Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep998: #998 - Contemporary Christian Worship: Is it Biblical or just Contemporary? Aaron Keyes

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Aaron Keyes is a singer/songwriter, pastor, speaker, and has not only been a worship leader for over 20 years, but has discipled and trained hundreds (if not thousands) of other Christian worship leaders. What I love most about Aaron is that he’s incredibly thoughtful and meaningful, and has been trying to restore a more pure, rooted, and theologically rich form of worship in the contemporary church. In this second TITR conversation with Aaron, we talk about the contemporary scene of Christian worship–the pros, the cons, the good, and the goofy, with an aim to help the church get back to a more holistic rhythm of worship, one that celebrates the goodness of God and also laments and protests the evil in the world.  For more about Aaron: https://www.aaronkeyes.com/welcome –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/theology –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– 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 Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you have not signed up for the Exiles in Babylon conference for 2023, then I would encourage you to do so on at theologyintheraw.com. All the info for that conference is there. You can attend live here in Boise or attend online virtually. If you do want to attend live, you want to sign up sooner than later because we sold out last year and we'll probably sell out this year as well. My guest today is Aaron Keyes. If you're an avid listener to the podcast, you might remember my episode with Aaron a bit over a year ago where we talked about worship, worship culture, theology of worship, talked about the church. Loved, loved, loved my conversation with Aaron. He's one of my most respected worship leaders and worship gurus in the church, primarily

because he's so incredibly thoughtful and honest. He has spent a couple of decades as a worship leader for a few churches, has been, I mean, he's a singer, songwriter, musician, and he has, over the last several years, ran a worship school, which he's going to talk about on the podcast. And he has a huge heart for raising up future worship leaders who are not just good musicians, who are not just good performers, but who are good men and women of God who love Jesus and have a heart for discipleship and are theologically sound. So if I know anything about my audience that listens to this podcast, I'm pretty sure most of you are really going to resonate

with at least much, if not all, of what Aaron has to say about a theology of worship. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Aaron Keyes. I wanted you to talk about, for as long as you want, just your theology of worship, maybe integrated with your experience. And I definitely want to talk about, or have you talk about as much as you want, 10,000 Fathers and the various ministry spaces that you're working in. Sure. Okay. Bro, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I in. Sure. Okay. Bro, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love this podcast. I have looked up to you and the contribution you bring in the kingdom of so many different areas, sectors, just thinking, can we do this better? You've got a real grace for that. How do we do this better? And that's what I've been trying to do for 25 years in the worship space. So about 15 years ago, I started getting hit up by more and more pastors saying, hey, do you know anyone who can come be our worship leader? Because we've got good singers and musicians, but we don't have anyone that can like pastor us and shepherd us and make disciples.

And so, you know, that was over the course of several years of traveling with a band, leading worship, different conferences, stuff like that. And so the more pastors that I started hearing from, the more burden I started feeling of, we got to do something about this. And it's not like, especially 15 years ago, there weren't seminaries training worship leaders. It's not a very, like, you know, critical community as far far as really doing deep study and rigorous theology. It was all pretty nascent and malleable and sentimental and a lot of beautiful things, but also a lot of not very critical things, not very thoughtful things. And so we basically bought a house. God did a couple really cool miracles, man.

He provided a house where we could build out a basement in Atlanta and guys could just come live with us indefinitely, live with us for six months, live with us for a year. And we could do discipleship the only way that we'd ever really seen it, which was come live with me, come follow me, you know, not mentorship. I had done mentorship before with younger worship leaders, like, done mentorship before with younger worship leaders, like, let's meet and we'll talk about this book. But it's like, internship, mentorship is so far away from discipleship, where mentorships come meet with me, discipleships come follow me. And so it just felt like we needed to invite people into our lives. And to do that, it needed to be like in our home. So God provided a home. And then I was still traveling a good bit with the band, and so God provided a bus.

So we had Leanne Rimes' old tour bus for 10 years. It smelled like somebody had been murdered in that thing. It was rank. Anyway, we won't get into that. So God kick-started this ministry, and we just called it worship school. For the first couple of years, we just had four guys come live with us, six months at a time, 12 months at a time. And then over the years, more and more people started reaching out saying, hey, I'm a worship leader, but I've never been trained. Can I come live with you?

And I was like, well, aren't you married with five kids? They're like, yeah. Can I come live with you? I'm like, no, no, you can't. We need to rethink this. So we spent some time tweaking the model, moving from residential discipleship to more cohort-based intensives. So that's still what we're doing now. So for about the last 12 years, worship school has looked a lot more like come for a week and then do weekly coaching online, come back for a week, weekly coaching, come for a week. So 18 months of training where we basically spend six months diving deep into the character that needs to be there for a worship pastor, then six months on the competency that needs to be

there. And then lastly, like the calling to make disciples and how to build community where you are. So it's kind of the best of the best content I wish someone would have given me. You know, not only like when I was just getting started and not only in terms of songwriting and set planning, but in terms of like marriage and family and friendships and like living an actual life of worship instead of just singing songs about it. And so because the worship space has been historically, you know, from its beginning in about the late 60s, even to now, historically, it's been, well, it's very young. And it's been driven by a lot of young people. You know, when you're in your twenties, it's just kind of, it feels good. It's like get into a groove. It's

kind of like drum circles, you know, you just kind of get into it and you just flow for a little while and you go into whatever like trance you want to get into. And some of that is great and beautiful and whatever. But in your forties, I have kids in college. It's just different now. You know, I'm not thinking like that anymore. And a mentor of mine told me once, like, once your kids get into late teenage years, that's the hardest stage of your faith. Because all the naivety and all the simplistic answers, all of that stuff that worked no longer works. Once they've come back from taking a few philosophy classes or religion classes or once a maniacal authoritarian dictator in Russia starts launching missiles into shopping malls, all the easy answers and the Jesus is my boyfriend kind of stuff just doesn't really work anymore. It feels like out of tune.

There's a serious discord between my reality and what we're singing about in this ministry. And so as time has gone on, I've gotten older, did seminary. It just got more and more apparent to us that we've got to take worship more thoughtfully, and we've got to be more serious, and we need to be more studious, and we need to be more scriptural. Because in the Psalms, the Psalms just don't screen out any human experience. But then in our worship services, we screen out everything that's not just very positivistic, triumphalistic. Everything is always, God's so good. This is also great.

Everything's up and to the right. When everyone in my church is struggling through a pandemic or struggling with Supreme Court decisions or struggling with national hostility and volatility and political, like, it has been a complicated couple of years, you know? And I don't know, because all of our senior pastors, most of our senior pastors, they've been through divinity school. A lot of them have post-doctorate degrees. They've wrestled with ecclesiology and church history, and they're not looking at what's coming into our churches as unprecedented. They're like, oh, no, it's way worse than the Dark Ages. They have a different perspective because they've been trained.

The worship pastors have not. So the worship pastors are just kind of following culture, going down the stream of whatever's popular. And there's a lot of good stuff in that stream, but not all of it is really fitting for this moment. Actually, less and less of it seems to be just because it's hard to fit lament into a worship service if you kind of want everyone to have good vibes and leave wanting to come back next week. No one wants to come to church and cry their eyes out about the brokenness of the world. I've often thought about that. Like you mentioned, I mean, several things you've mentioned.

I'm like, yeah, I have felt that. I haven't seen a lot of people say that, that, you know, if I'm in a more middle class, more primarily white kind of suburban church, that that triumphal God is good. I love you with all my heart, kind of like everything just so positive. And I just wonder how much of that is shaped by our position of privilege, you know, and then when I am in churches that aren't in positions of privilege, you know, or especially if you travel overseas and they're in a more persecuted country, just worship feels very different all the way from the content of the lyrics to the posture

to the desperation to to the theme of lament that seems to be much more i feel bad i feel bad even saying this because it sounds but you kind of mentioned like like just over emphasis on how good god is and like you you you feed the hungry you take care of things you rescue us you those are scriptural themes but they're not the only scriptural themes and i just i just always think of like you know statistically 20 to 25 percent of people singing in church have been sexually abused by a close relative or a trustworthy person and most of them have not really dealt with that you have people that wrestle with various disabilities some can be pretty debilitating you have people that have been through physical abuse or neglect or emotional abuse you have i mean if you add up

the deep deep pain many times undealt with that's a pretty high percentage in in the church and everybody's just smiling god is so good i'm like he good, but I don't feel that all the time. If God, or, you know, I was with somebody, I won't say, cause they listen to the podcast and, and I don't want to even, you know, well, they're, they're known, they're pretty public with their story. But so one of my friends lost a, you know, a child at a very young age, very young age. And it was a really just brutal process. And I'm like, I've got four kids. I think you have four kids too, right, Aaron?

I do. Yeah. Can you imagine losing, picture one of your kids and losing them at six, seven, eight? I think that would be so severe to my faith. I think it would be really hard for me to sing God is good over and over and over. Even though deep down, if I'm still a Christian, of course I believe it with my head. But I think I would struggle every day to say

that. And I think it would actually be hard for me in a context where everybody's just smiling so big and God, yes, God is so good. Yes, yes. I think that would actually be hard for my faith, just the way I'm wired. I think I'd get filled with cynicism, anger, and bitterness. Am I? I don't know.

I think it'd be harmful to your soul, too. What's that? You know, I think it'd be harmful to your soul to be that disingenuous and to be that inauthentic to where you're at. Like, I mean, Gnosticism is alive and well in the church and it's in worship. It's just splitting things between the spiritual and the actual or our practical daily lives, you know. So Gnosticism was a serious problem in the early church. And it's an unaddressed one. It's kind of like, you know, carbon dioxide in the air. Like if we don't, if no one's ever ringing the alarm bell, like, hello, people are

really struggling here. I'm just afraid we're all going to fall asleep. And, you know, maybe we'll come out of that slumber eventually, but are our kids going to like, will our kids put up with that? Because our kids did their BS filter is finally tuned. Right. And so they would never have gone for a lot of the stuff that baby boomers went for. They're just like, ah, it's so cheesy or it's too whatever. And so they have a built in criticality that can become cynicism. Obviously, like, I'm not saying I'm not trying to like say this is so great, but I am saying even the prophets throughout the Bible brought a critical consciousness to things. And Jesus being the chief among them, like, no, you've heard it said this, but I'm telling you this, this is the actual issue. You've always heard this, this is the actual issue. And when it comes to like what's happening

in contemporary worship, I think we just need a little bit more thoughtfulness. We don't need cynicism, which I have to guard against, but we do need critical thoughtfulness to go, is this helping? Less Gnosticism, like where if my life is falling apart or I feel serious hatred toward a Russian dictator and I come in to worship and don't acknowledge that I hate my enemies, and how is God ever going to heal my hatred of my enemies if I won't admit that I have them? We don't think we have enemies. Well, sure we do. If the Supreme Court puts out a ruling that has 50% of the people celebrating and throwing parades and 50% of the people throwing laments, this is a great time for me as a worship pastor to put into practice, am I going to love my enemies or not? When social media, everyone's hating everyone else, like, well, do we love our enemies or do we not? Because you don't think that's a big deal until you have hatred in your heart towards people. You know, I want a concrete

example from you. You've been a worship leader for 20 years and, and, and I know now you're in a different space and I want to come back to that too, but, um, okay. The Roe v. Wade reversal decision thing. Yeah. You brought it up a couple of times. How do you practically, if, if, if you're that decision say was on a, I don't know what it was, Thursday, Friday, you're leading worship that Sunday, what would you be doing? I was preaching. What's that? I was preaching.

You were? Yeah. Well, let's start with what actually happened. What did that Sunday look like for you? And then if you were going to lead worship instead of preaching, what would that look like in light of severe cataclysmic shifts in culture? Yeah. Well, I'd also mention, like, that's not the only decision that they've made recently. There's climate stuff that they're doing.

There's gun stuff that they're doing. There's abortion. Like, there's a lot happening very fast. And since I'm not the senior pastor of the church, so I help lead worship twice a month at my church at New Life Downtown. So since I'm not the senior pastor and God has not put me in that position, as soon as all that stuff started going down, I reached out to the pastors and said, I'm preaching this Sunday. What do you want me to do? This is your flock, not mine. But I'm on deck to communicate to them, what angle do you want me to take?

And so we try to, um, not be, you know, um, just savvy, but to be, uh,

pastoral and to shepherd. Well, what I felt like they needed here, but that was the main thing that I wanted to communicate was because at our church, we would have people on both sides of any of these issues. Um, it's not monolithic,

even abortion in Colorado Springs, like that 70,30 at least? Or is, I mean... I mean, maybe I did, again, I'm not the senior pastor. So maybe it's, I don't know. I don't want to misrepresent. But I know that it's, we're not First Baptist Dallas, or we're not Robert Jeffries. So we're going to have a lot more thoughtful people coming in who would recognize headlines and talking points. Soundbites are not a good thing to basically build your opinions on. You need to do – it's usually more than one side to a story. And so the main thing that I just wanted to communicate was this whole, do we love our enemies or don't we? Because it's easy to say that, or we don't even

really say that anymore. We just don't think we have enemies. But when something like this happens, anytime you feel ire rising up in you and you are provoked or you are offended, this is a great time to recognize, well, first of all, where's the emotional reactivity coming from, right? And then what are you going to do about it? Is there vitriol? Are you just going to shoot fire at fire? Are we going to actually represent the cruciform nature of Jesus here, carry our cross, wash the feet of those who are disgusting

to us. Are we going to meet people where they are, or are we going to just do what the rest of our culture is doing? And so even if I was only leading the songs that week, I might swap a couple songs out. I might, I don't know. But I would absolutely interject at some point. And I'd probably mention how in the Bible, it's not an option to say that you love God and not love people. Like 1 John makes that really clear. How do you say you love a God you can't see if you don't even love the people that you can? Not an option. So many warnings in Scripture about splitting your love for God from your reality, your real experience.

And again, that's what I think is often happening in contemporary worship. And it's something that it's easy to happen when most of the leaders, songwriters, pioneers, that's their whole world. If you've ever seen something in orbit around the earth like it's just in constant free fall, right? And it's got to make perfect like corrections all the time to stay in constant free fall. And it just keeps orbiting around the earth because of that speed and the gravitational pull and all that stuff. So I was in that worship orbit for 25 years.

That's what I thought about. It's what I did, writing songs, going to offices, teaching school, pastoring my team. I was just in that worship orbit. And like we talked about before we hit record, I'm now, I've fallen a little bit out of that orbit. Not out of love with Jesus, not out of my convictions about worship. I'm just a little more down to earth now in my thinking about worship, where I work kind of a normal job now, and I get to help at my church on the worship team. So I work as a mortgage office, a loan officer in a bank, and I still really value that my church in Colorado, we

worship God well. And so just because of the seat that I'm sitting in now, I see things a little differently. I sit actually in a literal seat out in the congregation twice a month instead of up on stage in a piano seat. I'm in a different seat. And so where you sit determines what you see. And so I'm just thinking a lot about what we're singing and how is this hitting people who aren't also in this worship free fall, this worship orbit where they're just in constant thrall with the majesty of God. But they're actually like trying to figure out what happened. What are they going to do now that they lost half of their investment portfolio? Or what are they going to do with their kids, like I said, who are post-critical now, and the simple answers don't work for? So I'm sitting here in this new place,

thinking about the same things, I guess, in new ways. The main thing I'm always trying to think through is, how do we help people worship in their lives, not just in this moment? This moment is great, but it's just a moment. And scriptures are replete with stories and examples where great moments did not produce life-changing fruit. It didn't, you know. Psalm 106 is like in one verse, it says, it talks about how the people sang his praise and they forgot his works. Like in the same sentence, it says that, you know, like we can sing ourselves right into a frenzy that doesn't necessarily transform us or create lasting fruit. And so because most worship leaders have not been trained, they're just going with culture. And what culture is doing is just like worship is getting simpler and simpler, you know, so anyone can play it. Pretty much anyone can write it.

You don't really need to study very much. Just find a line that you like androsby writing these deep, profound lyrics. Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I awoke, my dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee. That's a long way off from jesus

i want to nibble on your ear you know what i mean like that is a long way and so what were songwriting that was studious and study and and these guys were brilliant people these are brilliant men and women like radical faithful for the long haul. Wesley's wrote 7,500 songs. That's three songs. Seriously? 7,500? 7,500. They were evangelizing a continent that was illiterate. And so they were taking all theology, putting it into music so that people could remember the gospel if they couldn't read it. And so the songs that were written and lasted for so long came from deep wells and what's interesting now is what's really popular in worship i mean it's

winning grammys the songs are so simple they're like musical tweets so i have felt that i i don't know song i don't it's weird being a non-fiction writer and songwriter i feel like are two very different worlds like i i don't understand like when people say oh i got together with my buddy and we were writing songs i don't know what that looks like i can't write with somebody else in the room or even in the house like i think you know like um and i know it's just a different kind of but like i'm gonna be totally vulnerable and just let the chips fall where they may. I do. I have a hard time with a lot of worship songs. And sometimes because I believe in the corporate body and corporate stuff and you do things, whether you like to or not, I'll just sing because that's what the community is doing

at this moment. But there's a lot of times I feel like I'm just forcing the words. I'm just forcing it out of my mouth or how or i just don't sing i just and then i feel bad i feel guilty like what i just hate jesus whatever like i don't um but there's certain songs that i'm like or moments not just songs but like tangible events during the worship service that i'm like oh i this for some reason, I just don't need to try. It just comes out of me. Those are rare. Why is that? Am I a pagan?

Am I going to lose my faith soon? I don't want to be this old hymns only. We're both about the same age. Are we turning into the kind of grumpy old man on the back that we need to bring back the hymns? Most of the songs, the popular songs, I just don't really resonate. I don't i'm just like i don't can you pastor me through this

rebuke me whatever right everybody when he's prayed for preston to fall back into his teenage puppy love jesus i wrote a blog a while back i wrote a blog a while back called jesus is my boyfriend i got so much flack for that but i said um it was sparked because my wife was singing and i kind of like was listening and i'm like are you singing about me or jesus and it was kind of a joke because i was like everything she's saying she said to me on our date last night you know and like i'm like you this is good material like i can just really capture this word for word and like just map it all on either my wife like how i feel about my wife or how i feel about jesus and i just got a creepy picture of this girl like hugging jesus kind of a little bit like erotic

not erotically well no emotionally yeah no there's plenty that is i mean it's i mean these days it's like who can find the most clever way to express how much we love Jesus? And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's not inaccurate. It is inadequate, though, for what our congregations need over time. Because, again, I think we just have to, we have to measure what we're singing, not just one song at a time, but like a season at a time, six months at a time, like look back at what we've been singing and hold it up to the standard that the Bible has given us, which is the book of Psalms and say, all right, in the Psalms, there's lots of different themes

that are highlighted. There's great, there's the goodness of God, there's the glory of God, there's the loving kindness, the mercy, but there's also like, eviscerate my enemies. You know, like, where are you, God? There's as much of that as there is of the other. And so I see it like, if you've ever seen an EQ spectrum, where there's like LEDs, like here's all the low end, you see like five different LEDs, here's the mid range, upper mid and then highs. Like in the Bible, there's all these different themes that are going up and down, and they're all Because I think we've emphasized two or three of those, you know, EQ spectra, spectrums? It sounds like a James Bond movie. We've done a few of them, but there's a lot of stuff that's missing. And I think the stuff that is missing is what's

going to kill us. It's what's going to take out the next generation. Because there's room in the Psalms for doubt. There's room in the Psalms for. Because there's room in the Psalms for doubt. There's room in the Psalms for despair. There's room in the Psalms for anger. You know, you said something about the, like, you referenced our kids a few times. I just want to, like, affirm that. At least with my kids, and I think, you know, it's anecdotal, but as I talked to teenagers and Gen Z and young 20 something college students, there is this high BS meter and the, the kind of just like forced feel

good kind of version of Christianity. It just doesn't, I don't know if this is new or if this is always true of people who are late teens, early twenties. But like, I know with my kids, like we've, we've we've had to again this is gonna sound bad there's been search like certain like church and christian environments where i've had to remove my kids because it was pushing them away from jesus because it lacked kind of the the the kind of meaningfulness um it was just very kind of like i don't know if you've seen the comedian the christian comedian michael jr about you know being over saved oh yeah oh yeah there's like a lot let's pick up a household

word like oh that environment is a little too over saved you know and that just it just pushes them away or even if they hear things that are too ironed out to feel good like it actually says oh i don't know if i want that is that christian? Cause I don't know if I want that. Like, no, no, no. Like that's a form of it, you know, but no, that's not the essence of who Jesus is. And so it's, it's, it's, I don't know what to do with that either. Like it's, it's been not the, you know, God is dead, atheist, philosopher, professor, who's like pushing him away from the faith.

It's been certain versions of Christianity that has been a huge challenge for the faith at least with my my some of my kids not all my kids but some of my kids you know and the questions they're asking are like you know my um one of my daughters we get together for trips and solace every couple weeks because she has lists of questions it's just and we go through the whole list and then within two weeks she comes back to the know and i would say at least two-thirds of those questions are more complex than any other question I've gotten from adults my generation and older. Questions I've never even heard of, never even thought about. And I'm like, I thought I kind of had heard most of the hard questions, you know. Yeah, I don't know.

So I just, I'm concerned about that, you know. And I do want meaningful, meaningful worship environments. What are the key ingredients for that? What do you teach when you, when you are discipling future worship leaders? Like what are some of the main non-negotiables where it's like, you want to be a meaningful worship leader? Here's a few things that we must build into you. worship leader, here's a few things that we must build into you. Yeah. I mean, there's lots of different shapes and tools that we use to kind of hopefully give people handles to hang on to this stuff, both in 10KFAM, which is our, that's the worship school for the fully accredited thing and in Mere Worship. So that's our subscription-based community where leaders from around the world can just hop in. There's lots of, I mean, over a 100 videos of content, me teaching like paradigms, practices of effective worship, leadership, stuff like this.

So this is what we talk about in both of those communities. For a worship leader, we'll talk about a worship leader and then the worship song. So worship leader, I think they need to be aware of three things at all times, their own personal journey, their local context, and the historical tradition that they're leading at that time. So immature leaders are only aware of their personal journey. Impersonal leaders are only aware of their local context. And then institutional leaders are only aware of their historical tradition. So I'll actually show all this on a Venn diagram. And usually you don't have someone who's just one of those.

Usually you have someone who's just two of those. And so anyway, we build this whole thing out. But I talk about the ideal leader knows their personal journey. They know where they've been. They know what they value. They know where they're gifted, what they're called to do and whether or not they can articulate all that. And the stuff that's really important to them, they, they can, they can articulate that for you. They also know the local context that they're in.

So a lot of what we've talked about so far today has been about local context because it's like, this is what's going on in people's lives. This is what's going on in the news. This is what's going on with their kids. So that's like where people are really at today, not where they should be or where we wish they would be or where they would be if they were in the worship orbit and free fall and thrall with

Jesus. This is where they're at. This is the context. And then the historical tradition is something that's never really changing. I mean, it's nuanced from one church to another, maybe one stream to the next, but we want to be connected to that. I think we really need to stay connected to the ancient rootedness of our faith. I think we need stuff that's wiser than has been tweeted. We need stuff that has been around for a thousand plus years. And so what often happens is worship leaders only connect to a couple of those, so the congregation becomes anemic because it's not fully – it's not like a healthy, balanced meal. It's only here's my favorite stuff about God. So the worship leader, that's kind of the lens I want them to see through is all three of those things, recognizing they're not conflated.

They are not to overlap. There's going to be stuff in my personal journey that I'm really passionate about when it comes to the worship of God that doesn't fit my local context. They're not totally conflated. That's okay. The church should not be where I have to get all of my creative fulfillment. I should not subject the church to my need for validation and approval for all of my musical ideas or whatever. So there's going to be stuff outside of that. So just having a healthy give and take on all of that, I think is really important. And then the way that that plays into musicality and like songs, you could swap out the language in those circles. But basically, at the top would be, I think that a great song, a helpful song is going to be all three of these

things. It's going to be artistically beautiful. So I put that in with a personal journey. You need to have developed your competency to be able to make something beautiful. It needs to be theologically insightful. Okay. And then what's the third one? Oh, it needs to be congregationally accessible. So it's really hard to find a song that's all three of those things. And we could double click on any of those, right? So artistically beautiful. What does that mean? Isn't that subjective? Well subjective well yeah there's some subjectivity but there are reasons that these great composers were still listening to bach you know there are reasons why we're still listening to stuff and there's reasons why we make fun of other songs and now they're you know nickelback or michael bolton or whatever whatever else like there there are sorry i actually like michael back is such low hanging i always i again i don't even know i just like music that

helps me to lift more weight to the gym you know so i keep hearing that michael back is not really musically like gifted or i don't know okay so artistically beautiful if we double click on that here here's the criteria that i think like worship has if they're going to write a song or if they're going to choose a song and sing a song is it both of these things okay and this this will help with beauty take the lyrics away from the music listen to the music is Is that beautiful? Like just the melody. Is that beautiful? If it is great, you're halfway there. Are lyrically take the music away.

Just read that. Is that beautiful? Or is that kind of childish? You know, sometimes like if you, if you can use it can be deceptive. So I could sing something and you could actually really feel that. But, but if I just said it, you'd be like, that doesn't make any sense.

Or that's kind of dumb. Or it doesn't hold water. So if a lyric, if you could read a lyric and it moved you, and you could just listen to the music and that move you independently of one another. And then you put those together. That's something. I feel like for me that rarely happens. People are like, well, you're Mr. PhD. You probably just analyze, overanalyze.

I actually don't. I give so much. I almost have learned to just take my theological hat off when I go to church. That sounds bad. I don't overanalyze stuff nitpick at all um right but i would i also am conscious you know and i you know and when the lyrics they half the time they're so about one's individual subject subjective experience right and i don't want to lie to myself you know i lord i love you with all my whatever you make my heart just flip over my chest like well that's not true of me so do i still say it because i'm supposed to half the time i'm like no i'm not gonna say something i don't believe

you know yeah yeah so here you give me um all hail king jesus hands down my favorite worship song right now yeah you know is that is, because I feel like that combines powerful lyrics. What is it? I don't know enough about music to know if it's beautiful, but the way it elevates and does seem to be more creative than the average song and it has a power behind, an energy behind the music

that correlates with the energy behind the lyrics. Yeah. I don't know. Am I, is that, is that a good song great and i think it's a very strong song jeremy riddle is amazing so the guy that wrote that song okay he's he's real special he has been for a very long time yeah um but you know we talked

about the subjectivity objectivity last time um i remember i don't want to get back into that but what i would like to do is on the other side of that. So we talked lyrically last time. Let's think even musically, why are you maybe not moved? Okay. And even if you're like, you're, let's say you're not really that into music. Like you don't even care. There are a lot of people in our churches who don't, music's not a big part of their life.

So I love, I love music. I don't understand music. I don't understand it. So like... And that's great. So a lot of worship leaders, their spouses aren't that into music. A lot of them that I... And again, I coach hundreds of worship leaders.

So this isn't me just projecting. Like my wife actually loves music. A lot of worship leaders' spouses love it. But I'm telling you, I coach a lot of worship leaders whose spouses could kind of give or take the whole musical part of the service. And I've just been trying to figure out, like, what is going on there? And I think that even for someone who works in construction, you know, they just want to have some beers at the end of the day. They don't care about art, about fashion. They don't care. Like, they don't want to go to see concerts. They don't care about art, about fashion. They don't care.

They don't want to go see concerts. They don't care. Even that person lives in a society where there's television, there's movies, and guess what's in every commercial? There is music that's driving everything. And the music is very intentional. The music is obviously very powerful and it's visceral. And if you've ever tried to watch a movie with the sound turned off and just read the captions, it's not as powerful. Like the sound is really emotive, right?

And so it's really interesting because we've been conditioned. And so it's really interesting because we've been conditioned, even if I don't like classical music and I don't listen to highbrow stuff, I'm a member of this society. And they're playing – when I see a Rolex commercial, they're playing Rachmaninoff or whatever. And so my antenna are conditioned to a certain level of quality that I expect. I'm just used to it being a certain level. And so, again, even for non-musical people, their antennae are up. They're constantly watching movies. They're watching shows.

They're hearing music that is intentionally chosen to get a certain effect. And that's just called prosody. When music is connected to meaning and message, the artistic term for that is just prosody. So they're used to that. Okay, so even someone who doesn't know anything about music, doesn't really even care, even for them, they're like that. So then they come into church. And they come to church, and now they're not listening to music that has necessarily been written by people who study composition and know what happens emotively if you move from a first interval to a sixth. That has an emotive effect. Or if you really hang out on the fifth interval, that has a very definitive effect. If you're hitting a seven, that's a very anxious effect.

Composers know this. Classical composers know this. People who've studied songwriting know this. I mean, John Mayer studied songwriting at Berkeley. Pat Patterson, who is his teacher, he has taught legends. There are things that the people who are great at this know that people who are aspiring to be great at this need to know. Okay. So it's all this stuff that I don't understand.

So you're saying I may still like, huh, wow, this song is doing something. This rhythm is doing something to me. This other song isn't. And you're saying that's not just subjective. Like there are actual things going on. Thoughtfulness has gone into the creation of this rhythm rhythm this melody that didn't go into this one and most people might not even know why this one just is more energizing or more emotive or more moving for lack of better terms than this other song like why are there so many like you two songs that are still still playing on the radio

and it's like this is still a really good song you. I don't know if that's a good example or not. Maybe that's... Well, yeah. And it's... So I think anytime we ask a question like that, we have to separate. Let's separate lyrics from melody. And then honestly,

with a band like U2, you also need to kind of separate sound. So there's a few different things all working together. In the case of a lot of those U2 songs, they're all working together. In the case of a lot of those U2 songs, they're all working together in perfect prosody. So it's all just delivered so well. To illustrate this, think about a classical piece of music or just an instrumental piece of music that you've heard that made you cry.

There's nothing lyrically, there's nothing left brain, there's nothing like consciously, There's nothing lyrically. There's nothing left brain. There's nothing like consciously, but there's something deeper than that in you that's responding to that music. Okay, so just the tones, the sounds, the instruments, the notes, the intervals, the rhythm, all that stuff. It affects you deep, deeply, deeper than you understand. And the fact that a song without words can make you cry should make you question. There's something deep, there's something deeper to you than your brain. It's soul, it's heart, it's whatever you want to call it, right? And so in...

Language is that universal human language, right? Like you even said, people that don't say they like music, they still do. Like they still, it's just so embedded in creation. Like it's so much deeper than just one form of art that some people like, some people don't. Like it's much more theologically sophisticated than that. Yes. And it's ancient. I mean, even in the Bible, I mean, Genesis, is it Genesis 4? Yeah.

Where music starts, right? With that guy. And so Genesis 4, there's music. Genesis 5, where music starts, right? With that guy. And so Genesis 4, there's music. Genesis 5, civilization starts. So it is like ancient. It's primitive. There's something deeply human in us that connects with musicality. There's not a culture that's ever been found in the world that didn't have some expression of music.

Okay, now let's get back to the next generation. Because what affects you there's some universality to that but then there's going to be particularity to well what culture did you grow up in what time was that in history right and so this is why people are writing modern versions of hymns because maybe those melodies aren't stirring anymore like they would have been 200 years ago but lyrics still are so let's put new lyrics, sorry, new melody to it. But here's my big, huge question that I'm thinking about with worship these days, and it has to do with the next generation. When you and I were growing up, there was no such thing as a worship leader. I mean,

maybe that was just beginning to start. That role is only 60 years old. There was probably a music minister who, there was a piano player, maybe an organ, maybe a choir, maybe an orchestra. But they basically just sang the songs, right? And a lot of those songs sounded nothing like the music that I listened to throughout the week. I mean, there was a huge gap between the music at church and what I actually listened to when i was 15 right here's my big question have we not just created the exact same disparity between the music we're singing and the music that our kids are listening to and i know it's anecdotal but i have gone and i've asked tons of teenagers, what kind of music do you like?

I mean, I have multiple teenagers. I ask them. I don't have to ask them. I know. I take them to concerts. And I love the music. It's not what it sounded like when I was growing up. It sounds different.

I ask teenagers all the time, what kind of music do you like? They tell me the bands. They tell me the artists. And then I say, and what kind of worship music do you like? And the bands that they name sound nothing like the rest of the music that they named. I would say contemporary worship is as uncontemporary to the next generation as hymns were to you and I when we grew up. So why is that? Like, would the genre, if you're going to classify contemporary worship music, would the genre be something like soft rock or something, which nobody listens to anymore? It's a whole different thing. Yeah, like anthemic, kind of anthemic. Anthemic.

Yeah. And like, that's not, so why is, why is almost all contemporary Christian music one genre? Like why is that? It's monolithic. Yeah.

Because, um, white men have ruled it since the beginning. So it is, I mean, worship is way too male and way too pale. And this is the big problem, why worship is monolithic. The Church of Christ is not monolithic. The global body of Jesus is not monolithic or monocultural. I mean, there are going to be more colors and styles and sounds in heaven than we could even imagine. But worship did not buy into discipleship, and it definitely did not buy into a priesthood

of believers. It bought into colonization and empire, pyramids and dominance. And so you can go to Ghana, or you can go to Canada, or you can go to a remote—you can go to the Maldives and probably find a church singing Chris Tomlin songs. Now, that's not bad. Good for Chris. I love Chris. The question is, do we ever sing their songs? And the answer is no, of course we don't, because we don't believe in the priesthood of believers and the dignity of all people. don't believe in the priesthood of believers and the dignity of all people. Revelation does, but we don't. We haven't gone into countries curious to see what have they discovered of God that they've put into art that could enrich us. And that's a shame. That's a huge loss because

hymns did. Hardly any of those big hymns that you like were made in the USA. All right. Hardly any of those big hymns that you like were made in the USA. All right. How Great Thou Art, number two hymn of all time, Swedish song. It's called O Storgud, 200 plus years ago. And then it got discovered. It was translated into Russian, got translated into German, finally made it into English. Now it's the number two song behind Amazing Grace, beloved hymns of all time.

I grew up singing How Great Thou Art at my church probably once a week. I can't imagine what my upbringing in worship would have been like if I had never heard that song. So here's the question. What other songs are we not hearing? Because we're not paying attention to what God's doing in their midst. We're only exporting. We never import. That's a big problem. And when it comes to, sorry to keep going, I can land this. But when it comes to our kids, the reason I said worship doesn't give a rip about the next generation. And that's because worship doesn't really give a rip about discipleship. Discipleship is all about raising up the next generation and making

sure that your ceiling is their floor. You're giving them a baton. You're not dropping it. In the Bible, when that happens, serious breakthrough takes over. You know, when there's an Elijah with an Elisha, a Moses with a Joshua, a Jesus with those disciples, like things move more quickly. But most of biblical history is not going up and to the right because discipleship was happening. So most of it is one generation dropping the baton for the next. When you talked about just right now, most of the songs created by white men. Why have you said that? I got this fleeting thought in my head.

I feel like a year ago you made the same comment. And I think somebody on social media, which I you made the same comment and i think somebody on social media which i rarely pay attention to but i think somebody pushed back on that i'm trying to yeah it could have been something else but i think it was that i think they said something like no there's actually a good number of hot top christian contemporary songs created by non-white men um and even though that way maker song isn't that written by yeah we talked about temporary songs created by non white men. Um, and even though that way maker song, isn't that written by,

yeah, we talked about that. Okay. But is that, we talked about that, but guess, I mean, guess what happened?

Like it took a white man to make it accessible for America. You know, we can't do, we're not there yet. I mean, shout to the Lord, right? Darlene check.

I mean, that was, that was a breakthrough song. I would love, don't just look at it right now. Look at the last 50 years. Look at the top 100 songs in the last few years and count. See if it's a pretty fair representation of the body of Christ around the world. Is there a place where you can access it?

Are those numbers pretty, like there's just a factual list of like, here's the most widely played? Yeah, you can find those. I'm sure. I mean CCLI does that. Obviously, maybe I'm being a little bit hyperbolic here, but I do believe like the reason that I'm curious what's going to happen with our kids is because what you two did with rock music 20 years ago, it really affected, or 25 years ago, really affected some of those British young guys in their 20s. They were like, we want to be like that for the church. And so Delirious starts. So that goes all around the world.

And then Coldplay came on the scene, another British thing. And then worship kind of sounded like that for a long time. A lot of it still does. But a lot of these bands that like originated these sounds have moved on now they're they're doing different sounding things you know and you know my kids would still like to listen to Coldplay actually they would love to go to a show but they also listen to Kendrick they listen to Chance and they listen to these bands that actually like my favorite music I've discovered

in the last five years has been what my kids have introduced me to yeah and like is this so different you know and so the reason I say it's all connected to discipleship is because I think it's gonna it's not gonna take a 43 year old white middle class guy who works at a bank to write the next song that's really gonna affect affect an 18-year-old. It's not real. It's not authentic. So I'm not going to be the one that does that. But what I could do is pour into some 18-year-olds and give them the competency. Let them understand composition, what happens emotionally and viscerally with these notes, with these rhythms at this speed? What happens cognitively when the lyric says this against that? What happens with porosity and all this stuff? And so I think if we could actually raise up a generation who had all that technical

musical skill, but also had theological, biblical, pastoral sensibility. And again, this is going to take some time, but this is why worship school takes 18 months. It's still not enough time. If we could raise those people up and give them the dignity to recognize your generation has a sound. And my generation probably shouldn't even like it. Like, the problem is 21-year-olds are writing songs that 65-year-olds like. That's a problem, actually. That means we're not evolving. I also think it reinforces the sacred, secular divide. And I can even imagine my kids who are really thoughtful with music and have, you know, a high BS meter with church stuff. I think even then, like if I played a song that was more a hip

hop song or a reggae song, and let's just take the worship lyrics of any contemporary worship song and just map and just put it to a reggae tune, I would assume that maybe not my kids, maybe my kids, I don't know. I said hey here's the newest here's a worship song you know like oh well it's not worship though like they would define worship as like you know yeah anthemic soft rock you know music which you know may or may not be good but if you put a different genre on something with profound worship lyrics i think they would be like oh that's not that was we couldn't play on a church could we like this whole like weird division between like there's been a genre of

music that's been baptized in the church i think that has unhealthy ramifications outside of that think i mean reggae why don't we have more reggae why don't we any reggae worship everybody likes reggae do you know anybody doesn't like reggae go go to hawaii sit on a beach and get a you know a cocktail and watch the sunset and they're playing reggae and nobody's like oh let's turn we need some more you know soft rock no nobody says that it's super easy to sing to a super no no woman no cry i could start singing Bob Marley right now and everybody on the podcast can sing along. Like, why don't we have that? Oba oba so. Huh?

Yeah. Oba oba so, man. Oh, dude. Okay. Yeah. I'm with you. Like, you know, in Psalm 8, when David, those little superscriptions at the top of some of the Psalms, I think can be really instructive for us. But that one says to be played on the Giddeth. It's funny. It's like, why is that in the Bible? You know, but I think it's key because that was an instrument that was from Philistines. That was not a Jewish instrument. David invented a lot of instruments, blah, blah, blah.

That's not one. He discovered it. It was like a pagan sound. And he was like, this song that, oh Lord, how majestic is your name? You know, you've set us a little lower than all the eight psalmators. It's great. He says, play this one on the Giddeth. Yeah. Is it in your translation? Do you see it? Yeah. Yeah. Right there. Yeah. And those introductory notes I learned in my Hebrew class in seminary, these are part of our oldest manuscripts. So my Hebrew teacher said, this is part of the inspired Word of God.

These aren't added. As far as we go back in manuscripts, these are there. They're there. Yeah. So I just love that David had his own sounds. But he also, I mean, when he was spending time, and remember, he's running away from Saul, he's foaming at the mouth. It's weird stuff going on in his life when he's picking up this instrument and he learns it.

And he's like, that sound, we need that sound. Sing it with that sound. So I think that just more than that, but especially that, blow the doors open to, we ought to be engaging with all cultures and and not appropriating them you know like i'm not sure i think like the next generation will be sensitive to cultural appropriation and things like that but i can tell you um i wrote a reggae song with a couple friends micah massey and d wilson both of those guys have won Grammys in the last few years for Song of the Year. I'm the only one. I'm the only one of my friends that hasn't won a Grammy. I'm just kidding. I know a few others that haven't. But this song is called Grace Came Running.

It's a reggae song. And we probably wrote this four or five years ago. And I don't do much worship leading for kids anymore for students and youth you know but when i do that's the song that everyone sings all week and they freak out if we don't play it it's all the way reggae and d brought this idea it was his idea he started with it and then we just shaved it and made this whole thing it's one of my favorite songs I've ever written. It's got theology and it's got reggae. Yeah, so man, I mean, the overarching theme is like, what God's doing in the world is beautiful. What people are going through in the world is really difficult and sometimes brutal.

And I think we need all kinds of songs, all kinds of sounds, all kinds of prayers, just like you find in the Bible. And I'm afraid we're going to lose the next generation because the gap just keeps getting broader between where they're at and what they have to portend to be on Sunday mornings. I think we've got to give space. I think we've got to give space. And even if the songs don't exist yet for it, the worship pastors should have the sensibility and the acumen to be able to interject it. And so even if you do whatever new version of God is so good you want to do, at the end of that song, can you just encourage people to go, God is good. He has been good. But where are you at?

Are you there? Can you recall when God was good. He has been good. But where are you at? Are you there? Can you recall when God was good? Because you could probably think pretty easily about where he hasn't or where it seems like he hasn't. I've buried too many of my friends to think every time I pray, God's going to heal. And I'm still battling with God on so many people who I love who are in debilitating situations. And I'm honestly pissed. Sorry, I don't know if I should say that. When I think about that, when I think about missiles going into shopping malls, I am pissed. I'm like, God, you said you were going to do this.

You say you do this. Where is it? And kind of at this point in my life, at this season in my soul, the only Psalms I can really feel are those imprecatory dark ones where it's like, I think it's Psalm 55. It's like, make my enemies melt like snails. That's an interesting line. You probably never prayed on Sunday. You know, it's like, but all that break the bow, like shattered the arm, that's all disarming stuff. That's like, that's good prayer for us today for make the tank treads fall off, make the, uh, guns misfire, like whatever, you know, this is the only stuff I

can really feel right now. That's where I'm at. Yeah. That's where I'm at. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's very equal permission. It's very, it's very Psalms, right? I mean, like you said before, there's so much complexity in the Psalms and some of them like Psalm 88 never resolves itself. It's nothing but darkness. And that is where David, I think, was at that moment. And other ones have a blend of God, you're faithful, but you know, um, where are you here? It seems like you're not here. You know, it seems like you've gone back on your promises and that complex, complex dance. Um, uh, where can people find you, your worship school? Um, would love to, if anybody's interested in like, oh my gosh,

I would love to send some people to get the training you're talking about. Where can they, where can they find that? Yeah. Thank you, Preston. Okay. So mereworship.com, like mere Christianity, but mere worship, or 10kfam.com. So 10kfam, it's 10,000 fathers and mothers. That's our worship school. So lots of different options. People can sign up for class. We've got new classes in the fall and the spring. They can jump into a cohort instantly with mere worship. It's like less than $10 a month. So lots of different options. And then if they want to really revolutionize their financial futures,

they can go to AIO.loan and learn about the best mortgage that exists. We didn't even talk about your banking, your new banking career. But maybe we'll have to bring you back on to talk about this new... We were talking offline, just so everybody knows, for probably longer than we should have. But you were blowing my mind with this new way of doing home loans. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. So yeah, can you say that one more time, just in case somebody is intrigued about a home loan that would save them hundreds of thousands of dollars from what I hear, or possibly at least? Yeah. It's basically a mortgage that will save you a third of whatever you owe on your house.

So if you owe 300 grand on your house, you'll probably save a hundred thousand. And you don't have to make more money or spend less. So it's called the all-in-one. It's awesome. I built a website, AIO.loan. And I can't believe I'm plugging that on your podcast. I love your podcast. But it's not just your new gig.

I mean, it's a both. It's like, yeah, you're thriving in it, but you help other people genuinely save a lot of money, which is great for the kingdom. It is helping. Bro, thank you. I so appreciate you. I love talking with you.

We could talk for hours. Bless you, man. All right. Take care, man. Appreciate you. I love talking with you. We could talk for hours. Bless you, man. All right. Take care, man. Appreciate it. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.