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According to press releases from the Gospel Music Association (GMA), Christian music has been experiencing unprecedented growth in recent years. But a closer look at the top-sellers of 2001 show that the strongest "Christian music" draws are Mannheim Steamroller, the soundtrack for O Brother Where Art Thou, and P.O.D. All have become Christian records courtesy of Soundscan, the company originally created to clear up confusing and misleading statistics in the music industry.

Here's how it apparently works: Once Christian bookstores decide to carry an album like Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas Extraordinaire, it is then declared a "Christian record." Then every Christmas Extraordinaire sale, no matter where it occurs, is credited as another sale of "Christian music." Those numbers are then used to show how much growth has taken place in "Christian music."

The same goes for P.O.D. If the rock/rap act sells 1 million records in mainstream outlets and 100,000 in Christian bookstores, the Christian music industry is credited with 1,100,000 sales—without an asterisk or footnote.

But P.O.D. doesn't consider itself a "Christian band" making "Christian music." Instead, P.O.D.'s members see themselves as Christians making music about their lives, including their love for God, in the center of popular culture. By signing directly with Atlantic Records in New York, they hoped to avoid being saddled with marginalizing terms that ultimately keep their music away from non-Christians.

Lead singer Sonny Sandoval believes that the band's interested listeners sometimes don't buy its CDs when they are stocked by mainstream chains in the same bin as Sandi Patty and George Beverly Shea.

"You go into Sam Goody's and you have these kids that just came back from Ozzfest who [say,] 'I want that new P.O.D. I just heard them and they're awesome,'" says Sandoval. "They're [told] 'OK, they're over there in the Gospel section.' That's ridiculous."

All the glowing press releases and exaggerated sales numbers in the world cannot conceal this fact: The idea of Christian music as a genre is in decline among a new generation of people of faith.

A more accurate picture of the "growth" in Christian music can be obtained by taking the figures released by the GMA and subtracting the sales of artists of faith signed to "secular labels," compilation albums of previously released material, and Christmas (or hymn) records made by non-Christian artists. On Christian music's list of top 10 albums of 2001, this leaves only four.

The picture that then emerges is that of an exodus of devout young artists who are avoiding signing with CCM labels in favor of "secular" ones. The reason: they have discovered that the surest way to have their messages made irrelevant by the mainstream culture is to accept the marginalizing term "Christian artist" and sign with Christian labels. They know that Christian music as its own unique genre will not affect a post-Christian culture trained to resist such efforts. But people of faith working in every musical style—jazz, pop, rock, R&B, etc.—quite possibly will.

Young and devout artists like Lifehouse, Creed, P.O.D., Mary-Mary, Kendall Payne, and others are voting with their feet, taking their music to mainstream labels. They're finding executives who don't share their faith but who are still helping them find an audience.

In their desire to be understood by the Christian community, some of these artists (like P.O.D. and Kendall Payne) have allowed their records to be distributed to Christian-owned bookstores. But they probably never dreamed that doing this would give all their albums, no matter where they're sold, credit for growth in Christian music. (Why stop there? Why not include other top-selling acts like Lenny Kravitz, Moby, the entire classical music catalog, and anything else that sells? The Christian Music industry could grow by two thousand percent!)

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February (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46