Theology in the Raw - 863: Reimagining Evangelical Worship: Aaron Keyes

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Aaron Keyes has been a worship pastor for over 20 years, currently serving as the worship pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO. Aaron is also the founder of Mere Worship, a network of worship pastors who are reimagining Christian worship, and the founder and director of 10,000 Fathers, a discipleship-orientated worship school.  In this episode, we talk about all kinds of things related to Christian worship and worship leading, including the difference between subjective and objective oriented songs, the need for character in a worship pastor, why musical talent alone is insufficient in a worship leader and how it can even be destructive, “Jesus is my boyfriend” type songs, and some potential problems with the CCLI industrial complex.  Check out the 10,000 Fathers worship school: https://worship.school And the Mere Worship community: https://www.mereworship.com Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today a new friend of mine. I mean, we kind of go way back in terms of we met like, I think, 11 years ago, just briefly. We've kept in touch a little bit over social media. I've been following what Aaron's been doing for a while. He's been following what I've been doing, but this is the first time we really had an extended conversation. And look, guys, I only have guests on that I think are going to be interesting people, interesting conversations. So I was excited about this one. Aaron seems like a super interesting guy to me. I was blown away at how good this conversation was and how thoughtful and authentic

and mature, spiritually mature Aaron was. Not that I was expected him to be immature. It sounds so bad. Sorry, Aaron, if you're listening. But after I got done with this episode, I'm like, oh my gosh, I cannot wait for this conversation to go live. So it is now live. I can't wait for you to engage this conversation. If you are a worship pastor, worship leader, songwriter, or I would say a pastor or a leader in charge of hiring the next worship leader, I'm so excited for you. I think this conversation is... I want every church leader to hear this conversation. Anybody who's in the slightest way involved in the worship experience at church needs to hear this conversation. You need to know who Aaron Keyes is.

He has been a worship leader for over 20 years with some well-known people, well-known leaders. He knows the kind of Christian celebrity culture. He's extremely intelligent. He has a theological degree from Northern University. He has a theological degree from Northern University, and he also opened up a worship school called 10,000 Fathers, where he is training worship leaders to not just lead worship, but to pastor and disciple people into the holiness of God. And I just, I enjoyed every second of this conversation. If you would like to support this show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology

in the raw, support the show for as little as five bucks a month to get access to the theology in the rock community. Thank you for those of you who are supporting the show. It really does mean a lot and helps keep this show going. I would also encourage you to check out the show notes for information on Aaron Keyes and 10,000 Fathers. So without further ado, let's get to know the one and only Aaron Keyes. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm here with a friend from a distance. I mean, this is the world we live in. I feel like I know, I feel like I've known Aaron for a while.

Even though this is literally the first time. Well, there was another encounter that we had that you may not even remember. But I don't even know if it was like a face-to-face. It was still distanced in the same room. So I was at, this is going so far back. I'm not even sure if I got my facts straight. But I was at Cornerstone Church right at the tail end of Francis Chan's kind of tenure there when I believe you came out to interview or so you came out for something there. And that's where I first heard your name. Is that, is that, was that you? Yeah, I think that's when we met because we were

really praying about, um, if we were supposed to join up with Francis, come out to Cornerstone, work with Jim, Ellison, you know, Jim and Sherry. And we loved our time there, loved Francis, but didn't feel, despite what we wanted, didn't feel like God was calling us. It's funny, like three times over about three years, we came out to California thinking maybe God was leading us out there because we'd been in Atlanta for a long, long time. I mean, since I was basically 20 years old, I've been in Atlanta until we just finally moved almost a year ago to Colorado. But yeah, that was where we met because I think you were running the Bible college. And we connected just a little bit. And then I've, of course, followed you since then. So that was, I don't know, you tell me, maybe 10 years ago, the whole thing with Francis. I got the cornerstone in 2009. I think it was maybe right around within that year.

So probably 10, 11 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I would guess. And so I connected with Francis from leading worship for several events that he was speaking at. And then I brought Francis to speak for some of the more like cushy events that we led

worship at so like we would go down and leave worship in the bahamas every year you know and they wouldn't like pay you but they just like put you up and take you scuba diving and so we did that that was francis and lisa came on that that was fun so yeah we were just praying about do we join up so um anyway we didn't feel at peace despite what we wanted. And actually, I'm glad that we didn't move because you hear that I'm stepping down within a few months after that. But, yeah, I followed you. And then I actually even reached out to you, I think, a few years ago, maybe four or five years ago when I was in seminary because we were taking a class with Joel Willits. I remember that.

And he's so amazing, you know. And anyway, your name came up and in my cohort, so many people just expressed how grateful they were for the work that you were doing. I think at that point, I wasn't even up to speed on all that you'd been doing kind of off of my radar. And I just kind of started digging back into it and thought, man, this is really special. And so to get to chat today is I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Well, me too, man. I don't know why it took so long. But yeah. So did you finish? Did you finish? So you were doing a degree at North Park then? Is it via distance or?

Well, actually, I was at Northern. He was kind of adjuncting for one class. I don't even remember what class it was. But yeah, he was just adjuncting for one class. I don't even remember what class it was. But yeah, he was just adjunct for us that class. Yeah, I did an MA from Northern because for, I think, five or six years, our worship school with the Nothin' Fathers was partnered with Northern. We've switched that now to Duke. So now we're joined up with Duke Divinity. But yeah, for a while, I mean, we probably sent 40 or 50 students to Northern to do master's work there.

They better partner with you. You're feeding them much needed students. It's a little lopsided partnership. Let's go back. For people who don't know who you are, why don't you give us just a snapshot of your journey, your kind of ministry trajectory, and then I would love to just banter around

about worship, Christian worship, the worship scene and evangelicalism. I'm sure that'll take us in some interesting directions. Yeah, I don't know if we have time for all that, but we'll do our best. Okay, I'm 42 years old, live in Colorado Springs as of one year ago with my wife, Megan. We've been married 21 years. We have four sons, one in college, one going next year, and two in middle school. I'm a worship pastor here in Colorado Springs at New Life Church. And for the last 20 years or so, I was the worship pastor in a church in Atlanta called Grace Fellowship Church. So people probably haven't heard about Grace, but they've probably heard songs like Good, Good Father and Build My my life these songs came out of our church because there was this thing called house fires

that came out of our church that really um became god just like he just put wind in those sails and it went all over the place it was really awesome so for the last 20 years uh we were in atlanta at a church called grace and it was was a beautiful, like, greenhouse for apostolic, entrepreneurial kind of leaders to come and not be constricted to the walls of the church, but kind of be empowered to go do what's in your heart. So it was a really beautiful place in that, you know, their main vision, their biggest vision for your life wasn't like, come and volunteer in the church, but like, how do we unleash what's in your heart in the world and so about 15 years ago we opened up our home so that we could start training worship leaders because um leading worship you know guys like we were just

that's all well good but i was getting all these phone calls from pastors after the events like hey look we got singers we've got bands but we don't have anyone that leads worship like that and leads worship with scripture first and foremost. And do you know anyone else that could do that? And so at first I was I was sent out everyone that I knew and trusted and quickly I ran out of people that I both knew and trusted. And it was like, how do we do this like how how do we raise up people because it felt to me like the fields are white and the workers are few you know and the worship space and i guess we should pause there because um worship you know underwent like a little bit of a renewal, a reformation, late 60s Jesus movement. We, you know, we went from singing songs like A Mighty Fortress is Our God to I Love You, Lord.

And so when all of that happened, there was a beautiful move of the spirit, I think. And the guys out in California, all these hippies are getting saved. Some of them say we're going for worship in the presence of God. And they launched the Vineyard Movement of Churches. Some of them go, we're going to go verse by verse to the Bible. They launched Calvary Chapel. And so kind of streams split off from late 60s, early 70s, and worship just picked up steam. Before then, you might have had a music minister in church, but there was no such thing as a worship pastor or a worship leader. You'd have choir directors, you know, people like that. But this, so the worship role, like we understand it, is really about 50 years old. It's really young. And there's no such thing, you know, in the first

2,000 years of the church. And obviously, there's nothing in the New Testament about worship leading. So what is so normal for so many of us, Testament about worship leading. Um, so what is so normal for so many of us, we've just grown up singing, how great is our God. And we've grown up singing here I am to worship. Like that's not normal. Um, and it's not historical. So there's beautiful stuff that's come out of that, but there's also a little bit of like alarming stuff that's come out of that. So for instance, you know, we're the first generation ever to assume that because someone can lead us musically, they should also lead us spiritually. That's never, there's no biblical precedent for that. There's no historical precedent for that. And it's totally normal for us now to hire people for musical competency and then have to fire

them a year later for spiritual defects in character, you know, because they have, think about, like, you've got a doctorate. Like, most pastors, most leaders have done serious theological training, cultural training, historical rootedness. Worship leaders haven't done any of that. Like, there is a well-worn path for being a leader in a church today. You go to divinity school or seminary or you do a curacy if you're in the Church of England or whatever. There's all these different, very familiar paths. There is literally no path for worship leaders. And so what they do is they work on their guitar.

They work on their voice. They get some good-looking clothes, and they get on stage, and they do is they work on their guitar, they work on their voice, they get some good looking clothes and they get on stage and they do a lot of damage because we're not only are we the first generation to ever conflate musical gifting with spiritual authority. formed leaders as much opportunity when we gather together as we give to the theologically trained, spiritually authoritative, you know, relationally proven pastor of the church. So for the first time ever, you've got this convergence of both of those things happening. So untrained people with massive opportunities. So, I mean, a worship leader probably gets as much time shaping what a community of faith believes about God, themselves, their role in the world, etc., our relation to our country, and things like that. Like, the worship leader who hasn't had to do deep digging on any of that stuff gets as much time, and I would actually maybe even argue, like, because

they're communicating through creative media, like music, like songwriting or whatever else, they almost have an upper hand even in shaping what the people come away with. I don't think most people are driving home humming the sermon. They're kind of thinking of that song that you just ended with or whatever. They're kind of thinking of that song that you just ended with or whatever. And so because the worship leaders haven't been given the training, but they have been given the task, they've been given the platform. We've got a really interesting thing going on where you just have a lot of untrained people who are way out of their depth and you hear it. You know, you hear it in their songs. You hear it in their prayers.

It's pretty deplorable theology a lot of times. And it's not, again, it's usually not the senior pastor that's really mucking things up. It's usually the worship pastor. So how can we help worship leaders not screw this up so bad, you know? And so you do need theological training, but you also just kind of need like life training like how does your marriage not fall apart how do you how do you do all of your life and so that's why we said how you know we'd like to open up our home for leaders to come be trained not just um you know until then until this point 15 years ago i I had done internships.

I was like reading books and meeting with guys and whatever. But we went from internship to discipleship. So internship is like, come meet with me. Discipleship is come follow me. And we said, come into our life and see all of it. So they lived in our house. This first few years, we just had different groups of guys live with us for six months or a year at a time. They came on the bus

with the band. They were up with me on stage at church. We'd send them all over town to leave worship for events. And that was really cool. But then we started getting more and more people saying, hey, I've never been trained, but I've got five kids. My wife and I have decided it'd be worth it for me to come live in your basement for six months. And I was like, maybe we should tweak this model. This isn't really working. No, I would not recommend you do that. So we switched from the residential thing about about 10 years ago. We switched from come live with us to let's do this like grad school. Let's do it in

cohorts, come for a week at a time, and then we'll meet every week on Zoom. We'll walk you through the curriculum. We'll train you. So now that's 99% of worship school experience is people come just like grad school. It's 18 months long. They come for three different week-long intensives, and then there's weekly assignments all throughout. So like I was saying earlier, that's partnered up with Duke Divinity School. So all of our coursework at 10,000 Fathers, where the six months we first focus on the character of a worship pastor, the next six months is the craft and competency, the third six months is really the calling or community of a worship pastor, like how to go and make disciples and multiply this in your city and all that kind of stuff. All of that coursework is part of several

different master's degrees from Duke Div. So an MDiv, you can get an MDiv from Duke now with a certificate in worship. And we're a big part of that journey. So you come through 10,000 Fathers as part of that degree. You can also do an MTS or a Master's of Arts in Christian Practice. Any of those from Duke, you can get a worship certificate, which is really cool because what we basically are, what we've become is a para seminary, you know, so we're coming alongside seminary doing what I think seminaries were supposed to do, but just don't. They don't do formation. They do information, and they do it great. You know, I love partnering with Duke, the number four religious school in the world as of this year, but they're probably still not. I

mean, you might get to take a class with Howard Laws or Ellen Davis or, you know, Lester Ruth or Jeremy Begbie, but you're probably not going to hang out with them at dinner and have a glass of wine and get to share your life with them. So we aren't trying to do six months on Ecclesiastes at Tendazza Fathers, but I do think worship leaders need to spend six months in ecclesiastics, you know. So I think that they give you that side of it. We give you the other. And I think that the end result is leaders who are built to last and aren't just going to be kind of getting less and less relevant as they get older until they eventually age out of worship ministry, which is basically how most of it is now. You know, youth is like probably our biggest idol in worship culture these days, except for maybe ourselves. What we want to see is a whole generation of worship pastors rise up who will be elders in their churches long after

they're done being musically relevant. You know, they'll be musically cheesy, but they will be spiritually authoritative. So this is what we want to see. So it's called 10,000 Fathers and Mothers Worship School because in 1 Corinthians 4, sorry, this is a long answer, but I'm going to land this plant. I'm trying to go fast. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul says, even if you had 10,000 teachers, you don't have many fathers, but this is what I've become for your sake. So imitate me is like imitate Christ. So the whole thing being like we've got more teachers than ever in the worship experience.

Great teachers. Like you can go – you can listen to Francis. You can listen to Louis Giglio. You can listen to whoever. Pick your teacher. And Paul is saying to the church in Corinth, they had the exact same thing. They had celebrities. They had Apollos, and they had Barnabas, and Paul.

They had the whole constellation of superstars. And he goes, you don't have what you need. Wow. The most spiritual, the most manifestation of the Spirit of God, and the least maturity of any of the New Testament churches. manifestation of the spirit of the New Testament and the least maturity of any of the New Testament churches. So I think it's just helpful to not mistake even spiritual supernatural activity and big time cultural celebrity. Don't mistake that with fruitfulness and with actually getting this right. That's so good. I was wondering where the name came from. That's a really cool, I love that. That's such a fantastic idea. So you've been doing 10,000 Fathers Inn for about five years. How did you get connected with Duke? Okay. Oh, wow. How did you get connected with Duke? I mean, as you said, a super world-renowned, high-powered school. Did you have a personal connection or you just reached out to him? Yes, I did. Yeah. So a

friend of mine from Atlanta, he came to our church. He was an Old Testament professor at Candler in Emory, a good school, UMC school in Atlanta. And he wanted Emory to snatch us up from Northern. Because I was saying, look, I love that we're partnered with Northern, but the hope was like, we'll send you a bunch of students and you send us a bunch of students, you know, because I'm just trying to figure out where are the leaders that need to be trained. Like I was saying, like earlier, I think before we hit record for most of our tenure, we've graduated over 400 students in the last 15 years. Most of them came to the school because I met them somewhere on the road. And that just meant I was gone all the time, you know. And I don't really want to do that anymore.

I have zero ambition to go be some cool, like, touring worshiper. It's so boring to me. So we – I was talking with Brent, Dr. Brent Strawn, and he was like, I think you should partner up with Candler. So we met with the dean there and tried to make it happen they weren't interested well he transferred to duke and became an old professor at duke and so as soon as he got there he was like there's something special happening with this thing you need to come see it and so greg jones the dean at the time um at duke he and brent came down and spent a couple days at our house and then i went down and spent a couple of days at our house. And then I went up and spent a couple of days with those guys, with Begbie and Lester and some of these just, to me, some of the world leading thinkers on beauty and art and liturgy and worship. And how do we do this well?

To me, these are the guys I've known for a long time. I haven't known them, but I've followed them and thought these guys are such a gift to the church. But I followed them and thought, these guys are such a gift to the church. So I spent a couple of days with them. And eventually I asked Greg, the dean, I was like, what are you doing here? Like, how did you even find us? We're this tiny little thing run out of our living room. You know, we don't even have a campus.

And he said, we've been asking, we've been looking for places where God's moving in ways that are surprising. And this is surprising. Like what you're doing here is surprising. And it was just so fun because at that point, we'd probably been doing it for 13 years. There wasn't a lot that was surprising about it to us. It was just kind of normal to us. But that was where the partnership developed with Duke,

and we're so excited. Our first cohort launches this fall. Yeah. For those of you watching, I just pulled, I've been icing my back leg cause I've got like the sciatica as I was going. I tried to do it subtly, but I realized for those watching the video, like, what did you just pull out of your butt? I'm like, no, I'm sitting on an ice back. So I just, anyway, podcasters are all confused. Anyway. So, oh man, I've got so many questions. When you're, what are kind of the big picture things that you want to teach worship leaders? But beyond, I guess, like, you know, obviously get your own life in order and pursue holiness and repentance and maturity and all these. But when you're teaching them, okay, you're going out to lead God's people in worship,

here is what you need to do. Do you have kind of a top big picture pieces of advice you give them, or is that not really your focus? No, we hit some of that. It's just, no we hit some of that it's just you know when we start working with leaders we don't we don't let them pick up a guitar for six months people used to show up at my house like night one hey when are we gonna jam you know I'm like oh god please do not subject me to your need for being approved of and your insecurity and identity crisis like please don't do that so we have to do like six months of character work before we can even get to where them playing a song is because they have something to give instead of something to prove you know so we have so much work that we have to do so because of that i don't spend a lot of time addressing the stuff on the surface like

um how to pick a set list you know how to get better at vocals like we we give people coaching we assign them to coaches and we introduce them to places where they can work on those tech tech but what we really focus on is the the ground underneath that stuff where it's all coming out of and the the later we get in the process, the more visceral we do get granular. So in track two, when we do songwriting, I just took classes at Berklee. I took their stuff up in Boston on songwriting. I just tried to take the best stuff from all of that curriculum and distill it for worship leaders.

And just saying, you don't need to be a great songwriter, but you should be able to articulate something for your community to express the response to what God's doing there. That's going to be unique to every different place. You need to be able to bring that in the same way that, for our anniversary coming up this summer, I better not just hand my wife a Hallmark card that's got some little Roses of Red poem written in it and not actually write my own heart there. She doesn't care about the card stock.

She cares about the connection. And why do I? What do I love about her? And what do I see in her? And what do I, what do I love about her? And what do I see in her? And what do I want to call out? I feel like other people's songs will only ever be hallmark. So do you encourage worship leaders to write their own worship music for their local context? Yeah, for sure.

We don't only encourage it, though. We empower it. We entrain it. And that's a huge difference. People just think, oh, you come to our school and get encouraged or inspired. And I go, no, no, no, no. Watch YouTube for that. Go to a concert for that. You can inspire thousands of people at once, but you can't empower them.

Even Jesus couldn't. Like Jesus spent years just pouring into – well, these three were the closest and then there were 12 and then there's 72 and then there's 120 and then it's just the crowds. But I put zero confidence in a crowd to actually like be faithful to the call of Jesus. You know, like the crowds are so volatile and they just turn on Jesus from one moment to the next. So the men, the people that changed the world and turned it upside down were the people Jesus invested to the next. So the men, the people that changed the world and turned it upside down were the people Jesus invested his life into. So what we're trying to tell worship leaders, the first big paradigm shift is this, like first worship leaders lead songs, worship

pastors lead people, and we don't need any more worship leaders. Who cares? Songs aren't fixing anything. If they were going to change anything, it'd be changed by now. We have 210,000 songs in CCLI. It's not changing anything. So let's get our heads out of our butts and stop pretending that our song is going to change the world. It's not. Discipleship will, but our songs won't. The second thing is, they have to answer this question. If you lost your ability to play music today, would your church recognize you as a leader tomorrow?

Wait, can you say that again? Wow. Say that again. If you lost your ability to play music today or to sing, would your church still want you to lead them spiritually? so because most worship leaders were put in leadership uh not because of their depth in god their faithfulness their fruitfulness their ability to make disciples their ability to shepherd and pastor people they're put out there because their ability to sing um that is very that's a house of cards and we're seeing what happens when the character defects and those kinds of leaders uh come. We're seeing it not

just in worship leaders, by the way. Obviously, we're seeing this in any big shot leaders. When the competency is off the charts and the character hasn't kept pace, watch out because the dominoes are going to fall and tons of people are going to get hurt, right? So I think we have to train people in both of those things. So with 10,000 Fathers, it's really that 18-month deep dive on personal transformation that we hope results in cultural transformation. But to finish answering your question, over the years as I've connected with so many leaders and worked with so many leaders, there's tons of stuff that I do end up saying. You need to think about this, the practicals. Here's the tactical, like, try this this Sunday tons of stuff that i do end up saying you need to think about this the practicals here's the tactical like try this this sunday kind of stuff so all of that content i created a different training platform and that's called mere worship so in the same way that mere christianity

is like c.s lewis i'm in no way am i trying to put myself on that level, by the way. Sounds like the most arrogant. C.S. Lewis and I had this idea. But what he did in America's Shady was take these brilliant positions and abstractions that most people aren't going to – most average people aren't going to go read deep, deep commentary on all these things. So he just made it like bite-sized. I mean, they were originally just radio talks, right, for the BBC. That became the book. So it's like for mere worship, it was like how – I would normally teach. It doesn't fit anymore in 10,000 Fathers.

That content has gotten too strong. It's like too dense. It's too dense. It's too robust. I don't want to put a bunch of practical tips and tricks in there. That's all now in Mere Worship. Where 10,000 Fathers is the 18-month tuition, MDiv-accredited stuff, Mere Worship is just a monthly subscription. It's $9 a month. It's cheap, and there's tons of videos, me teaching all these little 5, 10, 15-minute things.

And then we meet on there, and we talk about it, and we brainstorm. So that's a pretty cool growing community of either people who want to do Ten Thousand Fathers but haven't been able to yet, they can't commit, or they actually graduated from Ten Thouscent Fathers, but they want to keep thinking progressively. And how do we not just kind of get into status quo? So it's a community of worship pastors who want to have an ongoing conversation with other people that are trying to, for lack of better terms, maybe change for good the worship scene in kind of evangelical churches today. That's really cool. One person at a time. That's awesome cool. Yeah, one person at a time. That's awesome. To step back and big picture stuff, I mean, how do you... I guess, I mean, you've been in this world now for a while, 20 plus years. What are your thoughts on... This

is gonna be a broad question, so you can kind of take any direction you want. What are your thoughts on just evangelical churches and worship in the last 20 years? Like when you were 20 years old and who you are now, have you changed? Have you seen just, what are the pros? What are the cons? I mean, you've kind of touched on that a little bit, but and help us, I guess, maybe peek behind the curtain on the Christian worship scene. And what does that look like if we were able to peek behind that curtain? Christian worship scene? And what does that look like if we were able to peek behind that curtain? Yeah, well, none of this, I hope none of this comes across as like an indictment. It's more of just a confession. Because the stuff that I've seen, good, bad, and ugly in the worship world,

I've seen in myself too. So it's not like, oh, they're awful. I'm great. It's not that at all. Like we're all just these, we're all conflicted messes, you know So you get a bunch of them and give them millions of dollars things get tricky, so Good grief. What am I seeing one would be? an inordinate tipping of the scales towards subjectivity away from objectivity in our Worship, so I mentioned going from mighty fortresses or God to I love you Lord. That's a shift from objectivity in our worship. So I mentioned going from a mighty fortresses are God to I love you,

Lord. That's a shift from objectivity to subjectivity, right? So I think this isn't, you know, empirically proven or anything, but my hunch is that if you go back through most of the hymns that have lasted a couple hundred years, or the early songs of the church and like that, there's a lot more objective stuff that you're praying and articulating than subjective. So again, un-mighty fortress of God, that's just true whether or not you're feeling it. You know, it's true whether or not you've been unfaithful this week. I love you, Lord.

Well, that depends. Like, have you? Do you? You know what I mean? like have you do you you know what i mean and and so i think there's been a big shift away from objective truth about god about what he's done about his plans for the world all that stuff it's just true like the character of god the faithfulness of god articulating that um there's been a lot less of that and a lot more like crazy more emphasis on our response to that so these songs it's amazing how many huge worship songs actually say nothing at all about god it's

all about i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that and i do this and i surrender worship. I love you. I adore you. And there's a place for all of that. But when all that we're doing is the response and there's we're never actually articulating what we're responding to. I just think, well, one of those requires study. You know, you actually need to study God to be able to write freshly and articulate in new ways about God. be able to write freshly and articulately in new ways about God. But you don't need to study God to have new poetic language about how much you fill in the blank. You're going to raise a hallelujah. Okay, great. It's an interesting song. It's a huge song, and there's not one thing in it about God. I mean, the whole thing is about how awesome we are. I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that, and then you're going to hear me do this.

And so there's like so many big songs about, I'm never going to stop doing that, and I'm always going to do it. And the problem is the people who wrote that do stop. They end up walking away from faith altogether. I can't sing most of those songs because I don't surrender all. And I feel like I'm being dishonest. It's easy for me. And I sound like, gosh, so I'm 45.

And the more I talk about it, I feel like I'm becoming that crotchety old Christian that we all couldn't stand growing up. But it's easy for me and actually spiritually nourishing for me to sing the more objective songs. And the older I get, the more I realize the depth of my inadequacy. And now I have a, instead of, you know, when I was a Christian for two years, I had two years of, you know, sin as a Christian, I'm wrestling now I've got 40, no 26 years. And it's like, my word, you know, thank you, Jesus. It's kind of like, you know, it's in Paul's last letter when he says, I am, I am the chief of all sinners, you know? Um, I feel that, you know, and I don't want to overly, I'm not that reformed anymore, sort of, you know, so I don't, it's not

that I'm a worm and always, you know. But I just have a more realistic perspective on my pursuit of God. And I cling to the fact that his loving kindness pursues me all the days of my life. Like were it not for that, I would be done. I would, as the hymn goes, you know, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. I can sing that all day long. And, you know, God, you shackled me with your grace. And I don't know, like I, and again, I, on the other hand, I do, you know, you read the Psalms and you do have both, right?

You do have objectivity and you do have subjectivity too. So I don't want to, I don't want to say all of those are bad, but I do. I like what you, I mean, I kind of, I like the fact that you said it. I don't like the content of it, you know, that some of these songs that are more subjective, which, okay, that in and of itself is okay and balanced. But when it's not wrapped up in the objectivity of what we are pursuing, that's where it becomes a little problematic.

I'm also concerned. I would love your thoughts on this. The, um, the, and I, you know, I don't know if this is, this might be offensive to some people, but the kind of like, you know, Jesus is my boyfriend, um, kind of songs. And I've gotten, you know, people push back on, on that or whatever, but my wife and I have this running joke. I'll hear her, you know, singing a song and I'm like, is that for towards me or Jesus? And she laughs. And like, I'm like, well, cause I heard you say that about me like five minutes ago, which I love. I've worn my heart. Now you're singing a, I think it's a worship song, but it's the exact same. And there's some that I, I, I wrote a blog

about it. I've just quoted some of these lyrics and I'm like, dude, I, this is great material on Valentine's day. Like, you know, and people like like, well, you know, it's the same thing. I'm like, well, it kind of isn't. I mean, there's analogies, sure. But it's our modern Western view of romantic love is not what the Bible's talking about. Like that, you know, we're not, our sexual desires are linked to our ultimate need for God. But we're not going to have sex with God. We're not having our sexual desires are linked to our ultimate need for God, but we're not going to have sex with God. We're not having sex with Jesus.

The love is not romantic in the modern Western sense. So I don't know. Am I, am I, is there anything there? Is that, is that me being overly perspicacious? Oh, there's a lot there. There's a lot there. So, I mean, think about this in, well, first of all, you mentioned Psalm 45, which is a weird song. It's a song written to Jezebel. It's written about Ahab's wedding to Jezebel. So that's a weird one. At the Psalms, we would see it's different than we think.

So in the Psalms, you do find the whole human experience, but only two times does it say anything like, I love the Lord. Really? Or I love you, Lord. So Psalm 18.1 is I love the Lord, my rock. It goes on to all this stuff about the Lord. And then Psalm 116.1 is where it says, I love you, Lord, for you have inclined your ear to me when I call. So twice in 150 songs does it say that. And Christopher Block was a professor we had in seminary, and he pointed that out. And he said, I love this.

He said, the psalmists weren't quick to assume that they loved God well, but we are. So because we sing it all the time, surely it must be true. You know, like we don't tell lies in church. We just sing them every week. Like I surrender all, like I love you with all that I am. No, you don't. Like, look at your life, you know, like you're absolutely deceiving yourself. You're not deceiving God.

So this is why I think, you know, the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Bible, the longest book in the Bible, it's all about worship. Like, it's critical how we worship, because, you know, broad brushstrokes here, when worship goes right, everything starts going right. And when it goes wrong, everything starts going wrong. And the trickiest part is when the people think it's going great, and God says it's not. So the first picture of worship in Genesis 4, half of it's unacceptable. Isaiah 1, God says, I can't stand it when you lift your hands and burn this incense. I actually... God and saying it was like, for this reason, the kingdom is going to be torn from you and given to David.

Like unacceptable worship is a common theme in the Bible. And just because we mean well doesn't mean that God's stoked about this. And so, you know, when Jesus says you've got to worship in spirit and truth, worship in reality, that's big and then hebrews 12 28 is um since we're receiving a kingdom that can't be shaken let's worship acceptably with reverence and awe for our gods of consuming fire so i think any conversation around like i just want to nibble on jesus ear and jesus or my boyfriend all that stuff like has to be sorry this is raw you said no it's good okay you can bleep any of this out or just edit um any of that has to be put into that perspective and that panoramic understanding of historically what does it mean to worship and honor god like how do we do that and i think there's just a lot of chronological kind of snobbery, like generational snobbery.

Like there's a lot of songs that came out, you know, 20 years ago. And this goes back to one of your earlier questions, like what's shifted since I started and to where I'm at now. What have I seen? There's a lot of like we're the ones like we are the generation. the generation. Let us be the ones. And that just ties in with all the rest of our kind of impatience and self-absorption and all that stuff. But man, I think like what God wants to do in our generation is probably beautiful, but we're probably not like God's answer to the cosmos. You know, we might raise God's answer to the cosmos. Like we might, we might actually, but, but usually we're just like so obsessed with ourselves. And so this gets into kind of the third, the third semester of worship school where we, we teach people growth is one thing, reproduction is another. And if you

never recognize the difference between your own growth and the need for you to actually multiply what God's done. And you don't need to multiply you. We don't need more of you. It's just that people need to see the life of Jesus worked out and someone like you to get a vision sometimes for how it works could even work for themselves. Until we make that shift, we'll just keep thinking it's all about us. And even worship is all about us. us like it's really crazy how many songs let me count sometime church like um not to pull you out of just the bliss and the ecstasy that i'm sure you experience every second in corporate worship now but like um take a moment and count how many of the lines are actually missional you know like they're actually for other people or for the world

or for the nations because when you read the psalms there's like tons of missional stuff in there which is fascinating because it's thousands of years old in a highly tribal time um there's not other ancient religious literature that's like that it's about like all the nations will will see and everyone will come to the to zion or whatever like all the other religions and all the literature is all very tribal like you would expect and there's some of that in the old testament of course but there's also a lot of beautiful missional stuff so psalm 67 right god bless us be gracious to us cause your face to shine upon us that your way may be known on all the earth and then that's verse one two and then the verse seven the last verse is like god blesses us so that the ends of the earth may fear him so just like israel like

loved being the blessed and favored well usually loved being the blessed favored people of god but didn't really want to like be the blessing and instrument of god's favor to the rest of the nations we're just we're just like that and so our worship music is primarily and predominantly about what Jesus has done for us. So he's welcomed us. He's washed us. He's forgiven us. He's loved us. But we're supposed to actually become like him and that we welcome others.

We forgive others. We pursue others. We love them. But we divorce, like we divorce all that missional stuff. And that's the reason, Isaiah 1, that God comes down so hard on that worship is unacceptable because the next verse says you haven't taken care of the orphans and the widows. You haven't you have dissociated this one aspect from this other. And it doesn't work like that. You can't just worship in spirit or truth. You actually have to do both. And it's so easy to find worship in spirit or truth.

I just realized this. You mentioned Isaiah 1, and then you have Jesus in Matthew 15, where worship, or when God criticizes worship, it's often linked with the behavior that's not following it. Like worship and behavior just are intertwined. I mean, it's kind of like the behavior that's not following it. Like worship and behavior just are intertwined. I mean, it's kind of like, well, duh, obviously. But I'm just wondering if we really believe that, how would we approach worship? Maybe even how would worship leaders or worship pastors? Because I don't know when's the last time I've heard a worship pastor or leader give any kind of thought on obedience that should correlate this next song? Hey, we're going to sing about this. If anybody has sin in their life, you know, now's the time to invite

God to, you know, address that. If, hey, come see us afterwards, confess your sins, get help, you know, so that your worship isn't in vain. You know, I don't know. I don't know if I've heard too many warnings like, hey, make sure you're not worshiping god in vain right now because that's really dangerous right well so go back to the whole like there is song of solomon in the bible there are a couple mentions to loving the lord you know in the old testament stuff but but put it back in the context like today if i told my wife all the time and even saying it to her that I loved her, but I never actually served her or made time for her or listened or sacrificed for her. Like she'd be offended. It's only a matter of, yeah, yeah. It's she'd be like, stop telling me that it's not true. You know? So

you can say something all you want until you're blue in the face. It doesn't mean make it true. Your life makes it true or it doesn't. And so that's where the heightened subjectivity is a little alarming. Because it does make, if you crank up the subjectivity and the worship primarily is about like, how much we're going to that and how hard we're going to this, you know, like it makes people either liars or watchers. They either lie and sing it and they know it's not true. Or like you said, they just kind of watch because they don't want to be untrue to themselves, you know. But if we as pastors of people using these songs, it's not, again, like, we actually did a verse-by-verse study.

Mirror Worship, one of our students, did a verse-by-verse study through the whole book of Psalms and looked at the objectivity and subjectivity thing. Yeah. What did he come up with? It's pretty close. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that actually doesn't fit at all. There's stuff about, like, you know, nature.

That's not about like, you know, nature. That's not about God objectively. There's stuff about enemies and idols. There's a lot of stuff if you go through the Psalms that doesn't fit anywhere in our worship, which should make you ask some questions too. But we do need both of those things. We need stuff about God and we need our response. It's just that if all we give is the response, I think we alienate a lot of people instead of giving people opportunity to let's think about God and then trust that He can actually provoke a response of confession or surrender or recommitment or whatever. And the thing I've been talking to some of our guys about in mere worship is like, um, Anne Lamott has this great line.

She's two or hallelujah. Anyway, I love that. Hallelujah. Anyway, it's such a beautiful, like that. That's the best call to worship I've heard in a long time. Right. And I love that because it's like, if the leader isn't really leading the people, it's just leading the song, then it lets people either worship, lie or watch. But if the leader is recognizing like not everybody does surrender all in this room and not everybody does give it all and love the Lord with all their heart, soul and soul.

So like if the worship recognizes that, then they can they can sing a song like I surrender all and say, you know, after they've done it or to set it up. Don't just sing the song because you have surrendered at all. Sing the song because you want to. You know, you need to. Don't don't just sing it because you've got it. Sing it because you need it. You know, don't just raise your hands because you are so surrendered. That's what we normally think. Like, I don't want to lift my hands because I know that I haven't been surrendered. But if the worship pastor would go, don't just do it because you're already so

faithful. Do it because you're so unfaithful. But you need a faithful God so badly to help you be more faithful. Well, now I can come kneel, not just because I'm humble, but because I'm so proud, but I want to be humble. Or I might not even want to be humble, but I know that I want to want that. Well, come kneel, not just because you're so humble, but because you want to be and you need the humility of Christ. So if the worship pastor is mindful of these things, I think it's like all things become permissible. Like they might not be very beneficial. Like in the same way that Paul's saying that about other stuff, I think if our mindset is right, we can actually use

all kinds of inadequate tools. And any song is going to be an inadequate tool, right? I mean, it's episodic poetry. It's not the Iliad. It's not Beowulf. Like even the songs are episodic or lyrical poems, right? They're not these huge things. So lyrical poetry, episodic poetry can only say so much. It's going to have to leave huge gaps. So any song is never going to state the whole thing, but we can at least be

mindful over time, wow, you know, we've really pretty much just emphasized all of our favorite things about God, and we've never actually entertained at all these trickier parts of the character of God that also need considering and meditation. If we're not mindful of any of that, I think we'll just go down the stream of culture. And I see no evidence to believe that culture is going to take us closer to scripture when it comes to worship. Yeah, not too much there. I'm curious about going to, I appreciate that you aren't going to kind of like give the A to Z kind of, here's how you lead a worship service, and that's not your main focus. I am still curious. I've been in, you know, like you, been in many different churches. And so I experienced many different

kinds of worship. And there are some, let me just give three general categories. The first two are negative. One category is it's just boring. And I know that because 10% of the people are singing to another 40% are kind of moving their mouths. Every other, they're kind of standing there. And then the other 50% aren't singing. Typically, mostly men.

They're not just standing there waiting for the sermon. The worship leaders just jam in. It's almost like they're not even aware that nobody's really into this. And then there's always

one person in the front row that's like, arms up in the air, waving a flag, doesn't realize nobody's with them behind them. I would say a lot of those kind of experiences and i'm like why why are we what i would i would it would be

more profitable for me to be out in the hallway talking to maybe a newcomer or something or you know like i don't need to stand here and be i don't know and it's hard and i'm like well i just need to for i need to for i need to get into it's not the end it's like i I'm like, well, I just need to, I need to, I need to get into it. It's not the, and it's like, I'm just like forcing words out of my mouth. And half the time the songs are like, I don't, do I believe that? And, you know, I don't think that's theologically accurate or I'm not surrendering, you know? So it's just, it's just, I'm gonna be honest. It can sometimes be an agonizing experience. Then there's other, maybe on the other extreme where it's so rev you up, where I'm just like getting exhausted with how people are just, and I'm not, I'm not at all against emotion. Okay. Please.

I mean, the essential part of human nature, but it does seem to be just like, it's the motivation seems to be, if we can just rev up people as emotionally as we can, they're running around on stage back and and forth, and just like, come on, people. That gets equally annoying. And then there's the more positive. And I can't put my finger on what makes it this, but I do sense the Spirit of God in authentic ways. I do feel like I am being drawn into God's presence in a unique corporate manner and space and time. The worship does seem meaningful. There is a blend of subjectivity, objectivity, or even let's just say emotion and cognitive challenges. It's kind of a both and. Does that resonate with you? Are you like, yeah, I've been in all three? Oh, sure. And how do you create, but how do you create that?

How do you, what are, are there some just real practical things that a worship leader, worship pastor can and should do to cultivate, for lack of better terms, meaningfulness during the singing time at church? Yeah, I do think that there are. So like I said, it starts with the leader having a life worthy of their calling. So Ephesians 4.1 kind of thing. So that's – OK, assuming that that's there, which is a huge assumption. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.

I'm not 100 percent willing to make, but let's just say that it's there. there are ways that a worship pastor can get a lot more traction within a culture of moving a culture forward in their adoration of God, their surrender, worship, whatever you want to say. And some of those steps would involve and include things like bringing some historical perspective to this time. Here's why we're doing this, you know, bringing some biblical handles to these amorphous concepts that we're singing about. So, I mean, the whole conversation about worship is a really tricky one because we end up using words that we don't use in anywhere else in our lives. So we're ascribing glory? Like, who talks like that? You know, like, we

end up talking in ways that are just foreign to us. So as worship pastors, I think we can give people actual handles then to actually get what we're talking about. So, you know, instead of just singing I Surrender All,

we keep going back to the song, and assuming that they know what an Ebenezer is and Come Thou Founts, like we could actually give people some either historical or scriptural or just personal handles. And I think we should be balancing all three of those. So, you know, it might be a simple song like How Great Is Our God. You could give a personal testimony to, you know, I wasn't really feeling this song this week, but worship's not about what I feel.

I want us to confess this, even maybe in defiance of how we're feeling. Let's confess this. So that's one thing. Or you could do a biblical, give them a biblical handle of, I mean, the songs from Psalm 104, right? Like the stuff that Psalm 104 says about God, like we're about to sing, sing that today. And no matter where you're at, like, it's good for us to sing this because it's about him. Or on I Surrender All, you know, you might, you might be a church where people lift up holy hands, or you might be a church where if you raise up a holy hand, you better ask a holy question. Like, no matter what kind of church this is, you know, actually in Psalm 28 too, it says,

Hear the voice of my supplication as I call to you for help, and I lift up my hands to your most holy place. So in Psalm 28, there's this picture of someone lifting their hands, saying, Lord, I need you. So if at any point during our time this morning, you just kind of recognize there's part of your life where you still really need God for anything, for breakthrough, for salvation, provision, healing, whatever, I would encourage you to engage your body with that prayer. Some of you are coming in here not really desperate and just barely hanging on. Some of you are coming in really strong. And it was a wonderful week, and God's been good to you.

Well, there's other psalms for that, for lifting our hands. So Psalm 63, I'll praise you as long as I live. In your name, I'll lift my hands. So if at any point this morning, you just want to bless God, you want to praise God, well, that's a way that you can do that. Just that posture can be, God, I praise you. And so all I'm doing there is saying, here's this experience or this emotion or where you're at. And here's a scripture that they were feeling the same thing. Let's practice that scripture in our time together. Or to the kneeling thing, you know, it's like we could go all the way through the Bible, lifting hands.

But to switch, Psalm 95, come let us worship and bow down. Let's kneel before the lord our maker like when was the last time you bowed to anything some cultures that's normal like you know asian cultures you bow out of respect um muslim cultures they bow over and over while they pray towards allah like isn't it unfortunate that other cultures are way more reverent of their gods than we are with ours like when was the last time you just knelt before god and confessed like you are weak but he is strong like you don't have what you need he has everything it when was the last time you confessed any of that and worship culture is not going to take you there because um worship culture is

primarily driven by a few engines that are charismatic, Pentecostal, and triumphalistic. So everything is up and to the right. We're going from glory to greater glory. We're going to get the breakthrough. I'm going to get the miracle, all the stuff. And there's a place for that. But if it's not countered by the other confession that sometimes we don't get healing, and can our worship survive that too, then I think we're just setting people up to be, um, good grief. I'm disappointed at best, but disenchanted eventually. Well, everything you're saying,

the common denominator is the worship leader should be talking and teaching and explaining. And, and cause that's one thing like when I, it's hard for me, talking and teaching and explaining. And, and cause that's one thing, like when I, it's hard for me when, and like, I want to real quick caveat. I am so thankful for people that simply say, Hey, I will serve this church in some way because 90% of people don't do anything. So hats off to you who are trying to do something you want to serve or giving up of your time and, and these things so um i would encourage well

on that note like when somebody's leading a corporate worship and it's kind of like no it's just like sing a song and then there's like that awkward like 20 second pause of silence while they're flipping the sheet music or scrolling all right for our next song you know boom and it's just like i don't know like and maybe it's just me, but I'm just like, it just feels like, are we worshiping or just singing three songs in prep for the message? Wait until, you know, like I, it just doesn't feel, it doesn't feel fluid, doesn't feel natural.

I guess it just feels awkward really to me. I mean, so do you, I mean, do you think by and large it is essential for a worship pastor to be kind of talking up there or being able to speak to the congregation, explain and do these things? Maybe essential might be too strong, but I don't know. Well, dude, in some of the Psalms, you know, you find like superscriptions, right? Like Psalm 103, a Psalm of David. A lot of these superscriptions they don't think were like original. They got added somewhere along the way.

But then a lot of the Psalms, there's no superscription at all. I think that sometimes we need to set up what we're doing for it to be coherent. I think a lot of it is clunky and just incoherent if we're not threading it together elegantly. I just, I really value elegance and beauty. And in the same way that this conversation is just naturally flowing, one thing leads to the next. I think our conversation with God should kind of just flow, right? But if it's just like, all right, song one that has nothing to do with song two, which has nothing to do with song three, if the songs don't naturally integrate well and make a coherent flow of thoughts, then I think we need to provide

those ligaments, right? So you need tendons and you need ligaments and these things to connect. I mean, the bones are the big, they're carrying the weight, but without need ligaments and these things to connect i mean the the bones are the big they're carrying the weight but without the ligaments like just the littlest ligament right like the whole thing is going to be awesome my buddy just um one of my friends here in colorado we've been skiing a lot together he just tore his acl it's the tiniest little ligament and just had surgery on it we're both like getting older we need to stay off the terrain park i broke my knee two months ago he tore his ACL so thankfully my knee is healing a lot quicker but his ACL is gonna be nine months right so nine months for the tiniest little thing and the little things make the biggest difference in

worship leadership because I think the little things that the leader adds are like the ligaments to the structural building blocks you know the songs or the set are are carrying the weight hopefully there's like liturgical depth and something older than than 20 years old in this you know hopefully that's there but if it's not and the if the church is like we don't do that we don't do anything book of common prayer i remember once i was doing an event with francis and it was francis and david platt and there's this big multiply event in birmingham and there were like a hundred thousand people watching online or something right for a secret church or whatever it was and i was in the

meeting i was like wow i mean there's people from a hundred different countries or whatever like might be cool to to start the night with a call act from the Book of Common Prayer or something just to say, hey, we're all united in this thing. And it was not met with a lot of favor. It's like, let's stick to scripture. And I was like, I mean, most of the Book of Common Prayer is scripture, but that's OK. We can just do that. It's fine. So if the leader can just pay attention to the ligaments uh i do think they

need to be fluent at that but you know at i'm used to my church in atlanta it was basically like the the worship leader and the senior leader and that's it the only people on stage every week so i was just very accustomed and comfortable with every ligament, whether that's the invocation, the benediction, exhortation, or just like announcements, you know, or setting up tithes and offerings. I'm real comfortable with all that. At New Life, they've kind of got these wingman figures who come up and they do all that heavy lifting. So it's interesting. At New Life, it's almost like if i'm doing a lot of talking it's distracting because there's already so much other so much going yeah yeah that's good yeah i just

think you just be sensitive and be emotionally intelligent be self-aware and then be others aware and you're going to be fine and be empathologically trained i've got uh one let me see yeah oh we're coming up on an hour here are you doing okay in time you got a one more question or what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I probably need to leave in the next five minutes. All right.

Well, I got a bomb of a question. Okay. I got a bomb of a question. What's the CCCL, CCCI. Yeah. Okay.

So here, here, I have a concern about that and let me, let me, okay. And maybe I, I have more than one. Okay. And maybe I might not have all my facts straight. From what I understand, every church has to subscribe to CCCI?

CCLI. CCLI. CCLI. And if... Christian Copywriting Licensing International or something like that. are. And if you write a worship song that makes it kind of big and is on there, then for every of the hundreds of thousands of churches that are singing that song, you get, I mean, what could be a ton of money. Now, from a marketing standpoint, Now, from a marketing standpoint, that would seem, it seems like there could be a massive financial motivation.

And as one who makes money off ministry, I'm not against at all. And yet I'm also very nervous. It's that weird tension of like, am I doing ministry and getting paid for it because it's an outflow of the need for the ministry and gifting and calling and all that? Or am I simply doing something because it's financially beneficial and the more I do it, the more, you know, that's always a tough tension. But I am nervous about the market being driven by that kind of financial motivation, especially in worship songs, so that the one way to really make it big, make it bigger than you could play in bars the rest of your life, or even maybe some small stadiums. Like you write a song that

takes off and is sung by churches. It doesn't need to be theologically sound. It doesn't need to be deep. It could take you two minutes to write. It doesn't, none of this really, the common denominator is does, do the masses want to sing it? If they do, you can make a ton of money. My assumption is that could create an environment where you have loads of people clamoring for that runaway worship song, regardless of whether that is an outflow of whether their pursuit of God or whatever. I don't know. Is anything what I'm describing here, is that accurate? And should I be concerned about that? Well, bro, I mean, how could you not be concerned, right?

I mean, yes, the system, a friend of mine actually built that system years back. And he did it so that people who are gifted and called by god to write songs for the church could do that and um be able to do it full time so it was actually built with the noblest you know aspirations of course like it's blue it's ballooned and now like the amount of money going to these people isn't like enough to make a living on stuff to buy a yacht with. And so it's all just shifted. It goes back to character, obviously. But the thing that I would point out about it is it does create a pyramid that just looks a lot like the world systems where, you know, you can only have so many people at the top.

where, you know, you can only have so many people at the top. And so within CCLI, in the top 100 songs, those are written by, how many songwriters would you guess have contributed to the top 100 songs in CCLI? Think about around the world. I'm going to guess maybe like 10 or something or 20. Yeah, you'd be very close. I think it's 18 okay um if you go to the top 200 songs it goes to like 25 oh and of those top 100 100 of them are written by white men

okay so we've got huge problems here because what we've been called to be is royal priesthood where everybody has a part to play every nation is dignified bringing the uniqueness of their cultures this is what we're supposed to be a part of but we don't want a royal priesthood we don't want god to be our king give us all so what we have in like worship celebrity is like a pyramid system where there can only be so many people on top and what that means is there's just—you've never probably even heard songs written from Malawi or Uganda or China. You've probably never even heard one. But I promise you the churches in those countries are singing Chris Tomlin songs. Now, it's a beautiful thing that what God's doing in one country can go out into others.

It's a disgusting thing when the country that's exporting everything is never importing anything. So we aren't dignifying the nations. We aren't discipling. We're not honoring. We're colonizing them. We're just sending them our stuff. And heaven will not be like that. And the thing that's heartbreaking about CCL, I like, and again, it's easy for me to poke holes in it because I've never, my royalty checks are basically invoices. They basically tell me what I still owe. It's like, I was a bad bet. Okay. But I have lots of good friends who they make a full, they make, they make their full salary

off of those royalty statements um if those resources just like any other resources are being used to raise other people up and to give other people power and to give other people a platform that's what i see jesus doing when he has all authority in heaven and earth he's using it to lift others up and to empower others the you know the only problem that i have with any of that pyramidal system aside from philosophically it's opposed to the priesthood of of every high place being brought down and every low place being brought up aside from that

all that source um isn't going isn't going to lift others up. I think every year those CCLI numbers should be more and more reflective of a multinational church, a multi-ethnic church, a global church where everyone is bringing their contribution. That's what I see in Revelation is that's the consummation of this whole thing. Not everyone singing 18 people's songs. Like, I promise there's not just 18 anointed songwriters in the world writing songs for the church. It's just our system has only honored that, and then it kind of self-perpetuates, right? So at 10,000 Fathers, what we're actively trying to do, we're not trying to dismantle that pyramid or anything, but we're just trying to do a whole different thing. And we're trying to empower hundreds of people to write songs for their churches. And we're trying to tell them, look, if you're counting on this to pay for your son's college, go play the lottery.

That's a better investment. That's a better investment, you know. But if you will just recognize there's such beauty in this craft of writing a song for your church and such an opportunity to shift the culture in your community by creating artifacts, so songs or sermons, whatever, that your community adopts and adheres to and celebrates, then you're going to see so much fruit from this long term that it's going to be more than worth it. You know, the last thing I'll say about any of this is like the way that songs work is it's like movies, like hits. It's hit driven. We need the song to go to number one. And then over time, it will just slide down the rankings until it's just kind of forgotten.

I would be curious to see i haven't done the study on this i wish somebody would but like the the speed at which the alacrity at which a hit goes to a forgotten song so everyone sings it how quickly these days um is no one singing it because it wasn't built uh to be able to stand up to hundreds of listenings or years of singing. It's just kind of built like our iPhones. Like awesome when it comes out and in three years you're going to have to get the new one. That is new. Again, historically through the church, there's not like thousands and thousands of songs that were really big hits

and then they just dissipated. And that's not how Jesus ever portrays the kingdom coming. Jesus uses pictures like planting seed in the ground, or leaven in dough. It's like, songs need to be explosive, but explosions make a big mark and then they just dissipate to nothing. Where seeds and leaven, they're so small, they're easy to miss. But over time, they shift everything. So I think that the whole system, I love that there's – I mean, what an incredible gift as a songwriter to be able to make any money from what we do for the church. That's amazing. But if the character stuff isn't there, and why would it be? These leaders haven't been formed. And if there's not a perspective that everything God gives us is not

just for us, it's to give away, then I think the pyramid's just gonna, well, it's the same thing as wealth in America, right? It's trickle down, economics is a joke. Like the rich just get richer and the poor get poorer, and that's happening in the church too. Unfortunately, that means that I think we're missing out on the treasure that God has instilled in the different nations of the world, because you know,

how great is our God? Sorry, how great thou art is the second most beloved hymn of all time behind Amazing Grace. Well, how great thou art was not written in English. It's not an American song. It was written in Swedish. It's called Ostorgud in the 1800s. And then it was so beloved in Sweden that it got translated into German, then Russian, and eventually into English. And I just mentioned that because I can't even imagine church without how great thou art. Like it was part of, I mean, we sang a lot as a kid, you know, it's still up there. And I just can't help but wonder what songs are we missing because we're not paying attention to what God's doing in the other countries. We're only exporting what God's done in ours. We don't have time, but I would love maybe when I have you back on,

we can talk about what can we do to tap into and do more importing than exporting from other countries. I've got a friend who's in Nepal. He's Nepalese. And off-the-chart musician, dude. And him and three other friends in Nepal and the jungles in Nepal wrote a worship album. It's all in Nepalese, Nepali. I think they have one English song it's it's beautiful beautiful i mean just i'm like how can we like but this obviously we'll never make it in but like is there something we can do to open up some of

those floodgates um because music is rich music is such a deeper part of many other cultures. I mean, it is of every culture, but other cultures, I feel like it's even more just intertwined with so much more depth and meaning and cultural significance and spiritual significance. It's like, man, we're, like you said, we are so missing out, but I don't, if someone said, okay, well, how do we get that? I'm like, man, that's, that's, I don't know. I'm sure you got some thoughts on that, but you got to go, man. I'm probably keeping you late. I do. I mean, I just, I can hit that real quick. Like, um, there's two things we can do. One, we can pay attention and listen to what are the songs that God is birthing in other countries and other languages. And you might not understand anything

that it's saying. That's fine. There's, you don't understand what a classical piece is doing to you either you know like there are levels to you that are sub-cerebral and it can still affect you and so i've done this like i i actually met with the christian music publishers association this is a global organization that basically uh any country that has like a big infrastructure of worship songs they're the heads of those countries all meet every year. And so a few years ago, I met with those guys to try to lobby this case. Like guys,

where are the songs from Italy? And where are the songs from Denmark? You know? And so I'm like, send me those songs because if we will pay attention to those, and then we'll learn the craft of not song translation, but song reimagination. You can't translate a song. There's too much linguistic stuff going on that has a motive purpose. Right. So you have to actually rewrite the song in English.

in English. But I've done this with probably 10 or 15 songs in the last five or 10 years that were native Danish songs, Swedish songs, one from, I don't remember where in Africa, but I'll hear these songs that I've never heard anything like that. We've never sung anything like that in my church. And I'll get in touch with the writer and go, could you and I work together on an English version of this song? It's not going to be word for word. It's not even going to be line for line. We're just going to try to make the heart of the song work well in English so that my church could sing them. So I've done that with lots of different songs. And those, I'm telling you, those were some of my church's favorite songs to sing in Atlanta. That's so cool. That's so awesome.

So that's a start. But I mean, we would pay attention. And then we have to actually learn what makes these songs work in those languages. What would make them work in English? So that's hard work. I pitched that to all these publishing heads, about 20 people in Amsterdam a few years ago, hoping that every year they would send me their 10 best worship songs. Because I was like, we've trained hundreds of people how to write songs technically, how to get in there in the weeds. And I was like, we will crank out great English versions of these songs with the original writers if you'll send me the songs. And nobody ever sent

me their songs. I think they were like, oh, we'll take that from here. Thanks very much. Aaron, where can people find you and your work? I mean, Aaron keys.com, right? Uh, is that your main website? I guess I still have that website.

I haven't looked at that in about a decade. Um, I'm on it right now. Aaron, Aaron keys. Uh, it looks like, yeah,

it looks like for some reason I'm seeing monkey, but it's Aaron keys. Cause the last, Oh, um, yeah. A, A, R OA-R-O-N Keys, K-E-Y-E-S. I guess if you're listening to the podcast, you know what his name looks like. And then where else? Yeah, worship.school is the 10,000 Fathers website where people can find out more about that. We have new classes that start twice a year in the fall and in the spring. So just this last week, we had about 75 worship pastors in from around the world

for three different intensives. That was really cool. So worship.school, if they're interested in finding out more about the deep dive, that is, I mean, it's intense. It's amazing. But then mirrorworship,

so M-E-R-E, mirrorworship.com, if they're just looking to kind of put their toes in the water or they want to have more conversations kind of like this in a community of like-minded people where we're all kind of growing together. Mirror Worship is the last place I would say to check out. Awesome. Thanks so much, bro, for being on Theology in a Row. We got to do this again very soon. Thanks, Preston. I loved it, man. Appreciate it. Appreciate you. Take care.