What To Do When Christian Influencers Fail You

Welcome to Season Two. I am starting a series on the power of music and its influence on our lives. Episode one introduces the specifics of what I plan to discuss throughout the series.
Buckle up; this season is going to blow your mind.
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Transcript

Welcome back to planting seeds. I'm your host, Ana Murby. This is season two, episode

one.

If you haven't watched my latest episode, it was just kind of updating you on how season two is going to be so that you get an idea of what's going on. 
You can listen to that.

Otherwise, I'm just going to give a brief overview of what I plan on doing.

I'm going to be talking about certain topics in the form of  a series. So each week is

going to be related kind of to what I talked about the week before and I'm just kind of

building a series, I guess, for each season from now on. 

These are meant to plant seeds, basically. It's not going to be easy topics for many Christians. It's probably going to rock your world.

I know the first topic I'm going to talk about really did mine. But it's not just for

Christians. It's for those who are seeking truth, who just want truth.

They don't want to be lied to anymore. They don't want half truth. They want the full

truth.

That's what this podcast is meant to do, is to plant seeds of truth, and God will water

them and make them grow in his timing. So without further ado, I'm going to start giving

you an, I guess, like an introduction to what I'm planning on talking about. 

But the question, the topic for today's episode is what to do when your Christian influences fail you?

And as a non-believer who might be listening to this, you're probably thinking, well,

that's not going to pertain to me. But it kind of does in the sense that I'm pretty sure at

one point you blamed your reason for not wanting to follow Christ on Christians. They're two-faced. They're backstabbers. They, you know, they're hypocrites. You know, I can't follow a God whose people don't act like him.

All these different things I'm pretty sure you've said. We've all said them at one

point or another. So this is not just for Christians.

This is also for those who want to blame Christians as to the reason why they don't want to follow God. Because we're human. God's not.

He can't fail. We fail all the time. We're human.

We make mistakes. Christians don't become like God in that sense that we are perfect

just because we ask him into our hearts. We still make mistakes.

So I wanted to get that out there first and foremost. This is for anybody who wants to

hear truth. You don't have to be a Christian.

You don't have to be someone who's thinking about being a Christian. You can be

wherever you are right now. But if you want to know absolute truth, then this will be for

you.

Because that's what I'm going to try to do my best in a gracious way is to share the truth

of what I've been learning through my studies on these topics that I'm going to be

discussing throughout the next seasons. 

So what do we do when our Christian influencers fail us? I don't know how many of you have been paying attention to any of this kind of Christian world. Like there's some Christian worship artists.

There's some Christian music artists. There's pastors who have been falling by the

wayside having problems. Things they've been going through saying they're no longer

Christian.

You know just turning their back on God. And I want to focus specifically right now on

this season is going to be only on Christian music. Worship, praise and worship Christian music is what it's really going to focus on for this season.

And the reason why is because that's kind of where my journey of my eyes being opened happened was with music. I've always loved music and I grew up in a Christian home and Christian music was safe. There's a radio station that says safe for the whole family.

That's what I thought with the Christian music I listened to that, it was safe. It was good.

There was nothing I had to worry about.

I could put it on guilt free. I could let anyone hear it and they were going to hear the

gospel. They were going to hear good things that come from God.

That's what my whole mentality was up until the 2020 lockdown. And if you listen to

podcasts or you hear anybody else I'm pretty sure you've also heard people saying 2020

was their year where God opened their eyes to things whatever. It's true.

Like I've listened to a lot of different podcasts where people are also saying the same

thing and I'm seeing a pattern that perhaps the lockdowns as terrible as they were there was some good that also came out of it. And my life was forever changed during that lockdown when I had more time to settle in and focus on my relationship with God and listening to godly podcasts from people that I trusted and heard some stuff that I had never heard before. So I have started listening to Alan Parr.

He has a podcast called The Beat and I have a couple things, a couple YouTube videos

that I can maybe leave links in my description for if you want to know more in depth of

this topic because he goes pretty in depth with things in a way that I can't and am not

fully capable of doing. But he's done his due diligence on these things. And the first

video that I'm going to kind of reference is called Why These Popular Christian Worship

Artists Left Christianity.

And he goes through a couple of them and talks about, you know, what they did, why

they left, and then he will eventually give his reasons why he thinks that they left. It's a

pretty good episode. So I mean, I encourage you guys to listen to it.

Like I said, I'll put in the links, you can check it out. This podcast is meant to be more of

like a friend talking with a friend. So I mean, I'm not going to just rattle off different facts

and whatnot to you guys.

I will point you to where I'm getting my information from. I'm just a friend sharing what I

can retain and what I remember and my heart to you because I want to see you guys

thrive in finding truth. So he talks about a woman named Audrey Assaud.

And I guess she did. She's a really good worship leader. I don't know if she just does

worship on her own or if she did it for a church.

In one part of his video, she's on stage with a church group. So I'm assuming maybe

she's part of a church group. I don't know.

But she really has a beautiful voice and she sings beautiful songs, worship songs about

God that are really deep and theological. But she recently came out with a video on why

she isn't following Christianity anymore, why she's no longer a Christian. And it's like

about Christian deconstruction.

And if you don't know what that is, Alisa Childers does a lot of information about that.

And maybe at some point, I'll talk about that as well. But it's such a deep theological and

apologetic topic that I don't know if I'll be able to get there.

But he just talks about her a little bit and how she fell away from God after making all

these beautiful songs. And then he mentions Marty Sampson, who I believe was part of a Hillsong church. And he talks about an interview that Marty Samson did called where he mentions that he is no longer a Christian.

And it's just mind blowing to me that these people are doing this. And when I first heard

this, I was like, what? I listened to Hillsong. I was like, how is this doesn't make any

sense.

And then I guess there's another couple called Lisa and Michael Gungor. I'm not exactly

sure I know who they are. But apparently, they're now embracing atheism.

And they're talking about it. And, you know, promoting how we need to find our truth

from within, find our worth from within, and all these other things that sound very new

agey. And he just asks questions.

He's like, why is this happening? Why are Christian artists doing this? They're not the

only ones. There's others that I used to listen to that I loved so much. Not sure how many people remember Jennifer Knapp.

But I loved her music. I had fun singing to it because it was in an octave that I could

actually do without having to strain. And I just loved her music.

But apparently she's come out as lesbian. Plumb, I don't know how many people know

her, but she says LGBTQ is awesome. The lead singer for Cademan's Call, Derek Webb,

recently made a Christian with quotation marks song called, I forget what it's called.

But he was dressed in drag in it. And he actually went to, I think the Grammys dressed in

drag too, and singing with someone called Flamy Grant. But it's just like, all these

Christian music artists are deconstructing.

Don't get me started on talking about the pastors who are getting called out for past

sins, for egregious sins, different people who share the gospel on television. All these

different topics, these ones that I'm not mentioning yet, they will be talked about in

seasons coming up, God willing, if he allows me to continue with this podcast. Because

these are things that have been weighing heavy on my heart and have been helping me

to shape my spiritual growth in the way that I need it to be for myself.

Because as I have said in a previous episode, I need to make my faith my own. And in

order to do that, I have to detangle it from everything else that I was taught, how I was

raised, because some of that stuff is not right. It's not true.

Not the basics of and fundamentals of Christianity. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fluff around it that some people may say, oh, that's just a

denominational difference.

Or you don't really need to worry about that. Perhaps we need to worry about it a lot

more than we think we do. Because as I get deeper into these subjects, I realize how far I have strayed away from the actual truth of the gospel and who God really is.

And I don't want my friends and family, I don't want you who I may not know, but you

are listening to this right now. I don't want that for you either. I don't want you to be

blinded.

The Bible says that the road to him is narrow, the road to God is narrow. That literally

means that there's going to be a lot more people who think they're going to heaven who

aren't really going to heaven, because we have something wrong with our theology. 

So my goal is to help in the best way that I can from an, I don't want to say ignorant

standpoint, because I'm not really ignorant, but more of a, I don't retain a lot of what's

said in these videos, because these are like hour long videos, almost an hour long video.

Like, I took some notes for this. And I will, when I watch videos, I'll take notes. And I'm

actually re-watching some of these videos so that I can take notes because I didn't

before.

Because I'm really trying to do something that I don't like to do, which is research. I don't

like going deep in research for things. I don't know if that's just lazy or whatever, but I'm

doing it now because I really feel that this is something God wants me to do.

And I want to help people be transformed. I want to see their lives changed. And I want

them to know the true Jesus.

So that's why I'm doing this. That's why I'm going out of my comfort zones to research

for one, and also to share this, knowing that it's probably going to alienate some of my

friends who might be listening to this, and it might cause some division in certain things.

But it's necessary because people need to know this.

You may think that your Christian music is safe, but it might not be. The lead singer of

Hawk Nelson, I'm not sure if anyone knows about this band. It's another one I used to

listen to, Jonathan Steingard, says he no longer believes in God too.

And Lecrae supports the BLM stuff, the Black Lives Matter. He supports that whole

campaign. He was promoting, I forget what his name is.

He was running for a seat, I believe in Congress in Atlanta. And the guy claimed to be a

pastor, but apparently he's also approving of abortion. And Lecrae was supporting that

candidate.

And apparently he does kind of support abortion. I don't follow Lecrae anymore, but

when I came back to Christ, he was one of the key people I listened to all the time. I

loved his music.

I love his passion. He's got a great rap. I mean, I don't even like rap, but I listened to him

because I liked the beat.

I liked what he was saying. I believed it. It was good.

And then I find this out and I'm like, wow, it just like somebody burst my Christian music

bubble. And he was one of the first ones that it happened to. And I'm like, wow, that's

crazy.

And then I found out about Marty Sampson, Audrey Assaud, all these other worship

leaders. I was like, wait a minute. The worship music isn't safe either.

There's probably things being said in there that's not right, like theologically not right.

And then I hear about all these other musicians. I was like, no, are you kidding me? Like

this is going down the list of my childhood, my high school years.

I wasn't allowed to listen to secular music because it wasn't safe. I could only listen to

Christian music. I could only listen to Christian girl music a lot of times, but it was just

Christian music in general because it was safe.

It was okay. I couldn't listen to rock music, which included skillet, which I will get to in a

second. But Kevin Max, does anyone know who DC talk is? If you grew up as a Christian,

you have to know who DC talk is.

They are a key part of the nineties Christian scene. In my opinion, I wasn't allowed to

listen to them because they were too ruckus, but they were so Christian, but I was, it

was too ruckus. One of the guys from that says he's an exvangelical.

I don't know enough about that, but it's somewhere along the lines of Christian

deconstruction. So if you're really interested in that, again, Alisa Childers has her podcast and she talks a lot about this in depth. She can totally help you weed through all that stuff, but he doesn't believe in God anymore either.

A guy from DC talk. Hello? Like that was one of the biggest Christian groups, Jesus freak.

How can somebody who's seeing all these godly songs, these beautiful worship songs fall from the wayside? And I wrote down four of the points that Alan Parr made in his video, the one that I had mentioned earlier, and his podcast is called the beat with Alan Parr.

You can find it on YouTube. It's probably on all the podcast platforms too, but he says

there's four reasons why this might be happening. Intellectual doubts and skepticism,

negative experiences with church or religious community, disappointment with God, or

this is a big one, especially nowadays.

And it's kind of poignant that I'm finishing up the end of June with this one, LGBTQ

discrimination. With Derek Webb, I think it's pretty obvious that that's his reason for why he's deconstructing, although he's probably been doing it for a while. Kevin Max, I

believe supports it.

Plumb, I don't know enough. I listened to her, but I had kind of backtracked a while

because I just had these feelings about certain bands. I mean, apparently Jars of Clay.

I forgot to mention them, but apparently they're also, I don't know if they're supporting

LGBTQ stuff or if they've just, I think they have. I don't know enough about that. I'm

going to try to go in depth with some of these specific things that I'm talking about

through the series.

So please stay tuned. I know I'm like throwing a whole bunch of stuff at you and you're,

I'm like throwing a whole bunch of darts at a bunch of balloons and some are getting

popped and you're like, wait, don't stop there. 

I'm not going to stop there.

That's why I'm choosing to make this a series rather than just one episode and then

moving on to something else, because these are things that matter. And these are things

that we need to know, because we don't want to be on the wrong theological train. I

know I didn't want to be.

And as painful as this was for me to learn these things, it's necessary because it'll get

you back on track and find what's true and right. And through finding out all this stuff

through the tears that I shed, realizing that the music that I had grown up thinking was

safe is no longer safe. Man, that was a mind blow and it broke my heart.

And I will be honest, I could not listen to Christian music for a long time. Like I'm still

having some trouble with it now because I'm, I've learned so much that when I listen to

certain things, especially at church with the worship music that we listen to, it's not bad.

I'm not going there, but I would sit there and stare at the screen.

And I would just have anxiety because I couldn't just sing the songs because I knew what church it was coming from, which is another topic I'll be getting into at some point,

probably another season because NAR, I don't know if you know what that is, but I am

going to be discussing that as well. And, you know, music kind of ties into that as well,

which you'll get a little taste of maybe next week, God willing, if that's the topic that he

chooses for me to talk about right away. But just there's theological problems with

certain worship songs.

There's theological problems with listening to music by people who don't believe what

you believe, and they're just singing it and putting these people on a pedestal. That's

basically what I was doing, is I was putting them in a safe spot. I was putting them in a

pedestal that almost felt like I was idolizing them, not necessarily, but in a sense, that's

what I feel I was doing.

And that's why I was having such a hard time with this and not able to sing at church

because I was scrutinizing the songs. I felt comatose. I could not wrap my head around

the fact that my whole music childhood was set aflame, basically.

And Avalon is another one that's had some drama going on there. That's a band that I

could listen to, even though there was a couple guys in it, but it was a safe band. And my

parents let me listen to it.

But I'm now realizing in my adulthood that these people were not as safe as my family

thought. They flew under the radar of Christian music, but they themselves didn't even

believe what they were singing. It was just, I don't even know.

I don't know them personally. I haven't heard all their stories, but it's just not what they

believed, I guess. And that's crazy.

How can you sing such passionate songs about God and who he is and not believe it? My

head is swimming again just thinking about all this. Now, I want to get back to what I was saying when I mentioned Skillet and said I was going to come back to that. I was not

allowed to listen to Skillet.

So much so that our school was going to do something called a human video with one of

Skillet's songs. And I wanted to be a part of it, but my parents didn't want me to because

it was such a radically loud rock song and I couldn't do it, even though they're a Christian band. I was very resentful of my parents that they wouldn't let me listen to Skillet while my other friends could listen to it.

It hurt. It made me angry because I'm like, they're a Christian band. Why can't I listen to

it? Same with DC Talk.

I was upset that I couldn't listen to DC Talk. Finally, my parents let me listen to DC Talk,

and I literally cried when I got their first album. I was obsessed with DC Talk after that,

and I was obsessed with being able to listen to Skillet at some point.

And honestly, I think the first time I ever listened to Skillet was when I was an adult, like

18, out of school, and I could buy my own music. I can't fully remember, but I believe

that's when I started listening to them. But I find it very, very, very, very, very ironic that

one of the groups that my parents kept me from because it was raucous music and it

didn't sound Christian, John Cooper, the lead singer of Skillet, is one of the loudest voices out there speaking against all this junk that's going on in our world today, speaking out against the theological differences in the world.

He's getting so much flack from it. He's losing fans. He's losing friends because he's

speaking the truth.

He's speaking the gospel, and he's unafraid and unashamed to do it even at his concerts.

And it's so funny that that was the band that I was kept from because they didn't sound

Christian. They sounded too loud and too raw to be Christian.

But the lead singer is the only one who's really speaking out super hard, other than

Alisa Childers, who used to be in Zoe Girl, if anyone knows that. But he stands firm in

his faith day after day, has this podcast called Cooper Stuff. I encourage you to listen to

that if you haven't before.

It's amazing. And he's not afraid to share the gospel and be honest with people and get

down deep into the politics and everything that's going on. He calls it Big Eva or Big

Evangelical, all the different politics that are going on in the Christian church and

everything.

He's calling it out. He's sharing his faith. He is strong in his faith.

He is a Christian band that I can actually listen to now, and I know what I'm going to get.

It's just, it's mind blowing that that's how it's going right now. And I chuckle at that all

the time.

Not because I'm trying to stick it to my parents or whatever and be like, haha, you were

wrong. It's nothing like that at all. It is not my parents' fault.

They did not know these things. They did not see what was coming down the pipe. I

didn't see what was coming down the pipe.

And if 2020 hadn't locked us down, and we didn't have all this free time to figure out

things and go on YouTube and find podcasts and stuff, I think a lot of us wouldn't have

been where we are now, finding out the things that we know, not just spiritual nature,

but in health and all this other stuff. But my point with all this is that this is a subject that

is necessary to talk about because subjects that Christians should not be approving of

are being approved of in certain areas of the Christian faith. And I think it's because we

have been complacent and lazy in what we believe, but it's also because we have been

trusting in things we should not be trusting in.

The only thing we should trust in 100% is God. He will never fail us. He will never lie.

He is always truthful. He is always honest. And he is always there for us.

And no one else will ever compare to that, especially humans. We are all flawed. We

make mistakes.

We get hurt by people. We get hurt by things. And then we attribute that to God.

And then we say, well, God can't be true. Let's go. And then we go on Instagram or

whatever, and we share that with other people, and we ruin their faith as well, which

may have been strong.

But through listening to those people talking about their stuff out loud, when they should just be talking about it with God, this is just too much. We should not be so focused on people and their influence on us. We should be more focused on God.

So as I said in the beginning, what to do when Christian influencers fail you? That was a

question that I asked myself two or three weeks ago at church while I'm standing there

during the worship, trying really hard to worship. It's something that I'm just now getting back into. And I want to thank personally Keith and Kristyn Getty.

Man, these people are wonderful. Their heart for God is amazing. Their heart for worship is mind-blowing.

I just recently listened to their audio book of their new book called Sing, and it's why we

worship. And it's short. It's easy to read, to listen through because I audio booked it.

I don't know what it's like reading it, but I'm pretty sure it's also fairly easy to read. But it is so full of passion and the reason why we worship, the reason we should worship. And when I read that, I realized that it's not about me.

I have to worship. And I may not like the songs that we sing at church. I may not fully

understand the songs theologically, but if it seems theologically sound, I should be

singing it.

And if not, I need to find a different way to praise my God because he is deserving of it.

So I want to thank them for writing that book because it's an amazing book. And I also

really love their music, by the way.

If you don't know who they are, listen to them. It's very theologically sounded and good

and dare I say safe. But after listening to that book and realizing that I need to worship

God no matter what, I stood in church as we're singing songs and I was standing there

and I just thought about that question, what to do when your Christian influencers fail

you? The answer is you still praise God because they aren't God and they shouldn't be

God.

And if you have to ask that question and your answer is not, you still praise God, then

you need to work on your heart with God or see if you even have God in your heart

because God is always worthy of our praise. No matter who fails us, he is always worthy

of our praise. He is our Lord and Savior.

His son Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He rose from the grave three days later,

breaking the chains of sin and death. And because of that, we have access to the Father

now.

We are children of God when we ask Jesus into our hearts. That is worthy of praise all

day, every day, no matter what, no matter who is messing up, that we trusted, that we

believed we could trust. God is always faithful and true and you can always trust what he says and does.

So that has put me back on a path where I'm choosing to get out of what I feel

comfortable with and I'm praising God no matter what. So even if we sing a song at

church that I'm like, well, I don't like that it comes from this place, then I will sing a

different song in my heart with God. I will thank him for things.

I'm choosing to still put him first during that service because worship matters. And it's

very interesting that I felt God wanted me to start with worship for this series because

our church is also deciding to talk about worship for the next three weekends. And it is a

necessary thing because music is a big part of everyone's life.

Everyone can think of a song that really rocks their world. But if you're listening to

Christian music and you're just kind of tuning out, listening to it, you know, turning off

your your feelers for, you know, bad content because it's Christian music, it's praise and

worship, then you're doing yourself a disservice because there are still snakes in that

grass. There are still wolves in sheep's clothing, even in Christian music.

And that was something that really blew my mind. And it's probably blowing yours. But it is true.

And I will be doing my best to get into those, you know, my reasons why I believe that in

the next however long the series ends up being. So I'm going to I'm going to land this

plane now. If you have any questions, comments, prayer requests, concerns, anything

that you want to talk about, feel free to go to my website, authorannamerby.com. The

link will be in the description with the link to this video that I was telling you about from

Alan Parr, and maybe a link to Alisa Childers channel and Cooper stuff.

And maybe a few other links like there. I'll probably go link city for you guys this week. I

don't know, maybe we'll see.

But I just I want to help you all. That's pretty much just what I'm doing here is I'm trying

to help. I'm not trying to be sensationalist.

I'm not. I'm not trying to make people angry on purpose. I'm trying to help.

So I hope that today I have helped you. I have opened your eyes, planted any seeds. We

will get into more in God willing the next week.

And yeah, I, I feel that this is a good place to land today. So I'm going to pray and say

goodbye. Lord God, thank you for this opportunity that I have to share with my friends.

Some information that I have felt you giving to me throughout the last few years. I pray

that they would receive it well, that their hearts would not be discouraged like mine was

when I first heard all this, but that they would be encouraged knowing that there's a light at the end of this tunnel, that they can always trust you. I pray Lord Jesus that you would help them to come back and listen to more episodes so that they can, can know more about these, these topics.

If this is something that they really feel you're calling them to it. I ask Lord Jesus that you

would give them a good week, that you would bless their time with their families and

friends, that you would bless their finances, that you would help them stay healthy and

that you would continue to speak to them and draw them to you if they don't know you

yet. And if they do know you, I pray that they would have an open heart to whatever it is

that you want to talk to them about this day.

In Jesus name, I pray. Amen. All right, everyone have a good day and God willing, I will

talk to you next week.

Bye.