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 …
Search results for "piano part"
Is it Biblical for a Woman to Lead Worship?
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 …
Share this post:
What Pastors Wish Their Worship Leaders Knew
This past week I had the privilege of participating in the Cutting it Straight conference in Jacksonville, led by H.B. Charles, Jr. and hosted by Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church. H.B. started this conference, now in its second year, specifically to influence African American pastors to preach expositionally. I was invited to be part of the worship track. H.B., along with his music pastor, Joe Pace, hopes to see more black churches singing songs that are theologically rich and gospel-centered. Not gospel like “black gospel,” but gospel like “Jesus bore our sins on the cross to purchase our forgiveness” gospel. While our cultural …
Share this post:
How Do You Manage Membership on a Worship Team?
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, …
Share this post:
Healthy Tensions in Worship
I’ve benefited from the many summaries I’ve read of the Together for the Gospel conference last week. How kind of the Lord to give so many a greater passion to serve His church, proclaim the Gospel, and preach His Word, in such a brief time. I’m still looking forward to taking some time to review and apply my notes. One remark I definitely hope to remember was made by my good friend, C.J. Mahaney: “This conference can be a means of progressive self-deception if we think hearing these messages insures present and future growth.” By God’s grace, I don’t want that to happen. A number of guys have …
Share this post:
Reflections on Leading Worship at Together for the Gospel
If you just read the comments on my last Together for the Gospel post, you might be tempted to think that things went flawlessly. Not the case. Practically every time I lead I learn something new about what I’m doing, even though I’ve been leading worship for over 30 years now. I pray that I’m always learning something. Here are some of the things I learned, put into practice, or remembered this year. You can experience and express strong emotions for God while singing hymns. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say that hymns are dry, academic, lyrically dense, and inappropriate for “passionate worship.” That may be true in some …
Share this post:
Winner of the Most Embarrassing Moment Contest
Last week I offered a free registration to the WorshipGod08 conference for the person who had the funniest story from a time they led corporate worship. There were some great contributions. Reading them made me freshly aware that God does indeed use the foolish and the weak to accomplish his purposes (1 Cor. 1:27). Contributions included playing an entire song in the wrong key, encouraging the members of the congregation to turn to each other and say, “How great thou art,” falling over as a result of a leg falling asleep, burping, confusing being prostrate before the Lord with being prostate, starting the wrong song, and more. Two had to do …
Share this post:
Who Pays for Music Equipment?
Justin wrote me and asked: How do you handle the purchase of instruments, equipment, and supplies for your musicians? Does the church purchase all instruments, some instruments, or no instruments? What about supplies (e.g. guitar strings, picks, drumsticks, batteries, reeds, etc.)? Or effects pedals, percussion pieces, etc.? We’ve done this different ways over the years. In general, we’ve learned that people tend to take better care of instruments and supplies when they own or purchase them. For that reason, we typically expect musicians to use their own instruments and purchase their own accessories. We’ve tried to avoid a mentality of …
Share this post:
Worship Leaders – Five Things to Remember About Skill
I’m in the midst of rewriting my book for Crossway. Things didn’t go quite as smoothly as I hoped last week. But my good friend, Jeff Purswell, saw I wasn’t doing well and offered to pray for me. I realized I’ve only been thinking of what I have to do and haven’t been focused on what God can do. That changes everything. I’m happy to report my attitude is much better this week. In any case, I don’t have much time for blogging. So I thought I’d post an excerpt from an unedited chapter. It may not even make it in the final version of the book, but I thought it might be helpful. It’s from the first section on “What Matters.” Just wanting to …
Share this post:
Sheet Music or Chord Charts?
Kyle wrote in to ask this question: I am about to start leading a worship team that consists of a good number of talented people and a variety of instruments. To this point, the band has used printed sheet music for all of the songs they play; this means that someone has manually entered everything into a music writing program (Finale) and printed everything out. It also means that for any given song, A) Musicians have four to six pages of material to deal with, B) creativity and freedom of expression are squelched a bit, and C) introducing new songs to the band, and to the congregation, will be very difficult.I have been used to working from …
Share this post:
Another New Reformation Song
Back in February, I posted a song that Chris Anderson and I wrote for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. We called it “Reformation Hymn.” I wrote about it in this post and Chris tells the backstory of how the song was written here. Around the same time, Tim Chester, a friend from the UK, asked me if I’d be interested in putting music to some lyrics he was working on, also based on the 5 Solas of the Reformation: Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone Solus Christus: Christ alone Sola Fide: faith alone Sola Gratia: grace alone Soli Deo Gloria: glory to God alone I enjoyed writing Come Praise and Glorify with Tim a few years ago and thought …
Share this post:
What I’ve Been Up To
Not writing this blog, obviously. At some point I hope to start posting regularly again, but right now I wanted to share what’s been going on in the world of Sovereign Grace Music. The Dominican Republic and a New Spanish Album I got back last night from the Dominican Republic where I had the joy of speaking twice this past weekend at the Por Su Causa (For His Cause) conference, “Worship: The Purpose of Redemption.” The conference was sponsored by International Baptist Church (IBI) and a ministry called Integridad y Sabiduría (Integrity and Wisdom), both led by my good friend, Miguel Núñez. Jeff Purswell and Donald Whitney also …
Share this post:
Holy Spirit, Breath of God – Getty/Townend Hymn
During the charismatic outpouring of the 1970s many churches became more aware of the Holy Spirit than they had ever been. That awareness then, and in subsequent years, resulted in songs to and about the Holy Spirit which weren’t always as theologically precise as one would hope. Given the number of times we repeated some of those songs, it seemed as though the Holy Spirit was either hard of hearing or resistant to our requests to have him move among us, fill us, empower us, or be with us. That’s why I’m so grateful for writers like Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, writers of In Christ Alone, The Power of the Cross, and many more modern hymns …
Share this post:
Keith and Kristyn Getty
This past Sunday we had the joy of hosting Keith and Kristyn Getty at our Sunday meeting. Keith and Kristyn have become dear friends since they moved to the U.S. two years ago, so I was delighted when they called and said they were going to be in the D.C. area this week and wondered if we would have any interest in having them share a couple songs on Sunday morning. After a few email exchanges, everything was a go. Having guest musicians on Sunday is a rare occurrence for us for a number of reasons. Having traveled on the road for twelve years with GLAD back in the 70s and 80s, I know that an artists often have set procedures and song lists …
Share this post:
Man of Sorrows Glorious King – Album Review
I’ve been encouraged by the attention hymns have been getting recently. Not because I’m a fan of hymns in general, but because hymns tend to allow for a greater development of the truths we’re singing. I currently have hymns albums from Sojourn Music (The War & The Mercy Seat), Indelible Grace (The Hymn Sing), and Page CXVI (Hymns III), which I hope to review in the near future. Mike Cosper has also started a series on hymns over at the Gospel Coalition site. But this post is about a hymns album I received last fall and am just getting around to reviewing. It’s the work of David Potter and is called Man of Sorrows Glorious King. The …
