We Have Created a Monster

Stan Moser's 1970 entrance into the Christian music business was unglamorous at best: a part-time job at Word Music while he was finishing college. But within ten years, Moser had moved from the bottom of the corporate ladder to the head of Word Records and was the dominant executive in the emerging Christian music industry. And he signed a young teenager who would change the face of Christian contemporary music: Amy Grant.

Then an interview with John Styll, publisher and executive editor of "Contemporary Christian Music" magazine, changed the way he looked at himself, his achievements, and the industry he was helping to shape. "I thought that was the greatest interview. I was blown away by how good I was," Moser recalls. "But later, the Lord said, 'You know that article? I thought it was disgusting. Until I give you something to say, I don't want to see you quoted anywhere again.' " The inaudible but unmistakable voice tore at his pride and filled him with shame. Five years passed before he was quoted again in print.

This interview was conducted last year when Moser was the CEO for Star Song Records. Then, last November, with 26 years in the Christian music industry behind him, he quit.

When I began my career, there was no such thing as contemporary Christian music (CCM). But you could see that something spiritual was happening in the music industry. I believe it was a genuine outpouring of God's Spirit. I'm from the sixties generation, and we were a generation of people who were searching. Even those of us who were good Baptist kids--not hippies, dopers, and dropouts--were still searching for some ultimate truths. Then, as my generation discovered Christ, revival happened.

As people of the hippie movement found Christ, they quite naturally expressed their new faith through music. The Jesus movement took hold, giving rise to "Jesus Music." Of course, there was no Internet at the time; the movie industry and television business were not nearly what they are today. The communication tool was radio, and there was one dominant format for our generation: Top 40.

Top 40 music is how we communicated ideas, and people like Bob Dylan were using music in just that way--as a means of communicating truths to their generation. Groups and artists like Love Song, Second Chapter of Acts, Randy Matthews, Randy Stonehill, Larry Norman, and Paul Clark created music with one dominant theme: "I have come out of the world of darkness, and I've found the light. Now I have to communicate that Jesus is the answer! Get saved!"

By the mid- to late-seventies, celebrities were getting saved. In 1977, the first Christian record from B. J. Thomas was released. And I remember how we got caught up in it. "Boy, wouldn't it be great if Bob Dylan would get saved?" we wondered. Then, a couple of years later, Bob Dylan released Slow Train Comin', the first of several albums celebrating his newly professed (and, unfortunately, short-lived) faith.

In that decade and the few years that followed, "born again" entered the collective American vocabulary. We had born-again presidents, born-again Watergate felons, born-again entertainers, born-again (or Bjorn Again!) athletes.

And concurrently, a new generation of artists emerged, not out of the hippie counterculture, but out of the church: people like Andrae Crouch, who came out of a pastor's home; Evie, who rose in popularity in the midseventies; and, of course, Amy Grant. These were young Christian kids who now had a place to take their music. In the early seventies, if a song wasn't about getting saved there was no market for it. But by the late seventies and early eighties, Christian music was dominated by biblically based topical songs. And at this point, in my mind, contemporary Christian music was established.

By the early eighties, however, the Jesus movement hurricane had died down, along with the charismatic renewal and the Catholic charismatic movements. The spiritual hurricane that had landed on the shores of California and swept the country had gone flat. We had been living off that hurricane, and I remember sitting there in Waco, Texas, as head of Word Records, saying, "Well, now we're on our own."

I'm not suggesting God didn't move after that, or that he wasn't doing things. But we did not have a movement of the Spirit to live off of anymore. Throughout the first ten years of my career, I could have done a terrible job and succeeded. There had been such a moving of the Spirit, all we had to do was capture it and just document what was going on.

In 1980 or '81, we went into business. Between 1970 and 1980, the retail growth in the Christian Booksellers' Association was tenfold, a phenomenal explosion. Then came the first wave of secular ownership. Zondervan, which was publicly traded, changed hands. ABC bought Word, infusing it with $17 million in capital. CBS started a Christian label, Priority Records. MCA dabbled in Christian music.

During that time, I had a deep concern not just for the marketability of the product, but for what the product was saying. By the mideighties, Christian music was finding its way into the broader secular world. It was at this point that Amy Grant went from being the Queen of Christian Music to being the preeminent Christian pop star--from "El Shaddai" to Unguarded. In the beginning of the eighties, Sandy Patti was singing Dottie Rambo songs in church concerts; toward the end of the eighties, she was singing at the Republican National Convention. We went from the church to Carnegie Hall, from the church to large, secular arenas, where Bill and Gloria Gaither would hold praise gatherings.

The wave of the Spirit had gone flat, but our profile was continuing to rise through secular ownership, secular venues, and crossover songs. That time represented our teenage years as an industry. We were given the keys to a shiny, new car, and, in many ways, we went into the ditch. For example, I put together a deal with A&M Records and now feel that, in some ways, we created a monster. We weren't mature enough to handle our newfound successes.

But in the case of Amy Grant, I do believe she was and is doing exactly what God told her to do. Amy has always been rich and famous; she has always been about something other than just straight church music, right from the beginning. But due partially to her success, everyone seemed to feel they should cross over, and I don't think it was God's call on each of those artists' lives.

We as an industry weren't running away from the church at that time, but I do think we walked away, hoping to bring enough of the church along so we could still make a living--so we could still, basically, get rich. Materialism, a lot of it, crept in and started affecting our values.

Now we're past the teenage years of the eighties--very uncomfortable years for me--and have moved into the nineties. We are no longer a maturing business, we are a business. We're not a maturing market, we are a market. The growth is no longer "explosive," but we are enjoying good, steady growth. We are selling more records in Target and other secular outlets than ever before. But where has this success carried us?

In the seventies, we were on a mission from God. We had no choice but to communicate the gospel. Now we've built our careers, we've built our ministries, we've built our houses, we've built our companies, and we've sold them--at great profit. We've made money--and now we're accountable to make more money for the new owners. In many cases, we are creating music because it's time to create more music. "It's been 18 months since my last record; I've got some decent songs, we have the production dollars to make them sound even better. So we might as well."

But to be candid, I look at the majority of the music I hear today and think it's virtually meaningless.

There are some great songs; there are some fine artists. But when I pick up any of the magazines that review Christian music, I often wonder, "What is this? Why on earth are they reviewing this thing?" The answer is because we've created the opportunity for business to happen and for the media to exist. Now we're obligated to put something out, give the stores something to sell, and the magazines something to write about. We're driven by "It's time for another record." The bottom line is "if it is commercially viable, produce it."

There is a growing chasm between CCM and the church--between what's actually happening in the real world of ministry, or even in the music ministry of the church, and what we're doing in ccm. In fact, I would probably be more inclined to call the industry "commercial Christian music," rather than "contemporary Christian music."

That's not all bad, of course. I have a young son, and I thank God there is music that, for the most part, is Christian-based with biblically driven lyrics. I'm glad that the music is being performed by people who profess Christ and, to the best of our knowledge, live a godly lifestyle. I thank God there is that alternative. But as we continue to mature as an industry, I sense the Lord is saying to us, "What are you going to be now that you're fully grown? And what do you want to be ten years from now? Twenty years?"

And that's the question I wrestle with today: What is going to be our legacy?

Copyright © 1996 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.