☦️ 🔥 🌟🌈 ✝️ 'Awesome God'

[sprinkleeninow]

[tanyev]

1. I miss Rich Mullins.

I started listening to Contemporary Christian Music not because I liked it, but because I was working as a church musician. Traditionally trained, pipe organ, etc. I was working in a conservative traditional denomination, but even they were starting to murmur about how CCM was what we needed to get "the kids" back in church. I could see the handwriting on the wall and tuned in to the CCM radio station in my car.

Of all the artists I got familiar with during that time period, Mullins was the one I had the most respect for. He wrote some nice music, some of which became iconic worship songs, but he walked the walk so much more than most CCM artists. He didn't even embrace the fame and fortune his music brought in, choosing instead to take a small salary and live on a Navajo reservation teaching music.

As we moved into the George Bush years and I watched the CCM industry get very, very cozy with right wing politics, I kept wishing Rich was still around to call them out for it. I think he would have, but we'll never know. Such a sad loss.

[LT Barclay]

2. I think a few around him tried to suck him down that path but in the book

about him the author called a “hagiography” he said he came to the realization that no government of man would ever bring us peace.
I interpreted that as his rejection of right wing politics.

[summer_in_TX]

3. So much Contemporary Christian Music is overproduced and showy.

Not Rich Mullins's. My husband and I loved his words, his music, and what was clearly a genuine heart of worship and someone devoted to patterning his life after Christ's.

I didn't know him but felt a keen sense of personal loss when we got the news of his death.