Praise music is a very important aspect of Christian worship, and for many people, it can be deeply personal as they squabble over whether churches should use hymns, modern praise songs, certain instruments, and so forth. While much of those arguments simply revolve around matters of taste, there is a more substantive discussion about whether popular praise songs from certain problematic churches should be used. It would be good to state our church’s position on such songs.
The churches in question are those like Hillsong and Bethel, churches with a history of charismatic theology that can also sound like prosperity (“health and wealth”) teaching. One Light Church disagrees with parts of charismatic theology but more strongly opposes the prosperity gospel as misleading, materialistic, and erroneous. While it is not quite right to dump Bethel or Hillsong into the same category of prosperity preachers like Kenneth Copeland, there does seem to be some prosperity influence on these churches, which has led some biblical churches to reject the use of songs coming from Hillsong, Bethel, or both. To use these songs, they argue, is to give tacit approval or endorsement of all the teachings that come from these questionable churches, even if the lyrics of the songs themselves have nothing wrong in them and may be perfectly orthodox.
There is not space here to litigate all the different positions on this subject, but at One Light Church, while we agree that the teachings from the likes of Bethel are not very good, we disagree that using their songs automatically gives approval of all that they teach. Christianity has a long history of songwriters and teachers who are less than perfect themselves but who produced helpful works. As long as the song lyrics are not clearly objectionable from a doctrinal standpoint, we will permit the use of such songs and encourage charitable interpretation when the songs use vague phrases. What matters is if the lyrics teach correct things about God and present the gospel. We are open to further discussion on this topic, so feel free to ask me or Pastor Lee about it. God bless. -EM Pastor Isak Lee
One Light Church 