Recently I was talking to Jon Payne, the worship pastor in the Sovereign Grace church in Gilbert, Arizona. He brought up a question he had been asked about how to handle membership on a team. The particular issue was managing how long people should be on the team, given changing church size, addition of new members, seasons of life, and other factors. I thought his answer was worth sharing here at Worship Matters, so I’ve adopted it here. Each fall we have a meeting where I “fire” everyone. I want them to know I don’t assume they should automatically continue serving on the team. I give them several weeks to pray about their decision, …
Archive | November, 2007
Introducing the New Sovereign Grace Music Website
I’ve been part of Sovereign Grace Ministries since 1981. We’re a family of churches committed to planting and supporting local churches. We support our churches personally and relationally, as well as through a variety of training opportunities and resources. One of those resources is music. That’s because for the past twenty five years we’ve written over 300 songs filled with biblical truth and gospel-saturated passion that reflect the Scriptural themes God has been teaching us – the centrality of the Christ’s substitutionary atonement, the sovereignty of God, the active presence of God’s Spirit, gratefulness, the doctrine of sin, and more. …
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The Book is Finally Done
For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you know that I’ve been working on a book for over a year now. I’m happy to report that I’m finally done. The book will be called Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God and will be published by Crossway. I mailed in the final manuscript about two weeks ago, and I’m one happy guy. Lord willing, it will be available in April. The book is written for those who lead congregational worship in song, but I think it will serve anyone in leadership, as well as Christians who want to discover more about what it means to worship God. Not surprisingly, I’m already …
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Free Christmas Music CD
Last year we produced our first “Christmas” CD, called Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man. It contains twelve original songs that celebrate the incarnation of our Savior, and I think it’s one of our strongest projects. We wanted to put this album out because every Christmas a worship leader’s dilemma is finding new songs to sing. So we decided to contribute some new ones to the mix. I’d love for more people to know about this CD. So I’m going to give away a free copy of the Savior CD to the first 100 people who e-mail me and fulfill the following conditions: 1. You write a blog that gets over 1000 hits a month 2. You’ll write …
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CD Review – You and You Alone by Pat and Joel Sczebel
Sovereign Grace Ministries has just released our 5th recording in the Overflow series. Overflow began because we simply weren’t able to put out enough projects to keep up with the songs that were being written by Sovereign Grace songwriters. Produced by local churches using local instrumentalists and vocalists, the Overflow highlight emerging songs that encourage passionate, biblically informed, Christ-glorifying worship. One of the aspects of the Overflow CDs I’m most excited about is seeing a greater variety in the songs that Sovereign Grace is producing. “You and You Alone” is an enhanced CD, including guitar charts and lead sheets. It …
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More Teachings from the Christian Musician Summit
Here are two more outlines from messages I gave at the Christian Musician Summit in Overlake, Washington. On Saturday morning, I had the privilege of speaking to the entire group on the topic of “Does God Even Like Our Music?” I figured in a conference of almost 3000 musicians, it’s important to know whether or not our music is actually pleasing to the one we’re there to worship. The answer has little to do with style, generations, or beat. It has everything to do with our hearts and life. In the second seminar I addressed the subject of “Worshiping God While Making Music.” To start things off I gave away a number of CD’s, and met a couple …
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Teachings from Christian Musician Summit
I had the privilege of teaching two seminars at the Christian Musician Summit today. The first was on Healthy Tensions, the second on A Worship Leader Job Description. The folks I addressed were both great groups – attentive and encouraging. That was really commendable because my voice hasn’t quite recovered from my cold earlier this week. Some people didn’t get a handout, so I told them that I would post the outlines here. I described both seminars in an earlier post. Healthy Tensions in Corporate Worship A Worship Leader Job Description By the way, expanded content from both of these seminars will be included as a part of my book …
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Heading Out to the Christian Musician Summit
Last year I had the privilege of speaking at the Christian Musician Summit, held at Overlake Church in Redmond, Washington. Amazingly enough, they asked me back again this year. Bruce Adolph and Matt Kees have been running the conference since 2002, and it’s grown to around 3000 musicians. I so appreciate their desire to “improve skill and inspire talent” in Christian musicians. This year some of the folks who will be there include Phil Keaggy, Brian Doerksen, Lincoln Brewster, Tim Hughes, Tommy Walker, Paul Baloche, and Pocket Full of Rocks. I’ll be traveling with my good friend Bo Lotinsky, and will be speaking at three workshops plus the …
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Before the Throne of God Above (music by Vikki Cook)
A few Sundays ago, I led worship at my home church. One of the songs we sang was Before the Throne of God Above. I’m posting an audio of what we did because I wanted to make a number of points with it. Feel free to listen as you read. 1. Introducing You to the Song: Even though “Before the Throne of God Above” has been recorded by Sonic Flood, Selah, Promise Keepers, Lou Fellingham (from Phatfish), Sojourn Church, GLAD, Shane and Shane, Matt Papa, and possibly others, you might not have heard it yet. So I wanted you to hear it. The lyrics, by Charitie Lees Bancroft (1841-1923), are a brilliant combination of Gospel-centered theology with personal …
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Are We Responsible for Musical Literacy in the Church?
I’m getting questions every week now on topics related to worship and music. I wish I had time to answer each one, but I can’t get to them. But thanks so much for writing and assuming I might have an answer to your question. I received this question from Stephen: What effect do you see the “PowerPoint driven church” and American pop culture having on the musical literacy of your instrumentalists, and potentially on the future of the church? Being a worship pastor in a somewhat “emerging” church (AKA rock band and candles with historic Christianity), I am beginning to see the great need for “reproducing” musicians who are musically literate. …
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Glory Be to God – Free mp3 Christmas Song
Last year we released our first CD for Christmas, Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man. It’s made up of twelve original songs that explore and respond to the miracle of the incarnation. When I say the songs are “original,” I mean that we didn’t include favorites like “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Although, I don’t know if Christmas songs get much better than that. The CD contains many songs that can be sung all year round, but the focus is the Son of God taking on human flesh and giving up his life to bear our sins and reconcile us to the Father. One of my favorites is “Emmanuel, Emmanuel,” by Mark Altrogge. It has a wonderfully …