Brandon Lake, an award-winning Christian music artist who recently swept the 12th annual K-LOVE Fan Awards at the Grand Ole Opry House, drew attention on social media this week for suggesting worship songs threaten to alienate non-Christians if they are too overtly biblical.
Lake, who serves as worship pastor at the multi-site megachurch Seacoast Church based in Charleston, South Carolina, singled out lyrics based on Revelation 4:8 emphasizing God’s holiness as potentially off-putting, according to a recent interview on the “Bryce Crawford Podcast.”
The interview, though published in April, went viral on social media Tuesday after a clip reemerged from the popular Christian X account Protestia, which showed Lake expressing concern with worship songs that excessively exhibit what he described as “Christianese.”
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Prominent Christian musician Brandon Lake criticizes church worship songs for having too much “Christianese’ language in them, citing the phrase ‘Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty’ as one example.
See the story at https://t.co/L4zsxiSEykpic.twitter.com/potNu7fDB1
— Protestia (@Protestia) June 3, 2025
Establishing a hypothetical character named “Bubba” as the type of person who has been dragged to church unwillingly, Lake said worship songs should be concerned with not alienating such individuals.
“Last thing I’ll say is, I’d love to see more worship sets, more churches kind of keep Bubba in mind. We call him Bubba: the guy who’s in the back of the room and he got dragged there by his wife,” Lake said. “And I just don’t know if, when your opening song or the most of your songs have so much Christianese language, I think he has a hard time going like, ‘Can I sing that? Like, I’m not there yet.’”
Lake offered his own hit worship song “Hard Fought Hallelujah” as a potentially more approachable option for Bubba to worship God compared to some historical hymns. Lake suggested the only context a figure such as Bubba might have for the word “holy” is in reference to profanity.
“I think [Bubba] hears a ‘Hard Fought Hallelujah’ — and I’m not saying ‘Hard Fought’ is the answer — but I love when your first song is like, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ I think he’s going like, ‘What does ‘holy’ mean? Like, holy crap? What?’ I don’t know.”
Lake suggested songs such as his could bridge the gap and eventually help Bubba-like figures to sing songs with more theological depth.
“Obviously, that’s where we want to get to in a worship set — it’s just every eye is fixated on Him, right? And it’s just like everyone — it’s, like, vertical. But, like, give Bubba some language. He can be like, ‘Alright, I find myself in that song. I feel like that,’ you know? And hopefully that’s what some of my music can continue to do.”
The music video for “Hard Fought Hallelujah” featuring rapper Jelly Roll has 6.3 million views on YouTube.
Christian cultural commentator Jon Root suggested in a Tuesday X post that Lake’s attitude is the epitome of the seeker-sensitive movement and Bethel Church. Lake was formerly a member of Bethel Music and Maverick City Music.
“This is the fruit of Bethel church [and] the seeker-sensitive movement — watering down the Gospel to make it more ‘digestible’ for unbelievers,” Root said. “Brandon Lake would rather entertain [and] compromise, than disciple [and] present theologically rich, Jesus-focused music.”
During an interview with The Christian Post in 2019, award-winning musician and modern hymnist Keith Getty warned that modern worship songs are often too worried about placating the surrounding culture instead of worshiping God, which he said is effectively “de-Christianizing” the church.
“Many worship songs are focused on this earth,” Getty said at the time. “I believe that the modern worship movement is a movement for cultural relevance. It’s a de-Christianizing of God’s people. It’s utterly dangerous. I have no quibbles saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ This can’t happen to build an authentic generation.”
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come,” is the phrase the four living creatures around the throne of God continually cry out, according to Revelation 4:8. The phrase features memorably in a famous hymn written by Anglican bishop Reginald Heber in the 19th century.
The passage in Revelation echoes the heavenly vision Isaiah received as recounted in Isaiah 6:3, which describes the six-winged seraphim around God’s throne continually crying to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
According to the text, the angelic worship and vision of God shook the Temple and overwhelmed Isaiah with a sense of his own sin and that of his nation. The late theologian R.C. Sproul noted that holiness is the only attribute of God that was raised to the third degree of repetition in Scripture.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
