Yes, I do work at a church. So why do we do this kind of music?
Before I go into my answer, let me first explain that we do two different kinds of music. We have our songs that are explicitly designed to give people an opportunity to sing to God, songs that are interactive and richly filled with the truth of God. These are songs that our people sing loudly to express their love and wonderment of who God is and what He has done for us. The second kind of song we do are those that are explicitly designed to cause people to think about some truth about God or about being a Christ-follower. These songs might be written and performed by Christian artists... a few weeks ago we used a great David Crowder song to illustrate that God is our ultimate rescue. Sometimes, these songs will connect with people better and get the message across better when they are songs our people know and love. What bands do they know and love? Maybe of them are done by the bands in the list above.
So, as you can see, the reason we play songs by John Mayer and Foo Fighers and whoever else is because we pick specific songs of theirs to make people think about what we will be talking about in that service. We did the Foo Fighters song "Come Alive" on Easter Sunday to show that the fullness of live is only realized in Jesus Christ.
This weekend, we got to play a Coldplay song, which was a ton of fun. The song was "Lost!", and we used it to illustrate the idea that there are many directions and factions, and that you need to examine your life to make sure you didn't wander off the path.
I love my job at Next Level Church. It is awesome to be able to play music that leads people in worship and music that helps people understand who God is. And I love playing and singing all of it.
