From Hymns to Homes:
Bob Lepine on Worship and Resisting the World
July 18, 2025
Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett
Guest: Bob Lepine
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 7/18/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
Thank you so much for tuning in today, whether you’re literally tuning in, maybe on a car, radio, or whether you’re listening live to our stream online, on our website, or on our app or listening later to our archives on our Stand in the Gap app or on one of your favorite podcast platforms. We’re on pretty much all of the main platforms there. Thank you for listening. Today, we want to look at and explore how faith, family, and worship bring us together, a foundation for this world, this world which tries to conform us to the things of this earth. How those things, faith, family, and worship can help us be heavenly focused. And we’re going to be joined by a special guest to talk about some of these practical topics. So much so that I hope you will maybe listen to this program again, share it with a loved one, take out pen and paper.
I’m often encouraging you to do that and take some notes on this. It’s very helpful. But our special guest that’s with us today is Pastor Bob Lapine. Many of you who listen to radio will recognize him from family radio as a morning host or maybe remember him from the decades he spent with Family Life today as a host of that program or the work he does on Truth for Life. He’s an author and a pastor. He’s a husband, a father, grandfather, Bob, you wear a lot of different hats, but this is our friend, pastor Bob Lapine. Thank you so much for making the time to come back to be with us at Stand In the Gap today.
BOB LEPINE:
Love being here with you. Isaac, thank you for the invitation.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
Well, you are well known for the work you do with couples and families. You’ve written a lot of really helpful things that I’ve found helpful about that or husbands and for wives. You’ve even written some books on Christmas and Easter and different things, but I think a lot of people recognize you from the radio and from the work you’ve done helping families. But the other thing that a lot of people recognize you from in the music world is Getty Music and the big conference they have now, I think it’s like eight years, this will be the eighth one maybe this year, the big Sing global conference that now brings people in from every single continent virtually and in person, every single continent, I think except for Antarctica. I don’t think anybody’s come from Antarctica, but sing Global conference with Keith and Kristen Getty and the whole team there. You’ve been with them really since the beginning of that as kind of an mc, a moderator, a speaker, and I’d just love for you to maybe share a little bit of what drew you into a partnership as a preacher and a pastor and a family emphasis kind of guy and a theologian. What drew you into Keith and Kristen with music and hymns and these conferences?
BOB LEPINE:
Well, I have been involved in local church ministry and involved in worship in local church ministries, have led worship in local churches, not because I’m a particularly skilled musician, but because there was a need and I was able to step in and fill some of that. And this goes all the way back to the late seventies. So I’ve been at this a long time, and you remember in the late seventies, early eighties, Calvary Chapel and the Maranatha Music Group with their praise choruses. This was kind of the new thing, and this was contemporary worship versus old hymns and there was controversy, should we have drums in church and all of that was going on. But I’ve been on this journey and was so encouraged maybe two decades ago when I heard In Christ Alone as many of us were and just said, this is a fresh, modern, contemporary hymn as opposed to a chorus, and I don’t object to choruses.
There’s a lot of, you’ve heard this Isaac, where people will say, well, these choruses where you just sing the same thing over and over again 37 times. Well, I go to the book of Psalms and you get to Psalm 1 36 and every other line is his steadfast love endures forever. And I think, okay, there is some biblical precedent for just repeating a theme over and over again and burning that into your mind. But I love substantive, fresh, contemporary hymns. Had the chance to meet Keith and Kristen about 15 years ago when we were together at a ministry and event and just found a commonality to our understanding of worship and how we want to be saying true things and right things and substantive things, but do it with a way that there’s artistic merit to them all. And I remember having lunch with Keith at a religious broadcasting convention years ago and I said, have you ever thought about doing a national conference, a worship conference?
He said, do you think people would want to come to that? I said, I think so. And it was a few years later that he said, we’re going to try this and do the sing conference. The first one was at Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville. That church will hold, I think it holds about 2,800 people and they had 3,500 people there and they were in video overflow rooms. Everybody was surprised at what the demand was, and since then, the conferences moved out to larger facilities and this year at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, there will be seven, 8,000 people who will be in attendance for the conference. So it’s just been encouraging to see there is a hunger, there’s an appetite for what I think is great musicianship combined with solid theological foundation. Keith and Kristen are at the forefront of that, and that’s what the conference is all about and I love it and I’m honored to be able to be a part of it.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
Keith Getty, he’s been on our program and others too because of that substance, that foundation they have. I know we’re getting close to our break here, but this week we’re mourning the loss of a unique pastor and theologian, John MacArthur, who is a faithful preacher. Expository preaching was kind of his emphasis, but he was at the scene conferences a couple of times and kind of falls into that same category with the Gettys. I know we just have about a minute here, but I’d love to get a comment from on the life and ministry of John MacArthur.
BOB LEPINE:
Boy, I could talk for a lot longer than a minute, but I’ll just say that John is one of those people who influenced me profoundly, specifically around expository preaching, going verse by verse through the Bible, digging deep, not being shallow, not just looking for a theme, but seeking to understand God’s revelation and understand God through his revelation and my life and ministry has been marked by John MacArthur and the church is going to miss him. We’re going to miss him, but I’m grateful for the legacy and for the way that he’s marked not just my life, but the lives of countless men and women throughout the world.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
Amen to that. I never met him personally, but hearing him, watching him, listening to him and reading so many of his books and commentaries, you felt like you got to know him and we’ve quoted him often on this program. I’ve quoted him even on Sunday. I was quoting him in my pulpit and it’s neat. That’s one of the things I enjoy about what Keith and Kristin Getty are doing with the conferences that you’re a big part of is that they’re getting these theologians together and they’re getting these musicians together and when you go, it’s just packed full. It’s mostly pastors, really. They’re pastors and their wives and a number of other great godly people, but just thousands of pastors concerned about the gospel and the idea of this expository preaching that is so good and so biblical that is seen also in the music and throughout the conference.
It reminds me of the old days. My grandfather used to talk about going to the Winona Lake Bible conferences and how people would come from all over the country, and that’s the kind of conferences, Singh is like a modern version of those Bible conferences. I’ve met listeners and viewers of ours that saw me there at the Singh conference and they said, we took our vacation to come here and we’re so glad we did. So there’s so much to talk about just to talk about true worship and how scripture and worship go together and theology. We’re going to take a quick break right now. We’ll hear from some of our partners and we’re going to come back. I want to talk about a new hymnal with Bob Lapin that’s coming from Getty Music, and I just want to talk about our families and how to get our families worshiping and how to draw closer to the Lord through that.
There’s a lot of encouragement that I’m hoping we can get to in this program, so please don’t go away. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap today. Welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I’m talking with Pastor Bob Lapine and if you say, oh, I think I know that name, you probably do probably recognize him from the radio. He’s involved with different radio programming even now, and for many decades he was a host along with Dennis Rainey and others with Family Life today, and so we’re just very grateful, Bob, that you would spend time coming on our program with us. I know you’re very busy as a pastor and with all the things you have going on, but I got to sit down and talk to you last year at the Getty Sing Conference, and there were so many things that you said and so many things that were said really there at the conference that I just felt so excited about that so much of what we talk here at the American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap Media about a biblical worldview.
I knew that some of this would come out because Keith Getty has been on our program many times, but to really see this tie in not just to churches, but to every Christian, every individual, and then especially to parents and grandparents as we seek to cultivate a ground for our children and grandchildren to grow in the Lord, that really, there’s a lot that hymns have to do with this. As you were mentioning the whole sometimes a battle between kind of popular Christian music versus the hymns, but I love it when there’s some substance as I think the word you used to what we are singing, and I love doing catechisms with my children, but sometimes many oftentimes our hymns become our catechisms, Isaac Watts and others. That was much of really what started there. They were doing it almost as catechisms for things. And so I’m excited about the Getty Conference.
What’s been going on with that. This one coming up in September is going to be very exciting. It’s going to be about generation to generation, but Bob, one of the things I think that’s most exciting about this, and one of the reasons why I think if they haven’t already sold out all their tickets, they probably will very soon and people can of course still watch online, but is that they’re coming out with a hymnal, the Getty Hymnal, it’s called the Sing Hymnal. And because you are a pastor and a teacher, but you’ve been following the Gettys and the music for so long, why is it important to equip churches and to equip parents and grandparents families with songs that are both beautiful as well as doctrinally and biblically grounded?
BOB LEPINE:
Well, I think you touched on the fact that songs catechize us. We’re going to be catechized by somebody. My friend Dr. Michael Ley likes to say, don’t let the culture catechize you. And the culture is relentless in seeking to mold our thinking. And the Bible tells us that we’re not to be conformed to this world, but we’re to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. And Colossians says, we’re to set our minds on things above. So having the right mindset to set our minds appropriately on the right thing involves being disciplined in how we handle these things and God’s word in music can be a great way. I find myself Isaac as I’m reading through the Bible. I’ve been reading through Psalms recently, and as I read through, I’ll come across a verse in Psalms or a couple verses in Psalms, and instantly the melody is there in my head and I don’t need to read the Bible anymore because the words are there.
They’re impressed on my heart because they’re connected to a melody. So I think there’s a great benefit in having biblically solid music, whether it’s scripture itself or theologically sound truth put into a musical format that it makes it easier for us to hide God’s word in our heart when we have that. And then to have the hymnal. Now, I don’t know, a lot of churches are not using hymnals anymore. We don’t use a hymnal at our church. We use projection like a lot of churches do, but my wife and I kind of lament the fact that there’s not a hymnal there that we’re looking at that shows the notes and the harmonies we were raised being able to learn some of those things. We have hymnals at home that we turn to and use and sit on the piano and we can go over there and play a hymn or remind ourself of hymns just thumb through and be reminded of some of the great hymns.
So having the hymnal and having God’s word or theological truth paired together, married to music, I think it’s just an important part not only of catechetical training, but music awakens our emotions in a way that the spoken word, it just does it differently. And so to have music available, I think that stirs us emotionally in a different way, and I think that’s important as well. We worship, Jesus said, we’re to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and part of the way we love him with our whole self is by having not just our minds engaged, but our hearts are emotions engaged and music is a part of how that happens.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
I love that, Bob, and you’ve written a lot about families. You wrote a book about the Christian husband and about love like you mean it and Build a Stronger Marriage, I think was one of your latest books on marriage. But I wonder, speaking to parents, how can a hymnal, and there are many good hymnals out there, but I’m very excited about the seeing hymnal. I saw the titles and things that had some background peaks at it, really, really excited about how it brings some of the modern hymns and keeps the old ones too. But how could a hymnal like the Seeing Hymnal or other hymnals help us as families, as not just individuals but parents and grandparents and aunt and uncles and things? How can it help us build stronger spiritual bonds for the younger generation, especially in a busy world that we live in?
BOB LEPINE:
Well, as you said, this is a hymnal that combines both new and old. One of the other things that I love about this hymnal is how they have arranged the songs together in topics or in groupings so that a family, as you’re thinking together or talking together, which Deuteronomy six says we’re supposed to do as we walk. By the way, as you’re having a conversation say, do we know any songs about that? Let’s turn to the hymnal and see if the section on that topic has any songs that suggest to us. And there are readings and liturgies that are included in the hymnal as well. So it’s really a worship book more than just a hymnal. It’s a guide to corporate worship or to family worship, and I think it’s going to be a great tool in regard to that. I just know as we raised our kids as they were home, Maryanne had a of the, I don’t know if it was the Hym of month that the kids memorized a hymn of the week.
I remember memorizing hymns when I was growing up. In fact, I earned my own hymnal with my name embossed on the front of it by memorizing 35 hymns, and I think it was just the first verse that I had to memorize, although I often went on and memorized all of these hymns, I’m so glad today that I still have some of these hymns 60 years later locked away in my heart, maybe not 60, maybe 50 years later, locked away in my heart. I’m not that old, but to look back at these hymns and have them there, there are just times when in the midst of life, God will bring a hymn to mind and you’re led to worship and to have those hymns hidden in your heart along with God’s word, I just think that’s an important part of how we walk faithfully with Christ.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
I remember growing up in church, I used to love watching my dad and other pastors or guest preachers that came in. I would watch them during our congregational singing, and so many of them didn’t need to look down at the hymnal. And I thought that was pretty cool. And then I remember when my dad was dying, and I remember us in the hospital room as we had done with so many, many good friends of mine, as they were passing into eternity, we were singing hymns that we had memorized. And as I’m thinking back on that, I don’t remember us singing any of the modern CCM things that take a whole band to make it sound good. It was all hymns, and I think the modern ones we sang were from Getty Music and Sovereign Grace, and there were just ones that we had learned as a family. But your children are grown now. You even have grandchildren talking to people who maybe have young children, whether it’s their children, grandchildren, or nieces and nephews. What are some practical steps that you might recommend now as a parent and a grandparent to help making hymns and singing and scripture kind of going together as a regular part of home life?
BOB LEPINE:
I think it’s a great idea to incentivize your kids and your grandkids to learn or memorize hymns and give them a reward. Like I got my hymnal when I had my 35 memorized, whether it’s a cash reward or a trip to the store to buy something that they want. Kids, especially in the elementary years, their minds are sponges. They are so fertile and to hide away in their heart. Great hymns is something that will pay dividends for years to come. So I would encourage parents, grandparents to make that a project that you do. Maybe you have over the course of a year 12 hymns that your family’s going to learn a hymn a month. The Gettys have tried to model this for us. There are videos online of them learning not just the hymns that they’ve written, but classic traditional hymns. You could pick Getty hymns and along with the Getty girls, learn as a family, a hymn, and then celebrate at the end of the month when everybody’s got the hymn memorized, go out for ice cream together or do something special to commemorate that. These are just some of the ways that we help train up our kids in the way that they should go. It’s a part of what discipleship looks like in the life of a family.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
That’s great. You were saying you earned a hymnal. Was that from church or from home, or where was that that you won your hymnal at?
BOB LEPINE:
Yeah, it was the church that did that. They provided the hymnal for all of us who were, I think I was in the eighth grade when that happened. And as you completed the eighth grade, if you had your 35 hymns memorized, you got the hymnal. I still have it with my name in Boston, the front cover, and it was just a good marker for me. I remember the deadline for having these in was the end of April and we were on spring break. Our family had driven to Florida for spring break. I remember driving back in the car from Florida from Spring break, and I was cramming in the final few hymns that I needed to memorize. So our car was full of hymn singing as I was driving home just so that I could get these hymns memorized.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
What a great story. And if you’re listening and you’re a Sunday school teacher or a youth pastor or a pastor, just anybody in the church, you might want to suggest this to your church or you might want to pay for something like this at your church to give some award Bibles, study Bibles and hymnals. I love having the hymnal next to my Bible and my personal devotion. The two go together so well, especially if I’m tired in the morning, the hymns kind of catch my attention and help me stay focused. So there’s so much with that. Well, a lot of practical wisdom from Pastor Bob Lapin about families and hymns coming up. We want to discuss an interesting article that he recently wrote about cultural conformity. A lot more to discuss. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap today. Well welcome back to Stand In the Gap.
If you’re just joining us, I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I’m speaking with somebody that I consider kind of Christian Radio royalty Pastor Bob Lapin, the host of the Family Life Today Program for many years, and he’s on Family Radio Truth for Life. He’s an author and a pastor and a speaker. A lot of different hats you wear, pastor Bob Lapine. But thank you for being on this program. If you’re just tuning in and you didn’t get the first part of this program, I would encourage you to go to our stand in the gap media.org, stand in the gap media.org or go to our Stand in the Gap app at the iTunes or Apple Store or Android, any of that. And you can listen to these programs or archive there. You can stream them live, listen to the archive or go to a podcast wherever you go to listen to podcasts.
Go there and look up Stand In the Gap, look up Bob Lapin, and you’ll get this program of us talking with Pastor Bob Lapin. Well, pastor Bob, we are talking about hymns and the positive effect they have on the family and on us as individuals. And we’ve talked about the word of God remembered ministry of John MacArthur who had spoken also at some of these sing conferences that you’ve been at every year. But I wanted to talk about this constant influence of conformity to this world. And you write a lot of interesting articles, I think as a pastor to your church and you’ve opened it up on Substack that others like myself can kind of see these articles too. And they’re very, very helpful, very devotional, very practical. And one of the articles you wrote was called Fitting in is Overrated. And in there you talk about this constant bombardment from our culture, from our world, everywhere we look. And my question really off of that and off of what we were discussing earlier about hymns and family time and things is how can Christians really know? How can we discern when we’re being shaped by the influences of the world rather than the influences of God in his word?
BOB LEPINE:
Well, it’s a great question and it’s something that I think we need to be alert to and be asking ourselves. John in one John two says, do not love the world or the things of the world. And Tim Keller wrote a book called Counterfeit Gods, that’s all about idolatry. John Calvin said, the heart is an idol factory. So we are regularly looking for things to worship, things to admire. We’re also regularly looking for acceptance and approval from others. And all of this helps shape how we behave and how we act. And I think we have to be asking ourselves regularly, do we care more about the approval of our peers than we do about the approval of God? Do we care more about are we more drawn to or more interested in social media than we are in God’s word? Where does our time go?
Where does our treasure go? What is dominating our day? I referenced Colossians three where the Bible says, set your mind on things above. When you wake up in the morning, the world wants to set your mind for you. When you turn on the radio, whatever it is they’re talking about, they’re saying here, this is what should matter to you. This is what’s important. They want to keep you listening because that’s their business model. So they’re going to say things to try to keep you intrigued and fascinated so that you’re in the know, so that you’re entertained whatever it is they’re hoping to do. And I think we just need to be saying, what draws our attention? What draws our affection? What are we hoping to find approval in or from? And of course, the right answer in all of those should be, it should be God who is our central affection, and it should be his approval that we care about more than anything else.
That does not come naturally to a fallen man. And so we have to be regularly seeking to redirect our thinking return to, here’s something I found really interesting, Isaac. Second Timothy is Paul’s last letter that we have. As far as we know, it’s the last one he wrote before he died. He’s writing to his protege Timothy, who has been with him in ministry for years and is now pastoring the church in Ephesus. Timothy’s a young pastor, but he’s growing in his ministry there and Paul’s trying to encourage him. And in second Timothy chapter two, verse eight, Paul says to Timothy, remember Jesus Christ? And then he gives the gospel. He was crucified for us and raised from the dead. You think, why is Paul reminding Timothy a pastor of Jesus? It’s like, is Timothy going to forget Jesus in the gospel? And the answer is yes, we all do. We all forget, we all get lured away by other things. The culture is seeking our attention, seeking our admiration, and so we have to be diligent to reset our thinking, reset our minds, set our minds on things that are above, and that’s important for every believer, and the culture is relentless. And so we can never give up our vigilance in seeking to reset our minds.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
That is so practical, so helpful, and we need that reminder of the good news because we live in the midst of the bad news. And as you just so adequately pointed out is that that is our nature, our fallen nature is to be distracted and to fall into the things of this world. What do we do for parents and for grandparents and other family members who are facing pressures, the social media, the culture of the day, how can couples, parents especially, or even grandparents and others, how can they have a foundation, a biblical foundation in their home where they can stand up against this and push back for themselves as individuals and as couples, but especially for the children that they have in their family that they can help try to protect them and set up some barriers to protect them from the onslaught of what the world is trying to do?
BOB LEPINE:
Yeah, I’ll say first that I think that the attempt at isolation from the culture is going to be a losing strategy. So if you say, we’re just going to barricade, we’re not going to have the internet, we’re not going to have tv, we’re going to stay insulated inside these four walls, and that way we’re not polluted by the culture. Well, first of all, the culture is not the only influence towards sin. Even the monks who went to the monasteries found that they carried their remaining sin with them. So you can try to wall off yourself from the culture, but sin goes with you wherever you go. And second, you can’t stay isolated forever. You have to emerge. You have to engage with the broader culture, and you have to know how to do that. In fact, Jesus said in the high priestly prayer, he said to God, he said, I’m in the world, so we’re to be in the world without being of the world.
And that’s a key distinction. Those little prepositions carry deep meaning with them. So as parents, as moms and dads, the first thing we need to make sure of is that our own hearts and minds are regularly reset. Your kids are noticing all the time, what’s most important to mom and dad? I remember hearing a story, Isaac, Don Whitney who wrote a great, he’s written a number of great books, but he’s written a book on praying the Bible. He’s written a book on family devotions. I remember interviewing him on that book on family devotions, and he said, we were faithful to have family devotions in our home regularly. And he said, I’ve written a book on this subject. He said, but I thought most nights this is not going anywhere. This is not having any impact. My daughter does not seem to be paying any attention to this.
She’s just wanting it to be over. He just felt like a failure most nights as a dad. But he said, we were faithful to do it. We were diligent to do it. He said, when his daughter graduated from high school, she was a commencement speaker. And as she spoke to the crowd, she teared up and started crying, talking about how significant it was for her that her family had devotions every day, and that her dad was faithful to lead those devotions. And he said, I was sitting out in the crowd going, wait what you were paying attention? I didn’t think you were paying any attention. And here she is weeping about how meaningful this was to her. So in the moment, we can be discouraged as parents, but we have to recognize we’re playing a long game here and your kids are going to know what matters and what’s important.
So I think of what my friends Alex and Steven Kendrick recommend to families. They would say when you get done with dinner and having dinner together as a family is a lost art. A lot of families, there’s too much going on, but you get a meal together after dinner. You just sit down, you have somebody read a paragraph from the Bible, you have somebody else pick a verse of a hymn that you sing, and then you say, what do we need to pray about today? And you have a short time of prayer. It takes 10 minutes to do it. But he said that daily discipline that you do as a family, a paragraph from the Bible, the first verse of a hymn, or sing the whole hymn if you’re really feeling it. And then what can we pray about? You take that 10 or 15 minutes every day, whether the individual day is significant or meaningful, your kids are getting an imprint marked on their heart and on their soul that what really matters in our family is the word of God and prayer and time together in worship
ISAAC CROCKETT:
That is very practical. I love those things. You as the parent or grandparent or whoever you are in the family, checking your own heart and mind. And then just setting up time. A short time doesn’t have to be something complicated, just keeping it simple and having that to do. We’re running really short on time here, but any other things for when we feel tempted, maybe by social media or social approval, any quick ways that we can keep ourselves from becoming like Demas who just kind of deconstructed his faith?
BOB LEPINE:
Yeah, I think when we just need to recognize that the world is always pressing in and what you set your mind to will shape you. I read a statement that said you become the combination of the five people you spend most time with. It’s interesting how we are influenced by our peers, by the people around us. Well, these days, the people we’re spending most of the time with are social media influencers, people who keep popping up in our feed, people we’re scrolling through. So I think we have to recognize the impact of that. We have to recognize how it reshapes our thinking. We no longer think deeply about things. We think shallowly because we’re scrolling regularly and then we have to put guardrails. How much time are you going to allow for yourself or for your kids to be on a device or on a social media app? Because all of that’s pressing in on us all the time.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
Well, as a parent and myself, I have teens and I have a tween. I’m finding everything you’re saying, extremely practical. I’m sitting here thinking, amen. This is so good. I’m taking notes. We have a few more questions for Pastor Bob Lapin. Please keep the radio on the station. We’ll be right back on Stand in the Gap today. We’ll welcome back to our last part of the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett. I’m talking with Pastor Bob Lapine and Bob, throughout all the questions I’ve been throwing at you, the whole interrogation here, you keep pointing us back to scripture and back to the need for parents and for other leaders to train up children in the way they should go. To have a focus on the things that are above that. If we want to pass a Godly heritage on, we have to have a Godly testimony and to know the Lord ourselves.
And a lot of what you’re talking about is just disciplining ourselves to take the time to do our own prayer and Bible study, to take time to dig into these hymns and different things and allow the music to be something that encourages us and lifts us up. And as you’re talking, it reminds me go back to where we started the program talking about the Sing conference, but then the life and ministry of John MacArthur. He had spoken at the Sing Conference a couple of times at least, and his ministry of expository preaching and teaching and commentaries and things really goes along with much of that deep doctrinal basis of the songs that are in this new hymnal, sing Hymnal with a lot of old songs, but also some new ones. It’s a new hymnal, and it reminds me of the Charles and John Wesley’s of the past, or John Newton or Isaac Watts, men who weren’t just great hymn writers, but they were deep theologians as well as musicians.
And I’m wondering how the Sing conference can inspire today’s pastors, John MacArthur. He was like that. He was known as a theologian, but he had a beautiful voice. I love to hear him sing. I remember years ago, I think I was still in seminary, first seminary degree, and it was back when I used to listen to compact discs music on cd. And he and his son-in-law, Corey, put out just an amazingly beautiful CD of some hymns that they sang together. And I’m wondering how conferences like the Sing conference and things can use this deep theological music to help us counter the conformity to this world that we’re all just naturally kind of bound towards.
BOB LEPINE:
Well, I would hope that pastors would recognize the power of the singing that goes on in their local church. John did, and I’ve mentioned that my life was marked in a significant way by John’s ministry. My love for God’s word, understanding of the authority of God’s word, the sufficiency of God’s word, the inerrancy of God’s word was all through John’s dependence on God’s word. And he didn’t talk about other things. He talked about God’s word. The reality. I know as a pastor, when folks walk away from a Sunday morning worship service, if you ask the folks at our church to tell about sermons that they’ve heard over the last year that have impacted them, they would have a harder time doing that than they would coming up with some of the hymns that we sing regularly. That’s just what sticks with people. Music helps make that happen.
And so my folks are walking away remembering He Will Hold Me Fast, or His Mercy is More probably better than anything that I said during my sermon time with them. And I think pastors just need to recognize that and be diligent. Work with whoever is on your worship team, your worship pastor, whoever’s leading the music, make sure you’re picking the right songs, good songs, doctrinally, theologically rich songs that will help catechize your people. And don’t just let that slide and think, well, that’s just the prelude to the sermon because the reality is that’s what’s going to stick with people even once the sermon is over and they’ve forgotten what it was you were preaching about. So yes, I think we need to, I hope pastors who come to the Singh Conference come away with a fresh understanding. First of all, their soul will be refreshed. They’re going to hear a solid biblical teaching combined with worship that is done with excellence, but is also done with passion and is theologically rich and substantive. And I would hope they’d want to take that home and say, this is what we want to be true in our church as well, and then work diligently to help shape that kind of a culture in their church.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
Yeah, I love that word, culture. It’s a Christian culture. It’s a kingdom focused culture of the doctrine. First, with this new hymnal that they’re coming out with this year, it’ll be available this fall starting at the Sing conference, I believe. What do you hope that it will inspire from Christians, from Christian homes? We have this culture that, again, that’s pulling us away from truth. And I remember my dad, he was not a trained musician, but he loved to sing. And before he was a Christian, there was music that kind of defined his lifestyle, a lifestyle of anti-establishment and everything else. And then he came to know the Lord in the sixties, and his desire for music of the Lord changed him. And it really made a difference, literally the music that he was listening to. But what might be some things that you hope will be seen with a new hymnal like this that’s bringing in such great hymns of the old faith and of modern hymn writers and things like that?
BOB LEPINE:
Yeah, I hope the hymnal will be a tool that will help expand someone’s view of what corporate worship can be. Because I think in our corporate worship, we tend to get into a pattern or a rut, if you will, and we just do what we’ve been doing. But here, there will be elements you can add, there’ll be readings that you can include. There will be old hymns. You will find that you’ve gone, I’d forgotten all about that hymn. We should sing that. I’m going to be leading worship at our church in two weeks. And I was going through what should we be singing? And I thought, it’s been years since we have sung the old hymn redeemed how I love to proclaim it. So I thought we’re going to dust that one off and just reintroduce that because there are a lot of folks who don’t know that hymn, but it’s one that I think we ought to be rehearsing again. So some of those hymns will pop out from the hymnal as you’re thumbing through, you go, I’ve forgotten about that hymn. We should reintroduce that one to our church or teach a new generation this hymn. And then there’ll be new hymns that you’ve not heard before that you’ll have a chance to learn and grow in. So I think it will expand our worship vocabulary and our worship tools, having a resource like this available to us.
ISAAC CROCKETT:
That’s great. Expanding our vocabulary and tools. That’s a great way of thinking of it. Well, as we’re getting ready for the close of this program, it’s hard to believe we’ve gone through the program, time flies when you’re having fun. But are there any practical steps, maybe one or two practical steps you could leave for our listeners final steps about worship or family or standing against worldliness, just something that somebody listening today could take with him or her and really practice this to strengthen their family or their faith this week?
BOB LEPINE:
Well, yeah, we’ve covered a lot of different things, and here’s on my mind as we’re wrapping all of this up. I’m getting ready this Sunday. I’m going to be preaching from Psalm one 19, the longest chapter in the Bible, the longest Psalm in the Psalter, and it’s 176 verses. And just about every one of them is a reaffirmation of the value of God’s word, the importance, the significance of God’s word. And as I have been reading through this, I’ve been reading through it with fresh eyes and just looking at the declarative statements that the psalmist makes about the value of God’s word. Why in affliction, God’s word is helpful. Why? When you are pursued by your enemies, God’s word will be a source for you. I just encourage people to get out that Psalm, Psalm 119 and do what I’ve been doing this week and just say, I want a fresh vision of the value of God’s Word, and let this psalm give it to you and show you the promises God is making about the power and sufficiency and significance of his word in your life. And I think you’ll come away with a fresh love for God’s word when you do that
ISAAC CROCKETT:
Well. Amen. That’s what we want. We wanted to have a fresh love for God and for His word. Pastor Bob Lapine, thank you so much for being on our program. I’m just going to close here in prayer. Our Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the written word given to us, inspired by the Spirit of God and handed down to us so that we can find the living word. Jesus Christ, we thank you for that hope that we have in salvation, that we have in the Gospel, that when we put our faith in you, your grace is more powerful than the sins of this world and the conformity of this world. I pray that today and throughout this week, we would put our minds on things above that we’d worship you to love you and love others. We do love you very much. It’s in the powerful name of Jesus Christ, we pray, and thank you, father. Amen. Well, thank you so much for listening today, and I hope that you’ll go back and listen to the whole program if you only got part of it. But please pray for us here at the American Pastors Network. And until next week, I hope that you will stand in the gap for truth wherever you are today.
Recent Comments