Living a Double Life in Christian Music

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The Michael Tate Bombshell Hits

You ever have your ducks in a row until you didn't? That happened this week. The show was all planned out and then the Newsboys Michael Tate bombshell hit. Didn't want to talk about it at first, but it's just grown from its inception since the story broke.

Michael Tate has been accused by several people, several young men, that he sexually assaulted them and he has admitted that he's guilty, that he's been involved in drug abuse and homosexuality. If you don't know, Michael Tate was one of the founding members of DC Talk. And then when Peter Furler, the original Newsboys lead singer, left the band, Michael Tate was hired and has been touring with them for over a decade now. He's the voice behind the songs God's Not Dead, Born Again, and some of those other awesome post-Peter Furler Newsboys songs.

The reaction has been all over the map, and the reaction to the news now has almost become more telling than the bombshell itself.

The Investigation and Cancellation

Faith Live Canada, a touring company, were the first ones to really put out there that there are issues, there are problems, and they actually cancelled the Canadian tour back in May, saying that some news had come out regarding Michael Tate and they just could not promote this tour and they cancelled the tour.

Here's the thing. When you do that, you lose money. Because you've already paid people to do certain things. So, the allegations were obviously serious enough and credible enough to them to go ahead and cancel the tour. Promoters don't do this. When I heard first that they were cancelling the tour, I thought, okay, they don't have the right lead singer. They're not going to draw enough to sell enough tickets. So, the promoters are doing a preemptive strike versus taking a huge loss where we think we're going to fill 15,000 seats and we're basing all of our compensation to everybody, including the band, on that. We're probably only going to sell three or 4 thousand seats. Why don't we just cancel? That's what I thought initially when I first heard about it.

But they started referring to behavioral stuff in the cancellation notice and the Newsboys didn't address it at all at this point. Right at that point, nothing had come out from the Newsboys or from Michael Tate himself.

Interestingly, Faith Live Canada got a huge backlash. They didn't cite specifically what the revelations were because I think they just kind of felt like it's not our place to put that out there and make the accusations and make it about that. We're just letting you know that we're canceling the tour. And fans were upset understandably so. But there was also confusion like what are they talking about? They weren't specific. But the thing is there was backlash toward Faith Live that they thought it was maybe just because Michael Tate had left the band. Well, they got some heated backlash from the fans. And I thought that was very interesting because this is what we've kind of lost as a culture. We've lost the ability to just hold your tongue for a minute. Just take a breath and let's see what gets fleshed out before we used to say it's going on Twitter right now, before you start leveling more accusations and judging what's going on. So, I was really sad to hear that they were cancelling the tour and I thought, but whatever's disturbing them, that has to come to light. That has to be made flesh.

And then it just started rolling out to the public, didn't it?

The Truth Comes Out

It did start rolling out because by this time the word was out and it was spreading fast that Michael had been involved in sexually assaulting young men and using cocaine, kind of what he refers to as leading a double life.

There was actually a 2-year investigation into these accusations, which means that they weren't made public until they were really, really sure. These accusations are very credible according to the people that have been investigating it. And of course, then Michael did come out with a statement acknowledging that these accusations, while they might not be 100% accurate, they were for the most part true. And he wasn't going to deny it and he wasn't going to fight it, and say, 'Well, that's not true and that's not true.' He just acknowledged it. He apologized. And his statement was not too bad. However, there were a couple things that really bothered me.

Number one, he said he'd been living a double life and that he needed to work on himself and so on. And I think people mostly assume when he says he was leading a double life that he was a Christian, but he had this problem. And this problem was the other life, right? But this has been going on for we know at least 20 years and we'll get into it later. But we also know that many of these Christian artists are hardly Christian in so many ways.

And it is ironic that the initial thought with a handful of folks regarding the telling of the story immediately go to well he's still a Christian who just fell down. And it doesn't look like that when you talk about double lives. 20 years is a long time. So my—this is an assumption. This is an opinion. This isn't a fact. This isn't anything other than my perception of things is that his double life was really that he was a Christian, meaning that he was living his normal carnal self who he was, faking the Christianity for his career. But what it looks like, doesn't it? What's easier to fake—your real stuff that's going on behind the scenes or the stuff that you just present to the public? That's what's easier to fake, right?

And what makes this such an important conversation to have is that at the end of the day, every one of us wants to hide our sin. We want to wear some sort of a mask. And when we want to be authentic with people, that's almost a synonym for we're going to show you our sin, which ain't cool. We're supposed to be saints. I'm on the road to heaven. And so the true authentic Christian will come to grips with that and will continue to try to put on a good front, will try to do the things that Jesus wants them to do, but they'll also have a repentant heart and they'll stay grounded in reality and then they'll have grace for others.

Well, and here's the thing. He said then in the last six months, he has really tried to work on himself and realized he had to make a change and blah blah blah. But when there's a two-year investigation going on into claims that you've been doing wrong things, it's not uncommon for people involved in that stuff to realize, uh-oh, this is going to come to a head. Well, and then if you've got a financial stake in it, you're going to do all you can to kind of keep it down, downplay it. Hey, if we don't have to talk about it, let's not.

How much of a secret do you think it really remained within the music industry? And how many people had their hunches, but you don't go out and say, 'Well, that's one of—you know what I mean? You got to trust a man's testimony is kind of the vibe behind the scenes.' I think that's why there wasn't a lot of talk about it because you don't want to say things that aren't true. Bravo. That's absolutely biblical. That's absolutely what God calls us to do. But now that those suspicions have been affirmed, there is a lot of talk about it. A lot of people suspected that he was very affirmative of the LGBTQ lifestyle. So now we have the proof.

Gramster Rant: Where's the Concern for the Victims?

Now here's the kicker because like I said earlier, the reaction to the bombshell is really more telling than the bombshell itself because the kicker is the reaction that people are having toward Christians because of this bombshell.

Caleb actually pulled their music, just all Newsboys. And they didn't say it's gone forever. They just said we're going to give it a rest because of how fresh and raw all this is. And they made an announcement, which is kind of weird because we've worked in radio. I was a program director at one time and we had pulled artists for different reasons. Not very many, but just one or two. And we never made an announcement about it. When you were program director, when we had our internet radio station and you pulled all of Jars of Clay's music, I was bummed. I was too because "Lift Your Head" is one of my favorite songs and still is and in my iTunes playlist. I still have it at number three on my Christian iTunes playlist, in spite of your program director pulling it. And every time if I have it on in the car and that song comes on, I kind of wait for you to say something. You never say that. I really don't because here's the thing. But when Jars of Clay lead singer came out in support of the homosexual movement, he's since totally unveiled that he's completely woke, pulling his music was the right thing to do.

They just made an announcement that they were going to give Newsboy music a rest on Caleb. And the reaction to that, if you go to their social media, is so sad. I couldn't believe what I was reading. And so, let's take a look at just a few of them.

Here's one that says, "I don't agree that they are pulling the music. Seems like cancel culture. Misconduct of any kind by a religious leader does not automatically cancel the wonderful kingdom work they did or lives they affected for the good."

Are you doing kingdom work? Really? I was shocked by her comparison of that to cancel culture. Let's take a look at the next one.

This is another comment. It says, "The music is still a relevant story of God, and we as listeners should not be punished by not getting to listen to it." So, you're getting punished by Caleb that there's kind of two things going on here. Number one, I don't think Caleb's trying to punish anyone. And this is the thing. These were consistent themes throughout the vast majority of comments. Well, it's people. It's not fair that you're punishing the band, you're punishing me, you're punishing your listeners. They're not punishing anyone.

No one's not letting you listen to the Newsboys. This is just the radio station and their format and they're making their changes, which they have every right to do. Look, they stopped playing artists for a lot of different reasons. They're no longer Christians or their music is just past its time or whatever. No one's forbidding you to listen to the Newsboys, nor are you being punished. Get a grip.

I'm surprised they made an announcement because like I said earlier, I would pull music, but I didn't make an announcement. This story with as hot as it is and as damaging as it is to Christianity, any Christian station out there that does not make a statement, I'm disappointed in. What your statement says will say a lot about you. Because there's so many Christian broadcasters out there that quite honestly are just in it because they can make a buck. They couldn't care less about what people are doing, how they're behaving, or whether you're saved or not. And they try to make everything as generic as possible. So from the farthest over on this side to the farthest over on that side, you'll still listen. Which is why most Christian music is "God is love" or "Jesus is your boyfriend." And it doesn't go any deeper than that.

But people have lost it completely. They have to be the first person to say what's what and where the bear does the thing in the woods, right? And so here's the reality, and I don't know for sure, but I think from the information that I was gathering, and I was sifting through a ton from a ton of different sources, I think Caleb's perception was kind of in the reality of how fresh and raw and awful and in just politeness to the victims, we're giving that music a rest right now.

Because here's the thing, there's more victims. You can't tell me there's only three. This has been going on since 2004 is the earliest that we know of. Words like predatory, assault, grooming are all part of the formal accusation. So, this isn't, oh, I fell into temptation just so unexpectedly. And I'm sorry if you're involved in this type of behavior. You don't assault someone first day out of the shoot, right? So, this has been going on much longer than that. We have to just rationally come to that conclusion. And so, this has been going on for a long time. I can't think that these are the only three victims that there are.

And the reactions that people are having are so selfish. Yeah, defend. I want to listen to their music. How dare you change my radio station and they cannot think for even one moment, what about the people who are the victims? Because here's the reality. When something like this is going on, drug abuse and sexual exploitation really, it's abusive. A lot of things can happen. Number one, it can cause someone to question their own sexuality. It can cause someone to come to a crisis in their faith like what's going on and ultimately it could even have someone abandon the faith altogether. Hey, if this is what being a Christian is and you've sexually abused me, I don't want anything to do with it.

So, we talked about this a lot. Sin splatters, right? So, Michael Tate wasn't doing this stuff by himself, all alone. So, who was it that he was doing cocaine with? Who was it that he was having these exploitations with? And you have to understand that as an extremely wealthy, famous, influential person, he would be the one to either say yay or nay. He would be the one that could either stop it or be the one to start it. Do you see what I'm saying?

Well, yeah. Just having spent the time we have with not just the Newsboys multiple times, but other really famous people, they have a power over the line of people waiting for them to just come out. I mean, which is one of the first things you'll know if somebody has like the rockstar mentality is how little they care if they're on time for something. I mean, I remember there was one band—I don't want to call names. I know who you're talking about. Well, we'll just call them Switchfoot—that was like 35 minutes late for no reason other than just they were. There's telltale signs when you get behind the curtain. There's telltale signs that go along with it.

And the thing that bothers me the most about the potential victims in this case is that Michael Tate's double life is that some of these folks will have an ongoing crisis of faith or worse yet, they'll leave the faith altogether. And so there is a chance for healing now that Michael has come clean because it's like we can realize that he is not a Christian influencer. He is not a Christian professing the right things about Christ. He might say the right words but his life doesn't match up and hasn't for so long when he says he's living a double life. The fake life is the Christian life. And that much is stone cold obvious.

What we have to realize too is these accusations are not accusations of, oh, he had a pickup line. These are of actual aggressions against people. And here's what I want people to think about, too. What if the people—what if the victims of this—I don't know how old the guy is. I'm guessing he's about 50-something. Michael Tate's got to be in his 50s. I mean, Toby Mac is our age. And I think Toby—I think we—I think we're the exact same age like we graduated—I graduated high school the same year as Toby we met in DC Talk. Michael was there and they started it at college so Michael's got to be mid-50s to early 60s I don't know I didn't look that up I didn't care enough to either way.

But what if these actions were being taken toward early 20-year-old girls and women? Would your sentiments be the same? I think not. Why? Why do you think that? Well, the whole me too movement and the whole just having to go through like even in places of employment, sexual harassment like we had to come to this realization that this was going on and it's completely wrong to the point that you better be careful if you even ask someone, hey, would you like to get a coffee outside of work because it could be misconstrued.

And so, what you're saying is that because Christians have been browbeaten into being soft on LGBTQ, that is allowing Michael Tate to get all this sympathy. Yeah, I think if it was women that he was doing this to, he wouldn't get the—I think there would be much more of an outrage. I think the Bible speaks about both being incredibly sinful. Well, they are. They're equally sinful. But that's where I'm saying there's a double standard here because if it were young girls and let's face it at 20, 22, 23 years old, you're still not necessarily all that mature. And you got this 50-something who's doing this stuff. That would be totally creepy. It'd be totally like, you know what I mean? But that has not by and large been the reaction.

However, so people who are professing to be Christians are blaming other Christians for not playing the music rather than what Tate actually did to other human beings and that's what frustrates me. Exactly.

Let's take a look at one more comment because this one gave me a little bit of hope. And there were a few comments on the Caleb social media that were like this one that says, "Thank you, Caleb, for caring about victims right now. Not to say the music can't ever be added back, but for now, while it's raw, it's best for the victims. Everyone has so much sympathy for the criminals, the pedophiles, the perpetrators, but very little for victims, which makes it so hard for them to come out or come forward in the first place. If we had as much or more sympathy and care and respect and support for victims, maybe more would come out and get the help and the support and the healing that they need and not have this being ongoing for 20-some years."

Well, you think about the Christian, you think about the Catholic priest abuses and how it was so hard for people to come forward. Well, I certainly don't believe the priest would do that. Think about how much more in the Christian community is saying, 'Yeah, the lead singer for the Newsboys, DC Talk's own Michael Tate.' You're not going to believe him. You're going to be like, 'Ah, you sure? Are you really hesitant to believe?' That's the kind of thing that last post that you just showed really goes after. And that is we have to really keep our eyes and ears open and stay grounded in the word.

Because for every five or six of these guys, here's the problem. The flip side of the coin is the Duke lacrosse team being falsely accused. Oh, believe the victim. Believe the victim. Believe the victim. So, anybody can get targeted with this. And I've seen many guys that I believe stone cold. They were falsely accused. And so, you've got both sides of that. But the reality is that's what makes it difficult. But Michael knows all the Christian doctrine and he slowly just got his conscience seared as the scripture says. And so now, we have people doing back flips over wanting to just esteem Michael and restore Michael because he's repentant now. And it's like I don't know what you guys are thinking, but I have gone on record as saying I don't think Michael should ever have a microphone on a stage ever again.

I mean, if he really loves the Lord and he really surrenders to the Lord, go to some small church, get into a Bible study, live your life. He probably doesn't need a job. I mean, he probably can go for many years without income problems and just serve the Lord quietly in a quiet setting. Trust us, we know the benefit of that.

But that's the thing, too. I mean, think about the accusations that had come out and as Christians, let's say these accusations came out against some secular band leader, lead singer. Oh, how shameful that would be. And we have no problem chastising and calling sin what it is when it's outside the church, right? But when it's inside the church, it's almost like you have to give it a pass. Now, what is that? The Bible says when God starts disciplining, he starts with his children. And that's the thing is that if it's not acceptable outside the church, it certainly isn't acceptable inside the church.

Mainstream media and even some of the Christian churches that are kind of on the woke side are going to start blaming Christians that it's your fault. It's your fault for not allowing Tate to openly live his homosexual lifestyle and sing for Jesus. So that's what's coming. That's what we're here to sound the alarm about in this particular episode. Already kind of been out there that they're blaming Christians that Tate has been caught up in this secret life. If he just would have been allowed to be gay, he would be in this committed wonderful homosexual relationship the whole time and he never would have done anything wrong. Like that is just so bad.

They say at the end times, not only will there be the great falling away, but the great falling away will be marked by sin not being sinful anymore. And if we're not living that, I don't know what we're living. Pursuing our own pleasures, that's definitely going to be the mark of the last days.

So, I feel bad for him. I feel especially bad though for the victims. I even feel bad for the rest of the band. Like that just stinks. But I feel mostly for the victims. And I think, like I was saying before, instead of looking at this through the lens of opinion or emotion or what I want and my radio station and my music and what I like and my personal preferences, let's look at it from a biblical lens because here's the reality. And this gets back to what I was saying before about is his double life the drug use and the homosexuality and the assaults or is his double life the pretending you're a Christian? And I would say the latter is more likely.

So let's take a look at John 8:31-36. And it says this. So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him, "If you continue in my word, then you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We're Abraham's descendants, and we have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?" Now, this is key. Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. Now the slave does not remain in the house forever. The son does remain forever." So if the son sets you free, you really will be free. You will be free.

Someone who has pretty devastating sin and it's been going on for more than 20 years—is that the son setting him free? I don't think so. I hope he comes to true repentance. I hope he comes out of all of that stuff. I won't be surprised if he just turns and like you were saying Chris goes with that mainstream idea that hey you know what maybe homosexuality isn't really bad and I was just doing that because I was fighting what's real and true. I don't know he hasn't done that I want to make that clear but he hasn't been set free he's going on and on and on and on and 20 years 20 plus years on and on that's not being set free.

Number two, let's go to Matthew chapter 7:16-23. This is talking about good trees bearing good fruit and bad trees bearing bad fruit. And verse 16 starts out, "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles. Are they? Are they? Are they? No. So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree, this is key, cannot bear bad fruit. Nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. It's impossible. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then you will know them by their fruits."

And then it goes on to scripture, Chris, that you and I have talked about quite often where Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the ones who do the will of my father who is in heaven, they will enter. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? In your name, cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles and concerts and music and all that stuff. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Leave me, you who practice lawlessness."

Yeah, that's the biblical perspective. That's the biblical lens. And so our hope as Christians should be, like I said before, that he comes completely out of this stuff forever and ever and is truly set free. And it is not the call of Christians to turn around and start pointing fingers at other Christians because they make a decision not to listen to this or to do that or what—it's just calm down take a breath and the truth will come out. That is for sure.

So there's a lot of people out there that I know listen to the Newsboys, love the Newsboys, DC Talk. I'm one of them. And I can hear them because I've heard it before. Well, like with false teachers and so on, but I listened to them and they helped me so much and it was so good and they what they did was just so helpful for me. It encouraged me and it did all this stuff.

Well, I would say to them, your appreciation and your thanksgiving is being put in the wrong place. If you've gotten any encouragement, if you've gotten any strengthening, if you've gotten any great wind in your sail of faith, you need to be thanking God. That's from God. And God will use whomever and whatever he wants. But your appreciation has to be toward God. God did that. The Newsboys didn't do that. Chris and Emilee didn't do that. Your pastor didn't do that. God did that. And that's where our love and our thanks and our appreciation needs to be and our empathy needs to be with the victims and our hope for restoration for Michael Tate. And that is all.

And that is the Gramster rant.

Salvaged by God Deep Dive: The Parable of the Soils and the Christian Industry

It is time for the salvaged by God deep dive. We're going to stick right with the Newsboys. We're going to stick with this whole concept. And I want to get back into—you wanted to do a biblical expose and I think you did a good job. I want you guys to know that as you watch the show, as you listen to the show, we have a deep love for authentic Christianity and it comes directly from the Savior and it's part of our journey. And I want to try to use some total honesty here in my storytelling of this salvaged by God.

We're going to be going to Matthew 13 in just a second. But in the spirit of total honesty, I want to just back up about 30 years. I had a deep love in high school for a band and the band was Van Halen. I love Van Halen and the reason I love Van Halen is it wasn't my brother's band. Now my brother was into like the Who and he had Boston and Eric Clapton albums and stuff like that. I was a Van Halen kid and David Lee Roth left the band and Sammy Hagar came into the band and I really was bummed for about a year until the first album came out and Emilee can tell you when I'm in the backyard grilling—she tells me to skip it but the four songs I have in the playlist, this is ironic and this is part of the story, are all Sammy Hagar songs. I didn't know that. I really started to appreciate Sammy Hagar.

Now, fast forward to our journey with Christian music. We go all-in with Jesus. We're no longer going to be a part of that life. I left sports broadcasting behind. I left my secular rock music behind. And so, we started listening to Christian rock. There was a band called Petra. There was others. And I was trying so hard to like it, but I always felt like it was just a little subpar.

Back in those days, the recording studio and the money you put into your recordings really affected the product that came out. And the Christians just didn't have the funds. And so their music was lesser then. It just felt like that, right? Until a band came along called the Newsboys and they had a song called Breakfast. And they had another song that they just one after another that I just started liking. And they had a little bit of a rock twinge to them that was to me kind of cool. And so they were like my favorite Christian band from jump street. And I love Jars of Clay as well at around the same time. They had a song called Flood that came out that actually crossed over into the top 40. And keep in mind, I'm working for secular radio during this time. We're not in Christian broadcasting when I first got turned on to these guys.

And so then we get into broadcasting on Christian stations and the Newsboys have always been and will always be for me in high rotation. Now because of that, I'm not alone in that. Every radio station in the country needs to put out a press release as to what they're going to do with the Newsboys music. And the reason I'm saying that is this is a litmus test now for every single station. And what Caleb did, I think, is the classic weak-wristed. You're a wuss. You shouldn't have even said anything if you're going to say something that lame. We're just going to put it on pause till the storm blows over. Then we'll decide what we're going to do. And trust me, the program director for Caleb is a friend of mine who I have high respect for. I mean, his phone number's in my phone. I could text him and say, 'Dude, do a better job.' But I never would because I love the guy. He's a great guy. But I think he's wrong on this one.

They need to come out and say we are pulling all Michael Tate Newsboys music forever and that the Newsboys that's going to be heard on Caleb is going to be the Peter Furler version and that's it. And because this is what happens when Christians are held accountable. Like if a pastor falls into sexual sin biblically he should never be back in the pulpit. Can he be restored? Yes. Can he be forgiven? Of course. We want to forgive and restore people, but not back to that position. Like I say, Michael Tate, repent. Go serve Jesus quietly somewhere. And don't ever get on the stage with a microphone for the rest of your life. You've been disqualified. But if you can find peace and love in Jesus, we encourage it. We want that. We want everybody to come to know the Lord.

So, with the Newsboys, there was a relationship there. And I just want to share this with you for a couple different reasons. One is credibility. I want you to understand that when we're talking about something, we're not talking about it like some journalist at 2,000 feet away. This is up close and personal. Let me just show you this. I have been gifted some gold records and we've had a great relationship with different things. I've got Chris Tomlin stories. Third Day dedicated a song to us from the stage in Flagstaff, Arizona. I got one of their gold records on the wall. Jeremy Camp. We had a great couple year run with Jeremy Camp as he was coming up. His gold record is on my wall. Well, also on my wall is my Newsboys collection. And you can see on the one it's the Ghost CD and that guitar pick is from Peter Furler and that's Emilee and I with the Newsboys. And of course, this is all before Michael Tate.

And so when Peter left the band and went out on his own, when he came to town, when he came to Grand Rapids, Emilee and Peter Furler painted different oil paintings together. He did one, Emilee did one, they collaborated on one, and we sold that and gave the money to some orphanage that was being built, but we did—listeners, five people could win this contest and come and paint with Emilee and Peter Furler backstage at the festival. And so I mean, we had this relationship.

One of the greatest moments of my life is in Tucson, Arizona. The Newsboys are doing this concert for the Global Tribe and 15,000 people showed up and I'm the main MC and we're standing backstage. It's just me and the Newsboys, the band, and we're just talking. And then I go out and tee up Peter Furler and hand him the microphone, and he gives like a 10-minute message and a gospel response, an altar call, and over 700 people came to the right field side of the baseball stadium that was just packed and gave their lives to Christ. And then he handed the microphone back to me and I closed the proceedings from the speaking part while the band got ready. And then they closed with a song.

So when you close a service like that in prayer in front of 15,000 people and you turn around and the Newsboys start a song, that was one of the most powerful moments of my whole career, my whole ministry, my whole trying to serve Jesus. So to see the Newsboys be caught up in this, it's just really, really hard.

After Michael became the lead singer, we—Emilee, it was just you and you remember this, right? It was you, me and their manager along with the four Newsboys members and Michael was there. Michael Tate was there and it was just a dinner of us in the green room. We were just—It was very nice hour that we spent together. And in those environments, I'm always hanging out with Duncan. Me and Duncan, we're the same height. He's funny. I'm trying to be funny. Pretty level. We're usually getting in trouble. Jeff Frankenstein's another one that I mean, we just kind of connect with him. We kind of cheer him on. But there was a distance with Michael that day or was it just me? It just felt very different than when Peter Furler was there. It just felt more genuine, more lighthearted and more—I don't know. It felt—there was a difference. We'll just say that. And was it the David Lee Roth Sammy Hagar vibe or was it something different? I don't know. Looking back, I mean, I liked Michael with the band. I thought he was a good fit. I loved the song Born Again. I love the song God's Not Dead when it came out with the movie, which is another one of my favorites. And so it's just—

Let me tell you the story and then I'm going to get to my scriptures and then I'm done. I doubt that. When we were first coming up in the Christian industry, we did not really understand how things went. And we were in Alaska and we were on a little station in the Bering Sea called KAKN in Kotzebue, Alaska. You can look it up. The station's still there. And we would come down and we would do these tours to raise money for the station. And we would do—we weren't really doing comedy shows at that time, but we would try to add humor into our little presentations.

And you and I ended up in North Carolina and there was a—it was a Friday night. We weren't speaking until Saturday, I think, in this town. So, we had a free night and there was a band called Sonic Flood that was playing kind of a youth event, but a public event. There was other adults there. And so, we said instead of sitting in our hotel room, we said, 'Let's go down to the Sonic Flood concert.' So we go down there and it was just—I don't know there had to be about a thousand kids there in that bigger church cafeteria or whatever it was and they just played a fun worship set. I mean they were singing their hits. They had a couple hits at the time and they were singing songs for Jesus. The dude had a Bible that he'd pull out and sat down on the stool next to him and he'd read a little bit. And at the end of the concert the lights came up and everybody—a lot of kids came up to the stage to shake hands with the band or whatever. but it wasn't an autograph line. And then about half an hour after, the youth are starting to congregate together and the youth pastor's trying to organize, the band starts tearing down their own equipment, right? And I go up there and start talking to them about what it's like to be on the road serving Jesus. You remember that? I always do that, right? You're always bothering people in the middle of their work.

Fast forward two years and now we're the hot big morning show in Phoenix, Arizona. And we get invited to MC the MercyMe concert and it was a completely different vibe. Nothing against MercyMe. I'm not—Bart Millard and "I Can Only Imagine" and the movie that the Erwin brothers made and all that. God bless you. Bart's been on our show I don't know three or four times. Nice enough guys. They're nice enough guys. But it was unbelievable the security that they had. The green room experience. It was all rockstar stuff. Now it wasn't serving Jesus and singing for Jesus. Now we're rock stars. And I remember just being completely turned off by all of that. I didn't have the right badge on and I got turned around and had to make three phone calls to be able to get my badge to even get backstage again. And it was just an awful experience and it just totally turned me off to what Christian music was becoming.

And so then from that point on, we must have MC'd, I don't know, a hundred different concerts, 10 different festivals. We've just been there, done that, got the t-shirt. And in that process, we have seen that they're not all Christians. They're not all Christians. In fact, Emilee, I'm going to—I want your response to this statement. Here's the statement. If it comes down to advancing the gospel or making money, we're going to choose to make money. That's what 90 to 95% of all Christian artists in the Christian industry are about.

Well, I think so because you look at a lot of the really good artists that come up and they seem to have a very genuine faith and they put out some really good music and then they're just gone and you know I think of like Aaron Shust. Legit guys who love Jesus are in the industry, but the industry is still the industry. There's a strong influence over them. And Rich Mullins even talked about that so many years ago that they wanted him to write music that they wanted him to write and he kind of just refused.

And so what you have to realize is that CCM and all these Christian record labels, they're owned by the big secular conglomerate music company. All the little guys have all been bought up now by Columbia and Universal and all those, right? There's really kind of no such thing as a Christian music label. Well, they're just a label that's going through the same people that are okaying all the other secular music. I mean, they don't care.

There was a band called Rush of Fools that came in studio with us in Arizona. Yeah, that's another one. And I gave him $20 for gas and they have two number one hits. Because the record label had taken everything, took all of it. And this was not a—this was a private supposedly Christian label. And so, you hear these stories, you see what's going on.

Rich Mullins had a contract where he would get paid from his own committee that he set up that included, I think, his sister and some other people that he'd get paid whatever a working man was getting, the average working man's salary. So the last Rich Mullins got paid before he died in a car wreck in '98, I think it was, he was getting like $40,000 a year, even though his music was making a million. So they were taking the rest of his money and they were putting it into missions and other things. No one does that today. No one does that today because if they did say that then the record company would just take it all and give them peanuts. They just wouldn't care. It's so cutthroat and so heartless and which is the exact opposite of the total gospel message.

I remember going to some of these festivals where there were a lot of artists and Chris, you and I were fresh off the mission field and some of their music we would listen to is really good music and it's like that music would be so good for the Native American population out there in far western Alaska which they don't have access to things like what we do. And we wanted to find a way to get back there and do more ministry. And so we brought, "Hey, would you guys ever think about going up to rural western remote Alaska, planes only?" And they would get so excited. Their eyes would start getting big and they're like, "Yeah, that'd be so cool. That'd be so great." And then they realized, yeah, it would come out of your pocket because it would be mission. And you saw their face just deflate. And I used to always—they were immediately no longer interested. And I used to always do—we used to, we started doing it as like a "let's just find out if we're dealing with live or Memorex here." And I would say, "And here's the best part. You get paid nothing and you're going to have to cough up a little bit of your riches to actually get out there. What do you think? It'll be serving Jesus." And they just get deflated. And it's just like, "No, that ain't how we roll." And some of them try to stammer and try to still hold face, but you can see it in their face. It's like, "No, this isn't some big mission organization that's going to dump World Vision money on you. This is just an opportunity for you to legitimately go and serve Jesus with some abandon in your life, with a little sacrifice." There were just a very few who actually continued on as in "Oh, yeah. Okay." And then they were still genuinely interested.

In fact, the Devivos from Casting Crowns, they actually did go out to Alaska. Not on our suggestion, but they took their riches that God had blessed them with and they put it back into doing ministry in rural Alaska. It was awesome. There are genuine Christian artists. Like Phillips, Craig, and Dean. They're getting fewer and further between.

A lot of them want the rockstar mentality. And here's the other thing. How come every female Christian artist has to look a certain way? How come all the young Christian male bands have to look a certain way? They're just being pushed into the same box as secular bands.

I'm not going to tell you who it is, but there is a well-known band that was sitting in their bus waiting for a promoter to give him a $50,000 check. And he was going to lose on this concert because he didn't sell the tickets he thought he was going to. And they sat in their bus waiting for him to give the check. And when he finally came out and said, "Listen, you guys just do the show. I'll pay you the best I can. It may not be 50. It may take me a month to get to the 50, but we can trust Jesus together." And they shut the door and drove away. And that's a fact.

And when you think of like Rebecca St. James and her dad, David Smallbone, Emilee co-MC'd an event called the She event with Rebecca St. James. Several of them. And what was the "ring your bells lady name"? Evie. Evie Carlson. Yeah, it was Evie and Rebecca St. James. Well, the Smallbones were the only other men in the whole building. 1500 ladies and me, the sound guy, and David Smallbone and his two sons, Joel and Luke. Luke was 15 at the time. And so we're hanging out talking and he's backstage and he's trying to do devotions with everybody. He really wanted his boys to maybe come up and start singing and doing stuff because they had talent. But he really wanted Christ to be the main thing. That was what he gave off. And how many events did we do with them? Several. So I got to know him a little bit.

Well, now his boys Joel and Luke are known as for King and Country. They don't go out for less than $175,000 a concert. Is that right or wrong? That depends on your perspective if it is right or wrong. I love those guys. I mean, when we knew them, they were Joel and Luke and now they're for King and Country. And since they become for King and Country, we've never seen them before or since. We just checked out. We checked out of the industry because of that.

We're not rolling our bus away if you don't have a check for us for 50 grand. We're going on stage to do what we're called to do by God and let the chips fall where they may. We're not going to pedal our bike away. What do you mean? We don't have a bus. That to me was one of the most disturbing things in Christian industry.

So, when we say the Christian industry is messed up, we mean it. And this is just the tip of the sadness iceberg to be honest with you. It is. It really is. And so you don't know how sorry it is to be in an environment where the only goal, the only true goal is to try to have the joy of the Lord, the hope that's found in Jesus as our substitute and wanting to share that with people and then being saddled with everybody else around you saying if we can't make money on it, we don't want to do it. Exactly.

And that's why I'm a pastor in rural America. And there's an opportunity for us to make another movie. And it's coming right now. I've got a producer that called me this week and we want to do a follow-up to Bible Idiots. And it's called Fools for Christ is the working title of the story. And we have to be able to pay the people that are going to do the work on the movie. Exactly. But after that, it's in God's hands. Why can't we just do work for the kingdom and leave it in God's hands? Why are we doing this show? Why are we still putting this out? Why are we here behind these microphones when there is really no—And the Christian industry would have shut this show down a year ago, but here we are because we're leaving the results in God. And there's a couple of you that have reached out and said that you like the show, that the show means something to you, that it's light in your world every week. And because of that, we'll keep trying to do it as best as we can.

I would say that the Christian industry is like every other industry. It is what it is and it's just not gonna be any different than anything else. And when you think about it like—look at the restaurants. Some new restaurant will open up. I remember when Applebee's opened up. I remember "eating good in the neighborhood" when Chili's opened up and it was like a step above just family dining whatever and the country kitchen. It was good and it was wonderful for a while and now they're kind of dives. I mean, Outback is like avoid that one altogether. Maybe there's one or two that are still good. Emilee got a bad blooming onion one time. They start out with the right purpose. They start out with the right intention. And as time goes on and money's the bottom line, what happens? The product becomes less and less and less. The staff becomes less and less and less, and pretty soon it's just not what it was before. Christian industry no different.

But like I said before, I don't want people to be discouraged. There are still Christian artists out there and I like the fact that people support them. But this shouldn't surprise us. I would much rather you're listening to Caleb than a lot of other stations. I'll put it that way. But at what point is it like it doesn't matter. If you're putting out this bad music that really is doctrinally not sound, you've got band members who are involved in all kinds of humans, and all the money is going to this big secular conglomerate. Anyway, at that point, go ahead, turn on the secular station. Like, what difference does it make?

And on that upbeat note, let me move to the scriptures. I am writing a sermon series called on the seven churches of revelation. If you want to hear the messages, you just need to search salvaged by God, wherever you get podcast content or freshroadmedia.com.

Matthew 13:3-10 is one of my foundational passages for the seven churches of Revelation. And I use this to set up the seven churches. Why? Because the seven churches are people who have at one point been in good ground. And when they were in good ground, then they started to wobble. Just like Applebee's. I don't know when Applebee's became subpar, but I'm going to find out after the show.

Jesus in Matthew 13:3-10, it's so self-explanatory. He said, "And he told them many things in parable, saying, A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some 100-fold, some 60, some 30. He who has the ears to hear, let him hear."

And the point of that is that Jesus is the one who opens eyes and opens ears. So the disciples come to him here asking him, why do you speak in parables? And Jesus is like, you're so lucky that you get to be here because a lot of people want to be here that can't be here and hear what you're hearing. But he said in verse 15 this is a quote from Isaiah. "For the people's heart has grown dull and their ears they can barely hear and their eyes they have closed. Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them."

And so that's my hope for Michael Tate and for these people that are questioning all the different reactions which is all over the board because of the culture we live in the consumer Christian culture that has permeated and the browbeating we have taken from society against biblical wisdom. Instead we're using human wisdom and our feelings.

All right. So they want to hear what the meaning of the parable is. In verse 18, Jesus actually tells us what the meaning of the parable is. He says, "Hear the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. That is what was sown along the path." What's he saying? People are going to hear the gospel. They may not even reject it or choose to try to fight against it, but it won't hold. And they'll eventually become a scoffer. They'll shrug it off. They'll do whatever.

Verse 20. "As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he himself has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately falls away." I call this the false conversion of "I've asked Jesus into my heart." And I'm trying to add Jesus onto what I got going on. There's joy there because here's a way out of my problems. And there's more problems being a Christian than not. So, I'm going to fade away.

Verse 22. "As for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruitful."

This is the Christian industry. This is another one who asked Jesus into their heart, but they did it because they wanted to add Jesus to what they had going on in a bigger way. And they really were hoping that Jesus would make them a better salesman, a better homemaker, give them a better jump shot, all of those things.

Verse 23, "As for what was sown on good soil, good ground Christians, good ground churches, this is what it's about. And the Christian industry does not have good soil anymore. Almost everywhere it has no good soil. He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case 100-fold, in another 60 and in another 30."

What's my point? My point is this. Emilee and I will do all we can to keep Fresh Encounter Church, the church I pastor, a good ground church. And I have begged God to send me to people who would also be good ground Christians. And I have a leadership team and also other Christians in leadership positions that may not be part of the eldership team. And this is about as strong a core as we've ever seen. And we've seen a lot. And so we are blessed to have this good ground church. Well, guess what? We know that the enemy is going to attack it. So we then need to even be all the more deeper into the good ground soil.

Fresh Road Media is Emilee's little brainchild along with another man from our church. He's an elder, Larry Hop. Fresh Road Media must stay a good ground ministry. Why? Because if you plant your financial seed in either the church that I'm the pastor of or the ministry that Emilee's the president of, we want it to be where it'll be good ground where the seed will then generate and give us 100-fold, 30-fold, 60-fold of what? Money. So we can redo our studio. No. Of the gospel going out and lives being changed because of the love of Jesus Christ who is your substitute.

You are sinful. Doesn't matter what the sin is. Fill in the blank. You cannot save yourself and you cannot be in the presence of a holy God. Only through the blood of Jesus Christ can you be in front of a holy God. And when you put his blood over the doorpost of your life, you now have eternal life and now you want to live for him. Well, what ground are you in? Are you in the rocky soil? Well, then come on over to the good ground.

We are watching Michael Tate and a lot of the other Christian things that have happened in the Christian industry because they are in either the rocky soil or the thorny soil. They're not in good ground. They're not on the path either because the path is those that just reject it. So many people have a bent towards Christianity one way, shape or form. But what ground are they in?

And that is why yes, listen to Christian music more than secular music. Yes, get into the word of God. Yes, go to a church that's available to you, but look for the good ground. And when I say this, I'm going to end with this. Even in the music, there's good ground music and then there's not good ground music. There's we're giving praise and worship to Jesus and there's God is love and Jesus is my boyfriend.

And that's my salvaged by God deep dive.

Closing Thoughts

One of the comments that I did read with regard to response to Caleb pulling their music for the immediate future was "Caleb's supposed to be about love and that's just not very loving" and like the one lady comparing it to cancel culture and having no concept of the people that have been hurt or harmed, having no empathy or love toward the oppressed and the victim. And Jesus was a staunch defender of those who were vulnerable. He really was.

"But he ate with sinners. He never condemned anybody." Are you kidding me? Jesus ate with sinners in order to offer them the kingdom. In order to offer them forgiveness. To call them out. To call them out of where they were. He doesn't want to leave us where they are. And in fact, I'm just a wee bit frustrated.

We were doing our devotions this morning and it was very interesting because we were doing Charles Spurgeon. Morning and evening in that verse that says "we love because he first loved us." The love that we have even for one another and the love that we have even toward God is from God. It doesn't originate from ourselves. I can't conjure it up. And so, Jesus told us you just have to be ready to walk away from everything that the world has to offer. That includes your favorite band. It really does. If there's just sinful, awful things going on, why are you afraid to lay it down? Because the love that we have is the love that only Christ gives to us.

And so I just thought that was very poignant and that we have to be ready for the love of others, for the love of the vulnerable, for the love of people who are caught in whatever and need freedom and need reassurance and need those things that comes from God. Not from the Newsboys, not from Chris and Emilee, but from God himself. So remember that. Get into God's word today because his word is life and it's going to make the things of the world really grow strangely dim when we are focused on the light and life of Jesus Christ.

There's so many times that people want you to like and subscribe and we would love for you to like and subscribe what we've got going on here. And also comments on like YouTube really help. We don't care about that. We would rather you comment directly. Send us an email. If you're watching, the email's on the screen. If you're listening, it's emilee@freshroadmedia.com or chris@freshroadmedia.com.

And I have got a free book for anybody who will send me an email telling me to put a playlist together of Van Halen, the Newsboys, and Jars of Clay the next time I'm grilling in the backyard. No, we're not going to do that.

But we will be back next week with how AI is advancing and causing problems for believers everywhere. Also, Bible translations, how they are really going awry. And hopefully next week we'll be back with Right On Way Off again. Mike Shaw couldn't join us this week, but I have a Right On Way Off statement from a listener, and that's next week.