I’ve had enough. It’s driving me nuts. I’m done.

Thirty-five years ago, in the wake of the TV evangelists’ scandals, I wrote a Bob-Dylanish, righteously indignant, finger-pointing song slamming the hypocrisy and hedonism in the Church on display for all the world to see. I don’t consider myself a songwriter, but I have penned a handful of songs over the years, and I was happy with this one. Here are some of the better lines of the screed:

I’m sick and tired of churches trying to find new ways grow, / More concerned with their numbers than with letting their light show. / I’m tired of deacons decorating buildings nice and neat, / While turning their backs on their brothers that are living in the street. / Materialism’s sanctified, new holy ways to lust. . . .

I’m sick of Spraynet Samuel, looking who he can slander next, / So self-absorbed and pompous, taking verses out of text. He say, / “Riches here on earth, rewards from up on high / From Sugar Daddy Jesus, our Santa in the Sky.” / I guess Donald Trump’s a prophet, and Mother Teresa’s a Pharisee. / Yeah, I surrender all to Jesus, just let me keep my LTD. / Ol’ Ananias and Sapphira, alive and well on my TV. . . .

Donald Trump was just a very wealthy real-estate mogul back then. Who knew?

It was a pretty darn good song. I set it as a minor-key blues (think “Green Onions”), my producer buddy Tony Wold put some killer horns and slap bass on the track, and it was a popular song for a short season with the band I led post-college, Living Proof (although not quite as popular as my abstinence-awareness exhortation, “Keep It to Yourself”). But part of the reason I think the song was successful was not that it so effectively judged obvious areas in the Church sadly ripe for the picking (it did, indeed) but because of the punchline at the end of each verse: for verses 1 and 3 (the latter above), “Basically, I guess you’d say, I’m sick and tired of me”; for verse 2 (above), the same sentiment with the pronoun in the plural, i.e., us. It was easy for me to judge others because my own sins stared me in the face so glaringly. (Earlier in the song, in verse 1, I lamented, “I’m sick of spending all my time meeting my own needs. / I’m tired of TV Moses telling me how to succeed. / I’m sick of living life like it’s a game that’s to be won; / He with all the money is he with all the fun. / I’m tired of spending fortunes buying all my eyes can see. / Basically, I’d guess you’d say, I’m sick and tired of me.”) If you have four and a half minutes, feel free to give a listen to “Sick and Tired of Me.” For a wma rip of a 35-year-old cassette tape, it doesn’t sound too bad. (Thanks, as always, for the media assistance from Prof. Tim May of Judson University.)

Many years later, I find that I’m sick and tired of me again. Here too, I feel Truth is on my side. Here too, the issues are obvious to anyone who is paying the least bit of attention. Here too, my frustration is that I know the Church is capable of so much more. But my attitude is killing me, and it doesn’t help the cause at all.

I have in this space tried my best to point out where the songs being composed for the Church over the past decade or so could be improved. I’ve tried, in my better moments, not to lump all current contemporary worship music (cwm) together, decrying “7/11” ditties in the manner of so many purists before me. In my worse moments, however, I confess I’ve wanted to scream, “YOU CAN DO BETTER” every time I hear a new cwm chart-topper with a boring melody, simplistic harmonic structure, and water-torture-worthy rhythm.

That said, I turned 60 a few months back, and I am bound and determined not to finish up my career as a worship-music Scrooge . . . even if the current situation in cwm only gets worse. I’ve told my wife on many occasions that I have this horrible thought of the two of us, in our dotage, sitting on our porch and overhearing some neighborhood child walking by us on the sidewalk and saying to friend, “How did that sweet old lady ever end up with that grouchy old man?” The potential is there.

So in the summer months, I’m going to try to articulate a plan of action for, well, trading my sorrows where boring cwm is concerned. Despite real reasons to continue to despair, I see rays of hope, and I’m going to choose to hang onto those. I invite any other would-be curmudgeons out there to join me.

The Lord be with you!