Lots of folks who aren’t Christians have had their feathers ruffled by Jay-Z’s insistence on continuing to use “b----” in his lyrics. A particularly Christian response, to his evident failure to Dad-up as he begins fatherhood, though, might be to grieve the missed opportunity and to pray, in hope, that Jay-Z will seize the next one.

A weird thing happened to my generation. A lot of us grew up thinking of church as strict and fundamentalist and a buzz kill. Christians got a reputation of being hypocritical and close minded and constantly protesting anyone who didn’t agree with them.

It's been 16 years since David Crowder, then a student at Baylor University, and his friend Chris Seay formed University Baptist Church in Waco—where Crowder was the worship leader and where DCB was eventually born. The band recorded a two indie CDs in the late '90s, and as their notoriety spread. They went on to make six more studio albums, culminating with the double-disc, 34-track finale, Give Us Rest (A Requiem Mass in C [The Happiest of All Keys]), which released this week. Now the band is calling it quits.

Paul Simon's latest album, So Beautiful or So What, made a bunch of Best Albums of 2011 lists, including CT's own. That Simon is acclaimed for his music is hardly news, but the fact that So Beautiful so deeply explores spiritual themes is fascinating. "For somebody who's not a religious person, God comes up a lot in my songs," Simon said in press materials accompanying the album's release.

U2 amassed $160.8 million for 2011, well ahead of runner-up Taylor Swift, whose combined earnings came to $126.8 million. Lady Gaga was the only other act to top $100 million, posting $109.4 million to place third.

U2's final spate of shows on its massive “360 Tour” lands as the top-grossing tour of 2011 across North America and throughout the world, according to Pollstar, the concert-industry tracking magazine. The Irish quartet, which had to postpone a significant chunk of shows that had been scheduled in 2010 when singer Bono injured his back, roared back in 2011, pulling in $156 million from 25 shows in 21 cities in North America. Worldwide the group logged $231.9 million from 34 shows in 26 cities.

Click on the bold letters to view the video. The lyrics from this praise and worship song come from the book entitled Never Fail: Success Strategies which is available from Barnes & Noble and amazon.com.

When CT's music critics had narrowed down the list of candidates for the year's best albums, a trend seemed to be emerging, prompting one of our critics to say, "We seem to be kind of a country bunch, don't we?" Well, it's certainly a country/bluegrass flavored list, but standing alone at the top is indie veteran Josh Garrels, who spent 18 months working on what would become CT's Album of the Year—only to end up giving it away.

What are the best Chris Tomlin songs? Check out this great list of songs sung by Chris Tomlin.

Christian songs can be encouraging and uplifting to many believers. Check out this list of great Christian songs to be uplifted.