Holy Cow!!!!  Can I laugh and be convicted at the same time?  Oh the question is….Where’s the Line?  On one hand churches and leadership seem not to mind using musicians until they drop dead but they don’t want to pay them (a general blanket statement). However, artists have to earn a living somehow.  Yet to charge people money to come and worship God seems silly too.  Only America….there are people around the world who are threatened with their lives to worship God and yet here we are….should we apologize for where we live and the freedom we have?  Were not the Levites paid to do what they did.  I don’t know if the video answers anything or just provokes more questions.  I’ve never made a dime off my music but I can’t say I haven’t thought about it.  I think at the end of the day it’s what you do with that money right?  Doesn’t it always come down to the heart?  I can’t say that I dig the pictures in the video either.  I know they had the disclaimer and all but some of those guys have done great things for God.  Maybe the guy who did the video is jealous? The view from the cheap seats is always…cheap.  Oh at the end of the day I think it comes down to the individual and the heart.  That’s what God’s after anyway.

It has been a long time since I have been moved enough to buy a “new contemporary christian album” (This music does seem to be repetitious and boring to me)  . I recently went to a festival where many bands were playing. There was a whole array of music and artists for whatever genre you were in to. Now I didn’t feel anything innately evil about this. It was kind of nice seeing different churches coming together and having a good time. But much of it was pure entertainment with an evangelistic message. It seems that christian artists have learned from the world in this fashion (Tents with products and merchandise, autographs etc.). I too struggle with the “Industry” idea. Maybe I am seeing it this way because I feel that singing and playing music to God is very powerful and wonderful. I think of David (Who probably wasn’t thinking about making money with his Psalms). David was singing to his Father and now we get to read and interpret what he wrote. I wonder what God really thinks when He sees the christian music industry? No doubt these artists and songs have affected many Christians (Going through whatever season in their lives). At the end of the day it still feels like something is missing. The industry is definitely tapping into the common themes in a Christians journey i.e, wanting to be loved, feeling broken and lost, restoration and redemption, calling and being fulfilled (Purpose) etc. Mixing talent and skill with these themes is no different than what the Christian book industry is doing (My opinion). It just seems that there has to be more! I think the question is, “Is the Christian music industry causing people to stumble?” However, your gift makes room for you. A christian artist should be paid well for what they do. And we are now living in a season where there is enough quality musician to affect non-believers. Like the song “I can only imagine”, I have heard that played and non-believers getting convicted by the lyrics in the work place. But a song like that is few and far between. I agree with the fellow above that it is the heart matters. Great subject! Really made me think….

as with many things, if there was not some truth, it would not hurt as much. Amos 6:5 says it pretty close.  because a call has been tainted by some, does not detract from the call.  the heart and purpose of God is still the motive for all of us.

This video really makes you wonder who is out there for God, and who are the wolves in ‘sheep’s clothing’...

Some years back I went to see U2 in Winnipeg ...i remember how amazing it was, how many ppl were there, lifting up their hands, singing along; essentially ‘worshipping’ the band….I remember thinking “Wow, this would be amazing if this many ppl were here to worship God right now, right here in this arena!!!”....maybe some of them even worshipping God as they were singing, who knows…but anyways it was one of those “matrix-y” moments when the blinders come off, just for a split second, and you see things the way they really are (and the way they should be if ppl only knew the truth).

I guess it’s too easy to get sidetracked from the Lord and start thinking of how to get by in our day-to-day life, essentially worrying about the here and now—-we are all guilty of it..  Losing focus of our “eternal’ life has proven to be easier then it should be for Christians, but that is the world we all live in, and being a Christian is a day to day thing, some days are easier, some days harder.  I think as long as God is first and we give Him alone the glory (and not ourselves as a band or whatever the situation might be)  then everything begins to make more sense,....only God can truly know what is motivating each of us.

You don’t have to be a “star” to have an inflated ego…. I just lead worship in my small local church and constantly have to check my heart when people come and say: Worship was awesome!!! I think there is a place for people who have such a great talent to be seen and distributed around the world, no question, but whether big or small, it’s always about what’s truly going on in your heart.

David,
My wife saw you in Canada at some church. During the worship, you broke into spontaneous song from Psalm 103. I’ve been trying to find an MP3 of the song. Any help?
I know it’s probably an odd request, but I’d really like to find this for her.
Thanks, Carl

Motives are tricky things…and nearly impossible to judge. Are the artists singing to please God, or entertain people? Is it for His glory, or their pocket book? Are the people there to glorify Jesus out of gratitude for their salvation (worship) or are they there to see and hear a favorite musical entertainer of theirs (concert)??? At any given moment the truth of the matter is different in every heart and only known fully by the Lord. I believe He receives what is pure and smiles, and the rest He ignores. Those that don’t have a tangible encounter with Him actually come away with nothing of value at all.

It’s all too easy to lose focus if we don’t rely on our Maker. The outpouring of worship could be misinterpreted as adulation of the singers/musicians, or could even be a mixture.
The people who are being led can be part of this whole issue too.
At Soul Survivor (youth festival) in the 90’s, I heard Kevin Prosch sing some radical, challenging lyrics that struck a chord with me.
The following year when David Ruis(!) was leading worship, he wasn’t Kevin Prosch and both men, being guest worship leaders, sang songs I wsn’t familiar with. But I switched off that 1st night David led, because I wanted what I’d known before…and missed out on entering worship that night -profusely begging God’s forgiveness for missing out on an intimate time of worship - it took me 20 mins to see where everyone else had gone, while I was picking.
Then I opened my heart and found great times with God while David was leading.
The vid is a timely reminder. We need those, often.

Amazing - just love it!

Unity between believers - no sin in the camp, and then God’s glory can fall.People being sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading during worship.Responsive hearts.A deep commitment to magnifying the LORD, from hearts that want to see Him glorified.

Hei dave my name is samuel gallo I saw you last time at fitche’s house, remember me barging into the front door, back in 2008 or 7 st. steven’s. Yeah I’m the crazy guy who spent 5 years of my life 24/7 listening to your musick, I could tell peter was trying his best to enterpret those untimely, unmeant words of mine, but no I really am a fan of your’s who literally spent five years 24/7 with my room cd player always playing your music. As you can tell it’s gotten to my head. But no worries i’m not obsessed or nothing to extreeme, yeah I think I had to go thorugh deliverance for that one and get delivered from the david ruis obsesion deamon. lol just jocking!!
Love ya
What need is there to say that I’m in love with your songs, but just to lett you know you’r music and songs have played a huge role in my life. I wanna be a worship leader like you some day.

UHH also before I forget dave, was wondering if you know of any churches that I could visit in Nepal? next year 2010 january or febuary, becasue I will be travelling there, to see base camp mount everest, and the vineyard churches I heard there are some there? cool man
sory for the craziness
love in Jesus Christ
ps my e-mail is (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you could help me out I would really appreciate it, you are my hero bro
Peace man

The guy in the shot probably misunderstood it all. Mocking people he does not know personally and their motives at all, was surely not a good idea.
First thing he does not understand, I think, is the understanding of power. Jesus has every power. That is also why He is happy and free person. He also has all wealth and all glory.
He said He decided to give us part of the power. This means part of every power, not only the spiritual power. We are supposed to use the power (media, high quality songs, newspapers…) to reach the world. Including money. It’s not so easy to reach people without money - go and ask Reinhard Bonkke or Benny Hinn or even pastors of several hundreds people. The question and importance of money is well discussed in the Bible. God is rich. If this wealth would be bad, God would do a bad thing. But it’s not true, God is happy to be rich and he wants to share his riches. That’s why God is not envious. Many people are envious usually because they are not successful. The envy is often manifested by suspicious thinking: “Where did he get it? He must have stolen it!...” Please, don’t judge motives of successful men of God. The motives will be judget by someone who knows better than we. I often thought I was right but I wasn’t, just like in my opinion this singer is not perfectly right, even though it seems very humble or whatever.
There are lots of people who think that christianity should be practiced in small closed groups where are several people that enjoy poverty and sickness which is obviously spoken in the Bible to be curse. They think christians should not be wealthy (general managers, top business people, professional singers, politicians…), probably because there still remains a thought that money are bad. This is nothing new under the sun. Here in europe this really prevails. Just come and see the churches in the eastern europe. Most of the churches are full of people living in depression. When a successful person from the world enters such gathering, he says to himself: “I live a better life now, I don’t need this depression and look like these few old people in couple of years…” and he leaves.
The person singing this controversial song means his best but it’s misleading. In these last days, money are very good means to spread the gospel massively throughout the world - it’s like combine harverster’s fuel. And christians should start to love money because of this. We need to make friends of money, though the money are not just. Jesus has all the gold and silver. He wants to give some of it to us to use it well. Please, don’t be afraid that money will deprave you. That’s a lie. It would deprave God if that would be a principle… But you need to serve God and be a giver, of course…
Jesus decided to give us parts of the power He has so that we can use it and sit in the governments, influence via media, sing high quality songs, create high quality movies, create good concerts where young people can be saved… In certain extend it needs to be spectacular / heavenly. People in the world don’t need to see church poor - with poor music, poor evangelization meetings, poor influence… With this thinking christians can’t do much but go to “underground”, to their pietistic and sentimental cheerless meetings, hide the lamp under the bed, bearing their own weaknesses that they really love and do some spiritual mysticism.
But this should not be so. Our light needs to be visible in this world, we can’t go the Essenes’ (read about them a bit) way and live on the desert. I say, it’s an old lie.

Surely I am against worshipping the band or other such like things. I partially understand what he wanted to say, but I think there is a spirit going with the song that creates another extreme and stirs up false justice, false compassion and humanism in it’s bad, anti-kingdom sense.

I believe christians should be the most successful people in the world because God id successful and He blesses us to be like Him. He does not want us to live a rigid bigotedly lives rejecting commerce sphere, full of eunuchs, not growing, not expanding… Such people who think this, they should go and live like monks…

Please, don’t understand me bad.

Thanks.

I personally think it’s WRONG to make worship into an industry whereupon we focus on making money off of the very thing that we are giving to God in our times of intimate closeness with Him. It’s also WRONG for churches to manipulate people into giving more money by playing a particular worship song just because they know that if they play that particular worship song, then they will see more people give of their finances. In this day and time as God’s Church, we HAVE to come to the realization that it’s NEVER been about us getting financially wealthy off of what God has gifted us to do, because what if one day the currency we use is no longer worth anything, and we’ll GASP have to trust God for ALL of our needs? Maybe I’m alone in this point of view right now, but don’t be surprised if it comes to pass, because the way things are going, it could VERY easily happen. Of course, we should be praying against this, but not just so we can turn the focus onto us having all the money and pushing God out of the way in the process. We HAVE to come out of our church buildings and start going into our highways and bi-ways and PREACH THE GOSPEL. That’s all there is to it. It’s not about whether or not we have some sort of fancy “programs”, “groups”, or whatever else. It’s ALWAYS been about us, the Body of Christ, preaching the Word of God in His Love and His Zeal. We’re never supposed to make it about our “agendas”, because we already know what that leads to, which is us building OUR kingdoms on earth, instead of us letting the Kingdom of God that is inside of all of us come forth into this earth.

For one, it’s not worship. For two, men wrote your Bible, which is certainly fallible; it’s written there that the Earth is flat and the center of the universe. For three, science is founded on knowledge and evidence, instead of fear and blasphemy.

David, I’m not sure it makes complete sense to me, the fact that you have all the things (well I cannot personally check your bank account.. but the fans/songs sung around the world/fame/admiration) that this video pokes fun at people striving for.
Do you think it’s wrong for people to have these things ? (as you do) or to want these things ? Don’t you want them too ? Or at least you have accepted these things, it appears on some level you must enjoy having them too. If we are all truly living for eternity then why should anybody bother to accept a royalty cheque ?

I know that you were writing worship music before it became lucrative.
I have a feeling that this is going to centre down to a discussion about the “right reasons” for doing things. However it is truly a hopeless and inevitably judgemental quest to try to assess the motivation of people.
Are you wrestling with yourself ? I’m not sure that it’s wrong for you to have these things. I’m not sure that it’s wrong for other people to want them too.