Roaring Lambs

Bob Briner’s 1993 book Roaring Lambs came as a wake-up call to thousands of Christian artists, entertainers and record companies. At a time when they were developing a dangerously en-trenched posture, Briner asked: “In light of Christ’s call to be salt and light in the culture around us, why do we want to keep all this talent huddled behind church walls?”

Many were deeply impacted by Briner’s message, including Steve Taylor, who had recently set up his own record label. He approached the author with an idea for an album featuring artists who were sharing their faith outside the church (see review, page 15). Briner loved it and personally pursued some of the artists.
Taylor says the album honours those artists and uses them as an example to young adults who are deciding what their careers should be.
“We want high school students to start asking the right questions now so they don’t repeat the mistakes many of us made of sequestering ourselves in a subculture rather than penetrating the culture as salt and light.”

Who’s Bob Briner?
Briner earned the right to be heard in the culture-at-large through his influence as an Emmy Award–winning television executive, a professional sports agent (he co-founded the Association of Tennis Professionals) and a businessman. Though he never worked directly in the music business, he had an obvious concern for those who did. By the time he died from cancer in June 1999, Briner had become deeply and personally involved with a number of artists, mentoring, encouraging, counselling.
“Bob gave us a context and a language to consider what it would mean to move outside the closed community of contemporary Christian music and into the whole wide world of music,” says producer Charlie Peacock.
“He helped us reclaim the scriptual understanding of what it means to be salt and light, and what it means to be caretakes of all of God’s creation, including music, both inside and outside the church. He helped us see how narrow our vision and our understanding of God’s kingdom had become.”

Art. A means to an end?
Taylor agrees, saying he used to think the arts had to have a measurable, quantifiable result to be salt and light.
“Art was just the means to an end and that end always had to be evangelism or worship. If those ends were not immediately apparent, it seemed the artists had somehow failed. Bob gently and graciously challenged that, without ever putting people on the spot over what they were currently doing. His purpose was never to diminish the role music created for the edification of fellow believers.
“He was just saying, ‘That part seems to be covered pretty well already, doesn’t it? Now, what are we doing about the culture-at-large? Why aren’t we raising up and equipping believers to occupy strategic positions in record companies, management companies and as artists speaking into the mainstream? Why aren’t we earning the right to exert the kind of influence that our culture so desperately needs?’”
Peacock says he now understands it’s not an either/or proposition. “It’s not, ‘Let’s stop what we’re doing in contemporary Christian music so we can send everyone out into the world.’ It’s, ‘Let’s help people understand what their calling is, and for those who are called to go out into mainstream music, let’s support them.’”

Roaring Lambs, Bob Briner, Zondervan Publishing House,
re-printed 2000, softcover, 208 pages. Recommended retail price $A12.95. Available from Christian bookstores.