The Gettys were
featured in the BBC TV Songs of Praise programme on 15th June 2014.
The article below was published by David Cloud and can be
read on his website, Wayoflife.org.
The Gettys - The Pied
Pipers of Contemporary Worship Music
______
Keith and Kristyn Getty’s “contemporary hymns” are used widely among “traditional, non-contemporary” churches, because they are considered relatively safe.
At least eight of their songs are included in Majesty Music’s Rejoice Hymns.
Twenty-nine of their songs are featured in Hymns Modern and Ancient, published by Heart Publications, a ministry of Steve Pettit Evangelistic Association and compiled by Fred Coleman who heads up Bob Jones University’s Department of Church Music.
Both Crown Baptist College and West Coast Baptist College, the two largest independent Baptist Bible colleges, perform Getty material in their services.
The Getty’s popular songs include “Don’t Let Me Lose My Wonder,” “In Christ Alone” (penned by Keith and Stuart Townend), “Speak, Oh Lord,” and “The Power of the Cross.”
Typically, the lyrics are Scriptural and the tunes are not blaring rock & roll (though the Gettys can and do rock out in their concerts).
What could be wrong with this, then?
Among all of the contemporary worship musicians, I consider the Gettys perhaps the most dangerous, because what they are offering is wrapped in such an attractive package: From their Irish brogue to their physical attractiveness, conservative appearance, and effervescent cheerfulness to their foot tapping Emerald Island-tinged music -- even to the spiritual depth of their lyrics. They aren’t writing the typical CCM 7-11 music (7 words sung 11 times); their lyrics have scriptural substance.
But that attractive, “conservative-appearing” package is a bridge to
truly great spiritual danger.
The Gettys represent the exceedingly dangerous world of contemporary worship music as definitely as does Graham Kendrick or Darlene Zschech, and any bridges that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys are bridges built to the one-world church and even to secular rock.
We are living in the age of end-time technology, which means that one can no longer use songs and hymns without the listeners being able to come into communication with the authors with great ease. Whereas even 30 years ago, it was difficult to contact and be influenced by authors of Christian music, that has changed dramatically with the Internet.
Today if people in a Bible-believing church hear songs by Jack Hayford or MercyMe or Graham Kendrick or Stuart Townend or Darlene Zschech or Keith Getty, songs heard in “adapted form” in many Bible-believing churches, they can easily search for that group or individual on the web and come into intimate contact with these people -- not only in contact with their music (typically played in "real" rock & roll style as opposed to the watered-down soft-rock ballad versions performed in churches that are beginning to dabble with contemporary praise music), but also in contact with their ecumenical/charismatic/separatist hating/one-world church philosophy.
Let’s say someone hears the choir perform “In Christ Alone” or “The Power of the Cross” by the Gettys. He likes the music and decide to check them out on the web. He comes across the Gettys rocking out at their concerts and begins to question his church’s stand against rock music. He sees the Gettys associating with anyone and everyone and begins to question biblical separation. “The Gettys seem so sincere and Christ-loving; maybe I’ve been too hard-nosed in my Christianity; maybe the separatist stance is all wrong; perhaps I should lighten up.” He comes across Keith Getty’s July 2013 interview with Assist Ministries and decides to listen to what the man has to say. He hears Getty speak highly of Bono and C.S. Lewis, so he decides to take a look at these people, and by so doing he begins to question fundamental Bible doctrines. After time, through the influence of the Gettys, the soul who was once a content member of a Bible-believing church, raising his children in a Bible-believing path, is on the high road to the emerging church and his children and grandchildren will end up who knows where.
The same could be said for the influence of Townend or Kendrick or MercyMe or Zschech or hundreds of other prominent contemporary worship musicians, because they hold the same philosophy and represent the same bridge to spiritual danger.
Men such as Paul Chappell and Clarence Sexton and Ron Hamilton, who should know better but who are defending the use of contemporary praise music either in word or by example, will answer to God for the souls that cross the bridges they are building to the dangerous world that is represented by this music.
The Getty’s ecumenical, one-world-church goal is to “bring everyone together musically” (www.keithgetty.com). They want to “bridge the gap between the traditional and contemporary” (www.gettymusic.com/about.aspx).
In a July 2013 interview, Keith Getty mentioned vile rocker Sting and homosexual rocker Elton John in a positive light, with not a hint of warning. The interview was with Dan Wooding of Assist Ministries and was broadcast on Frontpage Radio from Nashville (audio found HERE).
The Gettys list the Beatles as a major musical influence, and I have never heard them warn God’s people to stay away from the Beatles.
Thus any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond to the world of secular rock, because the Gettys speak in positive terms of that world instead of reproving the unfruitful works of darkness in accordance with Ephesians 5:11.
The Gettys are also a bridge to a wide variety of theological heresy.
In the same 2013 interview Keith Getty heaped praise on Bono of the Irish rock band U2, calling him a “brilliant theological thinker” and saying that Bono “cares for a lot of the things that Christ asks us to care about.” He also said, “I love his passion for life and his passion for learning.” Getty had absolutely nothing to say about Bono by word of warning. Bono rarely even attends church, and when he does it is often a viciously heretical “church” like Glide Memorial United Methodist in San Francisco (Bill Flanagan, U2 and the End of the World, p. 99). Bono’s biographer said that he has been a frequent worshiper at Glide. Cecil Williams, former pastor of the church, doesn’t believe in heaven; he began performing homosexual “marriages” in 1965; and church “celebrations” have included dancing with complete nudity.
This is Bono’s type of Christianity. Bono says that he believes that Jesus died on the cross for his sins and that “he is holding out for grace,” but Bono’s “grace” is a grace that does not result in radical conversion and a new way of life; it is a grace without repentance; it is a grace that does not produce holiness, in contrast with Titus 2:11-15. Nowhere does Bono warn his myriads of listeners to turn to Christ before it is too late and before they pass out of this life into eternal hell. In fact, he says that heaven and hell are on this earth (Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas, 2005, p. 254). Bono says that the older he gets the more comfort he finds in Roman Catholicism (Bono on Bono, p. 201). But he has nothing good to say about biblical “fundamentalism,” falsely claiming that it is a denial that God is love (Bono on Bono, p. 167) and calling it vile names (p. 147). The problem is that Bono defines love by the rock & roll dictionary rather than by the Bible, which says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). Bill Flanagan, a U2 friend who has traveled extensively with the group, in his authorized biography describes them as heavy drinkers and constant visitors to bars, brothels, and nightclubs (Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, p. 145). Bono admits that he lives “a fairly decadent kind of selfish-art-oriented lifestyle” (Flanagan, p. 79). Many of Bono’s statements cannot be printed in a Christian publication. Appearing on the Golden Globe Awards broadcast by NBC television in 2003, Bono shouted a vile curse word. Bono told the media that he and his bandmates planned to spend New Year’s Eve 2000 in Dublin, because “Dublin knows how to drink” (Bono, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. E1). In 2006 Bono said: “I recently read in one of St. Paul’s letters where it describes all of the fruits of the spirit, and I had none of them” (“Enough Rope with Andrew Denton,” March 13, 2006). In October 2008, Fox News reported that Bono and rocker friend Simon Carmody partied with teenage girls on a yacht in St. Tropez. The report, which was accompanied by a photo of Bono holding two bikini-clad teenagers on his lap at a bar (Fox News, Oct. 27, 2008).
This is the man that Keith Getty publicly calls a brilliant theologian and praises for caring about things that Christ tells us to care about! Doesn’t Christ care about truth and holiness and a pure gospel and repentance and sound doctrine, Keith? Aren’t these absolute fundamentals? Doesn’t the Bible say, “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4)? Doesn’t the Bible say, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4)?
(For more about Bono see the report “The Rock Group U2” at www.wayoflife.org.
Any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond the Gettys to people like Bono of U2.
In the same 2013 interview, Getty claimed C.S. Lewis as a major theological influence. Yet Lewis rejected the fundamental doctrines of the infallible inspiration of Scripture and “penal substitutionary atonement” and believed in purgatory and baptismal regeneration (“C.S. Lewis Superstar,” Christianity Today, Dec. 2005). Lewis rejected the historicity of Jonah and Job. He believed in prayers to the dead and confession to a priest. He held to theistic evolution, believing that “man is physically descended from animals” and calling the Genesis account of creation “a Hebrew folk tale” (Lewis, The Problem of Pain). He denied the eternal torment of hell and claimed that followers of pagan religions can be saved without acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour (Lewis, Mere Christianity; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle). (For more about Lewis see the free eBook Evangelicals and C.S. Lewis at www.wayoflife.org)
This is a man that Getty honors as a major theological influence and about whom he has nothing negative to say. No warnings. No separation.
Any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond the Gettys to heretics like C.S. Lewis.
The Gettys are called “modern hymn writers” but their music is syncretistic. They “fuse the music of their Irish heritage with the sounds of Nashville, their newly adopted home.” As we have noted, the Gettys list the Beatles as a major musical influence.
Keith arranged some of the songs on Michael W. Smith’s charismatic Healing Rain album.
The Gettys have a close working relationship with Stuart Townend, who is radically charismatic and ecumenical. Not only do they write and publish songs with Townend, but they also tour together, joining hands, for example, in the Celtic Islands Tour 2012.
In July 2012, the Gettys joined Townend and Roman Catholic Matt Maher on NewsongCafe on WorshipTogether.com. They played and discussed “The Power of the Cross,” which was co-written by Getty-Townend. The 10-minute program promoted ecumenical unity, with Maher/Townend/Getty entirely one in the spirit through the music. Fundamental doctrinal differences are so meaningless that they are not even mentioned. Spiritual abominations such as the papacy, the mass, infant baptism, baptismal regeneration, and Mariolatry were entirely ignored. Jude 3 was despised and Romans 16:17 completely disobeyed for the sake of building the one-world church through contemporary Christian music.
This is the Christianity of the Gettys.
(See also “Stuart Townend” and “Matt Maher” in this Directory.)
In October 2012, the Gettys joined hands with emerging heretic Leonard Sweet at the National Worship Leader Conference in San Diego. Sweet calls his universalist-tinged doctrine New Light and “quantum spirituality” and “the Christ consciousness” and describes it in terms of “the union of the human with the divine” which is the “center feature of all the world’s religions” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 235). He defines the New Light as “a structure of human becoming, a channeling of Christ energies through mindbody experience” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 70). Sweet says that “New Light pastors” hold the doctrine of “embodiment of God in the very substance of creation” (p. 124). In Carpe Mañana, Sweet says that the earth is as much a part of the body of Christ as humans and that humanity and the earth constitutes “a cosmic body of Christ” (p. 124). Sweet lists some of the “New Light leaders” that have influenced his thinking as Matthew Fox, M. Scott Peck, Willis Harman, and Ken Wilber. These are prominent New Agers who believe in the divinity of man, as we have documented in the book The New Age Tower of Babel. Sweet has endorsed The Shack with its non-judgmental father-mother god, and he promotes Roman Catholic contemplative mysticism and dangerous mystics such as the Catholic-Buddhist Thomas Merton. (For documentation see the book Contemplative Mysticism, which is available in print and eBook editions from Way of Life Literature -- www.wayoflife.org.)
Any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond the Gettys to heretics such as C.S. Lewis and Bono, to the Roman Catholic Church, to the Charismatic movement, to the filthy world of secular rock, to emergents and New Agers like Leonard Sweet, and to every element of the end-time one-world “church.”
_____
About Way of Life - The name “Way of Life” is from Proverbs 6:23: “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.” The biblical instruction that molds men to God’s will requires reproof. It is not strictly positive. It does not focus on man’s “self-esteem.” It does not avoid controversial or unpopular subjects. It warns as well as comforts. It deals with sin and false teaching in a plain manner. It is reproves, rebukes, exhorts with all longsuffering and doctrine (2 Tim. 4:2). This is what we seek to do through Way of Life Literature. The Way of Life preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. A mail stop is maintained in Port Huron, Michigan.
The Gettys represent the exceedingly dangerous world of contemporary worship music as definitely as does Graham Kendrick or Darlene Zschech, and any bridges that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys are bridges built to the one-world church and even to secular rock.
We are living in the age of end-time technology, which means that one can no longer use songs and hymns without the listeners being able to come into communication with the authors with great ease. Whereas even 30 years ago, it was difficult to contact and be influenced by authors of Christian music, that has changed dramatically with the Internet.
Today if people in a Bible-believing church hear songs by Jack Hayford or MercyMe or Graham Kendrick or Stuart Townend or Darlene Zschech or Keith Getty, songs heard in “adapted form” in many Bible-believing churches, they can easily search for that group or individual on the web and come into intimate contact with these people -- not only in contact with their music (typically played in "real" rock & roll style as opposed to the watered-down soft-rock ballad versions performed in churches that are beginning to dabble with contemporary praise music), but also in contact with their ecumenical/charismatic/separatist hating/one-world church philosophy.
Let’s say someone hears the choir perform “In Christ Alone” or “The Power of the Cross” by the Gettys. He likes the music and decide to check them out on the web. He comes across the Gettys rocking out at their concerts and begins to question his church’s stand against rock music. He sees the Gettys associating with anyone and everyone and begins to question biblical separation. “The Gettys seem so sincere and Christ-loving; maybe I’ve been too hard-nosed in my Christianity; maybe the separatist stance is all wrong; perhaps I should lighten up.” He comes across Keith Getty’s July 2013 interview with Assist Ministries and decides to listen to what the man has to say. He hears Getty speak highly of Bono and C.S. Lewis, so he decides to take a look at these people, and by so doing he begins to question fundamental Bible doctrines. After time, through the influence of the Gettys, the soul who was once a content member of a Bible-believing church, raising his children in a Bible-believing path, is on the high road to the emerging church and his children and grandchildren will end up who knows where.
The same could be said for the influence of Townend or Kendrick or MercyMe or Zschech or hundreds of other prominent contemporary worship musicians, because they hold the same philosophy and represent the same bridge to spiritual danger.
Men such as Paul Chappell and Clarence Sexton and Ron Hamilton, who should know better but who are defending the use of contemporary praise music either in word or by example, will answer to God for the souls that cross the bridges they are building to the dangerous world that is represented by this music.
The Getty’s ecumenical, one-world-church goal is to “bring everyone together musically” (www.keithgetty.com). They want to “bridge the gap between the traditional and contemporary” (www.gettymusic.com/about.aspx).
In a July 2013 interview, Keith Getty mentioned vile rocker Sting and homosexual rocker Elton John in a positive light, with not a hint of warning. The interview was with Dan Wooding of Assist Ministries and was broadcast on Frontpage Radio from Nashville (audio found HERE).
The Gettys list the Beatles as a major musical influence, and I have never heard them warn God’s people to stay away from the Beatles.
Thus any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond to the world of secular rock, because the Gettys speak in positive terms of that world instead of reproving the unfruitful works of darkness in accordance with Ephesians 5:11.
The Gettys are also a bridge to a wide variety of theological heresy.
In the same 2013 interview Keith Getty heaped praise on Bono of the Irish rock band U2, calling him a “brilliant theological thinker” and saying that Bono “cares for a lot of the things that Christ asks us to care about.” He also said, “I love his passion for life and his passion for learning.” Getty had absolutely nothing to say about Bono by word of warning. Bono rarely even attends church, and when he does it is often a viciously heretical “church” like Glide Memorial United Methodist in San Francisco (Bill Flanagan, U2 and the End of the World, p. 99). Bono’s biographer said that he has been a frequent worshiper at Glide. Cecil Williams, former pastor of the church, doesn’t believe in heaven; he began performing homosexual “marriages” in 1965; and church “celebrations” have included dancing with complete nudity.
This is Bono’s type of Christianity. Bono says that he believes that Jesus died on the cross for his sins and that “he is holding out for grace,” but Bono’s “grace” is a grace that does not result in radical conversion and a new way of life; it is a grace without repentance; it is a grace that does not produce holiness, in contrast with Titus 2:11-15. Nowhere does Bono warn his myriads of listeners to turn to Christ before it is too late and before they pass out of this life into eternal hell. In fact, he says that heaven and hell are on this earth (Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas, 2005, p. 254). Bono says that the older he gets the more comfort he finds in Roman Catholicism (Bono on Bono, p. 201). But he has nothing good to say about biblical “fundamentalism,” falsely claiming that it is a denial that God is love (Bono on Bono, p. 167) and calling it vile names (p. 147). The problem is that Bono defines love by the rock & roll dictionary rather than by the Bible, which says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). Bill Flanagan, a U2 friend who has traveled extensively with the group, in his authorized biography describes them as heavy drinkers and constant visitors to bars, brothels, and nightclubs (Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, p. 145). Bono admits that he lives “a fairly decadent kind of selfish-art-oriented lifestyle” (Flanagan, p. 79). Many of Bono’s statements cannot be printed in a Christian publication. Appearing on the Golden Globe Awards broadcast by NBC television in 2003, Bono shouted a vile curse word. Bono told the media that he and his bandmates planned to spend New Year’s Eve 2000 in Dublin, because “Dublin knows how to drink” (Bono, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. E1). In 2006 Bono said: “I recently read in one of St. Paul’s letters where it describes all of the fruits of the spirit, and I had none of them” (“Enough Rope with Andrew Denton,” March 13, 2006). In October 2008, Fox News reported that Bono and rocker friend Simon Carmody partied with teenage girls on a yacht in St. Tropez. The report, which was accompanied by a photo of Bono holding two bikini-clad teenagers on his lap at a bar (Fox News, Oct. 27, 2008).
This is the man that Keith Getty publicly calls a brilliant theologian and praises for caring about things that Christ tells us to care about! Doesn’t Christ care about truth and holiness and a pure gospel and repentance and sound doctrine, Keith? Aren’t these absolute fundamentals? Doesn’t the Bible say, “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4)? Doesn’t the Bible say, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4)?
(For more about Bono see the report “The Rock Group U2” at www.wayoflife.org.
Any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond the Gettys to people like Bono of U2.
In the same 2013 interview, Getty claimed C.S. Lewis as a major theological influence. Yet Lewis rejected the fundamental doctrines of the infallible inspiration of Scripture and “penal substitutionary atonement” and believed in purgatory and baptismal regeneration (“C.S. Lewis Superstar,” Christianity Today, Dec. 2005). Lewis rejected the historicity of Jonah and Job. He believed in prayers to the dead and confession to a priest. He held to theistic evolution, believing that “man is physically descended from animals” and calling the Genesis account of creation “a Hebrew folk tale” (Lewis, The Problem of Pain). He denied the eternal torment of hell and claimed that followers of pagan religions can be saved without acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour (Lewis, Mere Christianity; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle). (For more about Lewis see the free eBook Evangelicals and C.S. Lewis at www.wayoflife.org)
This is a man that Getty honors as a major theological influence and about whom he has nothing negative to say. No warnings. No separation.
Any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond the Gettys to heretics like C.S. Lewis.
The Gettys are called “modern hymn writers” but their music is syncretistic. They “fuse the music of their Irish heritage with the sounds of Nashville, their newly adopted home.” As we have noted, the Gettys list the Beatles as a major musical influence.
Keith arranged some of the songs on Michael W. Smith’s charismatic Healing Rain album.
The Gettys have a close working relationship with Stuart Townend, who is radically charismatic and ecumenical. Not only do they write and publish songs with Townend, but they also tour together, joining hands, for example, in the Celtic Islands Tour 2012.
In July 2012, the Gettys joined Townend and Roman Catholic Matt Maher on NewsongCafe on WorshipTogether.com. They played and discussed “The Power of the Cross,” which was co-written by Getty-Townend. The 10-minute program promoted ecumenical unity, with Maher/Townend/Getty entirely one in the spirit through the music. Fundamental doctrinal differences are so meaningless that they are not even mentioned. Spiritual abominations such as the papacy, the mass, infant baptism, baptismal regeneration, and Mariolatry were entirely ignored. Jude 3 was despised and Romans 16:17 completely disobeyed for the sake of building the one-world church through contemporary Christian music.
This is the Christianity of the Gettys.
(See also “Stuart Townend” and “Matt Maher” in this Directory.)
In October 2012, the Gettys joined hands with emerging heretic Leonard Sweet at the National Worship Leader Conference in San Diego. Sweet calls his universalist-tinged doctrine New Light and “quantum spirituality” and “the Christ consciousness” and describes it in terms of “the union of the human with the divine” which is the “center feature of all the world’s religions” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 235). He defines the New Light as “a structure of human becoming, a channeling of Christ energies through mindbody experience” (Quantum Spirituality, p. 70). Sweet says that “New Light pastors” hold the doctrine of “embodiment of God in the very substance of creation” (p. 124). In Carpe Mañana, Sweet says that the earth is as much a part of the body of Christ as humans and that humanity and the earth constitutes “a cosmic body of Christ” (p. 124). Sweet lists some of the “New Light leaders” that have influenced his thinking as Matthew Fox, M. Scott Peck, Willis Harman, and Ken Wilber. These are prominent New Agers who believe in the divinity of man, as we have documented in the book The New Age Tower of Babel. Sweet has endorsed The Shack with its non-judgmental father-mother god, and he promotes Roman Catholic contemplative mysticism and dangerous mystics such as the Catholic-Buddhist Thomas Merton. (For documentation see the book Contemplative Mysticism, which is available in print and eBook editions from Way of Life Literature -- www.wayoflife.org.)
Any bridge that Bible-believing churches build to the Gettys is a bridge beyond the Gettys to heretics such as C.S. Lewis and Bono, to the Roman Catholic Church, to the Charismatic movement, to the filthy world of secular rock, to emergents and New Agers like Leonard Sweet, and to every element of the end-time one-world “church.”
_____
About Way of Life - The name “Way of Life” is from Proverbs 6:23: “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.” The biblical instruction that molds men to God’s will requires reproof. It is not strictly positive. It does not focus on man’s “self-esteem.” It does not avoid controversial or unpopular subjects. It warns as well as comforts. It deals with sin and false teaching in a plain manner. It is reproves, rebukes, exhorts with all longsuffering and doctrine (2 Tim. 4:2). This is what we seek to do through Way of Life Literature. The Way of Life preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. A mail stop is maintained in Port Huron, Michigan.