A Texas worship leader with 15 years behind him wrote in Christianity Today that more and more churches, across denominations, simply won’t sing anything from Hillsong, Bethel or Elevation. The usual reason is “we care about good theology,” and the critics point to controversies around Bill Johnson, Brian Houston and Steven Furtick.
He agrees song choice matters. He quotes Tony Merida, “worship music is portable theology,” and notes that what you sing sends royalties somewhere. His worry is that the bans have less to do with weighing individual songs and more to do with fear of looking like you endorse someone. He says churches that praised his Austin Stone songs as “theologically rich” often hadn’t looked hard at equally solid songs from the big three.
My take
As a charismatic, I’ve watched a lot of songs get written off because of where they came from. Discernment is biblical, and some lyrics really should be dropped. But “test everything, hold on to the good” means testing the song in front of you, line by line against Scripture, not rejecting the whole label. A lot of these songs came straight out of rooms where people were hungry for the presence of God, and plenty of them say true things about Jesus. Weigh the words and keep the good ones.
“Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21).
God Bless, and May the Source Be with You!
