I’ve heard some excellent Jewish devotional rap. I was told one song had Emminem guest rapping.
Of course they play rock and roll in churches.
And, to bring it all together for the OP, I used to sing with a rock band at Catholic services at a retreat house that dealt mainly with 12-step programs. 35 years ago. No lasers, smoke, etc., but lead guitar, bass, rhythm guitar, keyboards, drums, and backup singers. After communion, the priest would have someone “witness” as a meditation. I was asked to reflect on my first Father’s Day.
I do miss those masses. That was a true Christian community. It wasn’t a bunch of people who were there to fill their weekly duty - stand up, sit down, kneel, leave right after communion. These were people who cared about each other and wanted to be there. After mass, they had bad coffee and stale donuts, and everyone stayed talking.
Bart must be very talented to pull off something like this.
The genre is nothing new. This was recorded in 1987.
This, BTW, is not the direct remake of a Petra song. GGR&RTY was original written and recorded by Argent, and Petra wanted to do a remake with a couple of words changed, and Argent agreed to it. The KISS song is the direct remake of the Argent version.
And Petra’s version.
Makes me think of the Missa Luba. Haven’t thought about that in decades. In a film class I took the professor used it as a soundtrack for the Falconetti/Dreyer Joan of Arc.
Reminds me of the church where I sang in the choir for years. Sunday services were an excuse for the congregants to gather, sing a few hymns, listen to a sermon, and move on to the coffee hour. There were homemade cookies, bad coffee (lemonade for the children), and plenty of fellowship, which is what church should be all about, after all. It was normal for “coffee hour” to last twice as long as the service.
As for “rock and roll,” we never quite got to that point. Still, we did do a few pop songs that would have definitely been out of place in the stodgy church that I grew up in. “Here Comes the Sun” was a perennial favourite in springtime, and “Morning Has Broken” was always set to the Cat Stevens piano arrangement.
It was there I was introduced to “House of Amazing Grace” - Amazing Grace sung to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun”.
Makes perfect sense - “saved a wretch like me” sung to a song about a whorehouse. And this was long before Bob Rivers noticed that O Little Town of Bethlehem can be sung to Rising Sun, too.
Most of what we did was “standard” church songs, but we always did a meditation song that usually was a “christian rock” song.
“Amazing Grace” has a pretty regular meter, so it’s not hard to find tunes to fit. I don’t think I’ve heard that one (but I think I have heard of it), but I have sung “Amazing Grace” to the tune of the “Gillingan’s Island” theme song.
Haven’t heard that, but I have heard “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island”
I will echo that many churches use contemporary instruments in Worship. And I think it’s a good thing. After all, the early Church didn’t use organs or pianos, so why do we think that’s the only way to have a Worship service? I have seen (and heard) churches that use modern instruments while playing the hymns in the hymnbook and it turns out pretty well.
But…but…rock and roll is the Devil’s Music! They’re all going to hell!
When I was in college, I was a member of a Christian student group for a couple of years. Most of the members of that group were pretty conservative, and a lot of them, in fact, didn’t listen to secular music – they only listened to Christian pop and rock artists. At that time, singer Amy Grant was a huge name in Christian pop, and my friends were crestfallen when she started recording music that wasn’t overtly Christian in its lyrics. (I quickly realized that I was not nearly as conservative as most of the others in that group!)
At church services and group meetings, there’d be a lot of contemporary Christian music played and sung (and very little in the way of traditional hymns and music). One year, we were at a retreat, with students from several other colleges. We met a few guys from one particular, super-conservative church, who told us that, at their church, the only allowed music at their services were the Psalms, which had been set to music – apparently, the reasoning was that any other music wasn’t “divinely inspired,” and thus, was inappropriate for worship.
Here you go:
This is what bugs me about this thread: I’ve always been a proud listener of the Devil’s music, and now those pesky Christians are stealing it away from us… 
(off to listen to “Sympathy For The Devil”)
Save your angst until you hear backmasking in a church service.
Praise God
Praise God
Everybody Praise God
Praise God
Praise God
Everybody Praise God
The over use of pad tracks drives me crazy. They’re synth sounds in specific keys. Practically any song can work.
I’ve even seen these used behind speech. Everyone here, raise your hands and rejoice. God is good! Can I get an amen?
It can be impressive at first. It gets to the point where you really just want to hear a song without the theatrics.
Churches buy these pads with various sounds. The licensing is included.
I thought this thread was going to be about the church that got a cease-and-desist for ripping off “Hamilton”.
Ca. 1990, with 3 kids in college, my dad got a job doing security at a local civic center, and after working a bunch of different shows, he told our mom, “I can’t believe I ever had a problem with the kids going to rock concerts. I sure am glad they weren’t country music fans.”