Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

We kick off our God @ the Billboards series in a few weeks. It is one of two "culture series" that we do each year. The other one is God @ the Box Office which fits great with our tagline: Now Meeting @ a Theater Near You.

It's always tough picking songs. We're going after lyrics that we can exegete and juxtapose with Scripture. We also want a great song musically that had radio recognizability. We've landed on Fix You by Coldplay, We Believe by Good Charlotte, and I Don't Wanna Be by Gavin DeGraw.

The 18th century Scottish thinker, Andrew Fletcher, said, "Give me the making of the songs of a nation and I care not who writes its laws." Our culture is shaped, even more than we know, by the movies we watch and the music we listen to.

Approximately 40% of Americans attend church on any given Sunday which means that 60% of Americans are getting their theology from someplace else. Let me cut to the chase. For better or for worse, whether we like it or not, the musicians who write music and the producers who make movies are the chief theologians of our culture.

Movies and music shape the soul and the psyche of approximately 175 million Americans. We better be talking about it if we want to be relevant.