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Choirs in Worship

By on June 26, 2008 in —Choirs, —Training a Team

In an earlier post I mentioned a question left in one of the comments. Collin wrote: With my limited experience I am able to lead a full band on Sunday mornings but it stops there. Our church has many capable individuals that would be involved in a choir but my limitations keep me from taking the plunge and just going for it with some simple choir pieces. Do have any suggestions, for someone with my limited experience, how to go about leading a choir? Should I hold off and wait until I have proper training in leading a choir? I know a choir would serve our worship time so it is something I would like to see on occasion on Sunday mornings. In …

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Great Training Videos for Your Band

By on June 24, 2008 in —Training a Team, Videos

Zach Nielsen, whom I’ve only met once but felt an immediate kinship with, hosted a Church Band Seminar a while back for church musicians. He invited three Nashville musicians (Tim Rosenau on guitar, James Gregory on bass, and Scott Williamson on drums) to talk about and demonstrate playing music for congregational worship as part of a band. While the video clips aren’t the best quality, you can hear what’s being discussed, and both the content and attitude of the players are worth checking out. They cover topics including Listening to As You Play, How to Play a Chord Chart, Leading in Rehearsal, and much more. To check out all the videos go …

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How Does Music “Work” in Worship?

By on June 19, 2008 in —Interviews, Videos

This is the third clip from a longer video in which Tim Smith, worship pastor from Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA, asked me various questions related to worship. In this portion, Tim asked me about the relationship between music and worship. In it I talk about some of the factors that have made music such a volatile issue in the church today, and different ways that Christians view music. Just scratching the surface here…If you want to dig deeper, I’d highly recommend you read Harold Best’s Music Through the Eyes of Faith. I read it in the mid-90’s and haven’t found anything as insightful, helpful, and biblically faithful. …

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Encouraging Expressiveness in Worship When It’s Not “Cool”

By on June 17, 2008 in —Expressiveness, —Interviews, —Physical Expressiveness, Videos

This is the second clip from an hour plus interview that Tim Smith did with me when I was in Seattle last November. He’s asking me about an issue they’ve faced at Mars Hill Church, but one that I’m sure is common to many churches. How do you motivate people to physically express affection for God when they’re singing his praise, when their default attitude on hearing music is passivity and reservation? How do you keep from manipulating or commanding certain responses that are appropriate to biblical corporate worship? If you want to read more, I did a series on physical expressiveness a while back. You can find Part 1 here. …

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Worship Experiences and the Presence of God

By on June 13, 2008 in —Interviews, —Worship and the Spirit, Videos

Last November I was in Seattle at the Acts 29 Resurgence conference and had the opportunity to spend some time with the Mars Hill Worship Pastor, Tim Smith. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Tim and talking to him about topics including the Psalms, Jonathan Edwards, physical expressiveness in worship, and how to organize music teams in the church. I found Tim to be thoughtful, humble, and committed to searching the Scriptures to better understand what it means to worship God. While I was there, Tim took the opportunity to interview me on video for about two hours. Acts 29 posted a video on their site, but it’s over an hour long. I plan to …

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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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A Psalms CD, a Song Book, and a Few Other Things

By on June 6, 2008 in —Books, —Sovereign Grace Music

I had hoped to post something on spontaneous songs and choirs this week but never got to it. That will be next week now. I’ve been working on a new songbook we hope to have ready by the WorshipGod conference. It will contain 71 songs from our last six projects. Unlike our downloadable piano scores, which are more like the studio arrangement, our songbooks contain simpler versions that are great for just learning the basic song. Roger Hooper, a member of Covenant Life and an amazing musician and synth player, sends me two staff versions of the songs in Sibelius and then I edit them. It can be difficult to reduce an entire band to a two staff piano …

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Three More Songs from New Attitude

By on June 3, 2008 in —Next/New Attitude, —Song Downloads

Last week I posted a download and stream of Nail My Glory, one of the live songs from the New Attitude conference in Louisville, KY. I have three more for you today. Ransomed The first is the song Ransomed, written by my son Jordan, with original words by John Kent (1827). A number of people commented on the use of the staccato strings, aka pizzicato. It’s not something you hear often in corporate worship but seemed to work well. You can download the song by clicking here, or listen to it below. [Audio:http://sgm.edgeboss.net/download/sgm/na/2008/na08.4_ransomed.mp3] All I Have is Christ We also used a choir of about 70 folks this …

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More Songs from New Attitude

By on May 31, 2008 in —Next/New Attitude

On Sunday night and Monday morning at the New Attitude conference we added 17 string players to the band. Pretty amazing. None of it would have been possible apart from the gifts and labors of Judah Groveman, a cellist/guitarist/songwriter in our church who spent many hours arranging the parts. He did a brilliant job. They string players were all from Sovereign Grace churches. They’ve spent years developing their skills on violin, viola, or cello. Thank God for their parents who obviously have made a significant financial investment over the years. One of the songs we sang with strings was Nail My Glory, written mostly by my son, Devon, …

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Songs from New Attitude

By on May 29, 2008 in —Next/New Attitude

Life has been wonderfully full lately. Got back late (read VERY late) Tuesday night from the New Attitude conference, where about 3200 singles and young married couples gathered to sing God’s praise, hear the Word of God preached, experience meaningful fellowship, and exhaust themselves doing it all. You can read more about it at the New Attitude site. It was a real privilege to participate in the conference. My son, Devon, led the corporate worship with the Na Band. We sang a number of songs from their new CD, Looked Upon. One that seemed to have a significant impact was All I Have is Christ, written by my other son, Jordan, who plays drums …

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Non-Christians on the Worship Team?

By on May 22, 2008 in —Training a Team

Recently a discussion developed over at the New City Church blog about a paragraph in my book. Here’s the paragraph in question: Even though musicians aren’t necessarily “elders” or “teachers” their presence in front of the congregation week after week implies that their life is worthy of emulation—not flawless, but demonstrating the fruit of the gospel. When that’s not true, the church gets the message that worship is more about music than the way we live. Likewise, when non-Christian musicians are used, we’re implying that the art of worship is more important than the heart. (p. 230) The comments focused around the topic of …

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Why Worship Matters

By on May 20, 2008 in —Worship and Life

Last week I asked people to answer the question, “Why does worship matter?” in 100 words or less. I said I’d pick the top 20 answers and send them a copy of Worship Matters, so that they could post a review on their blog. I received some great answers from as far away as Australia. Of course, if you live in Australia, you don’t think that’s far at all. Here are some of my favorite responses. Ryan James said worship matters because everyone worships. Worship matters because it is the inescapable activity of all people everywhere regardless of whether they are a Christian or even “religious.” All people have some sort of “god” that they orient …

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Working on Another CD, Passing the Baton

By on May 15, 2008 in —Sovereign Grace Music

Last week I was in the Sovereign Grace studio with producer Sal Oliveri, recording the vocals for our next project, Psalms, due out at the WorshipGod08 conference in July. I can’t believe we’re already working on another CD when Come Weary Saints just came out. Any way, it was a long but fulfilling week. Ryan Baird, from the Sovereign Grace church in Pasadena, CA, and part of the band West Coast Revival, sang five songs, and brought his usual blend of passion, strength, and thoughtfulness to each song. He also entertained us at times with his brilliant impersonations. Here’s a sample of Kermit singing part of “Greater Than We Can Imagine,” …

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Free Copy of Worship Matters for Twenty Bloggers

By on May 14, 2008 in —Contests, —Worship Matters book

Worship Matters, the book, has been out for a few weeks now, and I’ve been encouraged by initial responses. When I was writing it, I prayed that the book would be give worship leaders, pastors, and musicians a clear and practical biblical perspective on how they can most effectively serve the church in the area of corporate worship. Seems to be having that effect so far. A few folks have already reviewed the book on their blog. You can check them at Discerning Reader, Gospel Prism, and CROSS-eyed. In an effort to get word out I’m giving away 20 copies of Worship Matters for people who will review it on their blog. Just send me an email at the …

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Are Hymns Too Weighty To Take In?

By on May 8, 2008 in —Hymns

A Worship Matters reader sent me this question: With the hymns being so rich in lyrical content and theological ideas, there are often times where we can get to the end of the hymn and think “Well, what was all that about?” let alone getting to a point of engaging our hearts in response to the truth. From your experience, what could we do in terms of leading and arranging hymns with weighty (not a negative term) theological and lyrical content to allow room and time for people to engage God in meaningful worship through the song? Before I answer this, let me share a few thoughts on words in corporate worship. One of the primary purposes …

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