Tony Cummings looks at British CCM, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

This was God's plan and Cross Rhythms was to work towards its fulfilment. But for vision not to be some overblown exercise in quasi spirituality, a vision had to be rooted in market reality and fiscal responsibility. That was a lesson I had to learn when Cross Rhythms became the responsibility of Cornerstone House in 1991.The first issue of Cross Rhythms sold about 800 copies (we printed 5,000!) and had at its inception a full time staff, including myself, of three paid employees. When Cornerstone House took over its publication, the long, and at times painful, process of tailoring the magazine to the marketplace began. Relocating the editorial into my front room, doing away with paid help and finding a cheaper printer were key elements in moving Cross Rhythms towards viability. And then with the introduction of the Cross Rhythms Experience tape in December 1993 the magazine finally ceased to be a financial millstone around the neck of Cornerstone House. Today it breaks even financially.

In many ways the slow but organic growth of Cross Rhythms over its five year history is British CCM in microcosm. For over five years Christian music in Britain has grown on almost all fronts. I'm grateful to the Lord that Cross Rhythms has had a part to play in that process. When Cross Rhythms began it had a clear aim to be a catalyst in directing the attention of Christians and the media to the riches existing within Christian music. Five years on it appears that role is being achieved. In the week that this article was written I have received two letters from readers enthusing that it was the Cross Rhythms tape/magazine that has led them to become regular purchasers of CCM and that through this change of habit they have been tremendously blessed. In this last week I have also done telephone interviews with a television researcher planning a possible Christian music series and a journalist writing an article on Christian music for a Sunday supplement.

Yet even Cross Rhythms is small-time. When supporters ask the current circulation of the magazine and are told that (this issue) we are printing 3,100 they are often dismayed. For paradoxically in Britain today an impression has been created, by CD racks bulging with new releases; by exposure of Christian music on TV; by a magazine that strives in content at least to compete with the heavily-resourced music magazines of the newsagent rack; that Christian music in Britain is bigger than it actually is.

When discussing with Chris Cole what this article should actually contain we agreed that Britain's Christian music supporters not only needed to know how far we had come but how much still needed to be achieved before something of national cultural and spiritual significance is achieved. Let's take a look at the current level of CCM album sales. Excluding a handful of mainstream ('Stream Three) albums, the bulk of the albums released in Britain each year sell on average less than 400 copies for 'private recordings' tapes and between 1,000 and 3,000 copies for bona fide albums released through Christian companies. Christian music "hits" sell between 3,000 and 6,000 and anything over 6,000 sales in the UK is both a mega-hit and a rarity.

Many CCM albums are of course American in origin and such is the support base of major CCM label 'average1 releases (100,000 sales plus) the fact that British releases produce only another 3,000 sales is not a big deal. As far as the British artist goes being in such a small record market is a major problem. For instance, the resulting recording budgets (hire of studio, musicians and producer) for British albums are painfully low. A long-cherished means within the record industry of arriving at an appropriate budget is to estimate how many thousand sales a project is likely to generate and then allocate £1,000 in recording or promotional budget for every thousand. Recording budgets in the rock and pop mainstream in the UK for an album range between £30,000 and £150,000 plus. The recording budgets offered to UK CCM artists are microscopic by comparison, making it very, very difficult to compete with average US CCM albums let alone the mainstream's pop/rock luminaries. I was recently in the studio producing the second album for a British group where the budget allocated by the record company was £1,000. Fair enough on one level - the group's first album sold 1,000 copies. But in most parts of the record industry (both US CCM and the secular world) £1,000 would be considered a woefully inadequate budget to record demos let alone a CD release. One clear demonstration of the under budgeting of British CCM is how few British albums have achieved American release. In the main British albums simply cannot compete in terms of production values with the average US album. Consequently only a tiny number obtain US release.

Let's take another dimension of Christian music in Britain. The earnings of musicians. When in 1987 I became the manager, for a short period, of Split Level and encouraged them to go full time they were forced to live on £40 a week. In many ways the situation has got no better for full time British Christian musicians. Obviously working as a solo, as opposed to a band, significantly increases your earning capacity (one mouth rather than four to feed) while there are clearly more church-based engagements available for softer, non-rock styles of music. But for musicians prepared to make the modern day vow of poverty and become a full time Christian musician, it usually needs charitable trusts formed around their ministries, where supporters can covenant gifts, to make even the meagerist living possible. There is still needed a great deal of education so that Christian bands don't ask for too much and concert promoters don't pay too little.

But for all the problems thrown up by under investment within Britain's CCM scene, record sales, after more than a decade of stagnation, are at long last on the increase. The theological bigotry once generated by infamous anti-pop culture books like 'Pop Goes The Gospel' is waning. More and more Christian bands, particularly in the burgeoning R&B gospel field, are gaining mass media exposure in the TV and the press. Festivals have increased and diversified so that today Britain sports over a dozen annual events where Christian music is aired to hundreds or thousands. Radio exposure has slowly but surely increased both in the mainstream (Gospel Train, Cross Rhythms and dozens more programmes) and now on Christian radio stations like UCB and shortly London Christian Radio. Christian artists as stylistically diverse as Nu Colours, Martyn Joseph, the Wades and Eden Burning are making dents into mainstream consciousness. CCM has begun to be marketed into mainstream record shops. And even the Christian bookstores, who have been slow to promote and stock new CCM, preferring the market they know, soft pop and easy listening praise and worship, are at last showing small signs of awakening to new styles and artists with new, younger potential purchasers.

Christian music has unquestionably risen in British popularity and awareness in the last five years. And most encouraging of all are the sign that some of this growth is much deeper than on the 'good, wholesome entertainment for the kids' level. The Holy Spirit is tangibly active in CCM. There are today many signs that God is doing something exciting and fresh within music. From hard nose EMI executives weeping during a BeBe And CeCe Winans concert to hundreds of school children committing their lives to Christ during World Wide Message Tribe missions in Manchester schools. From palpable experiences of God's anointing during worship at Bible Weeks like Stoneleigh or New Wine to heavy metal fans profoundly affected during ministry at Meltdown. From powerfully prophetic outpourings from musicians like Kevin Prosch and Keith Thompson to fresh experiences of God in meditative and alternative worship. From tangible fruit of prison musicianaries like Nuffsed to 'Toronto style' outpourings at all manner of events, services, festivals and concerts. God is active in new and exciting ways in British Christian music. The first hint of revival? Time will tell. But what is certain is that something new and vital is happening and all the apathy and small-market defeatism Cross Rhythms encountered in its early days is being swept aside.

I conclude by returning once more to John Fischer and his sad drive through Florida listening to two hours of Christian hit radio and hearing only a sweet, compromised, incomplete message of God's love. I believe if John went to a World Wide Message Tribe concert, attended a Stoneleigh worship time or heard a Cross Rhythms Experience he would have heard and experienced a lot more than a shallow 'God loves you" message. For all the smallness of Britian's marketplace, compared with the Americans, at least we have so far been saved from making some of our US brothers' and sisters' mistakes. Fischer's experience is a warning for everyone involved in Christian music in the UK. If CCM's growth in the UK eventually achieves a duplication of Christian aural wallpaper on the radio and shallow consumerism in the churches, all of us working in Christian music in Britain will have woefully failed. It has been observed more than once that a positive to the under financing of British CCM is that it has kept motives of most grassroots musicians, executives, deejays and everyone else pretty pure. Certainly, there is a maturity developed through sacrifice and service in many British Christian musicians and behind-the-scenes workers that I do not always detect in our American brothers and sisters. Let us see how far the Lord will take CCM in Britain in the next five years. And let all of us, artists and album buyers, radio presenters and concert organisers, record company executives and magazine editors, be listening and obeying God in that process.