WHAT MAKES MUSIC... CHRISTIANLY? ...contending for biblical theology in CCM

Having ties to the Christian music industry, I could not agree more with Steve Camp. The things that you see and experience inside CCMI, will just make you sick. You soon come to the realization that much of what takes place in Christian music is no different than what takes place in the secular market place. Sadly CCMI is Christian by name only.

“Thy statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.”

- Psalm 119:54

CCMI-On The Down-Grade?
History is a lucid teacher and we can learn from her. Give ear to the account of one man’s battle against the roaring lion[17] of modernity in his time:

Charles Hadden Spurgeon spent the final four years of his life at war against the trends of early modernism which he rightly saw as a threat to Biblical Christianity. Spurgeon wanted to warn his flock about the dangers from moving away from the historic positions [of the truth]. ‘Biblical truth is like the pinnacle of a steep, slippery mountain,’ Spurgeon suggested. ‘One step away, and you find yourself on the down-grade. Once a church or individual Christian gets on the downgrade,’ Spurgeon said, ‘momentum takes over. Recovery is unusual and only happens when Christians get on the ‘up-line’ through spiritual revival.’ History has vindicated Spurgeon’s warnings about the down-grade. In the early part of the twentieth century the spreading of ‘false doctrine and worldliness’—theological liberalism and modernism—ravaged denominational Christianity throughout the world. Most of the mainline denominations were violently if not fatally altered by these influences. A hundred years later, we are seeing history repeating itself again…. ‘False doctrine and worldliness’—the same two influences Spurgeon attacked—always go hand in hand, with worldliness leading the way. Christians today tend to forget that modernism was not first of all a theological agenda but a methodological one.[18]

We are seriously close, beloved, to being on the down-grade in Christian music, if, in fact, we have not already begun the slide. Though we are seeing an unprecedented interest by the secular arena with more press and publicity, I believe there are some danger signs we can’t ignore: an absence of biblical truth; a reductionist gospel; being unequally yoked with the secular music industry; syncretism; pragmatism; aberrant and heretical themes accepted in lyrics; worldliness in business practice; relativism; moral pluralism; and experientialism. Could it be that the love of money is producing all sorts of evil?[19]

Brethren, God’s judgment is assuredly upon the Christian Music industry. Like the street courtesan, she has been sold by the “gatekeeper pimps” to the “secular johns” who have the deepest pockets and make the sweetest promises! It has patterned itself after the ways of the world rather than doing the work of God, by the will of God, according to the Word of God! There is no hope for gospel music apart from Heaven’s intervention. We need revival; we need renewal; we need repentance; and we need a new Reformation!

--- Steve Camp

Read the rest of this article @ Camponthis

Steve Camp / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0