We don't often post songs that aren't directly related to Christian worship (though if understood broadly, any song can be a "worship song"), but this time we're going to share a song and ask for your help. A friend tipped me off to a songwriting contest that Martin Guitars is having this month, and though I managed to write a song and submit it the same day I found out about it, there's not much time left for voting. The idea of the contest was to write a 2-3m song with the word "lifespan" in it and post a recording (with guitar) to YouTube. I decided to write a blues song based on Psalm 90 and some themes in Ecclesiastes in order to share bits of the gospel to whomever happens upon this song whether through Martin's website or just through YouTube. While it's certainly not as overt about the gospel as the songs you might find here that are geared towards public worship, I'm still trying to bear witness to Jesus in the world of singer-songwriters.
Christmas is upon us yet again, and though most of our service planning is probably finished, I'd like to point out a few of our songs that relate to the incarnation of Jesus.
The song When Adam By Transgression Fell was written to accompany a Scripture reading from Genesis 3 about the fall of man into sin. The Anglican liturgy of Lessons and Carols includes this reading at Christmas
Last Christmas Eric Schumacher, Jeff Bourque, and I collaborated to write a new tune (and some new lyrics) to Eric's already existing Christmas hymn How Beautiful the Mystery. Here's the new tune, and here's the original hymn text.
I wrote the song My Precious Savior Gave His All a few years ago to describe what Jesus gave in order to redeem His people from their sins. The first verse refers to the incarnation when it says "He left His majesty behind- The King became a slave!"
This is a much older song, in fact, one of my first hymn re-writes: The Everlasting Lord. The text is by Charles Wesley and features the verse "Equal He with God most high, mild, He laid His glory by; He,...
[ We've been working on rewriting our mission and also creating a series of "values" about worship that will communicate our vision for what worship should be all about. While those aren't completely finalized, I think it will be helpful to share some thoughts about each value in a series of short posts. ]
What kind of worship do we want to cultivate? Seventh: All-of-Life
Most of us use the word worship far too narrowly. We normally attend a "worship" service on Sunday mornings, and may even refer to the music and singing part of the service as "the worship." While worship certainly takes place during the Sunday morning gathering and during our songs, surprisingly, the New Testament does not use the word in connection with public services. Rather, worship is defined as what is happening on the inside which works itself outwards. Consider Romans 12:1-2, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern...
The music video for There Is No Sin That I Have Done has been out for a couple of weeks now, and I'd like to share the story behind it. If you had asked me whether I'd ever make a music video as part of Reformed Praise a couple of years ago, I would have laughed, and laughed hard. I'm not naturally a great performing singer and could never have envisioned myself on screen in a production anything like you'd see on music television. Besides, I write worship songs – songs intended for congregations to sing – a genre whose songs are normally accompanied by music videos, unless they are of a live performance in a worship setting (like Hillsongs videos).
A friend and fellow member of my local church runs a music and video production studio, but I wasn't able to work with him on our last album, Merciful to Me. After the album was finished, I was approached by another member of our church, who asked me if I had any work I could give to the studio. Since I didn't have any music recording projects lined up,...
We're thrilled to share the official music video for our song There Is No Sin That I Have Done on the album Merciful to Me. Special thanks goes to Terrell Ferguson at 121 Studios for directing the film. We'll share more about how this video came to be later, but for now the video alone will have to suffice. May God be glorified as people experience this song in a new way through the amazing medium of video.
On Sunday, October 9th, 2011, we'll be traveling out to Tonkawa, OK to support our good friend Nathan Copeland (who played bass and drum kit on a couple of our albums) as he is installed as the pastor of First Baptist Church. David will be leading First Baptist in congregational singing, teaching a Sunday school class, and preaching at the evening service. If you live in the Tonkawa area, feel free to drop by and show your support for Nathan and the Lord's church there, or pray for safe travel and that God's people would be edified in the gospel through sermon and song.
We've got some exciting news to share about one of our songs. One of the popular tracks on our recent album, Merciful to Me, is the song There Is No Sin that I Have Done. We have been working with a local audio and video studio to create a music video for this song in an attempt to communicate its gospel-saturated lyrics in the powerful medium of video. All of the filming has already been finished and the video is in the editing stage. We plan to make it publicly available on Saturday, October 22nd.
At 7pm on October 22nd, we are going to have a viewing party to celebrate the song and the music video project. Anyone who is interested will gather either at my home in Minnetonka, MN or at my church in Minnetonka (which is three blocks from my home). Our time together will include a song story and short teaching moment, a live performance of the song, a presentation about the filming of the video, and, of course, the premiere of the video itself. We'll also have some light refreshments to help us relax and enjoy...
Pardon us for the silence here over the past couple of months. An unusual season of busyness immediately after Easter, a few big projects related to Reformed Praise, and a long personal vacation have distracted us.
I have the privilege of attending the 2011 National Worship Leader Conference in the Kansas City area next week. The conference is being run by the folks at Worship Leader Magazine, to which I subscribe. At this conference I'll get to learn from a wide variety of performers and worship leaders, professors, pastors, and other experts, and look forward to the diversity of approaches and opinions. I'm eager to have my "box" (the limits of my philosophical and practical approaches to music ministry) expanded and ready to be challenged and encouraged.
If you or someone you know is going and knows me or anything about Reformed Praise, please contact me; I'd love to meet anyone who's interested.
In the mid 1990s I used to periodically listen to a radio station in New Jersey founded by Harold Camping called Family Radio. Once I started hearing Camping teach about the Bible and learned of his failed predication that Jesus would return in 1994, I lost interest in listening. This same group has garnered a huge amount of publicity in the past few weeks, making the national media spotlight with Camping's prediction that the new day of judgment was today, May 21st, 2011.
While much biblical prophecy about the end of the world is clouded by culturally removed symbolism, all evangelical, "Bible-believing" Christians agree that Judgment Day is real. As Jesus said in Mark 13:32, "concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." The world will be destroyed and re-made, but not even Jesus knows the specific time of His return. Amazingly, Harold Camping thinks that he has come to understand the living Word of God better than the Word Himself (Jesus is called the "Word" in John chapter 1).
Predictions of a judgment day have been taking place for all of...
[ We've been working on rewriting our mission and also creating a series of "values" about worship that will communicate our vision for what worship should be all about. While those aren't completely finalized, I think it will be helpful to share some thoughts about each value in a series of short posts. ]
What kind of worship do we want to cultivate? Sixth: Congregationally Oriented
Gathered Worship
I like to call public worship "gathered worship" to emphasize several things including this very value. God commands that we worship Him in several spheres of our lives - in private, in our families, and with our local churches. I'll write more on these spheres next time in our seventh and last worship value. It is certainly true that worship is for God, and in an overarching sense, directed to God; after all, we are to worship God, not anything or anyone else. But at the same time, God wants our gathered worship to be edifying to the church. He has designed the church's public gatherings as a time when the entire church can participate, utilize their spiritual gifts, and be edified. Look at how Paul instructs the Corinthian...
