Hello everyone!
We live in an era where communication is unprecedented. We’ve never before had this level of communication technology. The sheer capacity to instantly communicate globally and in mulitple ways is literally in our pocket. We carry everywhere - on our person - the ability to phone someone anywhere in the world, likewise send a text message, have a video call or video conference with several people, surf the internet, navigate with inbuilt GPS, do our shopping and banking, create videos, take photographs and transmit them, listen to music – and a host of other things. All on a small handheld device.
This is staggering capacity! Our children are born into this world. And communication technology, according to Bill Gates, is about to go to a whole new level. The mind truly boggles!
A key issue in all of this is our accessibility to so much information, news and resources with not all of it verifiably true, or accurate, or good, or helpful. Some of it is fake, other stuff is censored for political reasons.
In the middle of all this is the Christian music industry around the world. Christian worship music is proliferating with many artists and churches emerging at the moment. This proliferation has been astonishing – more than tripling in the last 12 years. And, of course, churches have accessed a lot of new music and songs for use in worship services, as has any Christian with a mobile phone, tablet or laptop computer. Our churches have done the same, too.
Obviously, with so much Christian music flooding our ears and more emerging all the time from hundreds of different origins there is, inevitably, a very wide range of biblical perspectives presented, too. And not all of these are accurate or appropriate. In fact, some of these songs are not just biblically flawed, or doctrinally unsound, they’re quite inappropriate and in a few cases are even heretical. That is, they misrepresent the Gospel or the Bible, and even God, Himself. In the last couple of weeks this issue has landed on my desk in several ways. Emerging from several conversations are two main concerns. First, is whether or not a song is worthy of inclusion in our worship services, and the other is the origins of the song itself – who wrote it, where did it come from and is the rest of that person’s, or church’s, ministry biblically sound and faithful in their portrayal of God the Father, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit and the Bible.
Worship leaders and pastors are faced with several challenges. Because of the accessibility to a wide range of Christian music, many Christians have been listening to songs and music on Spotify, iTunes or YouTube weeks before these have come to the notice of worship leaders or pastors. That’s a challenge, particularly if someone has been listening to songs that they have come to really love, but which are erroneous or even heretical. No pastor can check who is listening to what, but that is not their job. Believers have to check carefully so that unbiblical or heretical song lyrics listened to over and over again don’t become an earworm used by the enemy to brick into place a mindset, or a house made of thoughts that is actually opposed to God’s Word. So many songs are beautiful for the main part, but contain a line or two that undermines the Gospel, distorts the truth about who Jesus is, or falsely represents the person of God. Constant listening to such songs will embed wrong perspectives in our minds. Apart from biblical error and flawed doctrines are many songs which amount to very inappropriate “love songs” about Jesus Christ, or God – some are quite carnal in nature. Several, recently, are really quite off. They’re soulish and definitely not spiritual worship.
We need to check carefully, and listen carefully – critically evaluating – to ensure we don’t absorb earworms that contradict the Scriptures. Music is very powerful in shaping the mind. This evaluation should not be out of some paranoid legalism, either. Wisdom and discernment is needed.
At Roxburgh Park and Wallan, our worship leaders work closely with me to check for any errors before adopting new worship songs into our song list. Often we reject an entire song because one line conveys a biblical error. This is part of our responsibility so that we do not unwittingly encourage people to participate or listen to anything that causes them to stumble.
We take our duty of care very seriously, indeed …
FINAL WORD
Of course, there are other issues relating to whether or not we add a new worship song to our list. There are various perspectives here. Some of you are aware that there are entire on-line ministries set up for the sole purpose of exposing the errors of other ministries – some of these are quite slanderous, scathing – even nasty. It sickens me that this is the sole reason for someone’s ministry and they make no other contribution. Other pastors and preachers on YouTube, for example, have proudly proclaimed their church doesn’t sing any songs at all from such and such a church anymore, and they rip into the bride of Christ with much self-congratulation. This is sin.
To be clear there is a proper place and biblical manner by which sin or error is challenged and exposed – it is in Matthew 18.
Apart from not adopting certain worship songs because they are clearly biblically flawed, there is also an argument that says, “If a church, or movement, is teaching error, then all the worship songs emanating from their ministry should not be used – at all.” To that argument, (and I get it, I do), I would say, “Well, it all depends”. Many artists publish under the banner of their church – Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, to name a few – because they’re contracted or are employed and, if we adopted such are harsh measures on a perfectly good worship song, the artist gets caught in the crossfire. If, for example, a church, or movement is publicly promoting a false gospel, or deliberately misrepresenting the divinity of Jesus Christ, or some such thing, and if they refused correction on the basis of Matthew 18, then I would have no hesitation in ceasing using their music. It gets really tricky. What about songs that emerged when these churches were on a very sound biblical path? What about a writer who has fallen into sin, or away from faith since writing a song?
What about King David’s psalms just before he committed adultery and murder? Do we not read these or study these anymore? What about King Solomon? Do we remove all the Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament because he fell away from God, or was not in a good place with God? What about several of the most famous Christmas Carols and who wrote them – some dubious characters there!? Do we throw these out? These are clearly anointed of the Lord. Like I said, it is tricky and calls for much wisdom, grace and discernment. And so, for us at Roxy and Wallan we adopt, in addition to the biblical standard of Matthew 18 for accountability or correction as mentioned above, the following tests before we accept any new song for use in our worship services:
· Is it biblically accurate and theologically and doctrinally sound – does it properly honour God’s Word?
· Does it properly honour the persons of the Lord God, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit without shadow of doubt, or without any reduction to their glory or obscuration of their divinity?
· Is it actually worship? (So many songs are not, they’re focused elsewhere).
· Is it reverently focused on God, His majesty, holiness and His saving works, rather than us? (Is it soulish, or properly worshipful?).
· Is it clearly anointed of Holy Spirit?
· Is it appropriate for our church in this current season?
· Does this song lend itself to congregational worship? (Some songs by artists are just beautiful and correct in every way, but they just don’t translate well into congregational singing)
· Does it promote biblical truth and doctrine unambiguously, or contribute to confusion?
In short, every lyric of every song is checked against the standard of God’s Word – with spiritual discernment so that we are careful not to dishonour Him, or put a stumbling block in anyone’s way, regardless of the source. But neither do we want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. We simply don’t blindly accept a song without such careful checks. Furthermore, if we do use a particular song, this does not mean we necessarily endorse the ministry from which it came, or approve of that artist’s overall theology, or church, anymore than we’d endorse a whole organisation based on a single sermon from a single preacher – and there is some pretty weird preaching and teaching on YouTube, too. I have heard some great sermons in my time, and have occasionally thought, “Hmmm, I don’t think that idea is biblically accurate”, yet the rest of the message was great. In other words, eat the meat, but spit out the bones as you go.
There is so much more to say on all of this and, God willing, we will do so ongoing. My prayer is that this is helpful to you and reassuring, too, that our worship teams (and preachers, too) take great care with the content of our worship services to ensure God and His word are honoured at all times. By all means, speak to me if you want to discuss these issues.
You are so dearly loved.
Ps Milton