Contemporary Christian radio and Catholic prayer

I’m going to out myself. I’m a convert.

Well, not exactly. I’ve been a Catholic all my life.

But I recently completed a conversion of a different sort, to contemporary Christian music and radio. And, in the process, I discovered some important things about my family’s Catholic prayer life.

As a typical kid growing up in the Eighties and Nineties, my music preferences were always on-decade. Lots of rock and pop, with U2 holding a special place in my heart. By late high school, though, my sometimes-attendance at church youth group meetings brought me into contact with Christian radio.

Two songs in particular made a lasting impression: “Awesome God” by the late Rich Mullins (and covered by Michael W. Smith and many others) and “Shout to the Lord” by Darlene Zschech. I’d perk up whenever these songs were played. And despite hearing them often, I found myself–even as a sixteen-year-old–getting choked up whenever I heard those lyrics. While I moved on to college and mostly left Christian radio behind, I think those two songs sparked within me an early awareness: truly great music didn’t just make you want to dance, tap, or sing along, it moved something in your soul. And, after college, this realization led me to country music. George Strait. Alan Jackson. Brooks & Dunn. And while I still occasionally enjoy some Luke Combs and Chris Stapleton, I discovered that even country music was not going to sustain me. My search for something more enduring continued.

Years later, after my wife and I got married and had our three daughters, the two of us began to more purposefully consider what was on the radio. We were becoming painfully aware that whatever we were listening to wasn’t just filling us up, it was filling them up. It was during those years that my wife discovered K-Love, America’s premiere Christian radio station. Owned and operated by a non-profit Christian ministry, it broadcasts Christian music to over 2 million listeners every week and happened to be the very same radio station where I had first heard Michael W. Smith and Darlene Zschech as a teenager.

All of us have now been listening to Christian radio for more than a decade. And, last spring I completed my conversion when I took my two oldest daughters to their first Christian music concert. Now, I’ve seen a lot of concerts over the years–some really great ones across a wide variety of genres—but the show put on by Chris Tomlin and CAIN in Boston was easily one of the most memorable of my life. The same was true of the concert that my two oldest daughters and I attended recently, which featured MercyMe with TobyMac and Zac Williams.

Being a Catholic and a contemporary Christian music radio fan is a strange thing. At least where I live in New England, it feels a bit like no one understands you. The popular culture folks think you’re a nut. While they will shell out thousands of dollars to cram into a stadium so they can swoon for Taylor Swift, they think it’s completely “weird” (to use a word that is enjoying a recent resurgence in popularity) to go to a concert where the performers deflect attention away from themselves so that the audience can collectively swoon for Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

On the other hand, many Catholics who admittedly aren’t crazy about the idolization of pop stars, also look skeptically at Christian music. They realize that most Christian music performers are non-Catholics whose idea of church is quite different from ours. Mostly evangelicals, many Christian musicians differ from Catholics on important aspects of faith, including things as central as Scripture, salvation, and the sacraments (not to mention the Pope!). These are no small things. And I do understand why some Catholics worry sometimes that Christian music fans may be a Sunday Mass or two away from bolting the pews for Joel Osteen.

But I’m not one of them. And neither is Jonathan Roumie, the now-famous actor who portrays Jesus in “The Chosen.” Nor is Matt Maher, the highly-popular, platinum-selling Christian music artist. Both are very entrenched in the Christian music scene having even appeared together at the K-Love Fan Awards this past year and make no apologies for their Catholic faith.

All of this sets up the discovery that my two oldest daughters and I made one recent Sunday afternoon. While listening to music around the backyard fire pit after Mass, we were reflecting on our family’s prayer life and realized that Christian radio awakens within us an overwhelming desire to worship and praise God in our daily lives. It is a primal need. And while specific songs may tap into these desires in different ways, the overwhelming commonality in all of this music is that worship and praise—two forms of prayer discussed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church—are central to everything played on Christian radio.

The Catechism refers to prayers of worship as prayers of “Blessing and Adoration” (CCC 2626). Through such prayer, we exalt God’s greatness and acknowledge our dependence upon Him. Our Catholic Mass, of course, is rich with these types of prayers. Throughout the Mass, we humbly acknowledge that we are creatures before the God who created us. We are blessed and we bless. We are, of course, called to continue these prayers outside of Mass in our private prayer lives.

Praise “lauds God for His own sake and gives Him glory, quite beyond what He does but simply because HE IS. It shares in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in faith before seeing Him in glory” (CCC 2639). Because we are joined with the Holy Spirit through praise, we are called to praise Him through song and psalm in our daily prayer lives.

Beyond prayers of “Blessing and Adoration” and prayers of “Praise”, the Catechism reminds us that there are three other forms of prayer essential for living a faithful life.

Prayers of supplication call us to “ask, beseech, plead, invoke, entreat, cry out and ‘struggle in prayer’” (CCC 2629). “Petitionary” prayer humbly seeks first forgiveness from God and then participation in God’s plan and collaboration with Him. We offer petitions at Mass and a lot of our private prayer life is probably full of prayers of petition whereby we’re asking God for help.

One special type of petitionary prayer—a prayer of “Intercession”—is so important that it is understood to be a separate form (CCC 2634). Intercessory prayer is when we intervene through prayer on someone else’s behalf. We sometimes use Intercessory prayer to ask the saints to intervene. When we pray the “Hail Mary,” for example, we ask Mary—as the mother of our Lord—to “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Catholics particularly appreciate the role of the saints in intercessory prayer in ways that other Christians often say they themselves do not, thus making this type of prayer especially Catholic.

The last form of prayer is “Thanksgiving”. These prayers remind us that God is the source of all that is good and, like St. Paul in his letters, we should turn to Him always. By doing so, the Church becomes “more fully what she is” (2637). Again, while our celebration of the Mass brings us in communion with this and all of the other four forms of prayer, we are called as Catholics to integrate each of these forms of prayer into our daily lives.

That Sunday afternoon, as my daughters and I reflected on our family’s prayer life, we realized that while we were purposefully and mindfully integrating certain types of prayer into our family life, we weren’t doing the same with others. Yes, of course, we were going to Mass and participating in liturgical life. And the extraordinary nature of the Eucharist is such that it very uniquely captures all forms of prayer. But beyond that and what we were each individually doing in our own prayer lives, we weren’t really practicing all forms of prayer in our family life. We prayed before meals and before bed and we tried to regularly take time to say the Rosary together. But, overall, our family prayer life leaned very hard on prayers of “Thanksgiving” and prayers of “Petition” and “Intercession”. We seemed to be neglecting prayers of “Adoration” and prayers of “Praise”.

Or so we thought.

That afternoon, we had the realization that Christian radio was saving us. With it in our lives, we were doing something we didn’t realize we were doing. With every song and every lyric, we were worshipping God. Adoring Him. Praising Him.

What a powerful—and humbling—realization. Left to our own limited understanding, we turn to certain types of prayer thinking they will suit a particular need or season. But God finds a way to help us pray every prayer in every season. Just as we should.

Shout to the Lord. Our God is an awesome God.

Catholic World Report