This past Sunday I had the privilege of leading the singing at my home church. At Christmas time there’s sometimes a tension between choosing to sing songs that are “comfortably Christmasy” or songs that help people glory in the miracle of God becoming man. So here’s what we went with: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing Glory be to God free mp3 download (from the Savior CD) Emmanuel, Emmanuel (from the Savior CD) What Child is This? Before the Throne of God Above We started with Hark! the Herald Angels sing because it’s one of the most theologically rich Christmas carols we sing. After that, I shared that there are many things to love …
Tag Archives | spontaneous song
Encouraging Spontaneity in Your Church
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
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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More Songs from 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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Sunday Morning Video #3
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 …