Brandon Lake says overtly biblical worship songs danger alienating

Brandon Lake, an award-winning Christian music artist who lately swept the twelfth annual Okay-LOVE Fan Awards on the Grand Ole Opry Home, drew consideration on social media this week for suggesting worship songs threaten to alienate non-Christians if they’re too overtly biblical.

Lake, who serves as worship pastor on the multi-site megachurch Seacoast Church primarily based in Charleston, South Carolina, singled out lyrics primarily based on Revelation 4:8 emphasizing God’s holiness as probably off-putting, in keeping with a latest interview on the “Bryce Crawford Podcast.”

The interview, although printed in April, went viral on social media Tuesday after a clip reemerged from the favored Christian X account Protestia, which confirmed Lake expressing concern with worship songs that excessively exhibit what he described as “Christianese.”

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Outstanding Christian musician Brandon Lake criticizes church worship songs for having an excessive amount of “Christianese’ language in them, citing the phrase ‘Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty’ as one instance.

See the story at https://t.co/L4zsxiSEykpic.twitter.com/potNu7fDB1

— Protestia (@Protestia) June 3, 2025

Establishing a hypothetical character named “Bubba” as the kind of one that has been dragged to church unwillingly, Lake mentioned worship songs ought to be involved with not alienating such people.

“Last item I’ll say is, I’d like to see extra worship units, extra church buildings sort of preserve Bubba in thoughts. We name him Bubba: the man who’s at the back of the room and he bought dragged there by his spouse,” Lake mentioned. “And I simply don’t know if, when your opening tune or probably the most of your songs have a lot Christianese language, I feel he has a tough time going like, ‘Can I sing that? Like, I’m not there but.’”

Lake supplied his personal hit worship tune “Arduous Fought Hallelujah” as a probably extra approachable choice for Bubba to worship God in comparison with some historic hymns. Lake prompt the one context a determine akin to Bubba may need for the phrase “holy” is in reference to profanity.

“I feel [Bubba] hears a ‘Arduous Fought Hallelujah’ — and I’m not saying ‘Arduous Fought’ is the reply — however I really like when your first tune is like, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ I feel he’s going like, ‘What does ‘holy’ imply? Like, holy crap? What?’ I don’t know.”

Lake prompt songs akin to his may bridge the hole and ultimately assist Bubba-like figures to sing songs with extra theological depth.

“Clearly, that’s the place we need to get to in a worship set — it’s simply each eye is fixated on Him, proper? And it’s identical to everybody — it’s, like, vertical. However, like, give Bubba some language. He will be like, ‘Alright, I discover myself in that tune. I really feel like that,’ you recognize? And hopefully that’s what a few of my music can proceed to do.”

The music video for “Arduous Fought Hallelujah” that includes rapper Jelly Roll has 6.3 million views on YouTube.

Christian cultural commentator Jon Root prompt in a Tuesday X put up that Lake’s angle is the epitome of the seeker-sensitive motion and Bethel Church. Lake was previously a member of Bethel Music and Maverick Metropolis Music.

“That is the fruit of Bethel church [and] the seeker-sensitive motion — watering down the Gospel to make it extra ‘digestible’ for unbelievers,” Root mentioned. “Brandon Lake would slightly entertain [and] compromise, than disciple [and] current theologically wealthy, Jesus-focused music.”

Throughout an interview with The Christian Put up in 2019, award-winning musician and trendy hymnist Keith Getty warned that trendy worship songs are sometimes too nervous about placating the encompassing tradition as an alternative of worshiping God, which he mentioned is successfully “de-Christianizing” the church.

“Many worship songs are targeted on this earth,” Getty mentioned on the time. “I imagine that the fashionable worship motion is a motion for cultural relevance. It’s a de-Christianizing of God’s individuals. It’s completely harmful. I’ve no quibbles saying, ‘Sufficient is sufficient.’ This will’t occur to construct an genuine technology.”

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come back,” is the phrase the 4 dwelling creatures across the throne of God frequently cry out, in keeping with Revelation 4:8. The phrase options memorably in a well-known hymn written by Anglican bishop Reginald Heber within the nineteenth century.

The passage in Revelation echoes the heavenly imaginative and prescient Isaiah acquired as recounted in Isaiah 6:3, which describes the six-winged seraphim round God’s throne frequently crying to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the entire earth is stuffed with his glory!”

Based on the textual content, the angelic worship and imaginative and prescient of God shook the Temple and overwhelmed Isaiah with a way of his personal sin and that of his nation. The late theologian R.C. Sproul famous that holiness is the solely attribute of God that was raised to the third diploma of repetition in Scripture.