We're Being Manipulated...

Should Christians sing songs from Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation? Well, Scott Anile has written what is probably the best article ever written on this subject. Let's go through some of the highlights and add some commentary.

First, Scott states his unambiguous position at the very beginning, writing, Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation have become a global phenomenon, and you should stop singing their music. Indeed, Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation have an incredible amount of influence within Christianity, far beyond even the massive numbers that attend their megachurches.

Today, modern worship is pretty much synonymous with those groups, with countless worship services looking almost exactly like a Hillsong concert, complete with fancy light shows, fog machines, and singing centered around an emotional experience.

And Scott says all of this needs to stop. This is the same conclusion reached by Justin Peters.

Bethel and Hillsong, these are false churches, and they are dens of wolves, and they are out there trying to prey upon your sheep. So guard your sheep. Love them enough to guard them. And the most loving thing we can do for someone is to tell them the truth.

Scott then lists several good reasons why worship groups like Hillsong, Bethel, and Elevation are problematic. He mentions the prosperity gospel advocated by leaders within these movements, such as Bethel church pastor Bill Johnson, who argues that Jesus did not perform miracles as God.

He performed miracles, wonders, and signs as a man in right relationship to God, not as God. If he performed miracles because he was God, then they would be unattainable for us. But if he did them as a man, I am responsible to pursue his lifestyle.

Scott mentions Brian Houston in his book, You Need More Money.

There's not one person in this building who doesn't need more money. And if you say, well, I don't need more money, then I would say you have a very poor outlook on life. Poor does not have to be permanent.

All the answers you say, well, you know, how do you know that? Because why would the scripture say, let the poor say, I am rich! If it wasn't the will of God to break the power of poverty out of people's lives.

Scott mentions theological concerns with pastors such as Stephen Furtick of Elevation Church, who seem to teach something dangerously close to the heresy of modalism.

And now Jesus is taken from their sight and hidden in a cloud, but he did not leave. He just changed forms. He did not disappear. He just was no longer visible. Instead, he was internal.

Scott mentions Bethel's Bill Johnson, who taught that Jesus had to go to hell and be tortured for three days before being born again.

So he was born through Mary, the Virgin, and then he was born again in resurrection. The first one to touch him was Mary, the Virgin, when he was born naturally. The first person to touch him when he was born again was Mary Magdalene.

The Virgin Mary touched him in the law, and Mary Magdalene, the harlot, touched him in grace. When he was raised from the dead.

Scott mentions the charges of sexual abuse that have plagued leaders from Hillsong.

ABC News exclusive, the woman allegedly behind the affair that brought down Hillsong Church celebrity pastor Carl Lynth.

Scott mentions Hillsong pastor Brian Houston's questionable views on gay marriage.

A couple came to Hillsong, would you want them to change? The short answer is I think all of us need to be changing. So that's what Serving Jesus does. We're changing. Apparently, someone told me that there's two guys singing in the choir at New York.

But we'll never be the kind of church who, when people join the choir, we ask them, are you heterosexual? You know, are you homosexual? We will never be that kind of church.

Scott mentions theologically vague lyrics such as only want to sing,.

Wake, at break of day, in holy rising, who you say I am, I am,.

And theologically questionable lyrics such as what a beautiful name, reckless love, this is amazing grace, so will I. If I, Scott mentions the charismatic Pentecostal theology of these groups often manifested in their lyrics.

For example, oceans, spirit, and spirit breaks out. Scott mentions that when you buy their albums or sing their music, you are financially supporting questionable theology at best, and heretical theology at worst.

And so know that when you sing those songs, your money is going to support false church that are opposed to Jesus Christ.

Scott says that while all of these are legitimate reasons to stop singing music from these groups, they're not really the most important reason you should stop. And then here's the main point of Scott's article.

He writes that the most important reason to stop singing songs from these worship groups is because their music embodies a false theology of worship. The next section of the article falls under the heading, The Pentecostalization of Evangelical Worship.

Scott begins by pointing out that all of the groups under consideration here teach and practice a Pentecostal theology of worship. Why is this significant? Well, this kind of Pentecostal theology places a high emphasis and expectation in worship upon physical expressiveness and intensity, resulting in what is sometimes called a praise and worship theology of worship.

The goal in this theology is to experience the presence of God in worship, but praise is considered the means through which Christians do so. In other words, this kind of theology teaches that by leading people into physical expressiveness and intensity, particularly through the musical experience we lead people through, we are able to manifest and experience the presence of God in worship.

This is why there is often the goal within these worship services to get people to experience intense emotion, to lift up their hands, and to even jump up and down. And this is why external factors are extremely important.

Lights, fog machines, the volume of the music, the pacing of the music, etc. In the next section, Praise and Worship, Scott talks about a blueprint for a worship service that ensures worshipers will truly enter the presence of God.

The blueprint involves raising the matter of musical style to a level of significance that Lim and Ruth describe as musical sacramentality, where music is now considered a primary means through which God's presence could be encountered in worship.

This is why so-called revival events often center around generating and experiencing as much intense emotion as possible during the time of music and singing. If you like this video, subscribe to help spread the truth.

The goal is to create an environment where God's presence could be encountered in worship. And this is why the time of music and singing so often eclipses the time of preaching and teaching, which is oftentimes significantly shortened because the audience is more interested in expressing emotion during the time of singing than listening to a sermon about what the Bible teaches.

In the next section, Flow, Scott writes that praise and worship instead aims to bring the worshiper through a series of emotional stages from rousing praise to intimate worship. In other words, the time of music and singing is designed to lead the audience through an emotional journey, causing them to experience particular emotions at particular times through the pacing and flow of the music.

This usually starts with rousing praise and progresses to intimate worship. Scott continues, worship leaders are encouraged to begin with enthusiastic songs of thanksgiving, leading the worshipers to an emotional, soulish worship, and then bringing the mood to an intimate expression where a gentle, sustained chord on the organ and a song of the Spirit on the lips of the leaders should be more than sufficient to carry a worship response of the entire congregation for a protracted period of time.

Instead of centering the time of singing around the truths expressed in the lyrics, the time of singing has become a kind of emotional manipulation where the worship leaders control the states of emotion felt by the audience.

Worship becomes more about the emotional journey and experience rather than upon meditating upon the words being sung. In the next section, Worship Reformed According to Scripture, Scott writes, Worship theology that was reformed according to Scripture taught that emotion and singing come as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit and a believer's life, not as a cause of the Holy Spirit's work.

This is really important. Because modern worship leaders believe that emotion and singing is a cause of the Holy Spirit's work, they believe it's important to create the most intense experience of emotion and singing possible to cause the Holy Spirit to be as present as possible.

However, the biblical reality is that we do not usher in the Spirit through our emotion and singing. We experience emotion and singing because we already have the Spirit and because the Spirit is working in our lives.

So our singing and worship should flow from our experience of the Spirit, not be treated as a cause of the Spirit arriving. When worship is done properly, Scott writes that the songs and other elements of worship are not chosen for the emotional mood or any expectation that God's presence is made manifest through music.

Rather, they are chosen based on how their content fits in the covenant renewal shape of the service. When we choose songs based on their emotional mood, we are essentially seeking to manipulate the worship service and the audience, rather than simply letting emotion flow from the truths being sung.

In the next section, The Camel's Nose, Scott writes, Pentecostalism shifted the emphasis for corporate worship from covenant renewal to authentic emotional experience. The problem is that authentic emotional experience really has absolutely nothing to do with biblical truth.

It's extremely easy to deceive people into thinking they are close to God by giving them an authentic emotional experience, since people can easily experience emotion without also grasping hard biblical truths about sin and repentance.

When worship becomes more about an emotional experience than about communicating and singing the truth of God's Word, emotion really becomes the object of worship, not God. Scott concludes this section with a poignant paragraph.

The problem is when evangelicals who do not affirm or teach charismatic theology worship like charismatics, and this has come largely through the music produced by groups like these. Marty calls this the Hillsongization of Christianity.

This point is critically important to recognize. When you sing music from Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation, you are bringing embodied Pentecostalism into your church. Of course, this kind of worship is extremely attractive, because it leads to people looking and acting very spiritual.

However, there are enormous problems with this kind of theology of worship, and true Christians should be extremely wary of worship that emphasizes and manipulates emotions in this way. In the final section, music embodies theology.

Scott talks about the relative innocence of most of the lyrics sung by these worship groups. He writes, I'm not talking about the lyrics here, I'm talking about the music. The music itself has been carefully designed to create a visceral experience of the feelings that then become evidence of God's manifest presence.

When music is designed to create a visceral experience, then it can be argued that it's placing more emphasis upon emotion, experience, and manipulating emotion and experience, than upon communicating the truth of God's word.

And anything that obscures, distorts, or replaces the simple truth of God's word comes from the devil.

I've been in recent, the last two years, with a group of young people. You could not find a more dedicated group of young people, more desirous of studying Christ, knowing the gospel. They're sincere, they're converted, and they love the Lord.

But they come out of contemporary evangelicalism. And even though they love the Lord, they'll fast, they'll pray. When we're in our worship service, you see that they really don't sing with great zeal.

They don't put forth a joyful noise. They don't shout unto the Lord in song. And I've tried to figure out that. You know, why is that going on? And it's not because they don't love the Lord. It's because they've been raised in a Christianity, where it has a music director, a music band, a worship team, that does almost everything.

Combined with that, and the culture of entertainment, they've been taught to come into church and watch other people do their worship for them. And in most worship services today, in modern-day evangelicalism, if you were all of a sudden, in the middle of a song, to pull the plug on all the instrumentation, all the microphones and everything, you would find that the congregation is hardly singing.

Even when the congregation is filled with people who love the Lord. Because we've almost trained them to watch. And that is one of the greatest problems in evangelicalism today.