Secular music at student groups

Strange Things in Xenos
or Why Xenos will never be a model for other churches

23. Secular music at student ministry meetings - So far, we have never seen another church that plays mostly, or all, secular music at their student meetings, and even most adult meetings. But at Xenos, current secular music is the norm. Our students come from different parts of town and different cultural groups, so we listen to rap, punk, Indi-rock or blues, but only rarely do we hear Christian titles. The reason? Partly, this ties in with our view of worship as not depending on singing. Because we don't feel Christian songs are necessary for worship, the question becomes, "What do people want to play or hear?" It also grows out of the mission of our large meetings which are for outreach and teaching, not worship. We find our people don't like Christian music. In fairness, most of them are probably relatively unaware of much of contemporary Christian music. But the exposure they have had has not impressed most of them. Since our leadership doesn't legislate what music to play, people end up playing secular music. A good number of student home churches do sing praise songs in their home groups.

Most of our students say their secular friends will find secular music attractive, so it does play the role of cultural identification with our near-neighbors. We ask performers to avoid really extreme secular music containing obscene or satanic words. Yet, patently false views are presented in songs, often with commentary about how this is the way some people look at things, but look where it leads, etc. Many of our adult large meetings also have secular music, but Christian music also is included in some of these meetings.

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