In Response:

Here's my Pastor's response to Dr. Payton's teachings on the purpose of worship music (See previous post):

One of the items I believe is touched upon very well is the nature of style. Is style neutral or relative? I believe the answer has to be ‘No.’ Payton does a good job pointing this out with the Shine Jesus Shine/Sweet Caroline segment. For the church to be not conformed to the world, which is an explicit command, our music should not be conformed to the world either. It may be that the world would conform to the church’s music, which did happen in much of the baroque and classical period, but the converse must never be true. Unless one can say that there is nothing wrong with the pastor wearing a clown costume to the worship service, he cannot argue that style is neutral.

"Dr. Payton does an excellent job with this subject. It is very easy to criticize work you haven’t done. Still, I feel that something needs to be mentioned. I believe Dr. Payton grants undue weight to the Levitical tradition. I am, after all, a Calvinist, and we Calvinists agree whole-heartedly with Hebrews 7 (especially v. 18), that worship under the law (which was no doubt the Levitical tradition) is “weak and useless”. Maybe Calvin went too far to one direction, but Payton goes too far in the other. He has left Presbyterianism and become a Lutheran (literally), in spite of the fact that there are obvious Christological problems in Lutheran theology. Apparently he feels that historical worship practice is more important than biblical orthodoxy. I believe worship practice must grow out of biblical orthodoxy, not historical practice."