For a few years I was president of Integrity music in Mobile, Alabama. I was President of 40 Records, which was a division of Gotee Records, which was their worship label. I have a lot of experience in worship music. What we’ve seen over the last 10-20 years and even longer than that, is that many churches are now becoming worship labels, like Hillsong and Elevation Church. Years ago you were looking at Marinatha, Vineyard, and now Bethel. People ask me, “what do you think about a church being a music label?” I’ve got multiple responses to that.
First of all, as a believer and a new Testament believer, I believe the best songs, the best worship songs come out of the local church. I believe the church was designed to birth worship music and not to create songs, but to create an atmosphere for worship. I believe the church is becoming worship labels and music labels. I’ve not really had a problem with that at all because I think that is the presence environment, which creates the culture and the atmosphere in the presence of God for worship songs to be created. Now there is a line where I think the function of a traditional label may be done better outside the local church. So a lot of times you’re finding local churches sending off their distribution or their marketing or their publishing to a third party. They are the content provider. The church provides the content and then they may sub their distribution and other services that they’re not really as well equipped for, because it’s not really a function of the church.
I think this modern trend to go with local churches is a very good trend – as long as they merge their services with somebody that has the functions, the ability and the resources to do those things that a local church is not created to do. They’re not created to have their own distribution. They’re not created to have a lot of the things that a record label provides, like a large staff. But again, my heartfelt belief is the music should be created and sent out of the local church and then distributed through other facets.
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