Go To Pt. V
Yes, really. While the Newsboys in the last 5 years or so have receded somewhat into the background of CCM, there was a time when they were a creative force in the genre, and their music still has distinct insights to offer to the Church.
Formed in the 1980s, the Newsboys have in some ways become a legacy group. They have gained and lost members, and with the addition of Michael Tait of dcTalk as lead singer, the band has expanded its collaborative reach to more of the Christian music world.*
This post will primarily be focusing on the era prior to Tait joining the band, especially when founding member, drummer and vocalist Peter Furler was lead singer. The creative, catchy and winsome work of the Newsboys kicked into high gear when Steve Taylor (see Pt. IV of this series) entered into a creative partnership with the band, producing and co-writing numerous songs with Peter Furler, himself a highly talented lyricist, though the contributions of other founding members are not to be undervalued.
The Newsboys’ music in its heyday is distinctive for its word salad lyrics, catchy riffs, instrumental complexity and hopeful ethos. Though they did produce two worship albums, in this piece we will examine two songs which are not explicitly worship songs but do contain catechetical and liturgical elements: their hit “Shine” and the single “Entertaining Angels.”
“Shine” is loosely about evangelism, but an evangelism rooted in joy and the witness of actions as much as words. The song has a bouncing rhythm, with rapid-fire lyric verses interspersed with the chorus. “Dull as dirt/You can’t assert the kind of light/That might persuade a strict dictator to retire/Fire the army, teach the poor origami/The truth is in, the proof is when/You hear your heart/Start asking what’s my motivation,” Furler sings, subtly describing an empty evangelism common to some Christian communities which attempts to “spread the good news” without examining one’s own heart and truly living into the gospel.
By contrast, the chorus of the song, slowing down a bit, tells us to, “Shine/Make ‘em wonder what you got/Make ‘em wish that they were not/On the outside looking bored” and to “Let it shine before all men/Let ‘em see good works and then/Let ‘em glorify the Lord”. This is not merely PR. The call to “shine” is to live into the good news as if it were really good news, and the connection to good works shows that the gospel is made radiant far more by actions than by words. Indeed, the gospel is intertwined with holy action.
The second song, “Entertaining Angels,” is a slower, but still punchy love song to God, in an almost mystical way. It opens with strings, which build up to the guitar riffs. These soften slightly as Furler sings, “One to another/Do you remember me?/I feel so small/Are you listening?” The verse goes on to describe the speaker’s sense of dissatisfaction with the state of the world and the feeling of wanting to return to God. “I ran so far” evokes the Prodigal Son, and the chorus is a modern twist on both that narrative and the hospitality of Abraham:
“Entertaining angels/by the light of my TV screen/24-7, you wait for me/Entertaining angels/while the night becomes history/Hosts of Heaven, sing over me”.
To me this implies both God waiting faithfully for every human person to enter into love with Them. At the same time, there is a parallel of the human person being “host” (entertaining) to the Trinity in the every day of life (”by the light of my TV screen”). There is a deep message here that God is not remote from ourselves or from our everyday experience, but is interwoven into it even as God transfigures it. The intimacy between God and the beloved follower is elaborated on further in the second verse, where the speaker longs to be “close as a brother/The way we used to be/I’ll hold my breath/And I’ll wait for you to breathe.” This vision of true koinonia with God also blends nicely into ideals of theosis, with the implication being that God and the human person share one breath when the relationship is intimately pursued. Other devotional songs by the Newsboys expand on this theme of love and intimacy with God (cf. the song “Presence (My Heart’s Desire)”.
These two songs effectively sum up two catechetical insights from the Newsboys music. First, there is a focus on joy and engaging the wider world with love, good works and celebration of God’s goodness (a goodness which is not threatened by the good things of the world, but delights when the Kingdom breaks into everyday life). The Church would greatly benefit from the message that while the life in Christ is often a struggle, God is present in our joy as well as in our pain, and joy doesn’t have to be “churchly” to be holy. Second, their music proclaims an intimacy with the divine that does not reduce humanity to self-loathing. There is a valuable lesson that humility is not necessarily thinking less of yourself, but thinking about yourself less, and being caught up in the wonder and beauty of divine love. I am not an evangelical, but the Newsboys have a firm sense of what makes the Good News good, and it seems to me that if evangelicals want to recapture their tradition from the bad actors who have distorted it, they could do worse than to listen to some of these songs.
*Note: This post will admittedly be somewhat dunking on the Tait era. Tait is a talented singer and musician, and it’s not my intent to slam him personally. I just feel that the unique niche that the Newsboys filled in Christian music was most distinctive prior to his joining the group (in no small part due to the more active involvement of Steve Taylor and founding member Peter Furler in the songwriting process). This is not his fault.
