Lamm has written extensively on the subject, including “Should My Church Sing Songs from Bethel and Hillsong” and “Songs for Worship: How Do We Filter New Songs for our Setting?”
Jason “Bubba” Stewart, Worship and Music consultant for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, is thankful for the heavy theological component of the Master of Divinity in Church Music he earned from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1998. It served him well in churches in Kentucky, South Carolina and Indiana and does now as he works with more than 2,400 churches in his state.
“We have to be very careful about how we present God in our music,” he said.
The term “Worship Wars” refers to stylistic changes that came out of the Jesus Movement in the ‘70s and entered into church buildings across the country. A different discussion is going on today, Stewart said. And it’s not a negative one.
“I’m glad to have these conversations. It brings me joy for a pastor to call me and say, ‘Bubba, I’m having an issue with the lyrics of a song. Can you help me through this?’” Stewart said.
“I love that because it lets me know that you care.”
Like Shepherd and Lamm, he emphasizes the overlooked impact of discipleship that comes from worship.
“Most pastors don’t want to admit that people are gonna be more apt to remember a song versus a point of Scripture, or maybe even the Bible passage,” he said. “That’s what makes this discussion so important. If we believe what we sing, that is discipling us.”
Thus, the concept of God’s love as reckless can slip into the impression, if even subliminal, that there is an aspect of chaos as well.
God’s love is, indeed, “far beyond anything that we could ask or imagine,” Kirkwood Bullis, worship pastor at Valleydale Church in Birmingham, said in a recent interview with the nationally syndicated Rick & Bubba Show.
But it cannot be on equal footing with a person’s love.
“The problem is, the Bible also says that God is equal parts wrathful and vengeful and jealous for His glory,” he said. “So if you’re focusing too much on one side, you’re not giving the people … a balanced diet.”
This article originally appeared at Baptist Press.
