It feels like it’s been a slow year for Gospel music. I can’t say whether that’s because the music hasn’t been great or if it’s because we just haven’t been terribly excited about it. It’s possibly both. Most people I know are simply not excited about gospel music, are not turning cartwheels over the new releases, are not blowing up my phone with news and info about the new artists. In my circle of acquaintance, people are, literally, not talking about Gospel music. Oh, they’re buying it—mostly the WOW-style compilations, but nobody’s having much fun. I myself have heard only two albums this year I believe are worth buying. Everything else is a selective iTunes download, or possibly a full purchase pending a session at a Circuit City listening station. What we have here is a music industry that’s lost its way somehow, spitting out albums they hope will appease an increasingly disinterested audience, while doing, apparently, nothing of significance to expand that audience.

It occurs to me that expanding the audience for gospel music requires the industry to, well, create more Christians. To my observation, it is the rare black church that is interested in creating more Christians. It would seem to me that the record industry’s interests would be best served by their banding together and spending money—a lot of money—promoting Jesus instead of promoting their stuck-up, self-absorbed artists. If the companies invested in outreach, invested in evangelism, aggressively supported churches’ efforts in those areas—wouldn’t that increase the audience and demand for their product?

Instead, the gospel music industry continues to do what it has always done—mimic the secular industry. The same slick ads, the same “star” treatment, the same promotion and glamorization of self. Money spent in the same ways, the same basic business model, which puts a lie to the notion that gospel music is a “ministry.” It is a business. It is about promotion, it is about airplay, it is about revenue.

If the gospel music industry threw out the secular business model and began functioning like a ministry instead of a business, God would breathe on it. Those efforts would find success and blossom as never before. If the gospel record biz put their dollars into evangelism instead of into their own pockets (or, just as commonly, up their nose), we might just see a renaissance and industry surge that would return tens of dollars for every dollar spent. But, first, two things need to happen: record executives need to have vision beyond the corner of their desks, and black pastors have to start caring about souls again. Absent those two events, we’ll remain where we are: with a business model at odds with the very Gospel it allegedly represents.