had any relationship to any religion whatsoever. I knew about the whole premise of Christianity and in my family we were respectful to religious people, but there was always something wrong with them.

But music on that CD did something to me. The music I was listening to at that time (Deftones, Placebo, Linkin Park, Cypress Hill…) was like „look at me how I roll, cool, right“ or „ooh I’m in so much pain and nobody gets me“. 
But worship music was totally different. It was all about faith, hope and love. The atmosphere was like anything else. Beautiful melodies. Stadium-style choruses. Huge sound of drums. Very quickly I felt like this is the music I really should pay attention to, big time. 

I joined that gospel choir as a drummer.

I still smoked weed, though, sometimes with the bass player just before the gig. Until this day I still believe that God had a really good time watching two teenagers, totally baked, smashing their instruments in worship, not fully realizing they’re praising Jesus.

I imagine Him go like „OK, the dudes are high as kites, but at least they’re on the right track.“

So that‘s how it started. Later the worship music became way more significant for my personal and music life.

In the next article I will cover the first of The Big Worship Four - Bethel.

Be blessed.

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