This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on 6/17/22.  To listen to the program, please click HERE.

Isaac Crockett:                  Welcome to the program. I’m Isaac Crockett and joining me today is my co-host, Sam Rohrer. He’s the president of the American Pastors Network and the regular host of the Stand in the Gap Today program. Our special guest today is Keith Getty, one of my favorite hymn writers. Keith, thank you so much for taking the time out of your family time and your busy schedule to be with us today. We’re just so thankful to have you on with us.

Keith Getty:                       Thank you so much. It’s always a privilege and nice to be here in Ireland. If you can hear the birds singing in the background, it’s partly because birds sing, but it’s partly just because it’s Ireland.

Isaac Crockett:                  Well, Keith, I think the last time you were on with us, we were talking about the singing conference that had just happened and your Confessio, the album that you were coming out with right then, but today we’re going to talk some about a new song that came out, Christ Our Hope in Life and Death. It’s been a blessing to so many people. At the time that it came out back in 2021, and then this past week, you released it with the recording of Kristyn and you and Michael W. Smith singing it. But before we go into talking about that and talking about your upcoming singing conference and some of the busy things you have coming up in the fall, I just wanted to ask you as we talk about music today, your whole life and ministry has been based around good music and it’s helped my family.

We have everything from your hymnal for our kids to, we listen to your albums. When our kids were being born, my wife was in the hospital, I would have pictures going with songs in the background, a lot of neat hymns and a lot of them were from your albums. Even when my dad was passing away and the Lord was calling him home, the same thing, the songs that we sang around his death bed were mostly very old songs, but the only modern ones that I can remember, I think, were Getty hymns because they were just so helpful and so biblically based. But I’m wondering why is it that good music, especially good hymns, why is that so important for us as Christian families in our homes and in our churches?

Keith Getty:                       Well, the shortest answer, great question, and can I hold to say how encouraging that is to me as a writer, but the simple answer to your question is because God made us that way. God sung the world into being as in Genesis, the picture of heaven, the new creation, is of God’s people singing. It’s how we’re made. It’s how we connect in the most intimate and intense ways. It’s the way we remember things. It’s the way we crystallize our joy. It’s the way we somehow emote our sufferings in life. That’s why whether you’re a pastor or a musician or a mother or a father or a grandparent, or just somebody who cares about their own spiritual walk, what we sing and the songs we listen to are absolutely crucial for our spiritual health.

Sam Rohrer:                      Keith, this is Sam. It’s great to have you with us again, and calling in from Ireland is really special for our listeners and us right now. Let me follow up on what you just said. I’m a musician as well. I don’t sing nearly like you do. I play a few musical instruments, but probably not as good as you either, so I’m not in that category, but I do know and respond to what I term “good music,” but a lot of people listening would say, well, so do they. Here’s my question, maybe a tough question, but take a shot at it. We talk about good music. Isaac just said, “Good music, especially hymns,” how would you to define that? What is good music as compared to music that is not good, and are you seeing a trend in modern music being sung in our churches and in our homes today?

Keith Getty:                       Okay. I think I was hearing three of those four questions, but I’m going to try and answer them in some order. I think good music, which is beautiful as like anything else, beautiful food, beautiful gardens, a beautiful movie, a beautiful person are all people that are attracted to us and are magnetic to us because of their beauty. Now, what is good for Christians to sing has to be good music, but the thing is about the whole truths of God in a way that is beautiful. What we can’t do as Christians is just live in beauty without the truth, but unfortunately, many of our Christian friends are very keen to talk about truth, but there is no beauty.

There is no beauty in their lives, in their words, in their kindness, in their sacrifice, or indeed, in the music that they bring and the music around which the songs they sing happens. Unfortunately, no matter how truthful the words that you sing are, if the melodies are not beautiful, they’re not leaving the garage. Do you know what I mean? they don’t deserve to, because God has made us musical creatures who sing to him and sing beautifully to him.

Isaac Crockett:                  Keith, we want to talk about that truth. The name of our program is Stand in the Gap Today. We talk about standing in the gap for truth. We take everything back to a biblical worldview. In fact, last week, our good friend George Barna was just giving us information about how many pastors no longer have a biblical worldview, and so you see that sometimes in our hymns and in our worship music. But on the question of beauty, and this is maybe a lighter question than what Sam asked you, why is it that Irish music is so beautiful? I think all ages and all ethnic groups just respond when they hear Irish music. They just move to it and are gravitated towards it.

Keith Getty:                       Well, I think all of us react to music differently. Some of us will love jazz, some of us will love Irish music, some of us love classical music, some love Cuban music, some love rap, and everybody is entitled to their own choices and preferences. Incidentally, when we’re building relationships, family or friendship or other, understanding what music people love is a really crucial part, a really helpful part of that. But I think to answer your question more directly, what I think makes Irish music work certainly for church music is, Irish music is very melodic and very communal. In other words, whereas jazz is mostly appreciated for the extraordinary solo or Italian opera is known for its dramatic performance, Irish music is known for people standing around in a circle and singing together.

That is its magic. That’s its je ne sais quoi. That’s what makes it stand out. so when it’s very built in melody and very built in community, it makes it actually very easy for congregational singing, because everybody very quickly picks up the tunes and sing to one another, which is why so much of what we call traditional hymns when you strip it away, they sound Irish, whether it’s Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing, whether it’s a more modern one, whether it’s one from 100 years ago, like I’d Rather Have Jesus Than Silver or Gold, or whether it’s the hymns that we write today, there’s a connection between all of those things.

Isaac Crockett:                  Well, that’s an awesome answer. We just enjoy talking about this with you. We’re coming up to our break in just a few seconds here, but Sam, just real quickly, what comments do you have about this idea that we can’t escape truth? We need beautiful music, but we need beautiful music centered around God’s truths.

Sam Rohrer:                      Well, Isaac, even the program that we did yesterday here, we were talking about the matters of truth and from John 8, it talks about, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” The truth making one free is not just in the area of politics, it’s not just in the area of education. I think what, Keith, you’re talking about is that it also comes right directly into the heart of good music, the content, the truth of those words by supportive melody really is what brings it all together. This is a great discussion today, Isaac.

Isaac Crockett:                  It is, Sam, and we’re going to be right back with Keith Getty. We’re going to take a brief time out to hear from some of our partners. We want to come back and talk to Keith about this hymn Christ Our Hope in Life and Death. Again, talking about biblical truth, Christ Our Hope in Life and Death. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap Today.

Isaac Crockett:                  Welcome back to the program, I’m Isaac Crockett and Sam Rohrer is with me today, and we’re interviewing Keith Getty about music and about the hope that we have in Christ, no matter what happens in this life. So Keith, you and Sam both know how this is with children. We try to teach our children and bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

We try to teach our children a lot of hymns, and ones that my parents and grandparents knew. We try to teach them Psalms from the Bible and Bible verses and different doctrines. For teaching them doctrines, a lot of times we use the form of catechisms. I think all these things are very scriptural. We know Paul said in Ephesians that we’re to speak to ourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and make these melodies in our hearts. Many of the favorite hymns in my family, especially of the newer hymns, come from the Getty Music hymnals and albums that we listen to.

Then there’s a catechism that we go through a lot of times at night before the kids go to bed. In that catechism, the first question, and so we go through this one a lot, the first question is, what is our only hope in life and death? So I’ll ask the question and then my three young children will respond and they’ll answer, and they’ll say that we are not our own, but belong to God. Now last year, Keith, you worked with some other songwriters to write this song that taking that idea about that catechism question of what is our hope in life and death. You wrote a song Christ Our Hope in Life and Death. I just wanted to know if you could maybe tell us how this song came to be, and that title just really sums up so much of the truth that we need in our Christian life.

Keith Getty:                       Can you hear me?

Isaac Crockett:                  Yeah.

Keith Getty:                       Can you hear me?

Isaac Crockett:                  I can hear you now. Yes.

Keith Getty:                       I’m just sitting out in my back garden in Ireland here. The story was, actually our writers came here to this very house in Ireland and it was Jordan Kauflin, Matt Merker, Matt Papa, and Matt Boswell and myself. I wrote the chorus to it, but Matt Boswell had always wanted to set this passage to music, because like yourself, almost exactly the same, his son wanted some help with his faith late at night. He said, “I’m going to give him this here,” and so that’s what we did. That was really the foundation for the song Christ Our Hope in Life and Death. It took all of us to get it finished, because each person could only bring a bit and it never really felt convincing. So it was a real privilege to bring the guys here then to go back to America and to work on that song.

Sam Rohrer:                      Here’s a question, because as you were driven to write this song, so powerful, strong in its words and the underpinnings, like Isaac just mentioned, let me ask you this question. You’ve been in this space of writing good hymns, beautiful music with words of truth and content, what we talked about in the first segment, but what have you seen? How have you seen God use good hymns, beautiful music based on truth? How have you seen that actually help Christians, particularly during these last couple of difficult years when people had to stay home, locked down, all of that kind of thing?

Keith Getty:                       Well, I don’t think in many ways it changes from history. In the last section before the commercial break, you talked about truth not just being laws and education, but actually applying to what we were saying. There was a 19th century Scottish politician who actually said, at the end of his life, he said, “I care not to write the laws of my land if I could only have written the songs in which it sings,” because he understood that law is important, and in a culture where the church no longer stands up for truth, people immediately get their morals from the law. The problem is, it goes deeper than that, and it’s actually the law ultimately is a result of where people’s passions are growing. One of my friends who has done amazing work with people who are victims of child trafficking and slavery says one of his aha moments was early in his life when he lost a lawsuit and his friend said to him, “Don’t worry,” he says, “this was the day I knew we’d win.”

He said, “How?” He said, “Because afterwards when we left the law courts we heard the people sing and he who has the songs always win.” In other words, the law is important, especially in a society that’s rejecting the church. Education is important. In some ways, it’s the silver bullet for the next generations, aptitude and abilities and careers, but ultimately the songs we sing flower our minds and our hearts and our passions and our memory banks. That’s why they’re so important. I actually think the reason in the last couple of years people are increasingly looking for depth in their songs, but also going back to old songs, is that old songs have a guarantee.

If Be Thou My Vision has been around for several hundred years, it will probably continue to be around. So if I teach my kids the five verses of Be Thou My Vision about vision and wisdom and temptation and wealth and heaven, then that is something that I know they will carry with them their whole lives. I can’t be sure about my songs and I know certainly most modern worship songs are never going to last, nor do they deserve to last. It’s an amazing moment that we live in, and it’s why it’s so crucial to be teaching our kids great modern songs, but modern hymns, but also teaching of some of the great hymns of the faith, because they’ve proved it. They know they last. They’re like that old redwood tree over in San Francisco that’s been there for hundreds of years. It’s a lot more likely to keep standing than something that’s been around a short time.

Sam Rohrer:                      Keith, let me follow up with you on this and that is this. When you and Kristyn write music and you’re talking about good music and we’re talking about good music with truthful content enduring over the generations, let me ask you this, when you write, do you think that good music comes primarily out of the heart? Does it come out of the head? When you are writing it and you are performing it, are you directing it to the heart or to the head of perhaps, the listener? Put those thoughts together.

Keith Getty:                       Well, it’s all together, that’s what songs do. If I write a song, if that song is not going to make a Christian react, whether they put their hands up in the air, whether they punch the air with their fists, whether their heart lifts, it’s not worth doing because a song is supposed to connect at that level, it’s the same with, if we’re doing a concert, and if we’re band are doing a concert somewhere. We know that our job is to be the highlight of people’s minds, because that’s what they require of us. If they’re coming out on a Friday or Saturday night for a special concert, it has to lift them beyond what normal life does. So songs have to both connect with the heart and the head. Songs that don’t connect with the head aren’t very helpful, and songs that don’t connect with the heart are terrible songs and nobody cares.

Isaac Crockett:                  There’s a lot we could really go into there, even talking to preachers about sermons or any of us as Christians, how we represent the gospel to people. If we don’t do it in a winsome way, then our truth is tossed aside, or if we do it in a very winsome way, but we don’t have the truth, then we’ve accomplished nothing. So that is, again, very helpful and very deep on the musical side. With this song Christ Our Hope in Life and Death, as you mentioned, it was a collaboration with and number of musicians and just really neat. I know there’s some videos out there where you and some of those guys, or I think all of those guys, get together and talk about it a little bit. I would encourage all of our listeners to go through and look at some of those videos. But some of those musicians are newer musicians compared to yourself and Kristyn.

I just love seeing how, especially I think this song, represents it. You started with some of these who are newer musicians, and now you’ve released the same song all the way with Michael W. Smith singing with you. Of course, he’s a very experienced Christian musician who’s been making music and Christian music for decades. Literally, my whole life I’ve heard Michael W. Smith. So I’m just wondering, why have you been burdened, I guess, to bridge this gap of working with newer musicians, younger musicians as well as experienced, and even sometimes older, musicians that you kind of seem to be bringing both together?

Keith Getty:                       Well, I think we’re here for a short period of time. As a hymn writer, I never thought that I was the newest thing. I always thought that our job was to stand on the great tradition of hymn writing in history and try and write a fresh new chapter to it. I wanted to learn from Luther and from Wesley and from Bach and from Watts and from John Newton, the slave trader who was converted, and from Cecil Frances Alexander, the little Irish pastor’s wife.

I want to learn from all these people and then do a new generation of hymns. But in the same way as that’s my job, I’m on the second half of my life, I’m 47, I’m 18 years married today. My next chapter of my life now is about helping build a new generation of hymn writers. That’s why our company goes to sing conference. That’s why we have this writing team in our publishing company. That’s why we’ve got to have writers collectives, is to help build the next generation of hymn writers.

Isaac Crockett:                  Well, thank you so much for being with us. Again, you’re calling in from Ireland. I do hear the birds in the background. I’m not sure if all our listeners-

Keith Getty:                       Yeah, can you hear me?

Isaac Crockett:                  … can hear that or not.

Keith Getty:                       I hope it’s okay. [inaudible 00:17:22].

Isaac Crockett:                  Happy anniversary. [inaudible 00:17:23]. I did not realize when-

Keith Getty:                       Is it making the program more fun or is it a distraction?

Isaac Crockett:                  … it’s beautiful to hear those birds. I just, thank you so much. I knew you were taking some time out to be on this program with us. I didn’t realize that this is your anniversary, so congratulations and thank you for that.

Keith Getty:                       [inaudible 00:17:37].

Isaac Crockett:                  But I do when we come back, we’re going into another break and I do want to talk to you about the Sing! Global Conference, and I know that’s coming up in September. I would to love to talk to you a little more about what all is entailed in that and what you have planned for it, but it is just really neat to see that you’ve invited even in that conference different theologians and musicians, and just a host of different pastors and just neat to see a gathering of people who are concerned with the truth and beautiful music. We really want to delve into that and have you talk to us about that as well as continue to talk about this philosophy of music and hymn writing. We’re just so thankful, Keith, to have you with us. Again, we’re talking with Keith Getty from Getty Music.

We’re going to take another time out here from some more of our partners, and then we’ll be right back on and we’ll be talking about the Sing! Global Conference coming up in September.

Isaac Crockett:                  Welcome to our program. We are interviewing Keith Getty from Getty Music today. We’re talking about Christ Our Hope in Life and Death, and that is the name of a hymn that the Gettys were part of writing back in 2021, and that was just released last week. A beautiful version of that with the Getty and Michael W. Smith singing. Before we go back into talking to Keith about that, and actually hearing more about Sing! Global, the conference that the Gettys put on every year. Tim, I just want to go to you as our program producer to see if you could maybe give us some updates on how anybody who might be listening and maybe it’s a first time listener, how they can find out more about our ministry online and tune into our Facebook Live and different things that we have going on, on social media.

Tim Schneider:                  All right. Thank you very much, Isaac. Good Friday afternoon to everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for listening this afternoon. Just want to let you know about a couple of things around here at Stand in the Gap Media and the American Pastors Network. If you tune into us on Friday and you have Facebook, check us out on Facebook Live. You can go to our Facebook page there, which is the Stand in the Gap Radio, go and check us out. You should see us over there live right now, broadcasting live on Facebook Live. If you’ve never done Facebook or that’s not something you do, or if you do do it, please go ahead and like us over there so you can follow us and find out everything that we’re doing, especially to see this live broadcast over there on Facebook Live. Also, I want to let you know, we have two great websites, americanpastorsnetwork.net, and standinthegapmedia.org.

You can find a lot of resources on those two webpages, archives of the radio and TV programs, minutes, weekend programs. We have a lot of archives over there. We also have lots of other articles and just other things that you would find useful on americanpastorsnetwork.net. If you’re over there, make sure you sign up for our e-newsletter. We won’t inundate your inbox with spam, but we’ll send you information that you can find useful about ways to pray for our ministry and just other things happening here at the American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap Media. So a lot of people don’t know this Isaac, but before I actually was a producer for Stand in the Gap Today and the American Pastors Network, I actually was in contemporary Christian music radio for over 10 years. I have a lot of information and a lot of affiliation with the Gettys. We played a lot of their music and a lot of other great contemporary Christian music artist, so I used to love listening to their music and I still do, and it’s great to hear Keith on today with us.

Isaac Crockett:                  Well, thank you, Tim. Speaking of the Getty sand great Christian music, could you play, I think we have a clip about the Sing! 2022. Sing! Global, it’s a conference that we want to talk to Keith about right now. It’s a worship conference, but if that’s available for us, Tim, could you go ahead and play that?

(singing)

Speaker 6:                          Sing! 2022, Christ Our Hope in Life and Death: Prayers and Confessions returning to the Gaylord Opryland Resort.

(singing)

Join dozens of speakers and artists for three days of deep theology, timeless artistry, and congregational singing. Rediscover how the patterns of our worship cultivate our devotion to Christ. Sing! 2022, Christ Our Hope in Life and Death: Prayers and Confessions for more information, visit gettymusicworshipconference.com.

Isaac Crockett:                  So Keith, this conference, to me at least, it’s a very unusual conference and you’re talking about Christian music. A lot of times when you’re talking about contemporary Christian music, it doesn’t always flow with the same phrase that we just heard about “deep theology,” and yet this is what this conference is. So could you maybe just talk to us, to our listeners a little bit about what is Sing! 2022? What is Sing! Global? How long maybe even have you been doing these conferences? Just maybe let us know a little bit about that.

Keith Getty:                       It started off in 2017. We started planning for it about 2014, 2015, and then put it in seal in 2016, [inaudible 00:22:28] 2017. Really, I wanted it lined up with the reformation. 500 years ago, Martin Luther believed. We had to bring this Bible back to the center of the church, but it wasn’t simply done by preaching or expositional Bible teaching. It was done by singing the word, by praying the word, by reading the word, and by singing the word. Not actually of all the things was the most radical because congregational singing had been banned in the previous 100, 200 years by the Catholic church, but he realized the need for God’s people to, out of obedience, but out of how they’ve been created and out of response to the gospel to sing God’s work, to sing this good news, to sing it to themselves, to sing it to their families, to sing it to their churches, and to sing it to the world.

Sam Rohrer:                      Keith, when you’re describing what you just went through right there, it makes the word worship come to my mind. I think you talk a lot about worshiping together. Matter of fact, several months ago, when you were on with us, we broached this concept of worship in song. You said that it’s not enough for us people, generally Christian people, just to listen to Christian music by ourselves, but that we should do it within the concept of worshiping together. Why is that so needed right now in our times?

Keith Getty:                       Well, it is part of we sing to God because God has commanded us to. It’s the second most common command in scripture. So if you imagine, what is the second most common command from your parents or the government or something, or that you give to other people, it’s usually something that’s pretty important. So to God, for us not to sing is disobedience in the same way as being dishonest is disobedience, or telling lies, or causing someone harm is disobedience. So we sing because we’re commanded. We sing because God has created us to sing. It’s being fully human is to sing to God and be caught up in worship of him. Also, we sing because of course, Christ and his gospel is the greatest news. It is the only hope for the world. I hope that each of us are more excited about that hope than we are about celebrating our sports team or celebrating the success of our kids or the success of our careers, or even the success of just getting to Friday evening.

I hope those around us understand from how we worship, that this is the most precious and treasured thing in our lives, and so singing is that important to God. It affects how we are as human beings. It affects our minds and our imaginations and our emotions. It affects our family life. It affects our church life and it affects our witness. So it’s something that’s hugely important, and each year at the same conference, we’ve taken a new theme and we’ve tried to bring together people who write hymns and our worship leaders with a serious view  of biblical content of artistry and of helping families and churches sing. Then in addition to that, we’ve added to that, and pastors and theologians and some of the world’s finest musicians to come along and create this special event of teaching, of worship, of music, of concerts, of seminars, of interaction. It is just a total blast.

Isaac Crockett:                  Keith, when I first saw you all doing the Sing! Conferences, it reminded me of your good friend, Alistair Begg and the Basics Conferences that he does for pastors at Parkside. I’ve been there in person for many of them and been able to be online for ones that I couldn’t be there in person for. I know just speaking from experience that encouragement of coming together and singing with other like-minded believers, and again, that biblical content that you mentioned and doing that in a biblical way, it’s so powerful. So this year, Sing! 2022 is September 4th through 7th in Nashville, Tennessee at the Gaylord Opryland hotel. Could you maybe go into a little detail of what is the theme? I know the title this year is Christ Our Hope in Life and Death: Prayers and Confessions. So again, building on this hymn that we’ve been talking about today, but could you maybe talk a little bit to us about what the focus will be this year with that theme in particular?

Keith Getty:                       Yeah. Obviously, as your program, as you guys said in the show earlier, that’s one of the great liturgies or creates of the church in history. The Kielberg Catechism, one of the good catechisms. So we thought we’d take historic catechisms and historic prayers and liturgies of the church and just really just learn from those. Not all of them are good, but many of them are so helpful. So the conference this year really is about, we’re doing five sessions, we’re doing Liturgy and the Gathering, the importance of our congregations getting back out to church and being family to one another. John Piper’s going to kick us off on that. Then the second one’s called Liturgy and Song, and we’re all going to the Grand Ole Opry House to do two special song concerts with our friend, Joni Eareckson Tada and all our writers.

Then the third talk is on Liturgy and Prayer. We’ve got an Anglican morning, a morning prayer service with Paul Tripp doing one of his new morning mercies devotionals. We have Don Carson talking about the prayers of the church, and a conversation with Mark Dever about how we lead our congregations in prayer and the importance of that. The fourth session is on Liturgy and Beauty, the importance, and that’s everything from hip-hop to Handel. We start with Shaolin and we finish with the whole 6,800 people singing Handel’s Messiah. Then we finish the final day, we call it Liturgy and Life and Death, the importance of the gospel shaping absolutely every part of our service, every part of our songs, every part of our prayers and our worship life.

Isaac Crockett:                  That is so important to let God shape those, and it sounds so fundamental, but sometimes we forget that. Sam you’re a grandfather, you’ve raised six children and you have a lot of grandchildren and more on the way, what have you seen as far as just what kind of music and how should we go about introducing children in the next generation to good music like what we’re talking about today?

Sam Rohrer:                      Well, Isaac think it’s very similar to what you’re doing with your children, and that’s coming off the pages of scripture building in that principle. God made music for what purpose? To worship him. Why did God create mankind? What’s our purpose? To glorify our God, which is in heaven. Music is one method of doing that, so teaching our children, which we did good, music and the scripture talks about melody. And all of that that goes a part of construing and putting together good music, that was a part of it, Isaac ,and our children well, they really gravitate to it and they understand it just like yours.

Isaac Crockett:                  Well, thank you, Sam. We’ll be right back. We’re going to take another brief time out. We’ll be back with Keith Getty to finish up this interview. It’s just really flying by, but we want to come back and look at how we can pass on the promises of God to the next generation, just like what Sam was talking about and what Keith has been talking about. So we’ll come back for our final segment and talk to Keith about passing on the promise of God to the next generation.

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Isaac Crockett:                  Welcome back to the program. Isaac Crockett and Sam Rohrer and I are co-hosting today as we talk with Keith Getty. Again, Keith, thank you so much just for making the time to be on with us.

You’re over at home in Ireland and it’s your 18th wedding anniversary, so we do apologize to Kristyn and the family for stealing you away for this program, but thank you. This has just been so helpful. As we go to end this program here in our last segment, one of your latest albums, Confessio-Irish American Roots, actually the last time you’re on with us, I think was the day that that album was coming out. I love that album. I have, I think most of, if not all of your albums, but there’s a song on there, there’s several songs that my kids have really gravitated towards, and every one of the albums.

In this one, one of the ones that they really love is the song Pass the Promise. It’s this beautiful song that reminds us that we bear witness to what we have seen God do in our lives, and we are responsible to witness that to others, to pass that on to others, to the next generation, to our children, our grandchildren, to those around us. As a father, as I hear my children singing it and they love it because it is beautiful as well as very meaningful, but as a father, I find this song quite convicting too, to make sure I am passing on those promises. So Keith, we started out talking about the hymn and the theme for this year’s Sing! 2022 Christ Our Hope in Life and Death, but how do we pass that hope, that relationship that we have in Christ as our hope, how do we pass that on to the next generation, to our children and grandchildren?

Keith Getty:                       Gosh, what a great question. I think that’s probably the single most important question in my life. Most of the time, my girls are still small, so I can’t presume to be an expert. I consider the experts people who have passed the promise on to their kids, who’ve lived faithful lives, married faithful partners and have raised faithful kids themselves. So I’m not an expert, but I do know that the importance of filling our homes with songs of the Lord, of in the same way as the Old Testament, God speaks to the Jewish people through the Shema, the hero of Israel talking about writing these in our children’s hearts. Well, how do we write truths on their hearts? Education doesn’t really write truths on their hearts. Manners doesn’t really write truths on their hearts. Even reading scriptures sometimes doesn’t write it on their hearts, but singing, it does.

Singing the truths of Christ, singing the beauty of his gospel, singing the words of scripture in ways that are beautiful and delightful, we know that when we plant those in our children, it will not depart from them. They may depart from it for seasons, but it will not depart from them. So I would encourage everyone to do that. I would go even further to say, especially giving the turns that we’re seeing right now, both in pop music and in more Disney in particular, that the need that everyone in this world was born to have songs. We talked about this at the start of the program. That’s what God has made us. It’s not because we’ve somehow fallen away or we’re lost, or we’re shallow or something that we like songs.

He actually made us to like songs, but if we don’t give our children songs of the Lord and songs of his truth and songs of depth, they are going to get their songs from somewhere else. I suspect most people who feed them shallow songs will ultimately end up feeding them songs that really have nothing to do with the Lord. It’s hard because my kids love Frozen, and they’re brilliant songs, but they’re not about the Lord, and they think about something that’s actually the opposite. So, we have this challenge of getting alongside our kids and chatting to them about this kind of stuff, but also of fitting them with songs that actually teach them the truths of our Lord, that they can celebrate. They can sing and kind of be, that they can sing his mercy is more, that they can sing, Be Thou My Vision oh Lord of My Heart.

Isaac Crockett:                  Keith, that is wonderful advice. I know my children are also young and sometimes whether they’re just sitting in the truck with me, and we’re listening to whatever radio stations we can get, or we’re watching a Disney movie or something, they’ll ask me questions either about what they’ve heard on a movie, or a lot of times, the music. So often my youngest will say, “Dad, what does that mean?” He might repeat a phrase of it, or just wonder what that song means, and it’s a great time to talk about the philosophy and to discuss worldly philosophy as opposed to a biblical worldview. One of the things I find very unfortunate as a father is that sometimes my children are asking me if we’re listening to a Christian radio station, some of the music that’s on that Christian radio station I go to explain it to my kids and I’m thinking, “You know what? That doesn’t either make sense or it’s not very deep theologically,” but then other times some of the songs and especially the old hymns and things, I’m just so excited to share it.

I remember my dad and I remember my mom’s dad doing that with us when I was a kid. I remember my grandfather fought in the Dutch Underground, or I should say survived in the Dutch Underground, and it was the powerful words of Martin Luther that led him to get saved, watching 10 Christian young men standing before a firing squad, facing death in their early twenties, grabbing hands, blindfolded and singing A Mighty Fortress is Our God, and the German soldiers, not knowing what to do and opening fire as they ended that hymn, as they’re saying, “Our body, they may kill God’s word abide us still.” Those powerful stories. Those powerful words stuck with me, and I know they stick with my kids and with anybody, if we will share those with them. So we are so thankful, Keith, for the ministry that you and Kristyn and your whole team have with getting good hymn out. Any last words, any final words, and we’re going to close in prayer. I’ll have Sam close us in prayer, but any final words you’d like to pass on today as we close this program?

Keith Getty:                       No. I was talking to a friend today and multiple times in my life have called him when I’ve been having struggles. We tend to be attacked by people, or we trying to make hard decisions or feeling we’re losing our way a little bit, or worried about our children. He always gives me the same answer. He always says, “Even for death, the Lord will take care of the rest,” and I think it’s always good advice, isn’t it, that each one of us are trying to grow deeper in the Lord each day. I want to be the best musician I could be. I know you guys want to be the best radio broadcasters you can be or journalists as you can be. All of us out there, whether we’re a mother or a teacher or a business man or a student or a young person are all looking to make the most of our lives.

It’s important that we fan the flame of the gifts that God has given us. If I haven’t practiced 4, 5, 6, 7 hours a day at music, I couldn’t do what I do, but it’s so much more important that if each of us is growing deeper in our faith. So in our own daily walk with the Lord in our daily prayer life, in the words of scripture that we read in the songs that we allow to fill our homes and the family relationships we have, and in the friendships we have, I guess that’s what all of us are hoping for. In this season that is to come as our culture continues to disintegrate, all the more how we can look up, not with some peculiar rebellious arrogance, but actually just look up with love and with joy and with freedom and with joy in our eyes and peace in our hearts and love for all those around us so that they might find something of the beauty that is in Christ in this lost world.

Isaac Crockett:                  Well said. Well, thank you very much, Sam, would you close us in prayer, in the moments before that may be any final concluding thoughts that you might have as well, and then take us to the Lord in prayer?

Sam Rohrer:                      Well, Isaac again, yes. Keith, again, thank you for so clearly connecting together God as creator, mankind created in God’s image, truth as being the focal point of that which we do in how, when that’s put together, it becomes beautiful, in all aspects in music being created by God to bring us into alignment with him in worship. Great and wonderful. Thank you so very much. Heavenly father, Lord, we are grateful to you that we can acknowledge you in this program right now. We can reflect upon music, which you have created, not for our own benefit, Lord, but for the ability to magnify your name. Lift up the glory and the greatness, the awesomeness of God our savior and creator. We pray that that would be an encouragement all of us in today on this program, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Isaac Crockett:                  Amen. Thank you, Sam. Keith Getty, thank you so much for being on with us and for everyone listening, thank you for listening. Please pray for us here at American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap media. We appreciate you listening, and until next time, please Stand in the Gap for God’s truth wherever you are.