But by way of review, just take a look there at the introduction. This is what we covered the first time. I think it was two or three months ago now. But try to begin by just laying out what this is not about, this emphasis, this series, as well as what this is about. You see there negatively that our point here is not to defend a tradition or preference. It's not to micromanage your own personal choices. Certainly not to present those choices in a way that would suggest that somehow we are contributing to our standing before the Lord. And so I want to clarify this and distinguish it from what would be called legalism. But on the other hand, neither is it to introduce something strange and new into our ministry here. And so I'll put that point of clarification as well. This is not about a new direction. Positively, what is this about? This is really the fruition of a lot of work and thought that's been going on among our leadership for a number of months, and we worked on and approved together a philosophy statement this past fall, and we're just sharing with you the outcome of that, and primarily to articulate a biblically defensible rationale for making corporate music choices. In terms of explaining our thoughts and our efforts to apply the scriptures to what we do here as a church in this area of music, that would be the main thing. But on the other hand, there's also, on the personal level, this objective, and that is to encourage each of us in our own choices. The reality is that we do make choices in this area beyond what we would do corporately here together. And even though there would be some differences between our individual lives and our corporate lives, on the other hand, when we look again at these points, we're going to see that these are just basic biblical principles that actually apply just as much to our personal choices as to our corporate choices. And the scriptural ideas about the nature of music and about the idea of worship and the teaching that goes on in music and so forth, It really does apply across the board whether we're talking about personal choices or corporate choices. So we are encouraging all of us to consider these biblical principles and to be making applications to our own lives. Now that brings up the second issue, the second topic here. It's a question, how does God guide us into his will? Because, in fact, the Bible does not have the kind of specifics that we may like in dealing with an area like music. And so how do we go about really determining the will of God? And you remember back that first session, we dealt with the difference between God's guidance propositionally in Scripture, and then other non-propositional ways in which he teaches us his truth, and how all of that put together he uses to help us develop discernment. The proposition of guidance, talking of course about the scriptures, and that with the scriptures we're not restricting ourselves just to explicit statements about particular things, but that the Bible actually is designed to work in a variety of ways to teach us God's truth. And you see the list of five points there. The non-propositional guidance such as nature, conscience, and the Holy Spirit. And as I mentioned, the Lord uses all these different instruments to help us develop discernment. Now with that background, that foundation, we started to look at some general things regarding music. Not yet talking about worship music, but music as a whole. And just in surveying some of the key biblical passages on this topic, or passages that In some way related to this topic, we came up with these four points of summary. First of all, that music is a natural expression of God's image in man, as well as of the dominion mandate, his call to us to exercise dominion over every part of the earth. That music, according to scripture, can be used legitimately in a variety of ways. But that, on the other hand, there are times when in scripture music has particularly godly connotations as well as negative or sinful connotations. And basically our desire is to know how to determine, right, to know how to determine, is this music something that would be honoring to God? Is it something that he would categorize as sinful, like he does in some of those passages there? How would you go about assessing that? What principles come to bear from Scripture? What areas of music do we evaluate? And so we ended up with this other section of aspects of music to evaluate. What is it specifically about music that we are assessing? And then what are some biblical guidelines for those particular areas? We talked about biblical principles that relate to our speech, our words, and so that's dealt with the lyrics that may be connected with songs. And then we had two other categories, right? We talked about the sound issue and about the issue of associations. Let me just review that quickly. We dealt with the principle that nature, nature tells us, the scripture tells us as well, but nature tells us that music, its sound can produce a variety of effects. that those effects are not accidental, but the people who compose music recognize the influence that music has upon our moods, our emotions, our responses, and they craft the different elements of music with a goal of producing particular effects. And that brings us to letter C there, that because musical sound can influence, it can have an impact on not just our thoughts with the text, But on our emotions, our attitudes, our desires, and our actions, because it has an impact upon those areas, it does have the capacity to influence us on a moral level. And therefore, the sound ought to be assessed as to the kind of influence that it has upon us, as to whether that influence is something positive or whether it's something negative. And finally, another factor there, we brought out that in addition to just the general sound of the music, the performance technique, the way in which that is done can contribute further to that moral influence. Number three aspect was the matter of associations. And if you just focus on letter C there, I made this statement that music In addition to a general moral significance that it has, it has a specific moral significance as a medium of communication. It has an influence on us and it actually is sending a message non-verbally to us. The way that that works is by what I'm calling here symbolic association. In other words, the way that non-verbal forms of communication work is that there is something, even though it doesn't have words, it is representing in some symbolic way. And some of those symbolisms, some of those associations, they could either be intrinsic or natural, or they could be conventional or cultural. Because of what a thing or a sound represents in a particular culture, it ends up actually non-verbally, even apart from the words, communicating a certain message. And that leads us to the question of, all right, how do we analyze that issue of the message it's sending? Well, we certainly would want to be free of messages that are anti-God, of messages that are reflecting or encouraging a worldly lifestyle, an immoral lifestyle, and there are certainly clear warnings of Scripture not to be shaped, not to be conformed by the values of the world, and those values can be communicated in a number of ways, including non-verbally through music. In addition to that, we also have to recognize that music can have a detrimental effect on people because of their background or because of some connection with their lives, and that's another area that has to be considered there with associations. So, with that background, we started to talk about the element of worship and the music that we use to praise the Lord in worship. We define worship in terms of our Recognizing the Lord is our superior or more specifically ascribing to him his worth. Talked about different types of worship and targeted, especially number three is what we were going to give our attention, especially to our corporate interaction with God. In that corporate interaction, we were trying to appreciate just how important music is in worship. And so I gave you a number of examples where it comes up throughout redemptive history as a key part of our lives. I made the point from Psalm 66 that one of the points in scripture is that music enhances just the beauty of it to the glory of God, and also promotes the expression of spiritual affections. Which is a pretty important thing. This morning I said something about loving God with all your heart. That's the language of affection. Your attitude and your responses to God are fundamental. That is, they are basic. They're the foundation of everything else. And so you want to be careful as to what it is that is shaping your response to the Lord, what is having an impact on our affections toward Him, our conception of Him, how we relate to Him, how we respond to Him. And because of its importance that way, we focused on these principles for worship music. And first of all, that our worship music should correspond to the character of God. He's the one that we're worshiping. We want to be sure, best we know how, that what we're offering to him is in keeping with his own character, the character that we're exalting. And we targeted a number of attributes of God, truthfulness, excellence, holiness, and variety as things that are in keeping with his nature and therefore ought to characterize our worship music. There is also a horizontal dimension the Bible teaches, that in our worship music we're also having, or should have, a building up effect on other people, and because we want people to be built up instead of being torn down, we want to be communicating a right perspective of God, we want to be nurturing other people's right affections toward the Lord, we have to consider edification as well. And then even beyond the family of God, I said here, number three, that a principle from various passages is that worship music can also influence unbelievers toward God. Instead of being something that just feeds their flesh, instead of being something that just entertains them, that there would be something distinctive about it, both in its text and in its sound, that gives them a clear perception of God and nurtures the right kind of affections toward the Lord. And that's what we have covered so far. We began to get into some specifics along the way, but really have held off on a lot of that until we could cover those bases and now have a separate section that will be primarily application. And I'm talking here about various issues in the contemporary world that relate to worship music. You see that there are four of them. They are somewhat related. They do kind of build on each other once again. And so the Lord's help would like to tackle these one by one. Beginning with the whole question of old music versus new music. In fact, that is somehow the way that it's presented. And even our labels for all of this are sort of weighted to pit these two things against each other. When we use a label like traditional and conservative, in most people's minds, that refers to something that's been around for a long time, that people have used for a long time. When we use a label like contemporary, that refers to something that is new, that has been written within the last few years perhaps, and that is different in some significant way from the older music. And even in the labels that we use, we are actually kind of pitting these things against each other. And one of the things that I would encourage us to do in all of this Even though I don't think we're going to totally get away from those labels and there is something important communicated by a word like traditional or conservative, nevertheless, those really are not the best labels to be using. Those labels don't really get at the kind of biblical principles we've been talking about as to how old a song happens to be. They actually get you distracted from the issue that we want to be concerned about. and that we develop an appreciation within the broader scope of the biblical principles for both older and newer music, that there is a place for both of them. Now, we could argue that on a number of levels. One of the things we could say is very simply that every old song at some point was new, and the time issue is kind of relative. But there's a lot more that can be said, I think, even from scripture. Let me begin by saying here that there are a number of reasons for valuing older music. There are reasons for appreciating music that has been around for a long time. Now, if anything, this is the point that gets kind of lost in current discussions. And because of the energy behind the new and the desire for it, we end up really with an imbalance, and we end up missing the value that is there in reference to older music. What are some reasons? You probably could come up with others, but these are some major ones that come to my mind. First of all, there is a biblical principle just in honoring our forebears. And one of the famous stories about that in the Old Testament is the story of Jeremiah and the Reconvicts. where Jeremiah was taken to these people who held a long-standing tradition not to drink alcoholic beverages, out of respect for an ancestor of theirs who came to that position, and that's what he taught them, and it was a good thing for them to be practicing. And Jeremiah uses them as illustrating the kind of loyalty that ought to be in existence within families and cultures. the right preservation of good things. And he uses it actually as an illustration to rebuke the Israelites, that even though these people were willing to honor a human ancestor, they did not honor the Lord and his commandments. But nevertheless, there is a basic principle here. You might think of it as an application of the principle of honoring your parents, right there in the Ten Commandments. All of us have spiritual parents. We have people that have mentored us, we have people that have taught us, we have people that have tried to inculcate good things into our lives, and it is the right thing to honor them and the good practices that they have encouraged us with. In fact, that actually gets to the heart of some of the key ideas regarding the local church. And this is going to come up as an application as well on the other side, on the side of the new kinds of songs. But in fact the church is not to be associated with any one culture or any one generation. It is supposed to be intentionally transgenerational. It is supposed to be pulling people together that normally would not associate with each other. And when the Church restricts itself, again within the bounds of Scripture, to one particular genre or style of music, it's actually working against the very genius of the Church, if you read the book of Ephesians, which is about bringing different people together. And that is something that needs to be told to young people. reference to the older generation, that there is a right appreciation and an inclusion of this historic music. We could say even more. The second point here, the second reason for valuing older music, is that even beyond those who immediately brought us to the Lord, discipled us, whatever, this thing has been going on for 2,000 years. And there is a lot bigger church, historically, that we are actually connected with and that is good. That is something to celebrate and something to honor. It does my heart good to look down sometimes when we're singing a song and it says the author of this song lived in the 12th century. That is just amazing. That is amazing that over the centuries of time we have been confessing the same truths and worshiping the same God. And just as the church now ought to be inclusive of all generations, there's a broader spiritual idea of being inclusive of all the ages of church history and the wonderful contributions that have been made historically. And the fact that we are one people with them. All those who have trusted in Christ. I put there Hebrews 13, 7, which has to do with following our leader. Speaking there of people who had apparently gone on to the Lord's presence. But their memory in Hebrews is kept alive. And these people are encouraged to imitate the example of those who have lived in previous generations of the church. And I believe that applies to music as well. Now, I mentioned nature and common sense. Here's another consideration. This is not so much from the Bible, but from common sense. The common sense would tell us that what stands the test of time likely reflects quality. And I say they're likely because I'm sure that there have been things around for a long time that aren't any good. And there are also some things that have only been around briefly that aren't very good. So, I recognize some of this is relative, but I would say in general, if something has endured and has been appreciated for generation after generation after generation in the Church, there's probably a reason why. That has, by its own merit, brought itself to a certain level of acceptability and has communicated across the ages, and because of that fact, It becomes something appropriate for us to consider today. So here are some reasons for valuing older music, and if you've looked at our hymnal, you recognize that our hymnal very much is heavy on this end of things, and we appreciate that about the hymnal, and it is something that we intend to continue using as the core, as the primary source for our songs, particularly because of these kinds of considerations. Now, to come to the other side, I do want to focus as well on what is known as the biblical new song principle. The biblical new song principle. That it is not just a matter of using things that have been around for a long time. There is another biblical principle here. I gave you in the handout there a bunch of verses that use that phrase, the new song, or a new song, or something like that. It's largely in the Psalms, but also in heaven, as the people of God are celebrating redemption, as they're praising the Lamb, and so forth. It says that they're singing a new song. I'm not going to look at all those verses, but let me encourage you to go with me to Psalm 40. And we'll take a look at the usage there, Psalm 40. And it's a very familiar passage. It is applied to the Lord Jesus Christ in the book of Hebrews. Some actually come to the conclusion that this is an exclusively messianic psalm. But whether it's talking about Christ, Indirectly or directly, it is still appropriate in terms of God's dealings with the lives of all his people. And the writer says, I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Now, this passage has been used in the past to teach this point. Since we're talking about imagery here that very much communicates God's deliverance and can be applied to our salvation, the Lord pulled us out of the pit of sin and gave us a new song, the application that is made is that the song of the believer ought to be new in a sense of difference, in a sense of godly, unlike the worldly songs he used to sing. So that your conversion changes the way you think about music, and this new song idea is applied in that sense of your song, your singing is different from what it was before you were a believer. Now, what I just said is true. And that's actually a point that's going to come up a little bit later, that our songs ought to be different from the songs of the world. But, I'm convinced that is not what this passage and this phrase, the new song, is teaching when it occurs in scripture. What does new song mean? New song means new song. Okay? It means that whenever the people of God experience some intervention of God, delivering them, coming through for them, answering their prayers, whatever. Whether you're thinking about conversion or you're thinking about something that you experience as a believer. The way to respond to that is by using your creativity and whatever burden you have, to, in a fresh way, express your gratitude and your worship to God. And in fact, this term, new, both in Old and New Testament, has the idea of freshness. It's not simply that it's new, but that there's a fresh and vibrant quality because it comes out of your own personal experience, as opposed to what? As opposed to merely repeating the Psalms that reflect the experiences of other people. It is a personal and a contemporary thing in the right sense. And so this is how I would state the biblical New Song principle, that each generation should celebrate with freshness its own experiences of God's character and work. That in addition to appreciating the contributions of earlier generations, each generation has an opportunity to use its own creativity, its own talents, and to a certain extent, its own musical language, to communicate with freshness in a way that communicates, especially their own experience, what the Lord has done in their lives. So that new songs are not only just permissible, they are assumed to be a common part of Christian experience. That music is not something static, where it was all done in previous generations and we just repeat that. That is a part of it. But that music is an ongoing development as the history of the Church develops. And this is a good and a right thing. Leading me to this summary point here, that worship music scripturally ought to reflect a healthy mix of the old and the new. It ought to reflect a healthy mix of the old and the new. And one of the verses that I like to use to capture that point is from Jesus' own ministry. He was not a musical composer that we know of, but listen to how he described his teaching ministry. He says to them in Matthew 13, 52, every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. In other words, his ministry, yes, there was a lot of repetition, reinforcement of the Old Testament teaching the Mosaic law and whatnot. But there was a lot of new things as well and new insights into the Old Testament revelation. And that's what so many of his contemporaries found shocking, because it wasn't used to what they were hearing. It wasn't what they were used to hearing. And so there's this mix of the new and the old in his teaching. He presents that actually as kind of the model for the men that he's training here. And of course, there's all kinds of new revelation in the later books of the New Testament that they wrote. And I'm saying that this is a principle that would apply in this area as well. that worship music should reflect a healthy mix of the old and the new. Now, in an effort to apply that, I mentioned that our current hymnal has a very fine selection largely of historic hymns through about the middle of the 19th century primarily. We have instituted, several months ago, a music committee here among the leadership of our church. And this music committee is composed of some men who are elders and some who are not. And we have been working together already the last few months to look at particularly newer music. I want to say that I really have been blessed. We actually just had another meeting yesterday. I really have been blessed by the sharpening influence of these men. Just to let you know who's on the committee, it would be myself, Dave Wilber, David Cunningham, Brian Stark, and Lance Bastian. Just a great mix of both biblical and musical backgrounds, and I really appreciated the wisdom that they have all brought to this discussion. Right now, just again to let you know what we're doing, we're working on evaluating a list of about 150 newer songs, songs written between about 1850 to today. for use in our church and evaluating them according to the kinds of principles that I've been looking at here. And as you've noticed, we're trying to work these into our repertoire, usually about once a Sunday. We are working to incorporate a little bit newer piece into the worship that we are offering to the Lord. And that is out of an effort to observe this biblical principle and to develop this healthy mix. As we work with newer music, as we try to make these evaluations, how do we go about it? We've talked about a lot of biblical principles already, but there are some other considerations that enter into it. And moving forward here, our second point is the broader issue of the culture out of which particularly newer music comes, and some considerations that come into play here. So this is our second heading, the matter of evaluating culture. Now, as soon as I say evaluating culture, there are a lot of thoughts, I'm sure, that come to your mind. We speak of one culture or somebody from one culture assessing whether his culture or somebody else's culture. Some of the things that come to my mind is the danger that could creep in of elitism or pride. In other words, my culture is better than yours. That could be tied into prejudice, that could be tied into racism, and these are the kinds of dangers that are out there when you begin to speak of evaluating culture, since we're talking largely about human constructs. That would be one human arguing that his productions are better than that of another human being. So, we have dangers there, but nevertheless, is this something that we ought to be doing? That beyond specific things that the Bible actually says, looking at broader trends and broader developments within our particular culture, or even other cultures, and exercising a kind of judgment or discernment. I want to have you go to the verse that is mentioned there under that point, that's Titus. And what I'm saying here is that in spite of the dangers that are there, this actually is something that the Bible expects you to do. It certainly can be driven by prejudice, racism, whatever, but it need not be, and in fact, this is a standard practice in the New Testament period. I believe I mentioned this verse from time to time. This one stands out as the clearest one in the New Testament on this issue of evaluating culture. Remember that Paul is writing to Titus about helping the church or churches in Crete, getting them organized, helping them with their leadership and this kind of thing. And he makes a statement about the culture in Crete. He says, One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. Verse 13. This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith. And I call this the Bible's most politically incorrect Because he's looking at a people group, a culture, a race, or whatever you want to call it, the Cretans, and he's saying, these people are a bunch of lazy bums, and you need to deal with them about that. Their culture, of course, Crete was an island. You can imagine an island culture would lend itself to people being excessively laid back, kind of a party atmosphere. And he says, that's true. And you go after these people because that is a problem within their culture that needs to be addressed that is unscriptural. Every culture ought to be assessed according to the standards of the Bible. That is not inherently racist or something. This is an effort to exercise biblical wisdom and discernment. And yet, this passage actually cuts two ways. And Paul is very astute here in the way that he makes this point. He says, one of the Cretans themselves, a prophet of their own, he quotes probably a poet, philosopher from Crete by the name of Epimenides. He quotes him and then he says, he's right. It's kind of nice he was able to quote one of their own people instead of just coming out and saying it himself. But what do you learn from that? What you learn from that is, you know what? For as bad as Crete is, not everything in Crete is bad. Because they said something right about themselves. All truth is God's truth, even if a pagan philosopher said it. I'm going to take what he said and go with it and identify wrong parts of their culture. Do you understand what I'm saying here? This is the discernment that's going on. Just because a human being, sinful, even unsafe, produced something doesn't mean automatically it's wrong. God works in all kinds of ways, even through unsafe people, to communicate truth. And in this case, very appropriately, the unsafe comment ends up contributing to a Christian point that Paul is trying to make. And this is the kind of judgment call that we're doing all the time in our culture. We are assessing whether something is in keeping with the guidelines of scripture. Sometimes we accept it, and sometimes we don't. It just depends. Saying that we can't just broad brush things and reject them just because they're products of an unsaved culture. But this is a responsibility. Let me just share with you some basic things here, starting out at this point, some foundational concepts regarding culture. And then make some applications, of course, our concern is with music specifically, but I think these will be good foundational things just to define our terms. What are we talking about when we use the word culture? Whole books have been written just to define the term culture. I'm using it here in probably the most accepted way, it's a very broad definition, that when we speak of culture, we're talking about the sum total of human beliefs, values, customs and artifacts. And typically that's used especially of those things within a particular group, whether it's a specific people group or tribal group or country, nation, whatever. The whole package of their beliefs, values, customs, and artifacts. That's what we mean here by culture. That's what we're assessing. What do we mean more specifically about these customs, artifacts, and so forth? Well, just to give you some of the more prominent examples, we're talking, of course, about things like art and literature, architecture, dress, food. Music is one of those as well, that's specifically what we're going to go on to talk about. But it's not just music, really all of these elements are to be assessed. And notice that the last example I gave you there is the matter of the religion, that is the belief system, their concepts about God, the spiritual world, religion in the very broad sense, maybe a better word is the worldview of those people. how they look at the world and the meaning and purpose of life, who they recognize as their creator or wherever they came from, their worldview. Now, the point I want to make is this, very significant, this whole business of assessing culture. That list, those things are not equal. They're not equally significant. They're not equally influential. What you need to be asking primarily is, what is the influence of the religion or worldview on the other elements? Because whatever they do in art and literature and architecture, in dress and food and music, is a reflection of more fundamental beliefs that they have. What they treasure, what they consider valuable, important, worthwhile, worth living for, their worldview, all kinds of issues and terms there, but my point is, these things are not neutral. You might just be looking at paint in a picture. You might just be hearing sounds of music. But culture is a reflection of worldview in all these different forms. It is a way by which people express what's in their heart and what they want to communicate to others. That's a worldview. And so when we're looking at these things, that really is what we're actually trying to discern. What is it that these people fundamentally believe and what are they trying to communicate to these other aspects of culture? Now, we're not going to go on and on about this general category of culture, but I do want to share with you some tools here that I think will be helpful for you as you think about these things further on. And I'm saying here as letter B under this point, general categories of culture. Now, these categories are fairly well accepted among philosophers and people who analyze these things. They're particularly reflective of what is done to analyze Western culture. And I'm thinking, of course, specifically of American culture. My hunch is that they would apply across the board because they're so general in other in other cultures as well. But that's not really my concern right now. I'm dealing with the culture generally that we are looking at as Western people. If you want to read a good book on this, really the classic statement from an evangelical Christian perspective, it's got a funny title that's very helpful. It's by a fellow named Kenneth Myers, and it's called All God's Children in Blue Suede Shoes. And of course, that's a reflection of the whole rock generation and trying to assess that scripturally. It came out in 1987. It's been around for a long time. It's been accepted as one of the standard works in this field. And actually, it's been recently republished, and he wrote a new preface to it that I haven't read. I want to get the new version as well. Because when he was writing, he was thinking especially of things like the radio and television and so forth. That was back before the internet was an issue. And if there's any area of our culture that has exploded since then, and that requires discernment, it is the internet and what goes on in that whole field. But these are generally accepted categories, and I'm borrowing some of these concepts from Meyer's book. We're talking about the difference, you see there the bulleted points between high culture, folk culture, and number three, pop culture. What do we mean by high culture? This also goes by the label classic culture, classical culture, and the concept is that each of these kinds of culture, tend to be based upon certain worldview concepts, and tend to be communicating those worldview concepts. Now, notice, I want to emphasize, I said general categories of culture. And with some of these things, it becomes very hard to say, well, is this classical, is this folk, is this pop? Often it's kind of a mix of them all and it becomes more challenging. But as overall tools, these are good questions to be asking. What is characteristic of high culture? When you think of that category, you think of things like transcendence. There's a kind of a majesty about it, an awareness that there is a spiritual world out there that is over and above us and that is hugely significant for our daily lives. You think of words like timelessness, in other words, this is not limited to one generation, this is universal, this holds true all the time. You think of substance, in other words, this isn't cheap, this has got some real content to it. You think of community, in other words, there is a kind of a tradition that's been preserved, and there's a respect for the group concept. And an effort to perpetuate the values that characterize the community as a whole, bringing people together. There is a great deal of discipline of form. When you think of classical culture, you think of words like orderliness and excellence, a real attention to the form that is used. And there is also the reality, the recognition of delayed gratification. And you know what it's like to be singing in a classical concert, and you're really struggling to appreciate it. Some of that is because we have been so shaped by pop culture that we are impatient people. And our tastes have been dulled, and we have to work hard to appreciate these bigger and more complex things. And it's not a matter of just, well, I like that measure right there and that sound. It's the overall effect of the whole and how it's all interrelated. It takes some real concentration and effort to appreciate it. That's what we mean by high culture. And I'm not associating this only with music, all kinds of expressions of this. But these are general characteristics. Now, what about folk culture? What I want to say about folk culture is that there's actually a lot of overlap between it and high culture in terms of the substance that tends to be there, in terms of the community emphasis, in terms of the effort to produce something that has enough content that it will stand the test of time, it'll be timeless. But it is at a different level, okay? And what stands out about folk culture is that it is more oriented to the average person. It does not require a great deal of education, does not require a great deal of background or experience to appreciate. It's more oriented to the average person and therefore it is more simple and accessible. It's something that you can more readily appreciate even though there's great value in working to appreciate the high culture. This will communicate a lot of the same sort of intangible values, but it is easier to get your mind around. Now, because of that, this tends to be, I mean even the word folk communicates this, it tends to be associated with particular people groups, okay. We think classical culture, that's going to apply to a lot of nations and people groups in the Western world. When you think folk culture, you tend to think of Germans, Jews, Americans, Midwesterners, Southerners, you know, whatever. These are the kinds of ways that they perpetuate their own smaller values and traditions and so forth. Now, let me ask you this, as you think about those two, and especially high culture, what kind of worldview did high culture come out of? We're talking there especially about the Medieval and Reformation and immediately post-Reformation periods, where Europe was dominated by a Christian worldview, even though for the Medieval period it's hard to be Roman Catholic, but still certain basic values that are scriptural, in terms of the majesty of God and certain basic principles. It was the product of a culture that was dominated by a certain worldview, a generally Christian worldview. And it's very easy to see the connection between that worldview and what? And the excellence, and the form, and the delayed gratification, and this kind of thing. When you get down to the level of the whole culture, then you begin to ask more specific questions. Well, what would be the kind of worldview that dominates within that particular group? And what might be some effects of that worldview on the products of their culture? That's a question you have to be asking. Now, we still need to consider the pop culture, the third category. But notice I got a piece of apple pie there with the folk culture. And one of the things that Kenneth Myers does to kind of get the point is to use food as an example of the differences between these things. If you think of high culture, think about going to a five-star restaurant where you've got to dress up in a suit, and you look at the menu and half the items are in French. You don't understand that it's kind of hot, right? And it's very fine quality, and it's expensive. Folk culture would be kind of like going to Cracker Barrel, which is the food of a certain subculture within the United States. You think of the South, you think of fried chicken and this kind of thing. What about pop culture? Pop culture would be like going to McDonald's. And if that comparison gives you some idea, that's really what we're talking about here in the differences among these things. So, let's talk about pop culture a little bit. We're going to go through a list of characteristics that are the exact opposite of the characteristics of high culture, okay? And then I'm going to add one other at the end. As opposed to transcendence, you have immanence. That is, here and now and what I'm experiencing and what I'm feeling is something right here in front of me. Instead of that which is timeless, pop culture is something constantly changing. There's an emphasis on novelty and the present generation and what we like and what's good for us right now. Instead of substance, you have to admit there's a lot of superficiality to it. That there's not a great deal of content to it. Instead of necessity of community, there's this all about, everybody's an individual, I got my own take on this, I got my own style, and it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. Which, by the way, you should see some connections between pop culture and Americanism. I'm not saying individuality is wrong, but I'm saying that our heritage, specifically, easily lends itself to an abuse of individuality that is connected with pop culture. Freedom of form, instead of following accepted norms of excellence, just kind of doing your own thing. And of course, immediate gratification. And isn't that McDonald's? I mean, when you think about that list. Now, where do we come up with this category of pop culture? Remember I talked about medieval Reformation, post-Reformation period. Pop culture historians tend to connect with the Enlightenment which was the casting off of the authority of scripture, the setting up of man as his own authority and human reason as the test of everything. They tend to associate pop culture as well with the industrial revolution and urbanization that is All of these bunches of people that typically were separated in various locales, separated by people groups, coming together and working in industry. And you understand some of the difficulties that enter into that melting pot sort of concept. And as well, connected with the development of mass media. Okay, we're talking now about the 18th century especially. the 1700s and then the 1800s, these movements that I have mentioned there. Mass media gives you the ability to communicate your message to a lot of people, where before that era, it was very hard to get a message out to a whole nation or nations at a time. And because of the influence of mass media and the power of it to do especially one thing, to make money by communicating your message to a whole bunch of people and getting them to buy your product or get into whatever it is you're trying to push on them. One of the other characteristics of pop culture is the matter of commercialism. Now, if your goal is to get your message out to as many people as you can because you're after a buck from them, You are going to tend, instead of having a high standard of excellence, you are going to tend to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Something that people are immediately going to like. And related to that, there's also the temptation of appealing to that which is based in people. What they, as fleshly people, want and enjoy naturally, you're not going to have to convince them about it very much. There's just a natural built-in appeal to it, because that's what people like. Mass media gives you the opportunity to convey that message. Pop culture is associated with this concept of the lowest common denominator. Again, I'm making general statements here. We're not going to jump on you for going to McDonald's after lunch. I'm not saying that pop culture is inherently bad. Okay? Because half of you after church are going to go on Facebook. Facebook is the epitome of pop culture. And it has great opportunities, technically. But it's got all these dangers to it as well. Okay? It's not that it's bad, it's that it has built-in tendencies that are dangerous and that can be easily abused to do un-Christian things. Now, with that background in mind, let's begin to talk about music. What else was going on, particularly in the 19th century, after the whole Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, commercialism, pop culture was off the ground. What goes on in the mid to late 19th century? You realize that that time period, the end of the 19th century, represents our own immediate heritage as conservative Bible-believing people. And actually, some of the predecessors of what we know specifically as fundamentalism, which developed in the early 20th century, are there at the late 19th century. And one of the things that actually began to be a part of Christianity was a certain use of pop culture. This is the era, for example, when you start having mass evangelism going on. And I'm talking about city-wide crusades where you get thousands of people together and connected with the whole spirit of the age, what we tend to call populism, which is just another word for pop culture. That is, what's going to appeal to the masses? What's going to produce results? What's going to give me the greatest opportunity for people to hear my message and for me to have an impact on them? Populism. I'm sorry if you've never thought about this, but actually the fundamentalist movement was heavily influenced by populism at the end of the 19th century. And that had a dramatic effect on a lot of the methods that were used. Probably the chief example that comes to mind is the use of come forward invitations at these evangelistic meetings. which was associated with another development, a very weak theology of sin and salvation, that was very pragmatic in nature, and this developed as a method of getting immediate response from as many people as you can. Now, are comfort invitations inherently wrong? No, just like Facebook isn't wrong. But it's got tremendous weaknesses and potentials for problems with it, and something that ought to be approached very carefully. Another development in that whole scene, okay, begins to affect the area of music, because up to this time, church music was basically using forms borrowed from high culture and folk culture. And it's at this point that pop culture begins to have an entry into conservative Christianity, Probably the chief example there is what we call the gospel song. And there are some gospel songs in our hymnal. I'm not saying they're bad, I'm saying let's at least understand where they came from and how this all unfolded. The gospel song was a genre of music that was developed particularly for use in evangelistic meetings. and actually taking good text about the gospel, about personal experience of the gospel especially, more kind of testimonial sort of texts, and wedding them with what would have been at that point a pop style of the Victorian age. And I shared with you some examples last time, this kind of bouncy, circusy music, okay, that's what I'm talking about. That didn't just happen, that was actually borrowed from what was commonly used in Victorian middle-class homes as their kind of music for entertainment in their parlors, and as an effective way to get the attention of people on the street to communicate the gospel to them. I'm not saying that that's bad, I'm just saying recognize that that's what happened and that there are inherent dangers, and it's why, at this vantage point, we look at some of that, we listen to some of that, and it just sounds hokey, okay? Because it is so tied to the styles of that day that it no longer communicates and really seems to be kind of frothy and not very fitting to the magnitude of the words that are being said, okay? And there's a sense in which the trajectory that led to CCM was actually begun by the fundamentalists, because of their appropriation of pop styles for Christian songs. Actually, some of these people would say, we never wrote the gospel songs for use in church. We wrote these for street meetings, evangelistic rallies, testimony meetings, this kind of thing. This was inherently something different from what was going on in church. This was for another purpose. Gradually over time, it began to be used in churches. And that trajectory that actually began with a good intention is what ultimately opened up the people of God to the full-blown development of contemporary Christian music. is something that came out of the Jesus People movement in the late 1960s, early 1970s. It's something very foreign to us, because that is so different from our own background, perhaps. What you have going on with the Jesus People is that there were wide-scale conversions, starting in California, but really all over the world, of hippies. People who were coming out of the lifestyle that was characterized by drugs and immorality, very loose kind of living, who were run to Christ largely by charismatic churches, preaching the gospel. You know, the sort of icon of this thing is all these long-haired hippies getting baptized out in the Pacific Ocean. That actually did happen. That was a major part of this whole thing. And when you think about the hippies, I mean, that's pop culture all over the place. A lot of that background was brought into the churches from the original Jesus people movement. In other words, they came to Christ, their lives in many cases were revolutionized, they loved the Lord, they were very fervent, very evangelistic. But in terms of these cultural things, this was what they kept with them and brought them into Christian circles. It began to be more of a thing as an evangelistic tool, where you gather these people who are given over to the rock music, well let's use it then, putting Christian words to it, in order to connect with them, give them the gospel, and gradually that begins to gain more broad acceptance. And with that in mind, let's talk a little bit about contemporary Christian music. This, of course, is a huge topic. In all these topics, I'm just trying to lay out some basic foundations and basic principles so you know how we're thinking as we deal with this and what we're really trying to encourage you with. One of the things I'm trying to do here, for all sides, is to be fair. And so, again, I want to bring up some general categories of CCM-type music. Again, this is not in an effort to judge people individually. or to have a we're better than they attitude. This is an effort simply to make discerning choices for ourselves and for our congregation. CCM is a huge, it's a multi-million dollar a year industry and it's very broad, very diverse. I'm trying to give us some categories to think about. Probably the first thing that comes to your mind is what's called performance CCM. And what we're talking about there is what you would primarily hear if you turn on the radio station, the CCM station, what you would hear if you go to a concert, the kinds of things that you would listen to as you downloaded on your iPod or whatever. And it is very diverse. I mean, within this broad category, you have everything from light rock to heavy metal and everything in between. hip-hop, punk, whatever, you can find about any secular pop style and a counterpart with Christian words. Now, sometimes that is sung in churches, sometimes it's kind of start-up music before the service, But more commonly, what you tend to associate with churches is probably better categorized in this other label of Praise and Worship Music or Contemporary Worship Music, CWM. And this is where you get into, especially the praise courses, probably the leading label coming out of the Jesus People movement is the Maranatha label that has published a lot in this category. But the difference is that this was originally designed to be sung in congregations, in churches and worship services. The other is so broad, and we can talk about so many different themes. Some of it worked its way into churches. Some of it is not commonly used in churches. But now we're talking about more the congregational material. And then there's something, number three, that is more recent, going back to the mid-1990s, that has been called the Modern Hymn Movement. This one is very interesting because actually it is different in significant ways from normal CCM, particularly because of the text being very doctrinal, very substantial in their message. It is something that has come out of a broader movement that is known as Neo-Calvinism. Now, we would be here a long time if I got into the Calvinism part. I'm going to bracket that out and I'm going to talk about the Neo part. One sort of simplistic way of describing Neo-Calvinism is that it is Calvinistic orthodoxy plus pop culture. And a lot of the trappings that you associate with pop culture become accepted and even used to promote the message. Big name preachers you associate with that movement, people like John Piper, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, quite a range even of those names that I said. but that are very well known for substantial, doctrinal, Christ-centered, local church-oriented, evangelistically fervent preaching of the scriptures. And yet an openness to a lot of this other from pop culture, an openness to other things like continuationism, that is the charismatic movement, or at least the openness to the signed gifts being used today. A number of them would demonstrate an openness to that. But again, I'm going to sort of bracket out the theological aspects and talk about the neo part and the music part. The main purveyors in this category would be the folks at Sovereign Grace Ministries, which started out of a major church in Maryland. And this is a Reformed Charismatic Church, actually more like a little denomination. that also produces a great deal of music along these lines. And then maybe even more influential in our day would be a couple from Ireland known as Keith and Kristen Getty and Stuart Townend who works closely with them. I bring this up in order to demonstrate that we can't broad brush I'm trying to summarize and not spend forever on this topic, but that when we go to analyze, we have to recognize there are differences among these, and that some of the things I'm going to say may or may not apply to every last person under this overall heading, and they may apply to lesser degrees. Okay? So let's just share here. some problematic tendencies in this overall movement known as CCM. Again, these points are not equally true of all these genres. And frankly, some of these points, as we've already seen, apply to traditional music, But that in general, notice how I'm saying tendencies. These are areas to consider and analyze in any particular artist's song, whatever. What would be some of the things that stand out? These would be some of the concerns. First of all, with some of these songs would be the shallowness of the lyrics, coupled with an overemphasis on the emotional appeal of the music, or just the pure entertainment value. That ends up being a big distraction from the worship. And we started touching on this last time when I was giving you some examples along these lines. Let me just share with you what we did when we went home. My children do not have a lot of exposure to these things. And so we were talking about it, trying to appreciate it a little bit better. I said, tell you what, let's go on to YouTube. You want to know what this actually sounds like. It's a little hard. If you're just reading, you know, these repetitive chorus-type things, to really understand what's happening there, apart from the whole atmosphere, the music. So we went onto YouTube, we looked up some of those songs, some of those groups that were performing, and I think it made a point as to the combination of shallow lyrics and this highly emotive music, working people up into a kind of hypnotic frenzy almost. I really wonder in our own hearts, is that really worship? Is that, as I listen, is that really drawing me to Christ? Is that really enabling me to assimilate this truth? Or is this just kind of giving me a buzz? These are some of the dangers that are there. And of course, the broader problem, in our estimation as church leaders, is the whole rock genre and its sub-genres, the appeal to bodily impulses, the appeal to that which is carnal, and that this, even in our day, continues by way of symbolic association to represent, generally speaking, in the world, a worldly message. that is not erased by the fact that those styles are being used and certain techniques are being used with good godly words. So that's an area that has to be assessed. Number four, a lot of this continues to be connected with the charismatic movement and to be used to bring people together to experience that sort of flavor and to promote that sort of message. And then, since we're talking about pop culture, the commercialism. This is an industry. And this is, whether intentionally or not, becomes a very man-centered thing in some cases in terms of just craving a certain sound and loving a certain individual who's singing it, a certain way in which it's produced. And so these would be probably the main areas that you would want to consider and that we are working to consider as we look at this area. Now, one of the things that's always helpful to me in trying to get a handle on on this kind of thing, exercising discernment, is to look for input from people that you're not used to hearing them say these sorts of things. In other words, people outside of your more conservative circles. And the reality is that even within broader evangelicalism in recent years, you have voices being raised saying things that more conservative people have been saying for years about a lot of these genres. Not necessarily rejecting the whole thing, but definitely raising the same sorts of questions and concerns. And I want to give you a few illustrations of that before we go to our final point here. The first one is actually this book was written back in 1995. This is from a female theologian and musician. Her name is Dr. Marva Dawn. She is an evangelical Lutheran. And her book is entitled Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down. She says this, an over-emphasis on subjective feelings is destructive to the formation of character. As our culture moves into post-modernism, the Church offers great gifts in its recognition of an objective knowledge of God in the scriptural revelation. We do a disservice to worshippers if, by over-emphasizing music that only appeals to feelings, we promote the post-modernist attitude, I can't know anything, there is no truth unless I make it so. If we do not proclaim objective knowledge of God, we encourage each person to create his or her own faith. We want our worship music to appeal to the whole person, will, emotions, and intellect. Our goal is that worship practices will form character so that believers respond to God with commitment, love, thought, and virtuous action. Shallow music forms shallow people. Now, I don't say that to judge a whole bunch of evangelical Christians as shallow people. That's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm just asking the question, what do I want forming my thinking and my affections? What do I want forming the thoughts of God, responses for God, of the people under my care? My children. My students, my church people. And I think we would have to be shallow music for shallow people. And this is something that ought to be considered. This one is from about a month ago. This is from a professor of philosophy at Calvin College. His name is James Smith. And he wrote an open letter to praise bands. That is just fascinating. And let me just, I've got several parts highlighted. Let me give you his points. Number one, if we the congregation can't hear ourselves, it's not worship. If we the congregation can't sing along, it's not worship. If you, the praise band, are the center of attention, it's not worship. Because we've encouraged you to basically import forms of performance from the concert venue into the sanctuary. We might not realize that we've also unwittingly encouraged a sense that you are the center of attention. And when your performance becomes a display of your virtuosity, even with the best of intentions, it's difficult to counter the temptation to make the praise band the focus of our attention. When the praise band goes into long riffs that you might intend as offerings to God, we the congregation become utterly passive. And because we've adopted habits of relating to music from the Grammys and the concert venue, we unwittingly make you the center of attention. One more. This one is very, very sad. This was a blog article that came out last July. by a lady whose name is Megan O'Geeblin, who is a master's student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And she basically recounted the story of how she grew up in a very conservative homeschool family, and was very restrictive in these areas, except that her church began to use CCM music. And she got into it, I mean she really got into it, talks about going to concerts and jamming out at these places and all the hype connected with it. But then one day, on a trip, she watched MTV for the first time. And she was blown away. And do you know what this article is entitled? It's called Sniffing Glue. Let me read to you some of her comments. She's talking a lot about the whole MTV industry and the marketing that went into, that constantly goes into assessing what teenagers want and so forth. And she says that by comparison with that, the CCM market of this era seems tragically naive. Christian bands could mimic what was already done mainstream, but it was difficult to compete with a product created With the help of millions of dollars worth of demographic research, cultural relevance could be bought and MTV, part of media conglomerate Viacom, had a very large budget. And basically what she's saying is that the CCM industry just couldn't keep up. In terms of really knowing what would appeal to people, they were always a few steps behind and producing pretty cheap alternatives. And I'm looking here, I've got so many things highlighted here. I'm looking for the actual quote that is the subject of her article with the title of it. And what ends up creating in her own heart a direction that is very sad. She's relating about the first time she saw MTV. And how blown away she was by the power of the performances. And she says, I couldn't have told you what the word irony meant, but I knew I'd been cheated by Christian rock. This was crack, and I'd been wasting my time sniffing glue. And you know what, this young lady eventually gives her story of how she left the church. Because the church had been pursuing all these marketing methods coming out of pop culture that were cheap imitations, and she ends up viewing it as hypocritical, basically. That you're talking two different languages at the same time, and she walked away from the Lord and from the church, kind of in reaction to all that. I'd be glad to give you this material and let you know where you can access it. Very eye opening, very helpful in looking at all of this. Well, problematic tendencies in CCM. Again, I've been trying not to blackball the entire thing or suggest that everybody's motives here is, everybody's motive is base or that all these things apply to all categories. And the question would be, well, is there anything that would be connected with this background that is redeemable? Or should we just trash the whole thing and move on? Is there anything positive? Well, that's our final question here. I'm going to talk about more conservative adaptations of texts and tunes that are from problematic origins like the CCM realm. The reality is that if you divorce the text of many of these songs, and even the tune of many of these songs, from the original pop style in which they were performed, and from all the baggage that goes along with that, in some cases you're actually looking at music that would meet the kind of biblical principles that we have covered. So the question would be, is it feasible to perhaps clean up some of these songs and use them in a way that would be appropriate, because should we incorporate that into our worship? Well, this certainly is a point of controversy among the people of God today. And I'm running out of time, but I'm going to go ahead and take the time to deal with this and finish up this afternoon. One of the reasons it's complicated is because when you look at the Bible and the way that the authors of the New Testament address problems within local churches, it's really not as clear cut as you might think. And let me share with you, first of all, this point, that the Bible freely acknowledges the commendable traits of believers, even while addressing their serious problems. You don't have to read long to find this. As a matter of fact, just about every church in the New Testament has serious problems. But some of them really stand out, like 1 Corinthians. I mean, this church was replete with tolerance of immorality, and people taking each other to court, and the place was divided with ambition and pride and all this kind of thing. The Apostle Paul, listen to how he begins this. I give thanks to my God always, that in every way you are enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, so that you are not lacking any spiritual gift, and God is going to sustain you guiltless God is faithful by whom you are called in the fellowship of the Son of Jesus Christ our Lord. And he recognizes manifestations of grace, even among these very problematic churches. And the reality is that when you come to the Book of Revelation and those seven churches that the Apostle John is sending letters to, the Lord is sending letters to them, in most cases, even in the most compromised situation, the Lord is careful to say, now, you've got this going for you. You've got this good trait. I appreciate your faithfulness in this area. In other words, it's not a total all or nothing. You're bad, and so we're just going to shove you out of the way and not say anything positive about you. That's really not the way even the Lord himself deals with churches. And maybe that's because, maybe that is why, when you look at traditional conservative hymnals, they have not excluded an otherwise good song simply because of negative aspects of the author or composer. In other words, the attention has generally been on the text and the tune in an effort to not be overly swayed by the baggage that may be associated with the author or composer. Another way to say that is that the use of a song has not typically been taken to imply endorsement or affiliation. Basically, these songs tend to take on a life of their own, and they tend to develop into broader usage, even among people that would have no problem with certain things connected with the origin of it. Now, I hate to do this, because I don't want to disappoint you. But, on the other hand, there's no point in trying to hide anything either. So let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about here to make this point. The hymn, All Creatures of Our God and King, was written by 12th century Roman Catholic monk Francis of Assisi. The hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, was written by another Catholic monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, The tune that we use for that originally was used as a secular love song. We have a hymn that probably you grew up singing, Faith of Our Fathers, and probably singing it with the opposite meaning of what the author intended. That hymn was written by Frederick Faber, who left Anglicanism for Roman Catholicism, and he wrote it in memory of martyrs of the Catholic Church. Moving on into Protestant circles, Of course, we love and appreciate Martin Luther's The Mighty Corpus Is Our God, and the Lord used him greatly to recover the doctrine of justification by faith. But there's probably a reason you're not a Lutheran. And probably the reason is that Luther and his church taught some very questionable things, a form of baptismal regeneration, actually. And actually, many of the high church hymns, the hymns that are in that category, come from Anglicanism, which have teachings about the sacraments that are very much like Luther's perspective, and a famous example in that regard would be John Newton. The Wesley brothers were not only Anglicans, but they also taught other questionable doctrines, such as entire sanctification. or form of perfectionism, and here again, it's in their songs, and you singing it, you're probably not even knowing what they meant by it. Let me give you an example. This is Love Divine, all else excelling. Finish then thy new creation, pure and spotless let us be. Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee. Change from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise. Now, when I say that, I'm deliberately thinking that from glory to glory, part of progressive sanctification. But I don't think that's what they were thinking. This other business about, finish then thy new creation, pure and spotless, let us be, is reflecting their concept that actually a believer could, by a second work of grace, arrive at a form of perfection here on earth. A couple other examples, Phillips Brooks, who wrote Old Little Town of Bethlehem, was a liberal Episcopalian. Henry Van Dyke, who wrote Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, in the original fundamentalist modernist controversy, was a modernist who stood up and opposed Dr. J. Gresham Nation, who was one of the heroes of conservative theology in those days. And this is just a reality, folks. Whatever I'm going to say, we at least have to be historically honest. And we share with you one other example. This is from Charles Scribgen, who, in putting together one of the hymnals for his church, made this statement. He said, the area of our research has been as wide as the bounds of existing religious literature, American and British, Protestant and Romish, ancient and modern. Whatever may be thought of our taste, we have used it without prejudice, and a good hymn has not been rejected because of the character of its author or the heresies of the church in whose hymnal it first occurred. He went on to say, so long as the language and the spirit commended the hymn to our hearts, we included it and believe that we have enriched our collection thereby. And this has generally speaking been the standard approach among the conservative people. Now, what does this mean for us? Does this mean that we don't care at all about sort of ecclesiastical or cultural baggage connected with CCM, that discounting doesn't matter at all? The examples I gave, I wouldn't say are total parallels. I do think they're instructive. But given the nature of the problems of contemporary Christian music, given the widespread influence and interest in this sort of thing, the main point that I want to say about that is that it does call for a special measure of caution, that it is not an easy thing. Well, we have these other hymns, so it doesn't matter. Well, I think it does matter. And really, what I want to encourage us all with as we consider this is a verse of scripture that came up toward the beginning, and that's in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. My own thinking on this issue is that this question gives us a great opportunity to teach discernment. The reality is that many today are almost ignoring the historic traditions of the Church, the are jumping on a kind of bandwagon that is largely from this particular realm, and are using the kind of quotes I shared with you to justify it and say that it doesn't matter. Well, look with me at 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 20. This is interesting because it relates to a time when there were spirit-inspired, spirit-produced anyway, prophecies that were going on in the church. And the Apostle Paul says this, 1 Thessalonians 5.20, do not despise prophecies, but test everything, hold fast what is good, and then verse 22, abstain from every form of evil. I think this issue gives us the opportunity to learn to do that, to learn to do it together, to use it as an exercise in teaching our young people to do it. It gives us an opportunity to talk about this issue, to share the concerns, even while we recognize the value that's there and appreciate the good that's done. To be able to converse back and forth and look at these things specifically, it gives us a great opportunity to learn and to teach discernment. I say here there are enough concerns that we want to be talking about, that we want to be urging caution about, and that anything from this kind of room with those kinds of concerns, part of the discernment, I think, comes in the amount that would be used. I say there's this kind of a general move in this direction. The response to that could be, we're not going to use any of it. And this is totally outruled. My response to that is, we are in such a subjective area here, an area that's complicated enough that to take just a totally hard-line position, I think, ends up not teaching discernment. I think it actually ends up closing the door to teaching discernment, especially to our young people. We want to be having an ongoing conversation about this and on a case-by-case basis be looking at these things, be making appropriate use of some of this perhaps, but certainly in a very limited and discretionary way. Applying the principles that we have talked about. Not being on a bandwagon that as soon as a song comes out and everybody likes it, well, let's adapt it and use it because this is great stuff. allowing some time, using this as an opportunity to open doors for a conversation, to demonstrate a biblical graciousness to whatever value is there, but to keep it in the context of broader biblical issues and broader wisdom issues within church life. And that leads me to my last consideration here. that our discussions of these kind of debatable musical matters should be characterized by godly wisdom. And we're talking about discernment. Listen to the description of discernment as you find it here in James chapter 3. James says, who is wise in understanding among you by his good conduct, let him show his works, in the meekness of wisdom. He contrasts godly wisdom with jealousy, disorder, and then he says, verse 17, that the wisdom from above is first pure. So discernment is about seeking that which should be honoring to the Lord and reflect purity in doctrine, in life, and so forth. But it's also characterized by these other things. Peaceable gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And we want to be able to discuss these issues in a way that reflects all of those qualities. A passion to honor the Lord, but a reasonableness and a kindness and a gentleness. I think sometimes, as conservative people, One of the things that has hurt us is the attitude that we have conveyed in dealing with these things. That in our effort to do the right thing, we have pushed people away because of a spirit of anger, a spirit of hostility almost, And biblical wisdom is pure, but it's also peaceable, gentle, open to reason. And that spirit needs to characterize everyone involved in the discussion. And I trust the Lord will help us do that as a church. Let's pray. Our Father, we do pray that you would give us grace to be gracious people in our efforts to honor and serve you These can be challenging matters. We thank you for the help of your spirit, the help of your people. And Father, we want to be these wise people characterized by all the attributes of wisdom that James lays out. And we pray that you would be pleased with the results of the worship that we offer to you. In Jesus' name, amen.