First off, apologies for this coming somewhat late. These past few days, I finally settled on a community with whom to study contemporary Christian worship music. I had an idea of the "sounds" I wanted to learn about--stuff I've most heard on the radio or seen on TV--but didn't really know where or in what context to find it in Providence. I tried some basic googling, but it was difficult to discern what each church was like and how they ran their services. I knew the churches, of which there are many, in my immediate are pretty traditional--Catholic, Episcopalian, Unitarian. Since very few of my friends go to church (let's face it, Brown does not have the most church-savvy student population), it took a while to figure out where to look. But after getting word from a friend of a friend and a bit of emailing, I got in touch with the "Worship Arts" director at Northpointe Christian Church, Jordan Plumier.
Jordan and I grabbed some coffee last week, and I got to learn a lot more about Northpointe. Jordan has been extremely helpful and interested which has made this endeavor fun and quickly informative. The drummer from the church band, Nate, came along.
Northpointe Christian Church just started this past October and has been convening at theater 8 of the Cinemaworld in the Lincoln Mall (about a 15 minute drive from Providence proper). They are a non-denominational church based on scripture--the Book of Acts in particular. Jordan tells me that his family, along with two others, started Northpointe in conjunction with Restoration House Ministries, which is a group out of Boston that helps to "plant" new churches in areas that are "un-churched". To some Providence might seem like one of the most church-dense places in America, but as I mentioned earlier, most of these are old and more traditional-styled. Jordan told me that there are very few contemporary-styled churches in the Providence area and that there has not been much of a church scene to attract people looking for something "new".
Jordan told me that when him and his friends started the church, he intended for the music to be "awesome" and begin to explode some of the norms set for contemporary "Christian Worship Music". The genre seems to mean a variety of different things for different people, so I'm still going to leave the definition of it relatively open-ended: music written within the past 30 or 40 years for worship services that, stylistically, resembles pop-rock songs in instrumentation and form, but with lyrics drawing on Christian themes.
We talked about how there is a big industry for this type of music, mostly based out of Nashville, and how ubiquitous some of this music can be, especially in the South--Nate mentioned the nationally syndicated KLove radio. Jordan claimed there are swaths of "Christian" bands that many music-savvy people will never have heard of but who could probably sell out the Dunkin Donuts Center in a heartbeat. We made the distinction between "Christian" music and music meant to be sung at services. Of course there is crossover between the two types, but there are many quasi-mainstream bands released on what Jordan referred to as "the indie" Christian labels (such as Tooth and Nail). Bands like Reliant K, Lifehouse, Tampa-based Underoath etc. broke into some more mainstream rock acclaim by taking their "Christian" identities out of the spotlight.
As far as the music at Northpointe goes, Jordan wants it to be upbeat and engaging, and described it as very "electric-guitar driven". As the church got up on its feet, they've had a rotating cast of musicians. Some musicians from other Restoration House Ministries churches came for the first few weeks, and then a few different musicians from Berklee. Nate offered some insight into a lifetime of playing in a variety of bands loosely-identified as "Christian", and even spent some time trying to get picked up with a bigger band in Nashville. The worship band has a rehearsal space set up in a studio specifically geared towards these types of worship bands.
All in all, Jordan and Nate were great guys, and I set a date to come to Northpointe's service on Sunday.
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I guess the most interesting issue for me that's raised in these initial fieldnotes, as someone who only really knows this sort of thing from a very great distance, is what kind of audience/congregation this band is hoping to attract. Are there important religious-interpretive distinctions that they draw between their church and other churches in the Providence area? Or is it just the style of service (surely not)? And what are the mechanics of this, I mean, how does an independent church come together and work to gather a congregation? How important is the music in *that* process?
This entry shows that you've got some great contacts, from whom it seems like you can learn a lot about the place of music in this area - I hope you manage to take and post some good notes about the nature of the actual services, though, because I'm intensely curious about the atmosphere during a service, the musical selections, the kinds of participation that happen, and so on...
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