MTYC 2010: You Are My Witnesses

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Montana Youth Conference

MTYC 2010 Breakout Seminar - Music

Marion Peppers

God’s Original Song

Satan’s Counterfeit Song

Worship in Song

Making Music Practical

What do YOU want to know about Godly music?

Okay, so let's go ahead and have prayer for our last music seminar.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for the short time of rest that we've had to rejuvenate our minds and we pray now that you would just teach us something new that we would be drawn closer to you through this seminar.

And as we talk about music and evangelism, Lord, that we would just learn something more of how to reach people for you.

We thank you so much in Jesus' name, amen.

So the last several classes we talked about several principles having to do with music, God's ideal plan for music, the devil's counterfeit for music, We've seen some of the ways that the devil is trying to deceive God's people in this issue, especially in the end times.

The last class we talked about music in worship, what type of music is appropriate in the worship service.

And this last class is going to be maybe a little bit more practical.

And I want to talk about something that's dear to my heart, which is music and evangelism, mainly in public evangelism, but I'll talk a little bit more about others as well.

But, You know, being in evangelism for so many years, even before I was married, I worked with several evangelistic meetings as a Bible worker, and now being married to an evangelist, I've been able to witness a lot of different aspects, and we've seen some things that are good, some things that are not so good, and we've learned a lot from other evangelists.

And me being a musician, of course, I'm always looking at the music.

How can we improve the music in an evangelistic series?

What type of music can reach the most people?

What are the biblical principles that we need to follow?

And so I really started looking into this and praying and asking the Lord to help me as a musician to be able to help my husband as a preacher to combine both the sermons and the music together in a powerful way.

Because I believe, as I've said to some of you before, that there's something about a song that can reach certain people in a way that the spoken word can never do.

And so although I never wanna diminish or belittle the spoken word, That should always be the main focus of any church service or an evangelistic meeting.

However, God has created music in a beautiful way to be able to coincide with the word of God and that it can be a way of preparing the hearts of those listening to soften their hearts, to open them up for the message that the Lord wants to present to them.

So if you've ever done any type of evangelism, you've seen how important the work is that's done in evangelism and the many lives that can be changed through a public evangelistic series.

I know my parents were brought to the Lord through a public evangelistic series.

But instead of talking about all the different aspects of evangelism and how we should do an evangelism cycle, these things that we teach at AAFCO, I just want to strictly focus today on music.

I want to share some Bible verses, some more spirit of prophecy quotes with you on this topic And to give you some practical ways of choosing appropriate songs and types of music for an evangelistic series.

Now some of you may be thinking, how does this apply to me?

But I can pretty much guarantee that most of you will at 1 time or another be able to at least help out with an evangelistic series, whether 1 comes to your church, whether or not you are a young person working with a group like Youth for Jesus or a Bible working, you will be able to use somehow, if not an evangelistic series, in outreach somehow be able to use music.

So hopefully this will be helpful to you.

There are a lot of evangelists that actually don't really think that music is that important in a series.

I've met a lot of evangelists and they all have their different opinions and the different things that they focus on.

And some of them really just don't focus on music at all.

They just kind of leave it up to the church and they might have a special music and that's not really the focus of it.

And it works fine, the Lord is still able to bless, but the ones that I've been to where the evangelist really takes it seriously, for instance, I did an evangelistic series with Pastor Brian McMahon and he takes music very seriously.

He makes sure to get the best music that he can, to find people that are spiritual, that love the Lord, that sing from their heart, and he makes sure to have powerful appeals.

All these things we're going to talk about that are an important part of making a successful evangelistic meeting.

And it's just really powerful to watch how the evangelist can connect more with the people in the audience when they take music seriously and that's an important aspect of it.

So although music was not originally designed to be just evangelistic, we've talked about the reasons it was designed for, but I believe that there's still an important place for it.

The Spirit of Prophecy has a lot to say about it, so we're going to look at some of those things.

And So I want to go through some different points regarding this and the importance of music in evangelism.

And the first thing I want to look at is that music in evangelism should be simple, good quality, and uplift Jesus.

Again, I've emphasized this over and over again.

It should always uplift Jesus and not the musician.

If you have your Bibles, we're going to turn to the book of Acts, chapter 16 and verse 25.

And this is a very interesting story we read here.

I'm just going to read a short part of it.

But this is the story of Paul and Silas when they were placed in prison.

And it says in verse 25, and at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God and the prisoners heard them.

Now you know the rest of the story, right?

Remember the story, There was a great earthquake and the jailer was so afraid that everyone was going to escape and he comes in and everybody's still there, right?

And then Paul and Silas ended up winning over the jailer to the Lord.

But just this 1 verse, and at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.

And the prisoners were listening to them.

Now, I've never been into prison, but I've heard stories.

I've never been into jail, heard stories.

Can you imagine how noisy the jail was probably at that time.

People are talking and some people probably complaining, maybe even cursing.

And in the midst of all of this, there's these 2 crazy guys that have been thrown in jail.

They're praying and they're singing praises to God.

In other words, whatever was going on in that jail, All the talking and the complaining that was going on, all of it ceased.

It stopped, and they started to listen to those beautiful songs that Paul and Silas were singing.

And, you know, I can imagine there had to be something distinctly clear and beautiful about the songs that they were singing.

I doubt that everyone stopped because they thought, well, those guys really have great voices.

You know, they should really go on the road.

I seriously doubt that's why they stopped to listen to them.

But there was something different about the song that they were singing.

I imagine that most people in there had never heard anything quite so simple and beautiful in their life.

And it was so powerful that I believe it touched them so much that when the earthquake happened, That's why they stayed where they were, because they were touched by the words and the songs of these 2 men that obviously had a relationship with the Lord.

To me, this is 1 of the biggest, I guess, stories in the Bible of music being used in evangelism.

And you may think, oh, that's a little bit of a stretch, but I don't think so.

Paul and Silas were not, they were singing to cheer themselves up, yes, but I think even more than that, they were wanting to minister to those around them.

However, touching on something again that we mentioned in the last class, should we ever use worldly music or music in the world to try and attract people to, let's say, our evangelistic meetings.

What type of music were Paul and Silas singing to try and reach to these prisoners, these guys in prison?

They didn't say, hey, let's sing some songs that they're familiar with or sing in a way that they're familiar with so that we can win these guys to Jesus.

No, they just simply sang simple songs to Jesus, praises to God.

And so many times we think we have to use the music of the world to reach the people in the world, but as I said before, people are looking for something different.

They want something different in their lives.

You know, I told you I would share this study with you.

There was actually a study done by a Baptist evangelist.

He went on a six-month evangelistic crusade across the United States.

And he found that before, when he first started out, he was using a traditional, more traditional approach to evangelism.

He was using more traditional music in his appeal songs and what not.

And he found that about 15 to 20 percent of the people who made public decisions to follow God, people that came forward in an altar call, about 15 to 20 percent of those actually followed through with their decision later on.

You know, a lot of times we just see the decision they make there but we can't follow up and see where they are years down the road.

So 15 to 20% of those people followed through with their decision.

So he wanted to find out how successful his meetings would be if he began to feature more popular music that at that time was more like a Christian folk rock music.

He was taking, He started taking this, it was music that they had taken from the world to put Christian words to, this Christian folk rock, and he said, I wanted to start using this.

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Series

MTYC 2010 Breakout Seminar - Music

What do YOU want to know about Godly music?

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

MTYC 2010 Breakout Seminar - Music

Making Music Practical

50m

The Heavenly Sanctuary and the Universal Characteristics of Worship and Music

1h 1m

Music in Your Sphere: Max the Potential of Music in Ministry

5. When the Notes Clash

1h 3m

Music in Your Sphere: Max the Potential of Music in Ministry

2. The Power of One Song

1h

Breakout Session C

Reflecting Christ to Your Community as a Healthcare Provider

1h 7m

ASI 2011 Plenary Meetings

Members in Action

1h 35m

Music in Your Sphere: Max the Potential of Music in Ministry

3. Singing of a Better Land

1h 1m

The Sweetest Song I Know: Authentic Musical Worship Deepens Our Experience with Christ

How Can I Keep from Singing?

56m

In Harmony With God?- Music Overview

1h 10m

Practice What You Preach

43m

Sound Doctrine