Just wanted you to know that you can now purchase our latest kids’ CD, To Be Like Jesus, on iTunes. If you want to know more about the project you check out my post on it or visit the Sovereign Grace Music site. …
Should July 4th Affect Our Sunday Planning?
Someone reminded me of a post I did back in May of 2007 on this topic. Here it is again. I pray that today fills you with gratefulness not only for the freedom of our country for which many have given their lives, but also for the eternal freedom from God’s wrath found only in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. West sent in this question. Do national holidays have any influence on your worship planning? To what extent? Specifically, would you use the Sunday before Independence Day to focus on our utter dependence on Christ, our freedom from bondage to sin, our slavery to Christ (and so acknowledge, but spiritualize the holiday), or …
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Three Weeks Until WorshipGod09 Registration Closes
Life comes at you fast sometimes… I’ve been finishing up a few projects, including our latest kids’ CD, To Be Like Jesus, and the Next Live CD, from our Next conference. That will be available next Wednesday. 13 songs for $5. I’ll keep you posted on the details. But I just looked at my calendar and saw that it’s exactly five weeks until WorshipGod09 begins, and three weeks until registration closes. This will be our 7th conference since 1999, all held at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD. I’m looking forward to WorshipGod09 for a number of reasons. We’ll be spending three and a half days hearing rich teaching, singing …
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Songwriting – Who Gets the Credit?
My friend John Ripley, drummer for the band Generation Letter, recently emailed me some questions about how to figure out song writing credits. This is an area that can be sticky business because of miscommunication, no communication, ignorance, and indwelling sin. After writing songs for 30+ years, I’ve seen songwriting from all sides. I’ve written by myself, written songs that others have edited, and edited songs written by others. I’ve also served as a songwriter and a publisher. To my shame, I used to be much more concerned about who got the credit on a song. I remember working on a project for GLAD years ago and writing up the song credits. …
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To Be Like Jesus Kid’s CD Now Available
I’m very happy to announce that our new album for kids, To Be Like Jesus, is now available at the Sovereign Grace online store. Why another kid’s CD? A few reasons. We think there’s a need for more children’s songs that aren’t simply adult songs with kid’s voices. We’d like to see more kid’s songs that proclaim truth rather than express love for God, which many children don’t have yet. We wanted kids to see that God wants us to be joyful, loving, faithful, gentle, etc., because that’s the way he is. We also wanted kids to see that it’s impossible to be joyful, loving, faithful, gentle, etc. apart from believing the gospel and being …
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Preview Songs from Our New Kid’s CD: To Be Like Jesus
You can now sample songs from our next children’s CD, To Be Like Jesus, at the Sovereign Grace Music website. The album is scheduled for release later this month. To Be Like Jesus contains 12 songs. Ten of them are based on the qualities listed as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. I know only nine are listed there, but we included two on self-control because…well, any parent knows why we have two songs on self-control. The other two songs teach that God wants to make us like his Son, and when he does, we bear the fruit of the Spirit. We tried hard to avoid two extremes on this project. The first is assuming that every kid singing …
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Song List from Next 2009
Next was simply amazing. Teaching from Josh Harris, Kevin DeYoung (a new favorite speaker), D.A. Carson, C.J. Mahaney, and Sinclair Ferguson. All the messages are available for download at the Next website. Do yourself a favor and download them all — now. Listen to them soon. I guarantee your passion for the glory of Christ and your desire to make him known will grow. I had the privilege of putting together the song list for this year’s Next conference. Listed below are the songs we ended up doing. In the next three weeks, we plan to offer a download of 12 songs recorded live at Next for five bucks. You’ll also be able to purchase them …
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WorshipGod09 Rates About to Go Up
The Next conference is now history. What a fantastic time. I’ll be posting reflections and the song list on Worship Matters in the next few days. In the mean time, it’s time to turn to the next big event on my calendar – WorshipGod09: From Generation to Generation, Aug. 5-8, to be held in Gaithersburg, MD, near Washington, D.C. We have a great line up of speakers and musicians including John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, Thabiti Anyabwile, Jeff Purswell, Don Whitney, Keith and Kristyn Getty, Shai Linne, Ben Gowell, and more. As in years past, we’ll have plenty of giveaways, free lunches for registrants, new songs to learn, and teachings meant to …
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Getting Ready for Next
I’m in the middle of preparing for the Next conference, that starts this Saturday, May 23, and ends on Tuesday, May 26. Over 2500 mostly single men and women will be gathering in Baltimore to hear D.A. Carson, C.J. Mahaney, Josh Harris, Kevin DeYoung, and Sinclair Ferguson expound on the glory of Jesus Christ. Next was previously called New Attitude, and was started by Josh Harris. It’s continued almost every year since 1999. From the website: Next isn’t built on “new.” It isn’t about the next trend or fad. Next is built on the old, treasured, and true. It’s about rediscovering old truth and recommitting to it. The vision of Next is to gather …
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Finding the Right Key to Sing In
Chris recently wrote me to ask a question about the tension between congregational-friendly keys and leader-friendly keys. I have a upper-mid range tenor voice and though I can sing lower fairly easily, I find that if I transpose a song to a “congregational friendly” key the song loses energy, sometimes significantly. I want to serve the people in my church well and I am willing to put up with less energy if they are more comfortable singing along, but if the time of singing is musically flat, I wonder if it may be more detrimental to the overall “experience” (for lack of a better word) than to have people stretch vocally or sing in parts. …
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How to Get Two Free Songs from Our New Kid’s CD (for Facebook fans)
Over on the Sovereign Grace Music Facebook site we have a race going on. In mid-June we plan to release our second kid’s CD, To Be Like Jesus. (The first was Awesome God). It’s 12 songs based on the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5. The songs teach that these qualities (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.) come from God himself, and that we can’t have them apart from knowing Jesus as the Savior. Yesterday, Stephen Altrogge let our Facebook fans know of a way to get two free songs from the CD when it comes out. Here’s what he wrote: Okay here’s the deal. At this exact moment we have 5,348 [UPDATE: now 6220] dedicated fans of Sovereign …
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Scripture Memory Songs from Galatians and Philippians
A few years ago my church was teaching through the books of Galatians and Philippians and we wanted to help people memorize a number of the verses. We invited the members of the church to contribute original songs and ended up setting about 1/3 of each book to music. They were low-budget projects, but even to this day when I read those verses I hear melodies running through my mind. The Philippians and Galatians songs can be accessed here. Another great resource for Scripture memory songs is the Hide the Word albums produced and written by my good friend, Mark Altrogge. You can check them out over at his site, Forever Grateful Music. …
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Drabbles from the Depths
I didn’t know what a “drabble” was until just recently. It’s an extremely short work of fiction of exactly 100 words in length. Nicole McLernon, 21 year old daughter of my good friends Mike and Patty McLernon, recently wrote a “super-drabble” – ten drabbles in a row. She based it on some of the lyrics to my song, Out of the Depths, from our Psalms CD. Nicole unpacks what it might mean to “wait on the Lord” when you find out your daughter has cancer. Although her piece is fictional, the situation is all too familiar. I was affected by her portrayal of a struggling heart learning to submit to God’s wisdom and truth revealed in the gospel. This …
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Announcing the Sovereign Grace Songwriting Contest Winner
What? You say you didn’t even know we had a songwriting contest? No surprise. It was pretty low key. At the start of 2009, I sent out an email to the Sovereign Grace worship leaders announcing a contest for 14-22 year old songwriters. The rules were pretty simple. Submit up to two original congregational songs by mid-February. The winner would receive an ESV Study Bible and a $50 iTunes certificate. Among the promising entries were At the Cross by J’Nelle Smith and You Will Sustain by Philip VanderWeide. But the winner was 22 year old Peter (PJ) Kemerer of Corning, NY who sent in Gift of Grace. It’s an uptempo 6/8 song that focuses on …
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New “Glorious and Mighty” Live Recording
Last year, at WorshipGod08, we presented a choral arrangement of “Glorious and Mighty,” from the Psalms CD. Unfortunately, the recording didn’t turn out very well. But at this year’s Sovereign Grace Pastors Conference we sang the piece again and recorded it to 24 track. I thought it turned out much better. In any case, you can download it by clicking here, and get the choral arrangement here. Here are the lyrics, based on Psalm 96: Majesty, Your glory is shining Brighter than the moon and the stars Marveling, we honor and fear You Above all gods Glorious and mighty, You’re awesome In beauty Joyful songs we raise Glorious and mighty, …