Land Like Arrows
The world of music has navigated some climatic change over the last fifteen years. I’m going to tip my age, but my first real job was managing a record store. A real record store! Well, actually it was 1990 and the vinyl album had been usurped by the compact disc and wouldn’t be a cool collectors’ item for another twenty years. And we didn’t have a coffee bar.
My first job in the music industry was selling CDs and cassettes (don’t judge me) to stores all over America. We would take orders on the phone (pre-internet days) and ship boxes of product to the stores. If there were stores outside the U.S. that wanted to sell Christian music, it was a complicated system of foreign manufactures and mom & pop distributors. Even then, there were places in the world where it was impossible to buy Christian music.
Fast forward to current day. Music is now available at the click of a mouse or touch of a phone screen in virtually every place on the earth that hasn’t built a Great Fire Wall! I think about Jesus’ ominous words in Matthew 24, “And the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Never has there been more of an urgency and more of an opportunity to share the Good News to the “ends of the earth”. I’m always amazed and humbled when I see stories from the mission field of a small tribe of people in the most remote area singing a worship song. I always wonder in amazement “How did they learn these songs?” Forty percent of our visits at WorshipTogether.com come from places outside the U.S.
And as these songs travel by technology and by missionary, they land like arrows in the hands of warriors. Nothing pushes back the darkness like worship. Worship creates unity. And unity scares the daylights out of the enemy.
As you journey through these days of focus, prayer and fasting, sing out a song of praise. And as you’re singing, be reminded that the whole world is singing along. Come Lord Jesus.
Jimi Williams
Jimi is the vice president at Capitol CMG (Christian Music Group) publishing and based in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he also heads up a worship resource website called ‘Worship Together’, a platform for worship leaders and musicians to find all the resources they need to teach their church new songs. Before joining Capitol and starting Worship Together, Jimi was the worship pastor at his local church where he developed his passion to raise up and release worship leaders in their calling to lead worship and write songs. Thank you Jimi for sharing with us!