K-Love's 30 Days of Only Christian Music Challenge and Contest

Listener-supported Christian music station K-Love has issued a challenge: 30 days of listening only to Christian music. The purpose is to see what a difference it will make in the life of those participating in the challenge. For the first seven days of the challenge (January 1-7) participants can enter a contest to win a prize pack with CDs and other merchandise, as well as an opportunity to win a trip to a Winter Jam concert.

Listeners have posted their experiences related to listening to Christian music on K-Love and the effect it has had on their life on the K-Love website.

One listener, Rob, posted about the challenge on his "De-Blanked" blog, adding his own testimony of the fact it does make a difference. He also offered advice for anyone interested in the challenge to help make the experiment a little easier to follow through on for those who may not actively listen to Christian music.

For myself, I find K-Love and Christian music to be food and soothing balm to my soul, so to speak. The station's motto of "positive, encouraging" rings very true with me and those in my life who have now also become fans due to enjoying the music while around me. Listening to the music has always helped me to de-stress, feel uplifted and get things into perspective when feeling overwhelmed.

Laurence O'Donnell's "Music and the Brain" provides an overview of how research has proven music can affect people, for better or worse. One of the effects can be improved memory, which can affect test results and learning in students. Blood pressure and heart beat rate can also be affected; increasing or decreasing with the beat of the music listened to. Stress management and muscle strength or weakness have also been found to be affected by music.

K-Love can be enjoyed online or on any of a number of stations. Both online listening and a station-finder feature can be accessed via the K-love website. Another feature new listeners may find helpful is the listing on the site of the last several songs played, with artist and title. K-Love also offers a free song download.

Taking the challenge? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

Sources:

K-Love Broadcast promo. January 5, 2011.

Yet Another New Year's Challenge for You. Rob. De-Blanked. January 5, 2011. http://deblanked.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/yet-another-new-years-challenge-for-you/