Should Christians sing music from Bethel, Elevation and Hillsong?

Question 60026.

Few questions divide thoughtful believers as quickly as this one, because modern worship music from Bethel, Elevation and Hillsong is everywhere. Their songs fill hymn projectors, playlists and youth events across the English speaking church, and a good many of them are genuinely singable, warm and biblically shaped in their language.

I have watched congregations tear strips off each other over worship music, with one side certain that any concern is legalism and the other certain that any use is compromise. Both instincts are understandable and neither is quite right, so let me set out how I actually think it through.

Why this is harder than it looks

If the songs were obviously heretical the question would answer itself. Mostly they are not. Many of these lyrics are unobjectionable and some are excellent, which is precisely why the issue is live. Nobody argues about whether to sing something plainly false. We argue about whether a good song from a troubling source can be received on its own terms.

There is also a practical dimension that critics sometimes underestimate. In a great many churches, the worship music the congregation actually knows comes overwhelmingly from these three sources. Removing it is not a small adjustment to the song list, it is a substantial change to the shared memory of the church, and that has to be led rather than imposed.

What we sing is what we teach

Paul ties singing directly to instruction. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. The Greek word behind hymn, humnos, describes praise offered to God, and Paul assumes the congregation is being taught while it sings.

That means the songbook is a doctrinal document whether or not anyone treats it as one. People remember what they sing far longer than what they hear preached, and a line repeated forty times will lodge deeper than a paragraph in a sermon. So the elders of a church are responsible for the worship music in exactly the same way they are responsible for the preaching, and a great deal of trouble comes from leaving song selection entirely to whoever is on the rota.

Test the lyrics first

Take an actual song and ask straightforward questions of it. Who is being sung about, and would a visitor know from the words whether we mean Jesus or a boyfriend? Does the song say anything about the cross, sin, forgiveness or the character of God, or is it entirely about the intensity of my feelings? Does it promise things God has not promised, such as guaranteed breakthrough or a life free of trouble?

Judged that way the picture is mixed. Some worship music from these churches is theologically solid and I would not hesitate over it. Some is vague enough to mean anything. And some carries the specific freight of its theology, particularly songs which treat declaration as a creative force, so that my speaking is what brings the promised thing into being. That is not poetic licence, it is the teaching of the movement, and I have written about it in can you activate healing by speaking God’s Word.

The source is not irrelevant

Some argue that a song stands or falls on its own words, and I understand the point, but it is too simple. Songs carry their origin with them. When a congregation sings something from a particular church week after week, some of them will look that church up, follow its teaching, watch its conferences and absorb its theology. That is not a hypothetical, it is what actually happens with young people in my experience.

There is also the matter of money and platform. Royalties flow back, and the profile of the source rises with every congregation that adopts its catalogue. That does not make singing the song sinful, but it does make it a decision with consequences rather than a neutral choice of tune.

The three are not the same case

It is worth resisting the habit of treating Bethel, Elevation and Hillsong as one entity. Bethel is the sharpest concern for me, because the difficulty there is doctrinal at the foundation rather than a matter of failures in leadership, which I have set out in how we should respond to the scandal at Bethel and in what the New Apostolic Reformation teaches.

Hillsong’s public troubles have been largely about governance, money and the conduct of leaders, which is a serious matter but a different one. Elevation sits somewhere in between, with a preaching ministry I find shallow in places and a strong association with prosperity teaching, but not the same apostolic and prophetic framework. Sorting them out separately is more honest than sweeping them together.

Conscience and unity in a congregation

Some believers cannot sing this worship music without their conscience being troubled by where it came from. Romans 14 tells me to take that seriously rather than to educate them out of it with a lecture. Others sing it happily and are not being naive. A church can hold both if the leaders are willing to talk about the criteria openly rather than making quiet changes and hoping nobody notices.

What I would not do is make this a test of fellowship. I know godly congregations that have removed the whole catalogue and godly congregations that use it with care, and I am not prepared to say that one of them has left the faith. Where the gospel is preached and the songs are checked, there is room for a difference of judgement here.

Where I have landed

I test every song on its words, and I decline the ones that carry the theology I am preaching against, however good the tune is. Beyond that I have become more cautious over time, not because a song becomes poisonous by association, but because we have a very large inheritance of worship music that comes without any of these questions attached, and I would rather feed a congregation from it.

There are centuries of hymns which say more about the atonement in one verse than a year of choruses manages, alongside a healthy stream of newer writing from sound churches. Given the choice between a good song from a troubling source and an equally good song from a sound one, the second is simply the easier decision to defend to the young believer who asks me why we sing it.

Choosing worship music for a congregation

A practical word for those who actually have to build a song list on a Thursday evening. Ask first what your congregation will be singing in twenty years, because that is the real question. The worship music that shapes a church is not the song of the moment but the handful of things people can sing at a graveside, in a hospital ward, or in the kitchen at four in the morning when they cannot sleep.

Then look at the balance across a year rather than a Sunday. Is there anything here about sin and forgiveness, about the second coming, about the character of God rather than my response to Him? Do we ever sing a whole psalm? Would a bereaved person find anything on this list to hold on to? A songbook can be entirely orthodox line by line and still leave a congregation malnourished by what it never mentions.

And keep teaching the words. A minute of explanation before a hymn does more good than most of us expect, and it slowly forms a congregation that listens to what it is singing. Worship music is the theology most of your people will actually memorise, so it is worth the trouble of choosing it deliberately rather than by whatever is current.

One more practical thought. If you do decide to drop something the church loves, replace it with something better rather than simply removing it, and explain why in a sentence or two from the front. Congregations will follow a leader who has thought about this and told them his reasoning. What they resent, quite reasonably, is a decision that appears to have been made about them without them.

So, now what?

If you lead worship music in your church, do the unglamorous work of reading the words of every song on your list as though they were a statement of faith, because that is how the congregation will receive them. Talk it through with your elders rather than deciding alone, and be able to explain your reasoning to anyone who asks.

If you are in the congregation and this troubles you, speak to your leaders kindly and privately rather than campaigning. And whichever way your church settles it, do not let the argument steal the thing itself. Singing to God together is one of His best gifts to us, and it would be a poor outcome if a debate about sources left us with a sound songbook and cold hearts.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Colossians 3:16 (ESV)