O Timothy April 2011 - Way of Life Literature

W A Y O F L I F E L I T E R A T U R E
These are the types of forums in which CCM is birthed
and where it is most at home. The music at these forums
was “real” Christian rock. They pulled out all the stops.
No messing around with this silly business of trying to
remove the rock” from Christian rock. There was even
colored lights and smoke. No holds barred CCM. The real
stuff.
It is really pathetic to see once old-fashioned Baptist
churches like Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg,
Virginia, or Highland Park Baptist Church in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, trying to use CCM, like they
have been doing for a couple of decades. They have the
“worship leader” and the band but the people just stand
there stiffly, mouthing the words on the big screen
without the foggiest idea of what to do with such music.
Hey, that music is created to “connect” you to God, to
enable you to “experience” God. It’s all about “feeling”
something. You’re supposed to yield to it, move to it,
dance, man! Independent Baptist churches that want to
use CCM need to bring in some charismatic ecumenists
to teach them how to do it or they need to go to some of
the charismatic churches and conferences and observe
how it is done so they can do right by it. If you want to
use charismatic stuff, you ought to at least make an effort
to know what it is and how it should be used.
For nearly four decades I have researched the
Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, beginning from
when I was led to Christ by an old-line Pentecostal and
visited Pentecostal churches as a new Christian seeking
God’s will about “who” to join. The 317-page book The
Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements: The History and the
Error is packed with documentation of the apostasy and
spiritual danger represented by this movement, which
also represents the very heart and soul of Contemporary
Christian Music. We also have a photo-packed DVD
series on that subject.
I have visited for research purposes influential churches
that represent the heart and soul of CCM and its
philosophy, such as Mars Hill Church in Seattle (Mark
Driscoll), Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California,
Vineyard Fellowship in Anaheim, Carpenter’s Home
Church of Lakeland, Florida, Christ Church in Nashville,
City Harvest Church in Singapore, Without Walls in
Florida, Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul (supposedly
the world’s biggest church), Bill Hybel’s Willowcreek
Community Church west of Chicago, Rick Warren’s
Saddleback Church in California, First Baptist in Atlanta,
Hills Christian Life Centre in Sydney, and schools such as
Oral Roberts University, Regent College in Vancouver,
B.C., Wheaton College, and Southern Baptist Seminary
in Louisville.
Charles Billingsly is the Worship Leader at Thomas Road Baptist
Church in Lynchburg, TN.
I do have some unique personal experiences and have
done some serious research into the Pentecostal-
Charismatic movement and ecumenism and CCM. In
1998, when I published the first edition of Contemporary
Christian Music Under the Spotlight, the use and
“adaptation” of CCM was still rare among IB churches,
but that is no longer the case.
Paul warned that evil communications corrupt good
manners. If anything is evil today, it is the charismatic
ecumenical movement which is producing the vast bulk
of contemporary worship music. It has a name that it
lives, but when judged biblically, it is found to be dead. It
has zeal without knowledge. It has a form of godliness
but it denies the power thereof, which is absolute truth.
There is widespread confusion about the gospel itself
within this movement. At the North American Congress
on the Holy Spirit and World Evangelization in 1987,
which I attended with press credentials, a large
percentage of the participants and many of the speakers
were Roman Catholic. The two leaders were a
Pentecostal and a Roman Catholic who bragged about
4 1 Timothy 6:20,21