July 17, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Pastor Steve Camp on “Christian Music: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, We are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with, and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming.

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This is Iron Sharpens Iron, and I'm Chris Arntzen, your host, and I am wishing you all a happy Friday on this 17th day of July 2015, and it's not a very happy Friday for many who are mourning the loss of the

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Marines who were massacred in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I urge you all,

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I'm sure most of you already have, but I urge you all to continue praying for the family, friends, and loved ones and comrades of those fallen

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Marines killed on our own soil by Islamic terrorists. We originally were going to have as our guest today, providentially, before we even knew about this massacre, long ago we had scheduled

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Kareem Shamsi Basha, who is a former Muslim who converted to Christianity by the grace and mercy of Christ.

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We were going to have him as a guest today, but due to obligations with his career as a award -winning photographer, he had to once again reschedule his interview, and hopefully we will have him next week, but I did not have time to confirm that with Kareem.

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But thankfully, just as I did back in the old days, between 2006 and 2011, whenever I fell into a jam like this, 99 % of the time

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I could call my dear friend Steve Camp, who is not only an award -winning, a

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Grammy award -winning Christian songwriter and an award -winning Christian recording artist, he is also a studied theologian, he is a very popular blogger, or should

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I say sometimes very unpopular blogger, depending upon who you're talking to, and he's the pastor of Cross Church in Palm City, Florida.

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And it's my honor and privilege to have you back again on Iron Sharpens Iron, and for the very first time on the all -new

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Iron Sharpens Iron. Hey Chris, thank you man, what a joy. You never know what a day will unfold, and this is an absolute delight to be with you.

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Welcome back, we've missed your voice on radio, and what a delight to be on your program today.

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Thank you for this honor. Yeah, well I am honored to be on the program with you again, and those were some of my favorite broadcasts back then.

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In fact, I still chuckle when I tell people that my program almost was taken off the air permanently because of Steve Camp.

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I don't know if you remember this. But one day when I was actually going to a wedding,

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I had my very dear friend Pastor Jim Capo of the Massapequa Church of God fill in for me as a guest, and he said,

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I have no idea what to talk about, what should I talk about? And I said, I'll tell you what, why don't you get Steve Camp on as your co -host, and you can talk about Joel Osteen and his church, and you can examine the theology and teachings of Joel Osteen, since he is the most popular, or should

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I say the pastor of the largest church in the United States, at least at that time

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I believe he was the pastor of the largest evangelical church in the United States. And you folks, you and Jim, did a very honest critique of Mr.

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Osteen and his ministry, and it was not mean -spirited. I heard it after I got chewed out the next week when

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I came back the following Monday, but my general manager with tears in her eyes said that she was tempted to yank the program off the air in the middle of speaking, and almost permanently banned me from the airwaves from her station anyway.

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But she saw differently when she noticed that very quickly my program began to draw listeners from all over the world via live streaming, so that changed her tune a little bit.

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Oh, that Chris, I had no idea, I am so sorry. Don't be sorry, don't be sorry.

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Don't be sorry. I'm the one that came up with the idea, and I wanted you to tell the truth about the issue.

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I just had no idea that Joel Osteen was her favorite of all preachers. Oh, wow.

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No, but she should learn a lesson from that anyway. And by the way, Phyllis, if you happen to be listening,

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I love you, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to start Iron Sharpens Iron. I didn't mean to beat up on you on the air today.

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I just thought it was an interesting story. That's great. Today we are talking about Christian music, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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As I mentioned in the introductions, Steve Camp is a Grammy award -winning songwriter and has won other awards as a

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Christian recording artist. How long has your career been underway,

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Steve? Well, the first album came out in 1977, and I've released 22 releases between then and about 2007, and then have done just some off -again, on -again projects between now and then.

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In fact, Lord willing, I'm getting ready to record a new record. A lot of people through Facebook and Twitter and email and text messages have said,

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Brother, when are you going to record again? I so appreciate that encouragement. And I've got a boatload of songs, being a pastor of a church, to write songs out of the preaching ministry here and worship time with our dear people across church.

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And so over the last several years, I've been here six years now with my wife

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Cynthia, and I've got several new songs, praise songs, and also regular songs that speak to issues and maybe struggles of the

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Christian life or issues of culture. And no greater time to see the

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Christian voice really not timid or shy or stuttering, but speaking boldly of the things of the

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Lord. It just seems like society is spiraling down at accelerated rates, and though sin is sin and we're to be in the world but not of the world, certainly these are unusual days, unique days at least for America that we're seeing politically on issues that do face local church and do have issues within the boundaries of Christian marriage and the sanctity of life and these kinds of things that when politicians,

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Chris, pass laws or judges pass laws that deal with our duty as Christians, as pastors of gospel -centered churches, then we may speak boldly to those things and speak truth to power as Paul did, as John the

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Baptist did, as our dear Lord did. It's incumbent on us to do so. So what a great time to allow the

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Christian voice, while we still have freedom through your programs and others, to speak boldly of the things of God and the truth of the gospel and the truth of God's word.

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So I hope to encourage people to live gospel strong and to do that in song and in words.

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So it's been almost 37 years, I guess, 38 years in Christian music, and ever since 1999 when

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I joined John MacArthur's team, it was a great honor to do that for about a year, a little over a year, in Grace Community Church and then off again and on again with a few different churches and then here at the

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Cross Church, which has been my first senior pastorship, and a smaller congregation.

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I've always been in large kind of megachurches, but boy, what a delight to be in a congregation of under 100 and to walk with these dear people and to them minister to me as well as me hopefully minister to them.

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It's been an absolute delight. So it's out of that context that I'm delighted to be a part of your program today and speak to the issues that you've assigned.

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And briefly describe Cross Church. Cross Church is a

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Reformed Baptist church. We are a 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

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In other words, we believe everything the Westminster does except for baptizing babies.

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And so we are a solidly Reformed congregation in our soteriology, meaning the doctrines of grace, salvation is of the

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Lord, as Jonah says in Jonah 2 .9, that it's all of grace. But yet at the same time we are anticipating the glorious return of our

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Lord. We're not dispensational. We're covenantal. And so therefore the next great event on the eschatological calendar for us is the second coming of Christ, and we want to live in anticipation of that day with joy and service to the

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Lord. We're Baptists, and so we believe in being evangelistic and outreach as well as baptism by immersion.

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But we are a grace -centered church, and by that I'm so delighted here that we're not a legalistic congregation.

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In other words, it's not the clothes you wear, the length of hair, the style of music. Are there drums in the sanctuary?

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That was a horrible thing back in Wheaton, Illinois when I grew up. It was all these things that are really apocryphal in terms of the scriptural record.

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Those things should not matter. Now we want people to be dressed with proper propriety and so forth, but we don't want to become legalistic on those things, so we attract various groups of people from the young and the old.

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And if folks are struggling here, we counted a joy to minister to them, to walk with them.

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We do christ -practice church restoration. Some might know it by the phrase church discipline, but we changed it here to church restoration because it's only the

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Lord that truly disciplines, according to Hebrews 12. By God's grace, even pastors, we're sinners in need of grace every day.

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We all sin in thought, word, or deed every day, and therefore we need to rely upon His sanctifying grace every day.

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And at the same time, though, Scripture tells us if a brother or sister in Christ is caught in a trespass,

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Galatians 6, we're to restore such a one with humility, with grace, with love bearing their burdens.

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We're also to administer Christ -like disciplines in terms of Matthew 18.

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We're to go to someone privately. We're to take two or three. We're to bring them before the church. There's a passage of over a period of months that there's a persistence or an unrepentance in sin.

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And we've had to, with sadness of heart, issue public discipline, restoration, to a few brothers and sisters over the last six years.

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But we find that when it's done godly and it's done biblically, not by accusation, not for retribution or revenge, but for repentance, reconciliation, and restoration, that when you apply those things with grace and humility, then you see people's lives corrected and living for the

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Lord. Isn't that how we all want to be treated? Not with amputation, not with a guillotine approach to doctrine, but really one that holds fast the doctrines of grace, holds fast firm the truths of Scripture, but yet with a loving attitude to say, let's walk with people and see them restored as our

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Lord did. We're contemporary in worship, we're a blended service, but we love it when people come visit us.

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So if you're ever in Palm City, we're two hours straight south of Orlando, or about 45 minutes north of Palm Beach, we'd love to have you come crosschurch .net

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is our website, crosschurch .net. We're making our way right now expositionally through the book of Ephesians, and people can get online and hear those messages.

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Prior to that, Chris, we did two years in the book of Revelation, and then two and a half years before that in the

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Gospel of John. So I love this congregation. They love the Word of God, and we're dedicated to unfolding its truths every week.

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So it's an absolute joy. And I know that you are quite an enormous blessing to my friends

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Tom and Alyssa out on Long Island. Oh, wonderful. Tom, whose daughter was in the hospital about an hour away from you, and I just thank you from the bottom of my heart for immediately responding to my text to you to minister to them.

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And as you may have heard, Amanda, Tom and Alyssa's daughter, is doing very well right now, and they're rejoicing.

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And perhaps sometime Tom will come on as a guest and talk about that whole trial.

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Chris, that was a joy. Thank you for thinking of myself here, and we counted it a joy to not only meet them but also

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Amanda. I had the privilege of walking periodically with the family and visiting her in the hospital and pray for them weekly continued, and it's always good to hear a good praise report.

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What a joy to minister to another in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing our own frailties, but to see

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God's restorative and even self -evident grace take root in a person's life. So thank you for that privilege.

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And I just wanted to quickly say that if any of our listeners want to hear an interview that I conducted recently on the loving act of church discipline, you can go to the archives of Iron Sharpens Iron at ironsharpensironradio .com

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and click for the June archive. I believe it was in June that that interview took place, and it was an interesting interview.

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I don't know if this has ever been done before, but I, being a person who was under church discipline, interviewed one of the pastors who disciplined me.

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And so I thought it was quite an interesting interview, and Pastor Mark Rimaldi of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, my former pastor when

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I lived on Long Island, did a wonderful job, I believe, a very level -headed, biblically balanced approach to church discipline, which most often is either ignored or neglected or just not practiced, let alone discussed, or there are those occasions, as you know, where it has been a very heavy -handed, authoritarian type of situation.

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That's right, and it needs to be truth, boldness, love, firmness on the things of the

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Word of God in calling people to obedience, but yet, Grace, I think a lot of pastors who do practice this maybe pull the trigger a little quickly.

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You want to walk with people. I tell people, Chris, it's one thing to walk in the mountaintops of someone's life.

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It's another thing to walk in the valleys of someone's life, but it's another thing to walk in the septic tanks of someone's life.

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And when you do that, you get a real bird's -eye view of how any of us are inadequate for the ministry apart from God in His grace.

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And therefore, we need to approach people, again, as Paul says in Galatians 6, with humility, taking stock of ourselves first to see if we're even tempted the same way.

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This is not a place for arrogance or some sort of evangelical pontificating over the waywardness or sinfulness of another brother and sister.

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Far from it. We're to bear their burdens. Literally, that doesn't mean a difficult day. That means the load of sin that is weighing upon someone to cause them to sin further, to bring them down.

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And you want to step alongside them and bear that burden so they have time to heal and grow and repent and be restored.

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And when that happens, boy, as there's cause for sorrow to see your brother or sister fall, there's great cause for rejoicing when they are restored to fellowship, walking with Jesus, repentant of their sin.

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And that's how it should be in the body of Christ as we approach each other with that kind of grace that is not sentimental and certainly not authoritative where it's tyrannical, but one that is restorative in someone's walk with Jesus.

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Well, our topic today is Christian music, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I know that a number of years ago,

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I don't know if it was as long as 20 years ago, but perhaps it was, but it was a number of years ago, you followed in the footsteps of the great reformer

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Martin Luther who nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517 in protest to the selling of indulgences by the

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Roman Catholic Church. And you, you did one better on Martin Luther.

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You came up with 107 theses in protest to some things that you believed were unbiblical and anti -biblical that were taking place in epidemic proportions in the

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Christian music industry. And why don't you explain that? Yeah, that was in October of 1997, 18 years ago.

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It was interesting, Chris, that Christian music had gone through a real evolution from being born out of the

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Jesus movement really in the late 60s, and we're talking now the more traditional contemporary as opposed to the hymns or southern gospel.

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And what had happened as it started to grow and catch on in culture and society and sales started to increase, secular labels, major conglomerates started to purchase and buy up these

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Christianly record enterprises. Now, I don't fault a world wanting to profit on the sale of Christ -centered music.

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I do fault, and these are friends of mine back in Nashville for selling these labels for the promise of greater exposure, greater marketing, further fame, a greater name, maybe even a secular hit or two on mainstream radio.

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And so they sold the porridge of their birthright for something that was less important.

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It's what the Bible calls in 2 Corinthians 6 of being unequally yoked. You cannot be yoked with a nonbeliever in a spiritual ministry or enterprise.

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And that's what was happening. I had an executive of one of the larger secular labels at the time who

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I saw at a country music party, and he came over to me and he said, are you the man that's causing me all these problems?

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And I said, well, I'm not trying to cause you problems, but I said, sir, there's a biblical and a spiritual component when we sing about the

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Lord Jesus Christ that you, just like Simon the sorcerer of old, who wanted to profit on the work of the

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Holy Spirit for the issue of money. Paul even says in 2 Corinthians 2 .17, we are not like many who copulace, literally make retail merchandise of the word of God, the word of truth.

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We don't want to sell a diluted, substituted, watered down product as cheap retail merchandise for the sake of money.

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That's not what we're about. And so it was interesting. That was problem number one.

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Problem number two, because of that, there was a weakening of a Christ -centeredness in the mission of Christian music.

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When you talk about Jesus Christ and his gospel and sin and restoration and hope and resurrection and all these great things, that's not a popular, danceable message on Top 40

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Radio. So by necessity, Chris, people, writers, had to weaken the emphasis of the message in order to be accepted by mainstream music.

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So what you had was non -Christians now dictating to Christian men and women and to dear men and women of God who love the

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Lord in their own art, who were trying to cleverly disguise the message of Jesus by substituting the name of Jesus for love or making a love song and what

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I called as God is my girlfriend songs back in the day. And what you saw then was a weakening of the message and this kind of serendipitous kind of thing that infiltrated the local church.

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Now when that happens, then theology happens. It follows suit and it's what people have called where pastors gave in to that.

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You mentioned one of them, Mr. Osteen, who gives sermonettes for Christianettes. It's not the real preaching of the word.

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It's a weakening of the message to accommodate culture. And we forget that the gospel of the

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Lord Jesus Christ is always counter -cultural. Always. And so what we have to recover in Christian music, and don't get me wrong, there are some great writers and great praise and worship music and things being done today, but I'm saying back in my day that was a huge issue.

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So I thought this was worth knocking on Wittenberg's door again and as this spread to Christian publishing and local church ministry, it became a clarion call not only for Christian music but for Christian ministry to recover the centrality of the word of God, the centrality of the gospel of God, the centrality of the

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Lord Jesus Christ in what we do in matters of kingdom work for Him. And that was it.

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So we set out on October 31st. The same day that Luther tacked up his theses at Wittenberg's door, we mailed out about 10 ,000 copies to every

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Christian radio station, non -Christian station, bookstores, record stores, labels, publishers.

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And within a week, people began to minister to me directly sharing their consternation.

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But it was well worth it. And even different ones, Hank Hennegraaff, a dear friend, and John MacArthur, others.

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I even talked to John Piper by phone before it went out. R .C. Sproul evaluated the document for me.

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I wanted to make sure I had other eyes evaluating its truthfulness, its

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Christ -centeredness, its worthiness of the Scriptures. And it was great to have those voices participating and giving me instruction.

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But yeah, we may turn that into a little booklet, because boy, with everything that's happened, Chris, and forgetting music for a moment, just the secular ownership of publishing companies, the dumbing down of God's name and even neutering

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God in some translations of the Bible. I even saw recently where some companies coming out with a gay

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Bible discrediting the passages in Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, Leviticus and other passages to eliminate the sting of Scripture, what it says against homosexuality in those lists that it accompanies many other sins as well to meet with the times.

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When this happens, it's being on the downgrade of what Spurgeon faced back in the 1800s, where he said if the

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Church allows a worldly methodology to enter its doors, they'll have to develop some sort of sub -theology and inferior theology to justify its practices.

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Methodology always leads the way, and then the heresy or errancy follows.

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The skewed doctrine follows to justify the action. That's where we are in contemporary evangelicalism in America.

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So we need to keep pounding on Wittenberg's door again and to recover not only the

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Gospel, but the fundamentals of the faith, beginning with the truthfulness of God's Word.

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And I'm going to give our email address if you have a question for Steve Camp on our theme,

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Christian Music, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

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chrisarnsen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

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What do you like about Christian music today? Some of it, that element of it that you believe is biblically faithful.

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Perhaps you can give some artists that you are aware of that you do enjoy and believe are remaining faithful to their calling and to the

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Word of God. Oh yeah, you know what, at our church we love singing these modern day hymns,

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Before the Throne and Christ Alone, How Great is Our God, Chris Tomlin writes some beautiful music.

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We love singing Michael W. Smith's Agnes Day, and some of my songs from the past, and Ryder's Wonderful Merciful Savior, and you know, again, we love doing the hymns,

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Mighty Fortress and Christ the Solid Rock, and Be Thou My Vision, and Sacred Had Thou Wounded, and you know, we just had communion last

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Lord's Day, and we sang When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Isaac Watts' great hymn, and in doing that we'll sing modern day songs,

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Amazing Love, and even little choruses, you know, Awesome God, or these kinds of things.

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It's wonderful, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, so you know, it's like anything else,

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Chris, you want to eat the meat, throw away the bones, you want to be discerning as men and women of God, and what we allow into the worship teams, into the singing of songs, because as you know,

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Chris, people won't, after listening to me preach for 45 minutes or so, they're not going to go home and memorize that sermon, but if I can take the truth of that message and put it in a well -crafted song with a good melody that's maybe three or four or five minutes long, within maybe one or two listens to it, they'll be able to sing that chorus or sing part of that song.

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Music is by divine design a way for us to memorize and hide deeply in our hearts

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God's Word. I mean, think about this, even in secular music, it's true, music has a universal property that just galvanizes itself to our hearts and minds.

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Well, how much more in worship? How much more when we're speaking of the things of God? No question, when the psalmist says in Psalm 119 .54,

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Thy statutes are my songs and the house of my pilgrimage, that simply means as we're making our way through this earth,

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His theologies are doxology, His Word is our music, His statutes are songs.

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We have a heavenly song to sing and it's the largest collection of songs in the

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Bible. In fact, as you know, it's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters.

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Psalm 119 has 176 verses. Every verse mentions in some way the

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Word of God. And so we have the great hymnology, as it were, the Old Testament in the

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Psalms that speak of God and His character, who He is, His revelation to us, how we are to live, the struggles of some of the psalmists, the full gamut of human emotion, the struggle of sin, the forgiveness and repentance of sin, it's all there.

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And so when Paul says to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, psalms, literally the

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Psalter, hymns, the paradosis, the language of tradition, and then spiritual songs, the songs of a new generation.

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So I thank the Lord for some of these great songwriters today, great hymn writers, the musician priests in local churches that are really producing and writing some excellent praise music.

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And, you know, we love Matt Redmond's song, Ten Thousand Reasons. What a beautiful hymn. And so you have to be discerning, but what a great opportunity to sing truth to the

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Lord and to worship Him in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Yeah, and I want to throw in a new artist who has become a friend of mine,

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Deborah Antignano, who has recorded one of my favorite songs that has a lot of personal ramifications in my life.

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She recorded a song, Captives Be Free. She's a former Jehovah's Witness and had in the back of her mind being freed from a cult when becoming born again, and I, being a former drunk, enslaved to the addictions of alcohol, have also that special connotation in my heart of being set free as a captive to addictive substance.

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And, of course, even infinitely more than that, being born again and set free from the world of flesh and the devil by the grace and mercy of God.

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And we are going to be going to a break in a couple of minutes. I just wanted you to think about something that you were speaking about the psalms.

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Although I am not an exclusive psalmody advocate,

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I have friends who are, and I heard a very good reason why we should include at least regularly the psalms in our worship.

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I'm glad that Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, where I'm a member now, they have a psalter in every pew.

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They have several psalters in every pew, along with the hymnals, and he said something that didn't even occur to me before.

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When you sing from a psalter, you are connecting with the church or with God's people, going back even to the

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Old Covenant. You are having a connection with every generation of Christian and saint of God in the

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Old Testament that preceded us, obviously in different languages, but there is that connection that we are having in our worship and joining in the very same songs that those brethren before us sang.

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Isn't that something precious to think about? Oh, very much so. And you know, because our Lord is eternal and He is perfect,

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He is without sin, therefore the author of the book, it means the book, is also inerrant, infallible, free from error, true in all its parts, because the author is.

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And because of that, we can sing these psalms as if they were written right today, and we can use them as great ways to praise the

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Lord. You know, Don Whitney just came out with a book on how to pray the

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Scriptures, how to pray the Bible, and one of the things... I just got it in the mail from Crossway Books, and I'm going to be

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God -willing interviewing him on that. Yeah, it's an excellent book, and it's something that I've done for years. People say,

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Steve, does God still speak to us today? Well, yes, He does in this one respect, by His Spirit, through His Word.

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And if we want to hear the Lord speak to us, when we pray, open up the Bible, have a psalm before you, pray that to the

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Lord, honor Him with His Word, speak to God. We don't have to reinvent who He is.

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In fact, God help us if we try to recreate Him in our own image. But we need to speak how

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God has revealed Himself in Scripture to Him. And what a great thing, not only to pray according to God's Word, to preach the

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Word, but also to sing the Word in praise to Him. He's the author, and no question, the same psalms that they were singing 2 ,000 years, 3 ,000, 4 ,000 years ago, we get to sing today.

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And it shows the continuity of redemptive history in our worship. We have to go to a break right now.

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If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

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And please include your first name, your city and state, and your country, if you reside outside of the

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USA. We'll be right back with Steve Camp and Christian Music, the good, the bad, and the ugly, right after these messages.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Steve Kemp of Cross Church in Palm City, Florida.

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And that's crosschurch .net if you want to look him up on the internet later, crosschurch .net.

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And he is also a Grammy award -winning songwriter. And he has won other awards as a

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Christian recording artist for going on over two decades, well over two decades.

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And he is a dear friend of mine, a powerful preacher, an excellent teacher, and today we are talking about Christian music, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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And it just so happens that a gentleman I brought up at the outset of the program of a mutual friend of both

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Steve Kemp and I, Pastor Jim Capo of the Massapequa Church of God, he, thank

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God, he is listening today. And this was a very nice surprise. And he sent in an email.

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It's Pastor Jim of the Massapequa Church of God on Long Island, New York.

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He asks, there's a popular idea that no musical style by itself is inappropriate for worship and praise, but that it's only the words that matter.

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Now, that is a very popular thing that you hear among people who are advocates of contemporary

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Christian music. In fact, I know, obviously, your music has tempos and rhythms and melodies that are more upbeat than some of our more conservative brethren would care to have playing in their worship services and so on.

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But isn't there still, even though you do utilize contemporary rhythms and melodies in your music, don't you think there is an inappropriate music style to be introduced into Christian worship?

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Yeah, you know, Chris, I think, yeah, people think that music is amoral, that it's just benign and has no influence.

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But David, in the book of Chronicles, says that even the instruments were made to give praise to God.

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We know that David would play a melody to minister to Saul while Saul was being tormented by a spirit of divination, a demonic spirit.

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And so we know that melody has tremendous influence. Now, we also know this, that the lyric of the psalms were preserved.

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However, the musical style was not. And so what we have to say is that every generation, every time and culture, will have their brand of music.

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And what we have to remember, though, music, though it's not the chief purpose, it does give expression to what we're singing about.

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And so everything that is done should be done to God in His glory. Whatever you do,

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Paul says, to do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving praise and thanksgiving to God the

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Father through Him. And so what we have to remember is that in our worship, it's not performance.

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This is not a time for a band or a specific individual or even a

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CCM artist to go up and perform a song before the

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Lord so people may applaud to them. It's to lead others in worship. And there's a huge distinction between the two.

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So motive has something to do with this. Also, if the music is to complement the lyric, then certain styles of music would be inappropriate in terms of worship.

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Let me go to an extreme here. If you are singing a song about the character of God, to put that in like a thrash metal kind of motif and try to sing that as you're offering praise to the

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Lord, it would just be almost impossible to do so. In the same way, we would want our music to be reflective of the nature of God.

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Nothing wrong with any minor key or major key. There's nothing holy about a

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B -flat. There's nothing sinful about a D -minor. But it is how it's used that will give expression to our heart and give expression to the

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Lord of glory. And that's what we must keep at the forefront of what we are doing.

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And so I guess the thing that I'm most concerned about today, and it's a good question that he asks there,

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I would just say, make sure that the music is not performance -oriented, number one.

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Number two, make certain that it reflects properly the lyric. And number three, make sure it is done not in an aspect of performance, but given to the glory of God and that it leads others in worship and does not exalt any man in the process.

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Oh, that's excellent. Well, let me ask you a question about that.

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I believe, and perhaps you will correct me, and perhaps I'll take heed to your correction, but I believe that a

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Christian musician, singer, songwriter has the liberty to be involved in entertainment.

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I'm not talking about in a worship service. I'm talking about as an entertainer, in a theater, in a public square, at a concert, at the beach, etc.,

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where he may employ secular lyrics, as long as they were lyrics that were wholesome and non -offensive to God.

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In fact, you yourself said that you have written songs that would be secular but would ascribe to maintaining a purity and a wholesomeness to them, whether they be patriotic or otherwise.

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But these same people that are involved in a performance or in an entertainment arena,

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I would not want them ever doing the same thing in the church during a worship service.

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I'll give you an example. I do not find as horrifying or as grotesque as some of my brethren do, even some of my brethren,

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I'm sure, in my own church or people that I have close theological affiliation with who detest rap music.

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I think that there is really grotesque and horrible rap music, but I think that there are talented

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Christians involved in rap music or hip -hop, if you want to call it that. But I would not want them doing that in my church in a worship service.

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Is that a legitimate distinction? Yeah, you know what?

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Let me use a friend of mine, Bob Carlyle. I'll use two gentlemen that I've been privileged to work with.

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Bob Carlyle, part of an older band called White Heart, an amazing singer.

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Bob came out with a song years ago that was a huge crossover hit.

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He didn't have to alter anything. It was on the theme of marriage, and he really wrote an incredible song and just beautiful, and it enjoyed a wide success.

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I think he sold four or five million copies of this. It was unbelievable. Just to let you know,

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I think his previous album up to that point sold about 20 ,000 copies. But people, when buying his record, got to hear the gospel as well.

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If scripture speaks to all of life, Chris, then our music can speak to all of life.

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And so Bob wrote some beautiful songs, an amazing singer, one of the great singers of any music genre of all time.

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Also, a friend of mine, Dan Huff. I haven't worked with Dan in a number of years, but Dan also started out on White Heart.

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But Dan became probably the leading guitar studio musician in the world at one point.

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He's an amazing producer, one of the great guitar players of all time.

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He has played on literally over a thousand or two hit records, pop,

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Christian, all kinds, country, and he's a great producer to this day.

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He's produced Rascal Flats and other groups, and Dan is in Nashville. He's an amazing man.

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I haven't seen him in a number of years, but Dan is a musician's musician. He is an unbelievable talent, and he's used his abilities for the glory of God in such an amazing way, and God has blessed him richly.

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Now, with Dan, and I'm sure if he was on the phone here with us today, he would not say that playing on a

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Steely Dan record or playing on X amount of hits, whatever, is ministry. He's using his gifts and talents for the glory of the

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Lord clearly, but he's a Christian in all those environments, and he is using his gifts and talents for Christ as an attorney would, as a bricklayer would, as one who bakes the cake would, as a school teacher would be, just a good, solid believer in the

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Lord Jesus Christ who's extremely gifted in his musicianship, and so therefore, you don't have to use your talent, as it were, specifically in local church or worship or ministry in that way.

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However, everything we do must be used ultimately to the glory of God, and so you can be involved in entertainment.

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You can be involved as a musician, as a journeyman, if you please, in using your crafts and abilities in all kinds of ways, and then being a witness for the kingdom in those environments behind closed doors.

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My contention is this, is when people try to make worship entertainment or entertainment worship, now we've got a problem, and so both are acceptable.

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Listen, you might be listening today, and you're a musician, and you're going out, and you're singing every night in a local establishment, or you're providing jazz background music at an eatery, and people are coming to hear you play.

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We've even sponsored writers' nights from our church at a local Starbucks, and we want to encourage people to come and play their songs, and it's a great expression in the community of what we do.

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The Starbucks is like the Baptist bar, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

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Well, we call it Chris St. Arbucks. But you know what?

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There is a place for all of that expression in the

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Lord, and I think if we become legalistic, we will want to do an injustice to both.

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Listen, if you're using your gifts and your talent and your expression for the

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Lord Jesus Christ in a local church, don't make it entertainment.

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I can say this. I sang at Mr. Osteen's church, not at the new one, but at the older one that his dad used to pastor.

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I was in town visiting, and someone had asked me to come over, would you sing special music there?

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And I said, sure. And I went over. It was my first and only time to go, and here they played for the offertory that day.

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Jesus is just all right with me. The Doobie Brothers. Yeah. And I thought, oh, no, and you know what?

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Mrs. Osteen, Joel's mom, came up to me afterwards, and to her credit, she said to me, she said,

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Steve, you didn't like that, did you? And I said, well, my opinion means little, but I can tell you this, that the

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Lord did not like that. Taking a secular hit, trying to make it sound like it belongs in worship is not right.

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And you know, she agreed with me. She said it bothered me as well. And so this is what

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I'm saying. When we want to make worship just entertainment, we have a problem.

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And if you want to somehow go and to make what you do as a journeyman and using your craft of your musicianship and playing on a mainstream record and you're calling that worship, there's also a watering down of those terms.

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And so let's keep those things in a good way correct and each has their own expression.

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And again, as Paul says in Colossians, you want to do your work heartily is unto the

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Lord. So listen, whether you're a shoemaker, whether you're a tent maker, whether you're a teacher, whether you are a musician, do your work heartily to the

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Lord and let the excellence by which those things are done speak of your Christian witness in society.

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And we have to go to our final break. And if you have an email that you want to shoot to us with a question for Steve Camp, the number is, the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Steve Camp. Linbrook Baptist Church on 225

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Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org.

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That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just joined us, our guest today has been

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Steve Camp who is a Christian recording artist and now is a pastor of Cross Church in Palm City, Florida.

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Their website is crosschurch .net. That's crosschurch .net.

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We have been discussing Christian music, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And it made me...

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One thing I wanted to say before we continue is in regard to the rap music, one of the things

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I find most distasteful or ugly about rap music, and I'm even talking about some that goes under the guise of Christian rap music, is if God says that one thing, one of the things he hates is a haughty look, rap music is personified by that.

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The arrogance, the pride, the greed, when you have sometimes

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Christian rap groups or rap artists or hip -hop artists wearing the giant gold chains and having the posture, facial expression, and bravado of a secular rap singer, that to me is hideous.

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And if you could comment on that. Yeah, you know what? I think people sometimes...

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I understand your point. And it's not that I disagree with it, I don't. But I think that what happens is when

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Christian artists want to parrot what's going on in the pop music culture, then rather than use it for the glory of God, there's a problem.

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I think no question, the early days of rap, it was the language of the street, it was the poetry of the street, and it was a way for young men and women to get out a lot of the angst that they felt socially in society.

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But I gotta tell you, there are some excellent hip -hop artists in Christian music

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Yes, I know, I know. that are saying some good things. And you know what? I understand what you're saying, and I think when they use it as a vehicle for communicating truth, it's wonderful.

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And asset of those different kind of things that they wear, or the haughty look is what you're saying, it's a form really of preaching set to a great drum machine and other things.

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Two of my sons, Chris, Marshall and Johnson, especially Marshall, is what they call a freestyler.

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If you give Marshall a theme, if you read him a Bible verse and say,

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Marshall, talk about grace and justification and faith and the cross, he will literally freestyle and make it rhyme in unbelievable things for three or four minutes to you.

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And it's wonderful to see him use his gift and talent for the Lord. He would be the first one to tell you four or five years ago he had a different purpose than that.

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He really wasn't a Christian, he wasn't living for the Lord, and his heart was about himself.

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Now that the Lord has changed him, has regenerated him, man, there's a sweetness about his music, and there is a wonderful encouragement about his music.

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It's completely done for God in his glory, and he can go into any gang -related area, even to Christian youth groups and things, sing for them, minister to them.

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He's fearless with it. And I'm not just saying this because he's my son. The Lord has just done such a great work in his heart that that old way that you're speaking about is gone because now he wants to use it for the

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Lord. He would tell you, Chris, man, I thought music was all about me and me making a name for myself and all this, and I was full of myself.

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He says, man, the Lord saved me from that, and now it's all about him. In fact, it's all about the gospel and exalting

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Christ first. And he says, man, the music is way down the totem pole. I think that's the solution for whatever style of music it is.

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And he's been a great encouragement to my heart because hip -hop isn't naturally my kind of music either.

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But you know what? I've seen him and a few others, and even some of the name artists in Christian music use it to God in his glory, and that's a joy to see happen.

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Yeah, of course, those on the other extreme who would want to condemn all rap or hip -hop music, it's really just poetry and rhyming.

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So it'd be silly, really, to broad -rush all of it, even that that calls itself

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Christian, into one lump of garbage because, as I said, it's really just rhyming.

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And there is a perverse way to do that, a wicked way of doing that, and there is a way that you could glorify

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God with it as well, in my opinion. And we do have a listener from Yuma, Arizona, and this will be our final question for today.

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Based on the person you are, what is the reason why psalms are not being sung in church?

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How much do you think this is entertainment, and how much is it tradition?

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I guess, coming from the perspective you're coming from, I guess is what the listener meant to say by his initial statements.

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But if you could, and we'll close with that comment, we'll hopefully have you on next week if you're free, because this is a big topic that I'd like to continue on.

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Oh, I'd love to. Chris, you were breaking up a minute there, but was this a question on the psalms?

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Yes, let me say it one more time quickly. What is the reason why psalms are not being sung in church?

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How much do you think the reason is entertainment, and how much is tradition? Oh, I got you.

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Yeah, you know what? I think it's probably neither of it. I think that when you have hymn writers and songwriters and musician priests, chief musicians in a local church, and if there are those listening who are worship leaders this afternoon, take a psalm that would complement your pastor's message this week.

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If he's preaching on forgiveness, talk about Psalm 32. If he's speaking about holy living, go to Psalm 1.

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If he's speaking about praise through hurting times, go to Psalm 37. If he's speaking about what it means to bless the

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Lord in all situations, go to Psalm 103. If he's talking about the majesty of God, go to Psalm 100.

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Take those lyrics, take the words of Scripture, and put them in a beautiful simple melody where people, again, can learn to sing those things.

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I don't think it's a reason for entertainment that people don't sing them, and I don't think it's a matter of tradition. I think it's a matter of laziness on the part of the contemporary writers today.

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If I can include pastors with this, pastors ought to be helping young artists develop lyrics and even put those psalms to music.

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One final thing, and I know we're short on time. Pick up Isaac Watts' hymnal on the psalms.

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Many of those psalms, Chris, he has three or four versions of, and they all rhyme already.

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He's taken the legwork out of it of what he did over many, many years in the church, and he's taken those great hymns of psalms and put them already into prose and poetry.

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You just need to place great melody to them, and you have a winning combination. And I'd also like to give a hearty plug to T.

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David Gordon's book, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns. And I also interviewed

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Dr. Gordon on the subject of that book and his other book, Why Johnny Can't Preach, a number of years ago on the old

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Iron Sharpens Iron, and hopefully, perhaps, I'll have those older interviews posted on the website.

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Thank you so much, Steve. I want to have you back next week as a guest to continue this theme. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to have a safe and blessed weekend, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

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Savior than you are a sinner. God bless, and we'll see you next week for the two -hour version of Iron Sharpens Iron starting