but the existential crisis that I have as somebody who's in the audience is that often I'll come to church and most of the songs are like how I feel and I'm singing about how I feel but then I but because I'm such a thinker I'm like but I know everybody here doesn't feel this way and I don't actually particularly feel this way in this very moment so now I feel like I'm lying and then I'm just like doing all of this this and so I think that is the problem with me centered worship songs the music we've seen sort of weasles its way in there because it's like moving you emotionally yeah man that's such a great song you're like but is it really though like what's it really saying and I think most people aren't really looking at that and then you're just showing up at church and singing songs about yourself which is weird and I think that's I think that's actually a move of the devil to be honest [Music] well hey everybody i am so glad you've tuned in today for this conversation that is all about worship this is the Alisa Childers podcast i'm Alisa Childers and I always try to equip Christians to identify the core beliefs of historic Christianity discern its counterfeits and proclaim the gospel with clarity kindness and truth and along the way I get to have some really fascinating conversations like the one I'm going to bring you today today's episode is brought to you by Brave Books which is a Christian children's entertainment company i love what they're doing with their streaming platform and their physical books you can go to bravebooks.com and use the code children for 20% off your first order okay very excited to have Dave Stoval back on the podcast if you are unfamiliar with Dave he has a very fascinating story that he has shared on the podcast before he talked all about his journey into the contemporary Christian music industry as a part of the band Audio Adrenaline and then the band Waverly and ultimately how he deconstructed and became a progressive Christian for a while but ultimately was discipled back to the faith by a local pastor and so we talked all about that on our last episode a few months ago about his book which is called Losing My Faith in Progressive Christianity so definitely check that out but I wanted to have Dave back on the show because the ultimate end of that journey is that he is now uh the worship pastor at his local church and so in this episode we talked about some similarities in our um experiences in contemporary Christian music if anyone is unfamiliar with my background I was a part of the contemporary Christian music band Zoey Girl back in the late 90s early 2000s and Dave and I talked about some of the difficulties in the contemporary Christian music industry and ultimately how God led us back around to worship sort of at the end of those journeys which I think we see that happen quite a lot and so in today's episode Dave I wanted to pick his brain about how he approaches worship in his church setting what he thinks the church is getting right in general about worship what bugs him about what the church does what we're getting wrong we kind of both share our thoughts on that because one of the questions that I'm asked a lot is my opinion on modern worship and so we talked all about that we even talked about a couple of specific songs one that kind of bugs me and and I just hope that this episode will be encouraging for you i hope that it will be biblically enlightening for you and as you think through these questions about modern worship what are we supposed to be doing when we come to the Lord with our music and with our songs and uh ultimately how Dave approaches that question as a worship leader so here is my conversation with Dave Stoval so this is our big worship episode this is the long awaited most requested podcast episode for me i have people all the time saying "Please like they'll ask me to write a book about worship or talk about worship music." Yeah because I think a lot of Christians um go into existential crisis on Sunday morning when they're in their worship services at church i'm one of them i'm actually one of them so where do I want to start let's start with history okay and then I'll explain my existential crisis that I have very often i'm so curious in Sunday mornings now not so much at my church my church actually does a really good job so I'm you know when I say this I'm not at all throwing my own church on the bus i actually think our worship pastor I should have him on too sometime think he does a really good job of choosing really thoughtful theological songs and leading well so um this is just more a general statement of existential crisis in the current moment we're in right now um but I want to go way back because in our last episode which everybody should go watch and uh about Dave's story of deconstructing becoming a pro progressive Christian then coming back to faith now you're a worship pastor and um which is it was such a great episode i loved how you told your story but I mentioned in that episode that of course my dad's been on my podcast he was one of those hippies that found Christ you know came to the Lord in the in the Jesus Revolution time and he was in a band called Love Song which was actually featured in the film and then he went into Yeah contemporary Christian music but then in the 80s he completely pulled out of the industry at the height of his fame at the height of his success and not only went independent but went almost primarily into worship and this was back when that was not perceived that was what you did when you were like washed up you know when like you were done with your career you might go lead worship somewhere it's totally different now like there's a different mindset on these things now but I remember from a very young age though because of that having a very like sober honor mindset toward worship music that it was in my mind it was very it was something that was very sacred it was it was a calling that my dad really felt the Lord was calling him to do and so he started making independent albums independent worship albums and again long before the big worship movement that happened and then fast forward to when I was in Zoey Girl we were doing pop music for young girls that we we signed I believe in 98 or 99 somewhere around there we were kind of done by 2007 or 8 but by the time like so much happened throughout the years that I was in Zoey Girl so this is remember Napster oh yeah so Napster for all the Jenzers and people who are watching who don't know what that is somebody came up with like the first digital download idea but it was like people could just download music for free so it crashed the industry it's like while I was a a recording artist the industry crashed um like we had these huge budgets in the beginning and then by the end it was just like nothing and so when in when I signed you had to sell like hundreds of thousands of records to even get a second deal and by the end it was like those standards had way lowered so it was radical time of change in the Christian industry i guess in everybody's music industry but by the end I remember this was when passion was exploding kind of the Chris Tomlin thing was exploding worship had become mainstream worship had become sort of the the cool thing to do by by that time and so interesting story i don't know if I've ever told this story publicly maybe I have but by the end we were I I was kind of done i I kind of wanted to get out of the industry anyway i didn't do well touring i loved you know ministering to the young girls that we did but I just was exhausted depressed i had to get off the road so um when Zoe Girl came to an end basically the straw that kind of broke the camel's back for us was that I went into the president of the record label and we just were talking about the future and he basically said "Worship is what's selling right now." So if you guys want to continue you have to make a worship album oh really okay yeah now for me at the time I that really rubbed me the wrong way cuz I thought well I I What year was that so well maybe 2006 somewhere around there seven and And so I remember being really put off by that because I did have such a high respect for worship music that I would not want to do that just to sell records and so I think that was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back that made me just go "Okay well we just I don't want to do that." So we ended our run and and then worship just went like this and you almost lost any kind of other Christian music now so that's my journey with it in the music industry um but I'm curious about you so you you were in Audio Adrenaline Waverly um now your worship pastor what led you into worship okay so it's so s uh interesting what you said about the that fork in the road with your label about you can do worship or whatever because so my journey was we started out as a a pop punk Christian band so like Lincoln 82 wannabes and we got signed in um 2006 I think is what we got signed to um Flicker Records oh yeah which is owned by Audio Drilling Guys yeah remember Flicker yeah so but we um the producer we got hooked up with was Rob Graves he's done Red and all that stuff so he's like this um cinematic type producer and I had been I had majored in music education and college so I had all this music theory experience and I had written all these um classical piano pieces and stuff and I was playing them in the lobby as we're writing recording the songs with him that were sort of punkish but not really and he's all like dude we ought to make songs like that and he like sort of shifted our trajectory and made us a rock and roll band kind of like Muse and uh My Chemical Romance mixed together but um we had this song that I'd written in college called Praise and Adore just a straight up worship song and you know I didn't I led worship a little bit in college you know I was on the praise team at the Baptist Student Union but it wasn't my heart i wanted to write regular songs and write songs about God they weren't necessarily worship and uh we had that one song and that's I think that's the main reason we got signed is because we had that one song and so um they our label pushed us in that direction and pushed that song first and that's how everybody knew us was Praise and Adore and it really really got to me because every time we'd go anywhere and they're like oh yeah Praise and Adore i'm like well we made a whole other record that wasn't like that that you should check out it's pretty good but we too had that fork in the road because our our deal with um Flickr Flickr got bought out by Providence and Mark and Will were out um our deal with them was a one and four so you make one record and if you do well and you recoup then you get signed for four more well the first record did pretty well we were like the most played track on any band in Provident that year i think next to Casting Crowns maybe that's the Praise in a Door track um so they were coming around to us and they were like you know show us some demos um that you're making for the next album and I I just went like total progressive rock like really ethereal and just very cinematic and weird chord progressions like like my music theory just took over my brain i was going to make this rock epic you know like Bohemian Rap City or something um and they were like "Okay well you know you can make a rock record or you can play ball here." He said "People have spoken that Waverly is praise and adore." So they basically said the same thing to us wow interesting if you want to make more records they're going to have to lean towards praise and worship and uh so stories like yours but I I said in our uh the last episode we did that I never wanted to be a worship leader i was like "Well I'm not going to do that that's a huge step backwards." So we made the jump and try to be a mainstream band which is usually the you know signing the death certificate for your band and it was Yeah cuz we went and toured and played in bars and made no money and made an EP of like the best songs we'd ever written um but all the mainstream labels passed on us so then it all fell apart cuz we like we told the Christian industry we don't want to be Christian and we had Centricity you know huge label now Lauren Dagel yeah um and Jordan Feliz love Jordan um but they were a small label then they wanted to sign us but we were like "No we're not going to do that we're going to go be a mainstream ad." And then we it all fell apart you're gonna cross over and bring the cross over remember the whole Oh my gosh i've never heard it like that that's so good bring the cross over very few people actually bring the crossover when they do that that's true but so so becoming a worship player that was your question so I stopped touring and I was like I'm done Lord i'm done with music you know whenever I hit a dead end in music I'm or I have in the past I'm just like I'm not doing this anymore i'm not writing any songs i do anything but um I ended up playing drums at a church with my aunt she was playing piano and um I sang Praise and Adore at that church she let me play piano and just the response that I got after I sang it it's like the whole place was just silent and when I finished the song like everybody collectively just went like it was this really cool moment and I realized I'm neglecting a gift from the Lord i have a gift and I'm just not doing it so I began I became open to playing music again and that's when Mark Stewart original lead singer of Audio A was like "I have an opportunity for you i want you to be in Audio A." And I did that um and Will McGinness was the bass player i wasn't sure if he was still going to stay in the band with them or not and I was like "If if you know I don't know if I want to do this." He said "You never know what opportunities it'll lead to." And I'm so glad I did it because being an Audio is what led me to Harper's Christian Church because when audio was done I didn't know what I was going to do i didn't want to tour anymore i was just going to move back home but there was a church that needed somebody to lead on the weekends and I tried it out and um you know you'll have to listen to the other episode about my progressive journey but I was at a point where I really wanted to go deeper and know the Lord and know the truth about God and he led me to this church and I thought this was part of it so I just joined up with the church and started a a life on life relationship with my lead pastor he discipled me away from progressivism back to historic Christianity long story short I realized that all my experience through the music industry were it was all leading me towards being a minister being a pastor being a shepherd somebody who loves their flock and leads them well so that's sort of what I've realized about myself that that's a a gift that God has given me and and a skill set that I didn't have um and I'm trying to use that now uh at the church that I'm at and it's incredibly fulfilling in ways that I didn't realize that's so cool quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor which is Adele Natural Cosmetics i love Adele Natural Cosmetics because not only are they Christians but they're familyrun they're holistic handcrafted toxin-free they have skin care and color cosmetics everything's made in the USA you know almost every time you see me on camera on my podcast I'm wearing at least their moisturizing foundation their bronzing cream and their glow highlighter which is this beautiful glowy stick that gives you this kind of dewy glow i absolutely love it but I love that their products are very natural now they started after a health crisis that their owner Arlene had in 1999 when she discovered that the word natural can be kind of confusing and so she just decided to take matters into her own hands and start making her own products so that's what makes Adele so special they handcraft and artisan make all of their cosmetics in small batches they don't use any parabens synthetic fragrances nano particles or petroleum based products and so because they're searching for such quality nutrient-dense ingredient ingredients their customers find that their products actually help to reduce inflammatory conditions in their skin i have certainly witnessed my skin get better as I've used their products so give them a try today go to Adele Natural Cosmetics now that's spelled adel naturalcosmetics.com and use my code Alisa because they're going to offer you 25% off your first purchase that's a great discount take advantage of this give this a try go to adelnatural cosmetics.com and use my code Alisa my I think other than my dad my first real exposure to worship music being more like I don't know if the word is cool or because I was really moved by it as well it wasn't just like oh that's cool and I'm going to get the t-shirt and be a fan it was like it was Hill Song so this would have been like 1996ish somewhere maybe just before I was probably I think it was when I was living in New York so I lived in New York for a year and a half or so maybe a little longer than that doing some in inner city work in the projects between in the East Village and with a a local church there and somehow in the midst of that I discovered this this Hill Song worship album and I just remember being so moved by all the songs i had really heard anything like that before like this I don't know like what your experience was but that was the first time and maybe they were the first to do it I don't know but to have like this team this other than like to me before that worship teams were like whoever can sing and play you just come together and sort of you don't really practice the harmonies you just kind of harmonize do whatever you want that's how it was in high school and and yet this was like well produced the singers were good the songs were really moving and and I really love that early phase of Hillsong which made me want to lead worship so in that little church in New York I led worship now we did it was a very small little in inner city church and so we my memory is that we would play the song like play the record and then sing along with it leading the people because that's what we that's great and sort of like karaoke but they're singing like with you yeah yes exactly and um and you know I of course joined the worship team in high school and stuff but I think I really started more being more thoughtful about worship around that time when they said to Zoe girl you have to make a worship album or kind of kaputs you know and and that's when I really started thinking about theologically like what is it that we're doing because I grew up very charismatic i'm I'm you know I'm on this podcast I've had cessationists I've had continuationists you know I'm not going to debate charismatics or anything but I'm less charismatic than I was I'll say that you know okay and the reason what I mean that is culturally I'm less charismatic in that I think for very many years in my life I sort of was I don't know how to put this but I felt like like we were storming the gates of heaven with worship we were like preparing the atmosphere we were making things happen in the spirit you know and I rethought a lot of that theologically as I I got a little older went to scripture there's not a ton in scripture about what we're supposed to do with the music time we have some you know examples from early church history where they would sing i mean Christians have always been people who sing uh of course in the scripture it says bring a song a hymn a spiritual a psalm a hymn a spiritual song yeah so there's kind of three different categories of music so I feel like in our modern age we every church does this you have like 20 minutes or so of the singing and then there's the the message like what's your journey with that sort of like thinking that through because I'm glad we sing i I'm so glad we sing i love to sing and I think some churches do it better than others and I'm just curious to hear your approach to it like how do you think through what you're actually doing yeah when you're singing these songs that's a great question um I feel like us at our church right now the leadership we're really wrestling with this like what does it mean uh to worship um and this has been a really great conversation because I realized that I was trying to pick songs that really pointed towards the sermon and really like main make the sermon like the main part but we're sort of taking a step back from that and we're like why why do that is that the main part of gathering together as a church is the sermon is that what it is i don't know so I've taken a step back from that recently and I I picked songs that um help us remember like I want people to remember what Jesus did um remember what he's done personally for them and to let it just fill all of us up with hope and joy um as we enter the world after the service so we're remembering together in the service we're giving God praise we want to give him honor and glory um with these melodies singing with our hearts and worshiping him in spirit and in truth so like mind and heart um but it's really like to praise God while we're there and help us remember what he's done so that when we leave we actually keep worshiping him with how we're living our lives and that's what we've been meeting about it's been like a quarterly meeting I think all last year with our lead pastor and me and worship coordinator and executive minister and a couple guys that are just church members that um really care about church and we're talking about these things and wrestling about wrestling with them and we're asking the question how do we get our people to Monday through Saturday live lives of worship not how do we get them to sing our songs all week in their car which would be great you know but it like sort of took that my viewpoint of what a worship leader is and what I do and made it this much bigger picture and with my team specifically like my job is to in the back do the same thing we take communion together and I'm like think about your story what did God who were you who who were you before God stepped in and redeemed your marriage or redeemed your soul and gave you hope and peace and future think about that let's let's let's uh eat the bread and drink the juice together and give honor to Jesus for what he's done let him fill us up with joy and we go out let's do the same thing for them but I'm trying to during the week call my team i'm praying for them and I'm I'm hanging out with them we're getting lunch or coffee or whatever spending real time with them and asking how I can support them and living their life for the Lord not just how to sing great every single Sunday that's such a good model I think for for worship pastors that's what you are is a worship pastor you're pastoring the people that God has brought into your sphere and you're you know you together are leading the body of Christ in song and extolling the virtues of our amazing God and um you know it's sort of like there's this there's this relationship today between the business side of things and then the practical element of actually singing the songs and I struggle with this and and I'd love to get your opinion on this but I remember back when I was in Zoe Girl I had a meeting with my publisher and I was writing some worship songs uh but that wasn't like my main like I wasn't trying to do that as a career i just love the Lord and I would write worship songs and I remember talking to my publisher and saying this is when CCLI was getting you know I don't know when they started but it was kind of in full swing I think by that point where um and for anyone who's unfamiliar the way and I may not even have this right but the way CCLI works is the labels the publishers um submit their songs to CCLI and then churches buy a license from CCLI and then they report what songs they sing and then the the writers and artists maybe make royalties i always put a maybe after the artist because the artist doesn't always get that royalty but then there's a royalty paid out based on Is that correct i think you're right i don't 100% know i did I have a funny story about CCLI we like um we've been writing worship songs at our church we call ourselves Renew Creative and so good it's so good well thank you i want to promote that on this episode it's so good i think it was last July is when we released a full length album of original songs and then rewritten hymns or we like rewrite choruses that go along with old hymns and stuff um but I called CCLI you could find a number somewhere this is old school but I called him and I'm like "Hey I want to get my song God of Change which is on a record i want to get my song on CCLI there's like a few worship leaders that I know that want to do that song people are uh you know messaging me on Facebook where can we get the charts for this and blah blah blah and I I was like I think I want to make it um accessible for everyone and I called them and she said how many churches a week are requesting for your song and I was like um one my church my church and she goes oh well we usually wait until like a song's like a really big deal and then we and I'm like oh I thought CCLI worked like you could just put your song on there and everybody but it's really like you're saying exclusive the labels and publishers songs are already a big deal then they're on there like all Phil Wickham songs you know he want to go on there but yeah you do pay a yearly fee um but I don't know how the royalties work if it's like they're doled out somehow Chris Tomlin and Brandon Lake those guys are getting the cut of the pie I don't know how that works I'm assuming it's like that so so there's this relationship between the business side of it and then the worship side of it and and I really struggle with that in fact when I release some new music um couple well I guess a couple years now maybe ago i just didn't I didn't realize you had to be like you know a certain level so but I didn't even pursue that i just put it all on the website and then people can just get the stuff from there you know and the churches don't have to report and all of that um so that's good to know i learned something today but I but I do um that's part of my existential crisis is the business side of it because I remember from being in that meeting with my publisher i asked him I said "If I write a worship song though I don't I I just didn't personally feel right making royalties from a church singing the song." So it's it's one thing in my view to record it costs money to make a record your time costs money to sell the song to somebody to listen to your recording of the song that's different than if somebody just says "Oh we're just going to sing it in our church." Like I felt wrong taking money from that so I asked my publisher can I like not be a part of that and he said no you have to be a part of that if you do that oh wow so I didn't didn't submit worship songs back then because of that you can't just like email churches be like "Hey sing this." Yeah super successful that way too no I'm just kidding um Yeah no I I totally had zero hits so um no but but yeah it really bothered me that there was because I think I saw in the in the industry and this is where I think we're going to intersect with worship where when an industry that's primarily a business and I'm not at all saying that people who are in the industry are bad or that they're non-Christians or they're not ministry-minded i knew a lot of people in the industry that were very ministry-minded but the model is a business model and most of the labels now are owned by secular companies in New York and and so the the the primary thrust is going to be sales because that's what a business is yeah and so I think and I think a lot of people are asking these questions right now which is why I wanted to do an episode on this because there are songs that everybody can recognize are just theologically compromised they're just they're no good and people are singing them then there's songs where you're like "Okay everything's great but that one line what do I do about the one line?" And then there's some really really great great worship songs that people are writing in modern times so I'm like not a hymn snob by any any far stretch the existential crisis that I have as somebody who's in the audience is that often I'll come to church and most of the songs are like how I feel and I'm singing about how I feel but then I but because I'm such a thinker I'm like but I know everybody here doesn't feel this way and I don't actually particularly feel this way in this very moment so now I feel like I'm lying and then I'm just like doing all of this this and so I think that is the problem with me centered worship songs did you ever see the Alistister Beg clip where he he goes to a worship service and the worship leader says "How y'all feel?" And he's like "How y'all feel i just kicked the dog before I got here." You know and he's just he was saying like "Stop doing that." Um but and then I'll just tell this one other story and then throw it over to you for your thoughts on this but uh one time when this really was made clear to me was my family went through this horrific ordeal a few years ago when my nephew died suddenly of a drug overdose and my sister his mom wanted to go to church she wanted everybody to go to church like just a few days after this had happened and so we all went to the same church like I we didn't go to my church we went to a different church together as a family and the worship was so shallow and me centered and frankly church you know budget f it was so weird that like one of my sisters almost just walked out it was like really and so that's when I that's when I realized every single person coming into the story like you never know what people are struggling and we barely got ourselves together to walk into that church that morning and we could have sung How great their art along with the happy couple that just got married two totally different phases of life but we would have all been able to sing that song um we all would have been able to sing Amazing Grace we all would and not just to do hymns but you know we all Yeah great are you Lord right we all would have been able to sing a song that glorified that got our mind on the attributes of God glorifying him in whatever circumstance we're in that was a real paradigm shift for me cuz so many of the worship songs and I don't want to just rail on worship songs cuz enough people do that but the ones that are like you know just about how I feel when I worship or I don't know I I really struggle with those by the time this episode ends another family farm in America will shut down but that's not because they've stopped working hard but because the meat that you're buying in the grocery store it just isn't coming from them anymore and that's why a lot of people don't realize that over 85% of the grass-fed beef sold in the US is imported and that's where quality is questionable labeling is sometimes optional this is one of the reasons that almost all the meat that we eat in our home comes from good ranchers.com we get better than organic chicken grass-fed beef heritage breed pork all coming on dry ice ready to put in the freezer it makes preparing meals so easy you don't have to think about it and you also know that you're getting the absolute highest possible quality with no antibiotics hormones seed oils i absolutely love it well July 4th is just around the corner and you maybe you're going to grill out to celebrate why not try Good Ranchers to serve your family the absolute best and right now when you subscribe you're going to get a free meat add-on for the life of your subscription so you can choose between Wagu burgers which are so good we eat those all the time in our house or you can get hot dogs bacon or chicken wings in every box for the lifetime of your subscription and if you use my code Alisa at checkout you're going to get an extra $40 off so go to goodranchers.com today use my code Alisa for that free add-on for life plus $40 off goodranchers.com use my code Alisa yeah so when I'm picking songs I try to be mindful of that um and like I want to What's really hard is finding uptempo songs like the openers that are not super shallow you know like there's a couple songs that I I heard that I was like "This song isn't saying anything." Which one was it not to pick on Carrie Joe but it was a Carrie Joe song i love Carrie Joe songs and all that but there was one she did oh my gosh how did it go um she says I can't remember how the song went i don't Maybe I shouldn't throw the actual song under the bus but I'll throw I'll throw one under the bus it was a song that was really like the the music was jamming yeah and I loved it and the people on my team some people on my team wanted to do it and the more I listened to it I was like this song isn't saying anything like there was a line in there that says "I don't really care what anyone thinks." I don't really care what anyone thinks and it just jams out and I'm just like I just don't see us singing this song for worship yeah would the Apostle Paul be singing that in the front row i don't really care what anyone but like we try to find uh songs that are substantive that that's like that's sort of the measure now I know that there are some songs we sing um praise you anywhere brandon Lake Praise You Anywhere you know that song praise you what praise you anywhere i haven't heard it no praise giving praise give him praise in the highest praise like that and um it is not super deep but it is like a general praise song like God literally praise you in any walk of life yeah i'm committed to praising you and it's like you've been faithful all my life and like things like that which is funny when I was um in a band that wasn't doing worship I might have hated on the songs all saying the same thing but now I'm like I could find a song like Phil Wickhams I Believe All Praise to God the Father Praise Christ the Son i'm like this is the same thing as King of Kings Hill Song King of Kings but I love it i'm like do we really need to say much more than that like let's just praise God together and let's not sing songs about ourselves well let let's talk about that because that is one thing people just hate on worship music they're like "Oh it's the same four chords and so repetitive." But that's on purpose that's by design because worship songs are designed for an audience to be able who aren't singers necessarily or musicians necessarily to be able to sing along easily and not have to go learn music theory to be able to sing that's the brilliance of the hymns that's right the repetitive melodies i don't have a problem with the repetition you know yeah we've been talking about that about the simplicity of of the hymns and well they're not all simplistic because they have those weird chord changes and stuff like it as well does some weird key change stuff so it's not simple but the melody tends to kind of stair step up and stair step down and then up and then not big jumps and stuff and very easy to repeat you sing it one time through and then the next time you go around everybody knows the melody it's kind of brilliant in that way and I found that out as a songwriter it was harder for me to write worship songs than it was the other ones it's like regular songs I can do whatever I wanted people are just going to listen to them i'm not expecting them to learn and sing along then we go to writing worship music and I'm like man this melody is really difficult to catch it's too wordy it's too rhythmic so it needs to be simple for people to catch but it needs to have some substance in there so that you're singing about something yeah and like you said not just about how you feel or about I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this Lord it's like okay I have a list of songs um in a Google sheet that are like these songs are about God these songs are to God these songs are about us and it's like well I don't really want to sing those songs that much you know because what are we doing here on Sunday mornings we want to sing to ourselves yeah that seems a little weird yeah so there's this one song i'm not going to say the name of the song i don't want to throw anyone under the bus but when I was really thinking about the lyrics the lyrics were really praising yourself for pressing through your struggles to praise God i need to know that why don't you just say the name of the song will you get too much trouble if you say it i don't know i want to look up the holy I feel like I will I will get in trouble it's that one hard-fought Hallelujah it's just that line somebody literally recommended that song to me it's just that one line and I might be taking it out of context and I might have to edit this out of the show if the song is good otherwise but it's like I heard that line hard fought hallelujah but that's like praising yourself for fighting hard to still praise God and that's just like yucky to me that's kind of gross to me you got me curious uh I want to I'm going to pull up my list of songs that I've realized were were about God or about us well and but see here's the struggle with that some songs you do sing about yourself but it's still like glorifies and honors God yeah like songs like um you know in the garden or or I I don't know i could think of somewhere it's like here's what God has done for me or something you know like that's that's different I think than this is my story worshiping yeah exactly exactly that's a hymn that's actually Yeah singing a little bit about us but it's like a pointing to the Lord type of a way yeah right what he's done kind of a thing so do you ever find a song where you really love the song but there's just like one line and what do you do do you change the line or you not sing the song um you know I think I can't remember the example but we have done that where I think we changed changed the line in the song we definitely did one in one of one of my songs that I wrote the the one on our album called No One Has Loved Me So Well the chorus says "Oh you're with me down in the trenches you lift me out of the dust." Um the very end of it says it used to say "You're with me through heaven and hell." And my elders were like "God's not going to be with you in hell so like don't sing that." I was like "Yeah but it's like a sort of a metaphor." Yeah i'm singing a metaphor and they're like "Well some people are going to be hung over over that line." So you probably if you want it to be successful maybe change the line i'm like "Uh." And I decided to change it and we went with um your faithfulness always prevails which is probably a better line anyways um but we did change that line in that song because we didn't want people to stumble right and I but I have gotten a lot of people I do have I've had people on my team that say "Hey I don't want to be on the team when you sing Reckless Love." And I'm like "All right that's fair." And I asked my pastor about that song yeah tell me what you think am I going to get in trouble for this one no we're just talking i might just I might disagree but you can say your opinion i liked that song we don't do it as much anymore because I realize a lot of people did have a hangup with God's not reckless like he thinks things through and he plans things and he's perfect and my whole thing was to a human the way the the way that he's extended grace to me seemed like a gamble like I might not pay off of that risk that he took for me that seemed like a reckless thing to do or his love just always pursues me in this way that's just like reckless but my pastor didn't have a problem with it but I've had people in our congregation that have and so well you know what I think it is like the classical theist in me just recoils at the any language that presents God as passible so like one of God's attributes in classical theism is his impassibility which and and this is debated right so not everybody who is a Christian holds to all the things of classical theism i personally think Christians should because it's classical theism that really guards you from heresy but his impassibility means that God doesn't experience emotions like we do because he doesn't have passions he doesn't have a physical body which is where the Bible talks about the passions of the flesh being like something that's related to your body so God is impassible in that there's nothing that So like when when I hear you say God took a risk I'm like the the classical theist in me is going you know and I know what you mean because even the Bible uses analogous language like that like God changed his mind or you grieve the Holy Spirit or something like that so in classicalism that would be analogous language that is helping us understand the weight of something but it's not literally describing like God's feelings changing based on what we do this is the existential crisis I have on Sunday mornings that's a good I think there's more people out there that are wrestling with that stuff than you might realize let's talk about Brave Books as a parent I am always looking for ways to help shape my kids' hearts and minds toward the Lord to orient them toward biblical values to teach them discernment in a culture where most of the content let's just face it that's being made for them is confusing and shallow or even worse completely opposed to a biblical worldview so this is why I love what Brave Books is doing it's a Christian children's entertainment company that helps parents raise kids with character conviction and imagination so they have Brave Plus which is the streaming platform with carefully curated shows that will teach your kids good character traits good morality but also biblical principles of the gospel they've partnered with voices like Kurt Cameron to create stories and shows that are not just safe but they're going to actually strengthen your kids' faith and values they also have a line of physical books that are just amazing so right now if you go to bravebooks.com and use the code children you're going to get 20% off your first purchase give them a try today go to bravebooks.com use my code children but yeah in my opinion is and I hate to be like you don't want to make your brother stumble but if it is like causing someone that that was what we eventually landed on with with my song um was that do you really want people to be in the middle of worshiping God to go is that thing true that I just said no you don't you'd rather have it a little more simple to just sing something a little easier so that the focus is God not theology right okay i want to revisit Hard Fought Hallelujah because I just looked up the lyrics and I just skimmed them so nobody hold me to any of this and I don't I know this guy's Okay do you want to know I we're just we're giving all of this the scoops this is Brandon talking here is Brandon Lake Mike the one that Bo was in his video or is that somebody else okay never mind my little grandson was in Oh Corey uh Asbury he was in one of my little grandson was in a one of those oh cool that's awesome long story but um so this is Brandon Lake i'm not really familiar with Brandon Lake i don't follow a lot of music so I don't know like I have to That's probably the only reason about him it's for my work yeah yeah um so I just read these lyrics and here's here's another issue that we could really talk about because actually I'm reading these words and it's pretty good right like Yeah i don't always feel it yeah and that's when I need it the most so I'm going to keep on singing till my soul catches up with my song i think that's actually a good sentiment but the question is is that what we should be singing corporately as we worship God you know that's like to me this is more like a like not a worship song this is more like Oh yeah an encouraging song for Christian songs are like right there so do churches sing this in the Somebody literally asked me yesterday can we sing hard hard fought Hallelujah yeah i love that the thing that I So maybe that's something to think about those distinctions of between like what's just a encouraging song for Christians and what's one that corporately and I'm not claiming to have the answers i mean I'm not saying a church is heretical if they sing this in their service but like corporately like what's the thought that needs to go into it for what we're all singing together yeah so I'm thinking of a song by uh Cochran and Company cochran and Co it was called um Running Home it's really cool it sounds like uh John Melanchamp or something like that and I loved the way the song sounded it has this cool southern rock thing that my church particularly loves and so we sang it and nothing wrong with the song but we realized like after the second or third song we're sort of like singing it at our church and we're not like leading them into this like worship full time where we're singing about the Lord and singing to him and so we cut it we're like we don't really need a song like that and there are songs you know I have noticed um some of Brandon Lakes are like right on that line of like a performance song and a worshipful song and that's my problem with modern worship music as I see it when there's like you know clever titles and stuff you know I'm thinking about worship back in the day it was raw really raw and just honest and like just like in your desperation singing before the Lord i'm think like from the inside out or something like songs that I grew up singing i'm like this desperation and you singing like these prayers and stuff um and then you come to songs that are like is like catchy phrases and you're like what are you doing and I've seen a shift in worship music going sort of back towards the cheesy CCM stuff and it unfortunately it is in the elevation and Brennan Lake camp and we do sing Brennan Lake and Elevation at your church yeah we do sing those songs but I've seen a shift that direction and I'm like we can't sing those songs like Rattle was one of those ones like that'd be a great opener for this conference we're doing it's not really a worship song though it's just like a a jamming you know rock and roll song that's fun it's like that's cool if you're at like a worship concert yeah there's nothing wrong with a good Christian song that has a Christian message but it's not necessarily a worship song so there's a lot there's a lot to choose from now there's a lot out there yeah do you how do you approach like because I know I one of the number one questions I get from people is should we sing songs from places like Bethl or Hill Song or wherever it may be and I have sort of I used to my position was that each song just go on its own merit and if it's a good song and it's theologically sound I'm not going to try to track down where it comes from now I I have changed on that a little bit like my new position is that I would really encourage worship leaders to maybe avoid espec es especially Bethl songs because of the theology but um I'm curious how you approach that because I know that like this is kind of one of those areas where it's going to be like personal beliefs on this like what what is the right thing to do um so how do you approach that question like as far as which songs you do do do you just eliminate a whole group of songs or do you do each song on its own merit how do you approach that i typically do each song on its own merit that might just be because between uh leading worship and then my three kids at home homeschool kids it's like I don't have time to go down the go find all this stuff i understand that and as when you invited me you have a co-ite between like a Bethl person and then like a Phil Wickham that might write a song together and you're like well yeah what do I do with that when you invited me for the show I was like do I need to do research on this cuz I knew he had talked about Bethl and I'm trying to think if we even do we used to do some Bethl songs i don't know if we do that much anymore but typically we're just watching for within each song is this you know is this saying anything that's beneficial for our church is it saying anything heretical in there um and I asked that even like I just chose a song recently called uh here it is by Sean Curran it's fantastic worship song but he talks a lot about like bringing this gift of offering um to the Lord and bringing this gift to the altar which is sort of like Old Testament language a little bit so I had a question about that one and uh my pastor didn't say anything about it this past Sunday it passed we sang it so I think it passed but there have been times where I'm like this song I think it's saying something that um I don't ascribe to you know then we shouldn't do that song here so but I I just kind of go song to song but like um we did uh Michael Gungarer's Beautiful Things like after the liturgist podcast and after I realized you know he's not really is he really a Christian anymore he send it seems to me like it's the liturgists in general sort of went away totally to where he wasn't even defining himself as that but then they got into Richard like or more into Richard Roar so I I don't know where they're labeling themselves today i actually did a public dialogue with Lisa Gunger in 2019 i listened to that yeah and I I think maybe she was asked that and she kind of still held on to the Christian label is my memory but I don't know that was 2019 well we did that song um you know after it really came out that Michael Gungar was walking away from the faith basically and my pastor said "We're doing a song by a man who probably no longer believes those things." And I was like "Yeah that's right." I said "Yeah that's right." And he goes said "But that song is still true though." And I'm like "Yeah it is." So now we don't do it because it's not really that much of a corporate worship song you know it's like I don't think our our church weren't really singing that that song very heartily with us so there's other songs to do but to answer the question I just kind of go song to song and do it that way because I also know my heart like you know um I don't have all the right beliefs and I think I'm not perfect you know when I slip in sin I'm deliberately slipping into sin and I write songs that we sing and nobody's perfect but if there's stuff in my songs that's like a heretical or not lining up with our beliefs then we need to rewrite those songs that it does you know that's sort of how I think about it but then not that might not be the right way to do it i don't know well it's a hard question because especially having been in music and and having led worship i led worship at a church for about 10 years i was an artist in residence in between Zoe Girl and the apologetic stuff i was I was doing that and it's very I mean I have so much grace for worship pastors who have to make these decisions it is so hard and I would just encourage everybody who's listening to have grace because it is a it's a it's a tough job especially when there's sort of this worship culture there's all sorts of things that that if you were to just make a declarative statement like I'm not going to do any of these it's very difficult to actually implement that when you don't have all the power in the church anyway so so have grace for your worship leaders yeah please but but in addition to the kind of the songs that are just about me and even worshiping my feelings and things like that one of the things that has really uh bothered me is the vagory of some songs like I love a good water metaphor i'm not you know like I remember the first time I heard the the oceans I was like I really loved it i I loved it because now again the question is it a worship song that I I might question you know but everybody sang it like a worship song but I really did I genuinely loved that song when I when I first heard it um but the other one that Hill Song put out around the same time was you make me brave do you remember that one i do know that song yeah so it's an again water metaphor you you make me brave you call me out beyond the shore into the waves and and when I heard that song in my mind I was interpreting that like man God's calling me to get out of my comfort zone and minister to more people spread the gospel more um more personal holiness whatever it might be but here's a really interesting thing about when a song is vague and I actually wrote about this somewhere on my blog um the progressive church that I went to that kind of caused my faith crisis however many years ago 2010 or so they several years after Mike and I left they came out one morning as LGBTQ affirming they said "We're not we're now a progressive Christian church." They took down the I think it was the Nyine Creed they had on their website they wrote their own creed emphasizing the power of personal conscience they put that up oh gosh and that I watched a service online that morning and they sang You Make Me Brave oh wow so think about this when a worship song is vague enough that a super conservative Christian could sing it as an anthem to more personal holiness to maybe going out on a mission journey something like that and then a group of progressive Christians could also sing every one of those words meaning we're being called into a higher quote unquote love by becoming affirming now think about these lyrics now in that context you make me brave you make me brave you call me out beyond the shore into the waves you make me brave you make me brave no fear can hinder now where love is made away wow isn't that crazy so like the vagory I think is a really dangerous thing because you're sort of trusting that whoever is singing it has a solid theological grid whereas in the progressive you've probably experienced this too in the progressive churches they have to change the words of the hymns like we were just talking about this is my story this is my song there's a progressive church that changed that to what is your story what is your song oh my gosh you know and they that's like a little bit I know I'm rolling my eyes a little bit now well and then it just it just went viral of course we're recording this this will come out a bit later than we record it but it just went viral at least on my algorithm last week where there was a progressive church that changed all the lyrics to come thou fountain and it was like about leaving my religion and how freeing I feel now this is a progressive Christian church i've often wondered what progressives sing at their churches now i mean back then they were changing words of the hymns but like that that's the point though is that they had to actually change the lyrics to make it fit whereas with something that's vague it can kind of swing both ways yeah i'm thinking of songs like In Christ Alone like that rich Oh yeah song that you wouldn't be able to sing in progressive churches no you would not you'd have to change the lyrics for sure yeah it's like literally talking about the atonement the wrath of God was satisfying yeah that's the line wrath of God like that would make a a progressive cringe there you know what's so so crazy to me about that song too is in the progressive church I was at one Easter before they went like off the cliff we sang that really the first time I ever heard that song was in the progressive church it wasn't progressive yet quote unquote but we sang even the wrath of God line and I remember being so overwhelmed by that the lyrics of that song well within five years they weren't singing it or they had changed that line at least that line they went down yeah yeah so anyway I I think um this was good this was good this was I think I hope it's helpful to people because I hope so too you're kind of working out how you think through it i know there could be some pastors that are watching this and you know another thing we could just kind of close out with is talking about um you know depending on how the elder structure is of whatever you know church that who might be watching this um I do think there like I like how you even said "Well my pastor didn't say anything or he said this or that." And and that's a good call to pastors to be vigilant as well like if you hear your worship team sing a song that has something that's theologically bad like would you want your pastor to speak up right oh absolutely yeah and the only reason I didn't send it to him because he was in Hawaii uh celebrating an anniversary with his wife so I was like I'm not going to send it to him i don't have a problem with this language like the the altar and the offering kind of thing i think it's it's like and I know what it's trying to say in the song and it was so powerful that weekend uh that we did it again this past weekend when he was here but I will send it to him and hear what he says about it but yes I want that and I feel um safe in that environment knowing that I have elders that they take that job seriously yeah to protect our church and to lead us in the right direction and to pray through these things and figure them out what's right and what's wrong so I love that yeah and that's a qualification of an elder is to be able to teach sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it like that's literally a qualification of the church exactly and I think that the the music we've seen sort of weasles its way in there because it's like moving you emotionally man that's such a great song and like is it really though like what's it really saying and I think most people aren't really looking at that and then you're just showing up at church and singing songs about yourself which is weird and I think that's I think that's actually a move of the devil to be honest because it uh it's a little off topic here but if you remember those um Satan shoes that came out a few years ago you remember the Satan shoes nobody's Okay there was some shoes i don't know who made them but it was really satanic uh in how they were made there was like blood and and I don't know like real blood real I think it was real blood it was Lil NasX was the one who promoted these things i think I do remember right now so I'm not going to talk about the shoes but I read an article in the Rolling Stone about these shoes and they interviewed actual Satanist about the shoes what do you think about them and they were like this is really chilled me to the bone because they were like we don't really like believe in the Christian version of the devil like the red horns and all that kind of stuff when we get together we sort of view ourselves as gods and we sort of just sing to ourselves and like sing about that that's Satanism yeah and I'm like there is so much of that in our culture and it's it's definitely in progressive Christianity if you think about that about all about like your trauma make sure your trauma doesn't touch my trauma and the blah blah blah you're thinking about yourself and you elevate yourself over scripture and all that stuff but I think about that when we're singing these worship songs like we're singing about ourselves like that is satanic yeah and I'm like you know if if all this stuff is if I'm somebody who doesn't believe in it all I'm like if this were to be real that is a is a trick that the devil would play is not worship me it's like the usual suspects the greatest trick the devil ever played was convince the world he didn't exist it's like it's convincing you that you are the god that you were worshiping yourself and I think that that plays in there and as elders have to be doing that uh lead pastors got to be doing that and I'm doing that too so I'm watching these things like what am I giving to my church and and what am I giving to my team to sing make sure we're singing things that are correct about God but I just want to say before we're you know I think we're probably wrapping up but uh one thing that's really u sort of opened up my mind in the worship world is that I watched the worship leaders in the Baptist church I grew up in even my dad would do this on occasion he was the band director at our school when he would fill in is you just pick out the hymn that matches the sermon right and that's what you sing and that's what I thought I was going to be doing when I became a worship leader but then I realized that the teaching pastor and the lead pastor kept calling this out of me they're like "You have a shepherd's heart you really have a burden for your team like you want them to grow you want to protect them." He said "That's a that's what a shepherd does." And I realized that worship leaders are not just picking songs we're not just wearing denim i wore this for this interview just so people would know I'm a worship leader we're not just wearing denim and wearing the Doc Martens and look trying to look cool we're our purpose is not to record in U original music and become a big band out there that other churches can sing that's not the point of it our point is to shepherd our team and like our lead pastor we're also discipling and shephering our congregation that is such a huge role like during the week people are like "What do you do during the week?" They have no idea they think I'm just like listening to Chris Tomlin all week i don't know but like this morning I know you are yeah all week holy forever but like this morning um I used my every moment holy book and I prayed an intercession for my pastor praying for him that he can be led well i'm looking for prayers I can pray over my team that they would experience the joy of the Holy Spirit this week before Sunday so that they can be filled up how can I fill them up like that's such a deeper role as a minister and such a higher calling than I ever knew uh existed so I feel so honored that God led me to this place i love my job i love getting to do that and watching people grow spiritually and watch God um saving marriages and bringing people from being timid singers on stage to fully confident people that are setting songs up and sharing what they're about and reading scripture i'm just like you know that's my job and that's what I'm doing watching them grow in that is just amazing so I love it i love it we'll close out with this what advice would you give to because I'm asked this a lot too a a churchgoer who maybe just really sees a lot of issues theologically with the songs that are being chosen at their church what's the best way for them to maybe approach like how would you like to be approached if there was Oh man something where Sunday morning out in the lobby so maybe not Sunday morning out in the lobby is what you're saying yeah my kids are running around people are like I want to have a serious conversation with you i'm like now sing this word i don't know i guess for me what I would respect is somebody um you know ministers always love to get invited out for lunch but like maybe that scenario where you're invited to go have coffee or lunch or something and then have somebody say "Hey I'm hearing some things that are in these songs that I don't think they're scriptural." You know maybe start there um but it's like ultimately that's what we're talking about that's the elers's job and the lead pastor's job too to sort of protect that stuff so maybe a conversation with them is needed i guess it depends on the maturity level of the worship leader like are they really thinking that but I wonder if that worship leader has somebody in their life that's discipling them into thinking like that you know maybe they don't have that so maybe that's the relationship that this person who's mature enough in the congregation to to hear it and see it and be like that's doesn't line up with scripture but please do it gently i've been called out for something in a non-gentle way at my church and it was really it was difficult kind of hard to move past you're serving all week and you're laying down your life to be called out like that was was a little painful so I would say do it in private um and in a gentle loving way and approach it like hey I care about you i think our hearts are are aligned and that we care about this church and if there's somebody who doesn't think that way then you get the privilege of opening their mind up to that hey this is actually your job is to care about this flock right in front of you your church and also your team that's kind of how I would approach it probably that's good that's good and I want people to be able to get your music it's so good you you texted I told you this but you texted me your new album and I think I had it on repeat for like three days in a row it's so good and the lyrics are so thoughtful the the musical performances i even texted you i was like "Who did the vocals on this song?" You're like "That's me." I was like "Dang that was so good." What you said about the musical performances I wanted to touch on that because it took us a long time to make it you know Nashville the way they do things with the budget they just they hire everybody out send it out new truck drums over here and all that stuff we wanted to use our team and we don't pay our worship team they're all volunteers so it's like we have an injury lawyer on there we have a contractor we got stay at home moms um we got teenagers who have studied music and want to do it but this you know the spectrum there is wide of volunteers that we have but we had just about everybody on the team that could do it scheduling wise played on the record it was me and um a guy that had been in the country music industry for a long time that had built a studio in his backyard for this it was on our hearts to include the team so we brought them out and we showed them how to do it play real simple and do like this and we would we'd spend a lot of time editing afterwards to make them sound even better than what they brought to the thing but at the end result what we had was a product that is our team and it sounds like us and we did it for our church we weren't trying to become the next elevation fact if that's your goal you're just not you're probably not going to make it it's like a lottery type scenario but we wanted to make music for our church by our church and it was an incredible experience and what what I found on the way was that in those writing rooms and in the studios people's guards like my team their guards were lowering like the the walls of defense were lowering and I was able to as their leader be intentional there and like disciple my team in this creative space which is why we called it Renew Creative we're closely uh linked with our a ministry out of our church called renew.org and we're just a bunch of creatives but the idea behind it was that we were discipling the team as we were making music together discipling them in music this is how you record in studio blah blah blah but discipling them spiritually how can we pray for each other and be in our lives together it's a beautiful thing and I think the product is so cool i'm so proud of it i'm glad that you enjoyed it oh yeah and the vocals especially are just so great thank you love it so much renew Creative it's on Apple Music all the places it's everywhere yeah awesome all right well I want to thank my guest Dave Stovall and thanks so much for tuning in let us know what you think about this whole worship conversation in the comments below and let's remember as we pursue Christ to keep a sharp mind a soft heart and a thick skin we'll see you next time [Music] no turning right or left we'll make it through the road that's narrow and the gate that small don't give up it's going to be worth it all [Music]