Archive | March, 2012

Glorious Christ – New Song from a New Album

By Bob Kauflin on March 29, 2012 in —Sovereign Grace Music, —Worship and Christ, Videos

On April 10 we’ll be releasing our next album, From Age to Age, a collection of 14 new hymns for the church. We call them “hymns” because either they were based on or inspired by hymns of the past, or because the lyrics adhere to a metrical pattern in the verses. The songs also contain a theological richness that characterize most hymns. One song I wrote for the album is called Glorious Christ. I unashamedly got the idea for the song from Chris Tomlin’s How Great is Our God, which seems to be sung throughout the world. I love how Chris’ song focuses on God’s character and works then draws out the appropriate response of magnifying the Lord …

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Matt Searles – Now and Not Yet

By Bob Kauflin on March 22, 2012 in —Music Reviews, —Worship and the Church

The worship song outpouring in the last two decades has resulted in thousands of new songs for the church to sing. Many have been expressions of praise, thanksgiving, love, and commitment to God. Others intentionally seek to help us engage directly with God’s Word to us. That’s one of the purposes of music Paul refers to in Colossians 3:16 when he says that we’re to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly as we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. I was encouraged a while back to come across an album by Matt Searles, a 32 year old assistant pastor at Dundonald Church in Wimbledon, London. The album is called Now and Not Yet – Acoustic …

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What I Learned from Aristotle about Leading Congregational Worship

By Bob Kauflin on March 15, 2012 in —Emotions and Worship, —Leading a Congregation

Specifically, I haven’t learned anything from Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) about leading congregational worship that I didn’t learn first in Scripture. But in his day, Aristotle sought to help speakers be more persuasive by identifying three crucial areas to keep in mind. He called them logos, ethos, and pathos. Briefly, logos is seeking to persuade through truth. Aristotle was concerned that the speakers of his day, the sophists, focused too much on flowery language and not enough on actual content. Ethos has to do with the character of the person speaking. Aristotle recognized that listeners tend to be influenced most by people …