Brandon Lake is Wrong: Why I'm a Stickler on Worship Sets
And the value of being an overall corporate creedal curmudgeon
A seemingly unending carousel of new(ish) candy-lacquered tunes pour out of the Christian music machine season by season. Some of them really solid. Authentic souls penning raw moments of encounter with God illuminated by the truth of the Scriptures. Important anthems for the Church to sing. Depth over hype in a musical landscape dominated by popcorn and flash.
But that’s not all of them.
The skinny: several of what we call “worship songs” are, in fact, just “songs”—some of them well-written, catchy and even carrying spiritual depth. And that’s fine. Christians should create great art. Our problem is that as worship leaders, we are tasked with discipling people in the Way of Jesus. Believe it or not, that also includes stewarding the pipeline of songs we lead them to belt out every week as the Body of Christ gathers in unity across the world.
Recently, Grammy award-winning Christian music superstar Brandon Lake has made several interesting comments. To be clear, I like some of Brandon’s songs and believe he has some God-given creative gifts that are off the charts. His stuff is everywhere (Does the guy sleep? Like seriously, does he?). However, when one of the premier bards of the Body makes statements like this one (from about the 41:35 to the 42:41 minute marks):
… I’ve got a tremendous problem.
I'd love to see more worship sets… more churches like kind of keep Bubba in mind. Like, we call him Bubba — the guy who's like in the back of the room and he's like… he got dragged there by his wife (yeah) (yep). And I just don't know if, like… when your opening song or (the) most of your songs are… have so much Christianese language I think he has a hard time going like “can I sing that?”… like “I'm not there yet.” Right?
I think he hears a Hard Fought [Hallelujah] and I'm not I'm not saying Hard Fought is the answer, but like… I love like… like…
When your first song is like “holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty”, I think he's going “like, what does that mean? What does holy mean? Like holy crap?”… I don't know.
Obviously, that's where we want to get to in a worship set; where it's just, every eye is fixated on Him, right? And it's just like everyone, it's like vertical. But, like, give Bubba some language he can be like “all right, I find myself in that song, I feel like that,” you know.
What I’m about to say may get misconstrued, but hang with me. Can I be honest?
I don’t care if Bubba in the back understands what we’re singing.
Yes. Really.
“Kaleb! You’re so insensitive!”
Notice, I didn’t say I don’t care about Bubba the person. He is a keyholder of unimaginable royal dignity, made in the image of the Endless One. Talk about purpose and identity and value! People like him are precious to the heart of God, intrinsically tied to the divine motivations for the immense suffering of Jesus on the cross. I’ve probably bear-hugged him before.
But our gathering isn’t for Bubba. Sorry, it’s just not.
The primary reason followers of Jesus gather together is to glorify God (Psalm 34:3; Psalm 95; John 4:23; 1 Peter 2:9). Whenever the saints unite in one place, our chief aim is to honor, surrender to, celebrate and commune with Yahweh Himself, the Maker of all things. Our biggest concern should be doing things, praying things, organizing things, and singing things which He wants. It’s ontologically, distinctively, absolutely about Him.1 To be faithful to that mission, we have to make hard distinctions within Biblical boundaries regarding what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Jeremy Riddle thinks of it like this:
“We must look at every area of worship we’ve been given oversight of and fearlessly call to account anything perverting our purpose or keeping us from faithful, Biblical execution of our mission as worshiping communities.”
— Jeremy Riddle, The Reset
I get the idea of evangelism. But I also get the idol of evangelism; a false structure we’ve propped up due to misunderstanding what the Gospel actually is.2 Yes, God’s Family should be found as a peace-filled, welcoming house where glory drips like Paradise for those walking through the door. But it’s precisely because of the Presence of God — that people would be moved to “fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’” (1 Corinthians 14:25). Our problem in modern, Western churches is we tend to be cripplingly self-conscious at best and ashamed of the nature of the Gospel at worst.
What’s wild is this: seekers are actually tired of seeker-sensitive approaches. They’re searching for the sacred, the numinous; a taste of the transcendent.3 It’s why so many are gravitating to ancient faith traditions and liturgies. People want something that feels weighty, tried, rugged enough to handle the torrents rocking the culture and kingdoms of the West back and forth. So why are we trying to produce a safe, bubblegum version of Jesus for Bible-curious folks to sink their teeth into as a sample?
We need to trust the work of the Holy Spirit; He is the One Who draws people (John 6:44). Our vibey light programing and atmospheric lobby-spaces and palatable opening songs don’t and can’t (and shouldn’t) save Bubba or anyone else from the jaws of spiritual oblivion — only Christ Jesus can. So in that event, what do we actually need?
Do we really need another arena-rock anthem that takes Ezekiel chapter 37 about 58 miles out of context in our setlists? Sure it sounds nice musically, but is it a worship song? Does it achieve the end of glorifying the utterly unique God of all things directly and pleasing Him with timeless truth? No?
Oh, that’s right. We’ve got to put together another radio monster that kills it on the CCLI4 charts for us to make a cool million again. I nearly forgot.
Listen man, I’m fired up here. We’ve got one shot this Sunday to offer something pleasing to God. Shouldn’t that stir up a passion within us to give Him something He really wants? Not just trying to convince Him to embrace what we want?
Because I feel like that last one’s the definition of idolatry.
Look, I have no malice toward Brandon whatsoever. We don’t know each other. I’ve played with some people who have played music with him. But if we’re going to be leading the charge on facilitating sacred moments in our churches with our songs, you have a greater responsibility to people and, ultimately, to God, to be focused on the things which matter most to Him. Is He pleased with what we’re doing, even if unbelievers “aren’t there yet?”
By definition, we’re believers: followers of a creed. The songs we choose really matter. The doctrine we’re preserving for the faithful to sing in confidence together isn’t trivial. It’s not worth cheapening with artificial sweeteners. Allow the Word of God, the Presence of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to do the heavy lifting. It works.
A.W. Tozer fumed like a fireplace at the state of worship in his day: “The church that can’t worship must be entertained. And men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.”
Makes me shake my head and shudder. Tozer’s been with Jesus for over 60 years. How prophetic.
The choice is yours. Which do you want?
You can have entertainment. You can pick songs thinking of Bubba first. I’ll keep being the stickler, asking if what we’re choosing to sing actually lifts up the Name of the LORD and prepares the way for Him in the human heart.
We’ll see what Jesus ends up being happier with.
For more posts on worship:
At the end of the day, some will chalk this up to differences in ecclesial philosophy. While I have a deep heart for souls coming to the knowledge of Jesus, I don’t believe that our primary focus when gathering as the Church should be on the unbeliever. See: the New Testament.
Evangelism comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning “good news.” It’s about the victory of Christ Jesus and His rightful place as King of all things, calling us to submit to Him and have life. Our commission in Matthew 28 is vital to the purpose of the Church: but we can, and in the West often do, give a skewed version of the Gospel to unbelievers, one which requires nothing of them. To be clear, evangelism in its true form isn’t the issue, but venerating it to the point we change our message and how we worship God, just to appease people’s discomforts, is. See Eric Metaxas’ chapter on this idea in his book Letter to the American Church.
Numinous: supernatural, mysterious; filled with a sense of the presence of divinity.
CCLI is a copyright licensing organization that churches must register with and pay dues to every time they project lyrics to a song by an artist. Every. Time. That’s millions of churches and songs every Sunday. See Team, W. (2024, November 12). Following the Worship Money - Worship Leader research. Worship Leader Research. https://worshipleaderresearch.com/following-the-worship-money/
Atta boy Kaleb. Keep it focused on God. We’re not here for bubba. It’s not your job to make Christ taste good. It’s our job to worship Him in spirit and in truth. And I think honesty “bubba” would respect you more for not changing your vibe or principles or pronouns for anyone’s sake. Worship is for The Lord. Let Christ be King.
From a Biblical perspective hymns and songs and spiritual songs are addressed to one another whereby we make melody in our hearts to God (Eph. 5:18-19).
In God's presence there is unfiltered, direct adoration of God from the angels but angelic worship is not human worship. We transmit our worship of God through how we treat one another even in a worship service. Makes me wonder what a biblical worship song directed at one another would sound like, because I have never heard anything like it in all my years in the church.