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From the Archives: When Feet Want to be Hands

By on December 11, 2012 in —Leading a Team, —Spiritual Gifts

What do you do as a leader when someone wants to play a specific role on your music team but is better fit for something else? What do you do as a member if that’s you? A number of years ago I preached a message from 1 Cor. 12:12-31. Paul has been answering the Corinthians’ questions about who is “really” spiritual. They were under the mistaken assumption that certain gifts, like tongues, were a sign of true spirituality. Their attitude was dividing the church – the exact opposite of the unity the Spirit wants to bring. Paul presses his point home by using the analogy of the human body. In preparing for the message, I did a little …

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Resources for Your Worship Team from WorshipGod11: Leading, Songwriting, Tech

By on January 3, 2012 in —Choosing Songs, —Creativity, —Free Messages, —Leading a Congregation, —Music Theory, —Songwriting, —Sound and Tech, —Spiritual Gifts, —Training a Team, —Worship and Culture, —Worship and the Spirit, —WorshipGod Conferences

Last August at WorshipGod11 we offered 40 seminars for pastors, musicians, leaders, vocalists, instrumentalists, and tech teams. Today and tomorrow I’m posting the descriptions of a few that might serve you and your team in the coming year. Right clicking on the title will download the MP3, and of course, right clicking on the outline will get you the…outline. Leading Putting Songs Together – Bob Kauflin (outline) Why do you choose the songs you do? What factors go into deciding whether one song is better to use than another? What’s the difference between lyrical flow and musical flow? How can we use songs to effectively care for people’s …

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Spontaneous Song from NEXT 2011 for Those Who Have Lost a Parent

By on June 18, 2011 in —Next/New Attitude, —Spiritual Gifts, —Spontaneous Song

As I was preparing for the NEXT conference a few weeks ago, I had an ongoing impression that God wanted to minister through a prophetic song to attendees who had lost one or both parents unexpectedly. I wasn’t aware that two of the testimonies that were going to be shared at the conference referenced parents who had died recently. In any case, I ended up sharing a spontaneous song on Sunday night when I was leading corporate worship with Generation Letter. A number of people said the song encouraged them and have asked for a copy of it. You can download the audio by right-clicking here. You can also listen to it here: [audio:https://worshipmatter1.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/those_who_have_lost_parents1.mp3|titles=those_who_have_lost_parents] I’ve …

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Song for Those with Disabilities

By on June 7, 2010 in —Next/New Attitude, —Song Downloads, —Spiritual Gifts, —Worship and the Spirit

The 16th chapter of my book, Worship Matters, is called “To Cherish God’s Presence.” I talk about how one of the effects of biblical corporate worship is a greater pursuit of God’s active presence. I wrote: For many years I’ve sung spontaneous songs during corporate worship that I believe are a form of prophecy. They’re similar to a spoken prophetic impression from the Lord, only they’re sung, they rhyme, and are often sung “from God to us.” I’ve never believed for a moment that the words I sing are “word for word” from the Lord. That’s called Scripture. But these songs seem to consistently communicate in verse the Lord’s …

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Messages and Books on the Holy Spirit

By on August 26, 2009 in —Free Messages, —Spiritual Gifts, —Worship and the Spirit

I had a good conversation through Skype today with Tim Smith, worship pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I met Tim a couple years ago, and I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to interact with him on various topics related to worship and the church. Today one of the areas we touched on was the difference between being “charismatics with a seatbelt” and “philosophical charismatics.” The first phrase describes an attempt to exercise the more spontaneous gifts of the Spirit in a responsible way that exalts Christ and builds up the church. The second phrase describes those whose public meetings aren’t much different from those who deny that …

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Is Talent Overrated?

By on December 10, 2008 in —Books, —Choirs, —Musicians & Vocalists, —Spiritual Gifts, —Training a Team, —Vocalists

I just finished reading Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Geoff Colvin. Fascinating book. Giftedness is a topic that I’ve thought about a lot. Are we selling ourselves short by assuming that we’ll never be as good a keyboardist, vocalist, guitarist, drummer, or whatever, as the people we esteem? Colvin begins the book by examining the lives of several famous “greats,” including Tiger Woods, Mozart, Jack Welch, and Jerry Rice. He says that most people think their greatness arose either from a) hard work; or b) talent. Colvin says neither, and uses scientific and anecdotal evidence to support …

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Encouraging Spontaneity in Your Church

By on November 19, 2008 in —Other Events, —Spiritual Gifts, —Spontaneous Song, —Worship and the Pastor, —Worship and the Spirit

While at the Christian Musician Summit this past weekend I taught a workshop on Encouraging Spontaneity in Your Church. We had about 200 folks crammed into a room that held about 150, so it was, shall we say, a cozy setting. At one point, I led the group in singing spontaneous responses to different sections of Psalm 100, similar to what we did at the WorshipGod conference.  It’s a form of meditating on God’s Word through song. It was moving to hear how God spoke to different individuals through that exercise. Here’s a general outline of what I shared in the seminar. You can download my complete notes here. Cautions About Spontaneity 1. …

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Spontaneous Song for Parents Who Have Lost a Child

By on October 16, 2008 in —Funerals, —Spiritual Gifts, —Spontaneous Song, —WorshipGod Conferences

Jon Payne is a worship pastor at the Sovereign Grace church in Gilbert, AZ. On the last morning of the WorshipGod08 conference he did a great job leading us in corporate worship. One of the songs he led was Glorious and Mighty, which I posted on here. While preparing, Jon sensed that God wanted to minister through prophetic song specifically to parents who had lost a child. This was his introduction and the song he sang that morning: Over the years I’ve noticed that these songs often come at just the right time. After the conference I learned that there was a young mom in attendance who had lost her first child two years earlier. She …

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Spontaneous and Prophetic Songs

By on June 11, 2008 in —Spiritual Gifts

A week and a half ago I posted on some of the spontaneous songs I sang at the New Attitude conference. Aaron left this comment on another post about New Attitude: Regarding the spontaneous song(s) – could you comment or perhaps designate a separate post explaining the “prophetic song”. I thought the song was a sweet ministry to those under affliction & I thought you set it up well & carefully. However, those of us coming from a cessationist view would be interested in hearing you talk about this in more detail. I wrote about this in my book, Worship Matters, because it’s a gift I’ve been studying or exercising for about twenty years. This …

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Sunday Morning Video #3

By on March 6, 2008 in —Leading a Congregation, —Spiritual Gifts, Videos

The past two days I’ve posted videos from a recent Sunday morning at Covenant Life. The first one is here, the second one is here. These aren’t examples of someone doing everything right. Hardly. They just contain examples of a lot of the things I’ve written about at Worship Matters. Today I’m posting an example of spontaneity. Being “reformed charismatics,” we value the sufficiency, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture as well as the active presence of the Holy Spirit through the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Cor. 14 and elsewhere. During the fourth song that Sunday, Lost in Wonder, two pastors came up and shared prophetic impressions from …

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How Do We Make Room for the Gift of Prophecy?

By on October 19, 2007 in —Spiritual Gifts

I received this question from Mark: “While we are Southern Baptist, we are definitely reformed in our theology. We also do not believe that the gifts of the Spirit have ceased. When we were attending the Worship God conference , we were moved by those who shared from the prophecy mic. It was an incredible part of our worship to hear scripture, illustrations and such. Can you share with me how you introduced that to your church? Any guidance and input you could give would be great as we pray and seek God’s leadership in introducing this to our people. There’s no question that this is scriptural. But, we want to make sure we present this correctly …

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Entering the Presence of God

By on July 6, 2007 in —Defining Terms, —Spiritual Gifts, —Worship and the Spirit

My friend, West, left a question on another post. He was asking about comments I’ve made to the effect that it isn’t a worship leader’s responsibility to lead people into God’s presence. Only Jesus can do that. West wrote: Heb. 9 through Heb. 10:1-22 call us to enter the Most Holy Place confidently. John Frame says “The Most Holy Place was opened to us at the death of Christ, when the veil of the temple was torn in two” (In Spirit and Truth, 27). If God is enthroned on and abides in the praises of his people, and if he is wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in his name, then it seems that there is an actual, spiritual experience of “entering into” the …

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Is it Biblical for a Woman to Lead Worship?

By on March 2, 2007 in —Defining Terms, —Gender Issues, —Spiritual Gifts

I received this question from Tracy: My husband has recently become a Pastor in a small Outback Queensland (Australia) church and holds a complementarian view of women in ministry. This is a very uncommon viewpoint in the church movement my husband is Pastoring under. We have had queries as to if I will lead worship which has left both my husband and I with our own questions as we can’t see a biblical precedent for women as worship leaders…What do you see as a woman’s place in worship and is it permissible for a woman to be a worship leader? I’ve been asked this question numerous times and thought Tracy’s particular situation would give …

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