Carolyn Arends is a Canadian wonder. She originally came to public prominence as a songwriter for Nashville-based contemporary Christian music (CCM) and then became a performing artist in her own right. She has won Dove Awards, CCM’s highest honours, in both modes, and has also won numerous Covenant Awards in Canada.

Carolyn’s lyrics attracted the attention of editors and publishers, and she embarked on an award-winning career as a journalist, writing columns for Christianity Today in the United States and Faith Today in Canada. Several books also grace her CV.

Carolyn Arends holds degrees from Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, and Regent College in Vancouver. She is now education director at Renovaré, the multimedia resource founded by Celebration of Disciplines author Richard Foster. And she is a wife and mother who enjoys long-distance running and–I’m guessing–solving calculus problems and building electron microscopes in her many leisure hours.

Carolyn is a gentle spirit, but she has incisive things to say about the business of CCM, the benefits and harms to creativity of her evangelical subculture, and the main threat to Christian songwriting today–and it isn’t streaming.