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The Deity of the Heart
(appended 5/19/2005)

I’ve made several attempts to write this particular article. It has been difficult. I hope that completing it will bring into focus my feelings, concerns, and observations concerning the state of CCM in wake of recent personal events.

I left my band in February of this year. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly and I hated to leave this group of people whom I have come to consider some of my closest friends. However, I have felt conflicted for some time concerning our approach to ministry. The issue which became a catalyst for me to act was concerning the inclusion of some mild secular pop songs into our repertoire. If you’ve read some of the other articles on this website, then perhaps you understand why it was something I just couldn’t participate in.

It appears that I have come full circle. I was in CCM in the late 70s early 80s then stepped out of it (as a would-be agnostic) for twenty-something years. Then (after God hit me upside the head with a 2 x 4 to get my attention) I stepped back into it in 2001, I was shocked at what I found, wrote a book which explored how to operate as a Christian band using biblical principles, and now have stepped back out of CCM due to those same principles! Now that I’m on the outside after having been “behind the curtain” once again, I hope that my experience will provide a little more clarity concerning some of the issues which are difficult to address when you’re in the middle of it.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Hebrews 4:12 12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

An underlying attitude which I find pervasive throughout CCM is that the heart is the ultimate authority as to whether something is right or wrong…of God or not of God. When we find ourselves faced with a decision, the deciding factor is inevitably what we “feel” about it. This decision-making process (or lack thereof) is used in everything including ministry decisions. It doesn’t matter whether it’s choosing band members or writing songs or picking a set list or accepting a gig or determining how we conduct a concert or deciding what we say at our concerts. We may pray about it but after we’re through praying, the final decision will be based on what we “feel.” Other synonyms are often used in place of “feel” which sound more spiritual. They include phrases such as “I feel God is leading me to…” and “let the Spirit lead” and “I think God wants…” However, the final result is the same. We make our decisions based on how we feel.

Is this any basis for making ministry decisions?! The Word of God never even enters into the thought process! We might as well just place the Bible on the shelf for all the good in does us when we’re trying to come to a decision on something!

Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.

The Word of God should be so firmly engrained into our psyche that its principles under gird every important decision we make. This is accomplished by consistent and personal study of the Word, memorization of the Scriptures, and training yourself to consider what God’s Word has to say on the subject before making important decisions. Instead, we (who are leading and influencing the entire popular Christian culture) ignore the Word or at best listen to the occasional sermon and read a brief daily devotional. No wonder CCM has found itself in its current state! You can’t ignore God’s Word (or simply pay it “lip service”), go by your feelings, and expect anything else!

Most of CCM would retort “you’re quenching the Spirit” or “you’re being legalistic.” Let me say it plainly; following your feelings is NOT the same thing as following the leading of the Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit will NEVER lead you to do something which compromises biblical principles! It is foolish in the extreme to assume that your “feelings” are synonymous with what God wants…ESPECIALLY in situations where you stand to benefit by being “flexible.”

Does God guide us by His Spirit using what we could only refer to as “feelings”? Yes… BUT the Holy Spirit isn’t the only spirit or factor influencing your feelings.

1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Galatians 5:17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

In addition to the Holy Spirit, you have your own carnal desires, the world, and Satanic forces vying to influence your feelings. To just trust your feelings without checking them against biblical principles is guaranteed to lead you into making bad decisions and creating corrupted doctrines. The only way to discern whether it’s the Holy Spirit leading you or something else requires you to be immersed in God’s Word.

Hebrews 5:14 14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness

How do we discern good and evil? We train our senses. How do we train our senses? Through knowing and understanding the Scriptures. I don’t think anyone would make the argument that those in CCM are (generally speaking) spiritually mature and have a good understanding of the scriptures. Therefore, what can we expect of CCM? The same thing that you can expect from any group of Christians who are “a mile wide and an inch deep;” carnal behavior, compromises with the world, a focus on the experiential, rampant doctrinal errors, and a misunderstanding of the gospel.

What Is The Gospel?

Galatians 1:8,9 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

2 Corinthians 11:4 For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.

In the name of tolerance, “being all things to all men”, a fear of appearing judgmental or offending, we have edited the gospel so that we only present the “positive” aspects in our concerts. You hear a lot about God’s love, His plan to prosper you, forgiveness, heaven, and the abundant life. But when was the last time you heard someone at a concert call for repentance, explain how God views sin, expound on the fact that without Christ we are all condemned to eternity in Hell, or warn of the impending judgment of God? They’d probably stone them if they did. The last thing you want to do at a Christian concert is bum out the crowd. Instead, let’s focus on worshiping God and feeling good about who we are and the future, right? Let’s make sure they’re entertained so that they will be filled with the desire to be celebrities for God someday, too!

Mark 7:6 And He said to them, "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.'”

For that matter, when was the last time you heard a presentation of the gospel at a concert? And WHICH gospel? We’ve edited the gospel so much that it bears little resemblance to the gospel preached by Jesus or the Apostles. What did Jesus preach?

Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Did you hear that? He said we need to stop living in sin and doing the things that we KNOW are wrong…we need to turn away from those behaviors and come to God and ask for mercy because the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

Mark 8:34 And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”

Acts 10:42 And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead.

We need to preach (not “share,” “relate to”, be “seeker friendly”) the whole counsel of God! People need to understand WHY they need a Savior! They need to understand that as it stands they are under a sentence of eternal death because of their sin and the judgment of God is only a heartbeat away! THAT’S why they need a Savior! According to the warped gospel which comes out of CCM today, you need Jesus because He’ll make you happy and give you life abundantly…don’t worry about stopping the stuff you’re doing wrong (can’t use the “sin” word) God loves you and is just waiting to forgive you! Is it little wonder that those who make decisions based on that kind of gospel “jump ship” whenever things get rough or they are confronted with the need to give up their pet sins or they find out they have to “take up their cross and follow Him?” A complete presentation of the true gospel will result in decisions based on the reality that they need Jesus whether things are good, bad, or indifferent.

Sometimes during CCM concerts, someone will share their testimony. Telling people your testimony is scriptural and God can use it but it is NOT the gospel! It’s a great gateway for the gospel but it is not a substitute for it. To give your testimony without presenting the gospel is like having an appetizer but never bringing out the entrée! Despite popular thought, people are hungry for the gospel. And don’t depend on the speaker who may follow you to present it. Just like in most churches today, they may tell a great story but never give the gospel. It doesn’t require an hour long sermon…all it takes is a few minutes out your allotted concert time. Here’s the gospel in a nutshell:

  • God is Holy and those who wish to spend eternity with Him must be Holy (1 Peter1:14-16, Hebrews 12:14, Matthew 5:20, James 2:10)
  • Man chose and chooses to disobey God. Therefore, the human race is under a sentence of eternal death (Romans 5:12-19, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Luke 13:3, John 3:18)
  • Man can never make himself good enough to be accepted by a Holy God (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10, Ephesians 2:8,9)
  • God loved us so much that He sent His sinless Son to pay the price for our sins. He was crucified for our sins and rose from the dead on the third day so that we might have eternal life. We are saved by our faith in the completed work of Christ (John 3:16, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, 1 John 5:11-13, Ephesians 2:8,9, Romans 6:10, Hebrews 10:12-14)
  • To accept God’s free gift of salvation, man must repent of his sins and accept Jesus as Lord of All (Mark 1:15, Luke 24:47, Acts 2:38, 2 Corinthians 7:10, Romans 10:9)
That’s the gospel! When we have the opportunity to speak from a stage and influence thousands we need to be more concerned with the integrity of the message than the response of the crowd.

Thou Shalt Not Question

2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith.

Proverbs 12:1 Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

Proverbs 14:16 A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident.

A sure fire way to get those in CCM riled up is to question whether we have mixed motives or flawed methodologies. As a whole there is what Steve Camp refers to as a general “unteachableness.” A violent knee-jerk reaction in both fans and performers whenever you make the slightest inference that something might be fundamentally wrong with what we’re doing. If you call for an examination of what we’re doing and why, then you’re labeled divisive and legalistic. And if you use scripture and biblical principles to back-up your argument then your observations are dismissed out of hand because you’re “firing Bible bullets.” For some reason it is perfectly acceptable to use worldly reason and pragmatic logic in discussing these issues but using the Bible is considered bad taste. Of course, that’s because we view the Bible as just another bunch of relativistic observations which can be twisted to mean anything you want it to …(sigh)

So after having dismissed your observations, they then confidently go right back to what they were doing and never even consider the possibility that God might have nothing to do with it. Why? Because it “feels” right…because of all the people who have told them how great they are and how much their music has meant to them…because of the number of people who have made “decisions” after their concerts. But most importantly, because it would fundamentally change who they believe themselves to be. Because they would have to reevaluate the value to God of everything that they had done before. After all, all these people can’t be wrong, right?

God’s Approval

When considering whether an ongoing activity is blessed or approved by God, what criteria are we to use? To those who say that all of the people in CCM couldn’t be wrong, I suggest they consider the fact that there are almost 1.5 billion Catholics, 1.5 billion Muslims, and 900 million Hindus in the world today. It was a mere 150 years ago that the United States was embroiled in a civil war because half of us thought it was right for us to own another human being. It was less than 500 years ago that the church was involved in it’s own sort of civil war initiated by a church doctrine which stated that one could buy forgiveness of sins. Need I say more?

So we can’t use the “majority” opinion to determine God’s approval. And it should be self-evident that we can’t use how successful we are in what we do as an indicator of God’s approval. If that were true, then we would have to conclude that God sure must like The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and Madonna. But what about all of the people who have made “decisions for Christ” at our concerts?

First of all, we need to be honest and state that for most of us, no one responded to OUR message by making a decision. Usually (if there is an invitation of any kind), a speaker who follows the band is the one that gives people an opportunity to accept Christ or to rededicate their lives to Him. Would they have made their decisions without the musical prelude we provide? Who can say. Would there have been less people there without the “live” music? Most certainly. That’s one of the arguments used by the CCM community to convince themselves that they are a “ministry.” People aren’t going to show up just to listen to some guy preach so we need to “bait” them with some rock and roll. And the music can’t be too “preachy” because it’ll scare them off. So let’s gradually inject some stuff about God in our music and let the speaker and the Holy Spirit do the rest. It’s all good if they wind up making a decision, right?

In Mark 4, Jesus gives the parable of the sower. This is such an important parable that Jesus said that you can’t understand the rest of the parables that He told unless you understand this one (v. 13). It illustrates the concept of false conversions. The fact is that the vast majority of people who make a decision for Christ today wind up falling away. Why? There are several reasons and some of them are explained in the parable. But if the seed that is sown (i.e., the gospel message presented) is flawed from the beginning then the result will be false conversions. For a good illustration of this principle in action, take a look at much of the religious programming on TV. People keep watching and going to the crusades and sending their money in and when they give an invitation they respond in droves but does that really mean their message is of God? If you make a message “positive” enough and generate enough emotion through music and “motivational” speakers then, people will respond to just about anything. There is an excellent article concerning false conversions available at http://www.livingwaters.com/helps/TrueAndFalseConversion.pdf.

Matthew 7:21 Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.

The truth is whether God approves of your message and your methodology cannot be measured by how it “feels”, how many people love your music or buy your CDs, or how many people make decisions after your concerts. The only true measure of God’s blessing is how closely you stick to the full counsel of God given in His Word!

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Acts 20:26-28 Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

Hebrews 4:12 12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

But what if no one responds to the message because it offends them? What if everyone else in CCM condemns me? So WHAT! You’re in great company!

Romans 10:16,17 However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, "LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?" So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

John 7:7 "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.”

John 15:18 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.”

2 Timothy 4:16 At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me; may it not be counted against them.

Is It A Ministry?

How you can you have a “ministry” that claims to be reaching out to the world but omits the gospel? Then it isn’t a ministry. It’s something else. Worship (of which musical worship is only a small fraction) is for Christians and to be true worship come from a repentant heart walking in obedience and trust. Without that, musical worship does nothing except generate an emotional buzz. Not only is God NOT honored by it, but He actually hates it.

Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight.

Isaiah 1:13-15 Bring your worthless offerings no longer, incense is an abomination to Me new moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies--I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, they have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

Malachi 1:6,7,10 Says the LORD of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, "In what way have we despised Your name?' "You offer defiled food on My altar, But say, "In what way have we defiled You?' By saying, "The table of the LORD is contemptible. 'Who is there even among you who would shut the doors, so that you would not kindle fire on My altar in vain? I have no pleasure in you," says the LORD of hosts, "Nor will I accept an offering from your hands.”

We have defiled our offerings of praise by seeking to emulate and partner with the world. Our excuse that we’re trying to reach the world for Christ holds no water because we omit or distort the only thing from our concerts which could possibly bring them to the Lord…the gospel.

Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

Make no mistake, corporate worship and the use of music to enhance corporate worship is biblical and a natural byproduct of a life surrendered to God. But all too often the musicians and singers in local churches become enamored of the warped monstrosity that CCM has become. CCM has taken musical worship and admonition and turned it into something carnal, worldly, and warped which God did not intend or condone. And worship from Christians who deny the truth of God’s Word and live off their own “feelings” is worthless.

John 4:22 You worship what you do not know

A Call To Repentance

However, having said all this, I see no indication that CCM will be changing its ways. There are some shining exceptions out there, but in general what I see is a stiff-necked attitude which is intent on doing it their way instead of God’s way…which is more concerned with getting a response than in being true to what God’s message is…which is rushing headlong into breaking down all the barriers between the Christian and secular music worlds without any conception of what that means…which is more concerned with following their heart than following God’s Word.

Its time we stopped fooling ourselves. We go up onstage and take the applause and the glory and revel in the admiration of our audiences and afterwards pat ourselves on the back for how much we sacrifice for God and how greatly He’s using us. And it “feels” so right, doesn’t it? However, at best it’s a diversion from what God has really called us to and at worst it’s actively leading people astray with a false gospel.

I have grown weary of all of it. I have no intent or desire to pursue playing in a CCM band again. I can’t say I’ll never play music again because I’m willing to follow wherever Jesus may lead me. But excluding that, I’m done with it. To me it was never about the music. Music was simply a tool and now the tool has become so dull and twisted that nothing of any worth can be done with it. My time would be much better spent in street evangelism. Barring a sudden rush to repentance by those within CCM, I anticipate all vestiges of the Christian music industry will be consumed by the secular world within 10 years at the outside. It’s what CCM as a whole is striving and fighting for and based on its current state, that’s exactly what it deserves. The remnants will be treated just as religion is currently treated in Country music…as an expression of the culture with nothing of the power of God left in it.

It’s time to repent and grow-up or face the inevitable consequences of our behavior. May God have mercy on us all.

James 4:9,10 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Hebrews 5:12-14 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.

Ephesians 4:14,15 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ

James 4:17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

1 Corinthians 11:31,32 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

2 Peter 2:1-3 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.