Last Sunday night (so called Easter Sunday) the popular TV program American Idol hosted an evening of what they promoted as “Songs of Faith” to celebrate or honor Easter. One of my favorite Contemporary Christian Artist, Steve Camp, who has impacted me with many great songs over the years (and now pastors a church in FL) had this take on it.
American Idol’s Sunday Evening’s “Songs of Faith” was not a Gospel rich, God honoring, Spirit empowered, Christ exalting event. In a word… idolatry. Were there great performances? Yes! Canaan, Carrie, Thunderstorm, CeCe Winans, etc. Amazing talent this year. No question. But was it worthy of celebrating the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross to redeem a people for His own possession? Was it worthy of honoring His glorious bodily resurrection from the dead for our justification? Not at all.We’ve reached a new plateau in the Christian faith: worship is now entertainment, the Gospel is a man-centered self empowering therapeutic emotional aura fluff, having church is having the best sounding background singers / choir to sing behind the artists, and now its marketable by big business where secular TV can profit handsomely in generating millions in revenue and viewership all because a few Christian artists lend their names to the evening legitimizing its production.“Deny yourself; take up your cross, and follow Me” (Mt 16:24) are jettisoned for a plastic Jesus of their own invention. So ask yourself: Was the real Gospel presented? No. Was genuine worship offered? No. Was the Lord glorified? No. Was He approached as holy? No. Was any Scripture presented? No. Was repentance mentioned? No. Was sin at all mentioned or explained as one of the reasons for the necessity of the cross for our salvation? No.This is serious beloved. Listen, using Jesus, His cross and resurrection as a widget to sell is not a game. Consider the sobering words of the Apostle Paul:“For we do not market the word of God as cheap retail merchandise, huckstering its truths for profit like so many. On the contrary, we speak with sincerity in Christ, as from God and before God.” -2 Corinthians 2:17 We need reformation and revival once again!
I love Steve and his artistry and passion for the Lord. I follow him regularly but must admit in recent years I disagree with him often because he has become rather often so harsh in judgements based in his strict reading and understanding of the evangelical Sola Scriptura that often leads to trying to take the speck out of someone’s eye while not dealing with the log in your own. It ends up in my opinion being very close to what we saw as Pharisaic in the times and judgement of Jesus.
I responded to Steve’s post with the following and had a great deal of feedback agreeing with me. So I offer it here for your consideration.
While your point of the show not being a “God honoring, Spirit empowered, Christ exalting “ event is well taken. You must remember that was not the design or point of the show, nor its producers. It was promoted as “Songs of Faith”, hence we had everything from You Are So Beautiful (dedicated to mom) and humanist based Bridge Over Troubled Water, to How Great Thou Art (with the most clear stanza dealing with sin and Jesus’ sacrifice left out) and a couple of decent CCM and Black Gospel performances. However, there is a place to leave your pharisaic stone throwing and rejoice that the art in its lyrics and music, and diversity of delivery, can move people to consider the hope there is in its communication beyond the razzle dazzle.
Most of your indictments of this show here are played out at dozens of “Christian” concerts and, even more unfortunately, in hundreds and hundreds of platform to spectator gatherings called “church” every week. You won’t find this platform to spectator form of gathering anywhere in the New Testament. Or its trappings featuring purely the transfer or information through teaching and “worship” led through bands of performers. So, in that sense, the church has conditioned the culture to look for and accept what you call the therapeutic venture as authentic. (Too much to detail here)
Having said all that.. I will say, as one that pioneered CCM music in radio broadcasting beginning in 1975 (including your earliest efforts), that the art is powerful and you and others often have said in lyric and music in 3 minutes what it would take teachers (like me) an hour to exposit. The art is powerful and God has often used crooked sticks to draw straight lines leading to Him. (I can remember the liberal Tony Campolo once shocking a CCM radio seminar group of broadcasters and recording artists with some shocking language, and then turning and challenging you, Steve Camp, to “do something” about secular artist putting the church and Christian artist to shame in loving the unlovely. And, you did!)
So, although Paul wrote 2 Corinthians 2:17, he also from prison wrote to the Philippians in chapter 1:15 Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will;16 the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel;17 the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.So, let us rejoice, whenever the art is given an opportunity to proclaim Him to millions, even if the motive ain’t all we would like it to be. Some may just have ears to hear the voice of God and His message, beyond the vessel delivering it.
Another gentleman responded to my post that he too sees the same things Steve indicted the show over week after week in “church” . I responded to him with the following, again for your consideration.
That was my mostly my point. We, “the church” have endorsed and given example to a platform to spectator form or gathering focusing on personality, performance – essentially by hierarchy, entertainment, and only the transfer of intellectual information by teaching. (I haven’t visited, but I’m sure Steve’s Cross Church functions primarily in this form, as most do.) A form that is void of the function of a/the body outlined in the New Testament, where everything is open and everyone participates, see 1 Corinthians 14:26. In doing so we have made the “therapeutic’ venture Steve speaks of, including raising money or profiting by it, the norm in the culture… and unfortunately in the church as well.
Platform to spectator was never intended to be our experience with only the transfer of knowledge. We are to be in serving relationships and growing by relationship with Him and each other. We are intended to be the Body of Christ the fullness of Him that fills all in all (Ephesians 12-23) in which the each member joined to the Head (Jesus) is fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:16).
Platform to spectator can do little else than entertain and transfer information. It will nearly always morph into performance, and accolades and profit for performers and hierarchy based in performance. Not that that can have no place or impact, but little compared to divine design.
While I do not consider myself the last word on these issues or truth, I do think we have to be much like Paul writing in that Philippian jail, rejoicing that God can use many things and many forms to reveal Himself and draw men to Jesus. That doesn’t mean we have to embrace or endorse everything and anything, but it does mean we must exercise our judgment carefully and be wise in how we share the good news as well under his direction. I marvel at how many times people focus on our need to “come out from among them and be separate” to the end of totally avoiding people where they are and how they are.
I understand a call to Godly living, behavior, and holiness. But, Jesus left the effluence of glory as fully God to take on the form of becoming fully man and reveal the fullness of the Fathers love. And, then at the end, He specifically prayed that we NOT be taken out of the world. He prayed that we would be kept from the evil one and that we would be sanctified (set apart) not from people, but in or to the truth, even as He was. Meditate on what that means. Set a part in or to truth in a world of lies and that embraces lies. Timely for our culture for sure.
Then we have the example of Paul in Athens in Acts 17 where he not only did not separate, he went out of the way to be in the midst of their places of idols. He was then given the opportunity to speak at Mars Hill and the Areopagus … the tv debate forum of the Athenians, if you will, at the time. Adapting his message to relate to them…He then spoke of their “unknown god” idol, quoted their poets, used no scripture, but shared God’s plan of redemption made possible by the resurrection of one Man, and didn’t name Him, at least not in the text there. The result in Acts 17:34—- some men believed and joined him…
In fact it might be said of Paul’s ministry and message to the Gentiles that it was to come out from among the religious pagans, and the religious Jews, and then Judaizers. He called the unholy and unclean not to leave the appearance of unrighteousness, but called them all to the righteousness that is in Christ. Then he confronts both religious types, Jews and Gentiles, to lie down the enmity between them to be made into one new man in the Body of Christ. Can we do less?