History and Development
In early 1950s, the catholic Taizé Community in France started to attract youths from several religious denominations with worship hymns based on modern melodies.
In the 1950s and 60s the Church began to place particular emphasis on reaching to the youth. Christian Unions in university environments hosted evangelistic talks and provided biblical teaching for their members, Christian cafes opened with evangelistic aims, and church youth groups were set up. Amateur musicians from these groups began playing Christian music in a popular idiom. Some Christians felt that the Church needed to break from its stereotype as being structured, formal and dull to appeal to the younger generation. By borrowing the conventions of popular music, the antithesis of this stereotype, the Church restated the claims of the Bible through Christian lyrics, and thus sent the message that Christianity was not outdated or irrelevant. The Joystrings were one of the first Christian pop groups to appear on television, in Salvation Army uniform, playing Christian beat music. The Jesus People in America also had particular influence, and began to create their own musical subculture, sometimes referred to as Jesus music— essentially hippie-style music with biblical lyrics. This Jesus music gradually bifurcated into Christian rock (music played for concerts) and 'praise music' (music for communal worship).
Churches began to adopt some of these songs and the styles for corporate worship. These early songs for communal singing were arguably the first examples of contemporary worship music, and were characteristically simple, often only involving a three chord structure. ‘Youth Praise’, published in 1966, was one of the first and most famous collections of these songs and was compiled and edited by Michael Baughen and published by the Jubilate Group. More recently songs are displayed using projectors on screens at the front of the church, and this has enabled greater physical freedom, and a faster rate of turnover in the material being sung. Important propagators of CWM today include Hillsong, Vineyard and Soul Survivor.
Read more about this topic: Contemporary Worship Music
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