Is It Consistent to Be "Picky" about CCM Associations While Using Protestant Hymns?

It is popularly argued that if we are to be “picky” about musical associations in regard to the contemporary musicians, then we would have to discard Luther’s or Wesley’s hymns, but that holds no water. The old Protestant hymns were exceedingly different in character from contemporary worship music. The old Protestants weren’t building the end-time one-world church, but the CCM crowd most definitely is. The old Protestants condemned Rome boldly and were separated from her. The world represented by Stuart Townend and his “contemporary hymns” is the world of rock & roll, charismatic mysticism, C.S. Lewis, The Shack, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the emerging church, The Message, Brennan Manning, Christian homosexuality, Leonard Sweet, Rick Warren, contemplative prayer, and unity with Rome. I don’t know of even one instance in which the use of a hymn by Luther has transformed a Baptist church into a Lutheran church, but I know of large numbers of cases in which fundamentalist churches have been converted to a contemporary philosophy through the use of CCM. I don’t know of one instance in which the old Protestant hymns acted as a bridge to the world, the flesh, and the devil, but I can point to many young people who have discovered contemporary worship music to be a bridge to these things. And it always started with the softer, less controversial stuff.

​(Friday Church News Notes, September 14, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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