Vote for the song here: http://lifespan.venturaassociates.net/gallerydetails.php?vid=165

Please consider voting for the song. If I win the song will be featured on Martin’s website (or YouTube channel) and I’d win a very nice Martin Guitar.

And in case you caught it, the webcam recording software I used somehow flipped the image… I’m not left-handed!

Here are the lyrics. The second verse made the song too long for their contest (3m) but I’m including it here anyway.
Vanity

The seasons change, mountains rise,
Clouds appear in ev’ry corner of my skies.
My days pass by, my secrets known,
My lifespan races on, all I can do is groan.
From dust we came, to dust we shall,
Return as quickly as we came.

{The wind blows in, rivers rush
The wind returns and the sea is never hushed.
What has been done will come again
There’s nothing new under this tireless sun.
From dust we came, to dust we shall,
Return as quickly as we came.}

It is vanity, vanity, vanity,
This is vanity, vanity, vanity.

Where can I go to end this strife,
To find the meaning of my temporary life.
For a thousand years there’s been a place-
Men sought their Maker for His mercy and His grace.
Return, O Lord, reveal Your works
And make our days of darkness glad.

He saw our strife, He saw our pain,
He saw our waywardness, our self-appointed reign.
In love He came, rich became poor,
He lived in toil and pain though innocent and pure.
From life He came, to death He went,
To rescue us from vanity.
From life He came, to death He went,
To rescue us from vanity.

From our vanity, vanity, vanity,
From our vanity, vanity, vanity.

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, eternal God, was born, object of His creatures’ scorn; Man with men did He appear, pleased a servant’s form to wear.”

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 what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

In response to God’s initiative in revealing Himself, we are moved in mind and heart to respond appropriately outwardly. Sometimes that means participating in a public worship service. Other times that means quiet, personal reflection on the beauty that God has made for us to enjoy. Other times that means serving others in a concrete demonstration of selflessness, out of gratefulness for how Jesus has served us. Jesus explained this radical shift in our understanding of worship when he said in John 4:23, “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” Worship is possible anywhere and at any time because it is firstly an inner disposition of the heart, and secondly made acceptable through the work of Jesus, not by following the proper forms or service orders.

Outward Manifestations of Worship
Scripture reveals several ways that worship manifests itself: public or gathered worship, family worship, private worship, and conversational worship. First, a few words about public worship. I like to refer to the public worship service as “gathered worship” because it connotes the reality that this is only one kind of worship; we are naturally led to ask “what then is scattered worship?” Public worship refers to the gathered assembly of a local church or sub-group of the local church. There is clear biblical precedence for a local church meeting at least weekly to practice the so-called “one anothers” – the commands to love and care for one another. For example, in Acts 20, Paul attends the gathered assembly, who were meeting on the first day of the week (Sunday) to preach. Hebrews 10:25 also records the command for believers not to forsake assembling together.

Family worship refers to those in a household turning their attention towards God together at set times. See my series of articles about family worship for more information.

Private worship refers to individual devotional time with God. While many call this time a “quiet time” or “devotions,” we feel that it’s more helpful to call it private worship. The goal of our alone time with God should be to worship Him, not merely get through our daily readings, prayer lists, and other “spiritual” tasks. We should strive and ask to truly encounter God in a life-changing way, which God makes possible through the work of His Spirit within us. The same kind of passionate and life-sustaining private worship that Jesus had with His heavenly Father is possible in us because we have His Spirit.

Conversational worship refers to the spontaneous response to God believers are commanded to offer throughout their day on a moment-by-moment basis. Sometimes this is called “all-of-life worship,” but we’ve chosen to use the term all-of-life to refer to all of the ways worship manifests itself outwardly. “Conversational” is meant to depict having such a close relationship with God that we regularly offer up to him responses of thankfulness, gratitude, neediness, praise, etc. silently and in the midst of our normal daily activities. An example of this kind of worship is one entailment of 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “pray without ceasing.” As we continually see both the hand of God and our own neediness, we should turn to God countless times throughout each day to seek Him in faith.

May we be an organization that seeks to cultivate worship in all of these forms – not simply publishing songs for public worship, but teaching, leading, and writing in such a way that believers will be moved into a healthy and transformative life full of ceaseless worship to the true and living God.

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, I couldn’t envision anything in particular. But the Lord reminded me of his skills making videos, and the idea for a music video was born. With the funds in hand and the producer chosen, all that was needed was to choose a song and storyline.

Choosing the Song
We ended up choosing There Is No Sin because of its musical simplicity, the fact that all of the musicians were local to Minneapolis, and the fact that the lyrics vividly depict someone walking through an experience of the gospel and seemed to fit a graphic storyline well. This song is one of my favorites on the album. Steve Cook did a masterful job in the editing room pulling all of the pieces together to make something really special.

Choosing the Story
I sent the song and asked for storyline ideas from several creatively-minded friends, and most of the ideas were similar: depict someone caught in a particularly shame-filled sin pattern who hears the message of the gospel and responds, having been transformed by the grace of God. Since we couldn’t use dialog, we had to choose a situation where the shame, guilt, brokenness, and loneliness were painfully obvious. Waking up in a hotel room, surrounded by visual reminders of inner defilement, seemed a natural choice.

The original plan was to feature a young woman caught in a life of prostitution (or simply adultery/fornication), who finds a gospel tract and follows it to church, where she is welcomed by someone who walks her through Scripture, then prays with her. She would then be led into a worship service where she would sing God’s praises with a transformed countenance, perhaps even the song There Is No Sin. But plan A turned into plan B and plan C, since we couldn’t muster enough extras to film a worship service. The producer decided to film the main character sitting alone in a sanctuary during off-hours – depicting a place of struggle, then rest. Instead of a pastor greeting her as she came in, we were able to find an older woman who took notice of the main character’s sobbing and brought a comforting embrace as she listened to me singing the lyrics of the song.

How the Storyline Should Help You Engage with the Lyrics
My first reaction to the music video was to become frustrated with how long the main character stays in brokenness and loneliness. But as I watched it several times, I began to see the masterful intentionality that went into the timing of the storyline. As the song moves past forgiveness to walking in grace (second half of verse 2) and then love for Jesus and longing for future intimacy (verse 3), the main character remains largely still lost in sin and without the comfort of the gospel. But notice how she is living the opposite of what the song speaks of. When she lashes out in grief, the song speaks of Jesus bearing our grief. When she turns her face away from the scene of her sin, the lyrics speak of “no cause to hide my face.” When she stands before her crimes, the song speaks of no work needed to “stand before His throne.” And most powerfully, when she walks to the bus stop, completely alone physically and spiritually, the song speaks of knowing Jesus’ love by faith and longing for an experience of his love.

In the final moments of the video, we are depicting the comfort of the gospel beginning to come into her life as she sits in a church building listening to me sing the song, and receives the loving advances of a believer reaching out to her with the love and warmth of Jesus through a careful and tender touch. The final scene is meant to hint at a transformation that has only just begun in her life.

Any More Videos to Come?
We don’t have any concrete plans to make any more videos, but the Lord likes to surprise us. If you have any ideas or would like to help sponsor one, we’d love to hear from you!

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 a social time together. If you can join us at 7pm on October 22nd in Minnetonka, MN contact me via our contact page. We’d love to visit and celebrate with you!

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.

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 recorded history. Why? Let me suggest that it may be in part due to residual memory from the worldwide judgment that came upon the earth several thousand years ago – the great flood of Noah. Mankind has experienced the wrath of God unleashed upon the earth, and since our conscience testifies to us that there is such a thing as an objective morality, deep down we know that we deserve judgment from a holy and just God because of our disobedience. We all know it’s coming, and for some that unsettling fear influences them to follow lunatics like camping even though their teaching is illogical and fantastical.

Even though Camping’s prediction was wrong, let’s be thankful for the attention to Judgment Day that he has brought to the entire world. Judgment Day is coming, and since no one knows when, we should call our friends and family to repent and humbly seek God’s mercy while there is still time. Let’s also strive to live holy lives, standing on the platform of grace, remembering with sobriety that this world and the things in it are temporary. Let’s not put our hope in earthly treasure, but in heavenly treasure.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. — 2 Peter 3:10-13

John Newton wrote a fantastic hymn text about the final judgment which I’ve adapted to fit the tune of “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted.”

Here is the song post

Here are the lyrics:
Day of judgment, day of wonders,
Hear the trumpet’s awful sound;
Louder than ten thousand thunders,
Shakes the vast creation round!
At His call the dead shall waken,
And shall rise from earth and sea;
All creation will be shaken,
Sinners from His wrath shall flee.

See the Judge our nature wearing,
Clothed in majesty divine!
Those who long for His appearing
Then shall say, “This God is mine!”
But the ones who have neglected
Christ, the Son of God and man,
Shall cry out, yet be rejected,
“Hide us from the mighty Lamb!”

Horrors past imagination
Will surprise the sinner’s heart
When he hears the condemnation,
“Stranger, from My face depart!”
But to those who have received Him,
Loved and served the Lord below,
He will say, “Come near, my children,
See the kingdom I bestow.”

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 church after their worship had become unbalanced as they focused on the supernatural gifts to the exclusion of other aspects of worship: “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.” (1 Corinthians 14:26) When Paul says “let all things,” he is referring to all things pertaining to public worship.

Edification and Exaltation
We see the wonderful balance of simultaneous brotherly edification and Godward exaltation in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Notice how we are to sing to one another, with thankfulness to God. That’s why worship songs can either be directed towards God, be about God (in the third person), or be simply to the gathered church. A few examples: “The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures;” (Amazing Grace, God in the third person) “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;” (Holy, Holy, Holy, directed to God in the first person) “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.” (Onward Christian Soldiers)

Performance and Participation
Too often, especially as churches grow and either hire or attract more talented musicians, public worship can become a playground for musical skill rather than a platform for encouraging and fostering participation by everyone. I don’t mean to set up a tension between musical excellence or skill and congregational participation, as if to get people to participate we should intentionally offer music that is of lower quality. But the value of congregational participation should necessarily shape and limit the music that we make in gathered worship. That’s why for centuries, hymns have been written in certain meters. The poetry of hymns is limited so that the lyrics can be set to tunes that people know, and so that the poetry is more accessible to people of all intellects. Likewise, when we write or choose songs that we want our people to sing, they should be artistically limited in range, tempo, and meter. We should choose singable songs and lead them in a singable way.

The Function of Music in Worship
This leads us to naturally question what the function of music in gathered worship should be. Throughout the Bible, we see music used in various ways in worship, but they can be grouped into two broad categories. First, music is used as a stand-alone offering of praise, and the participation of others is expected to be passive. Second, music is used to encourage, support, and enhance congregational singing. When the inherent power of music is wed to truth-filled lyrics it becomes a mighty tool that God uses to help us connect our minds and hearts and feel the great doctrines that we sing. Because the New Testament doesn’t specify whether or not we should use instruments in our congregational singing, and doesn’t specifically mention praising God with instruments, I believe that this second function of music should be the primary way music is used in gathered worship. While this doesn’t completely exclude our use music as an offering by itself (as in so-called “offertories,” music performed for the congregation), it does, however, call us to examine what the purpose of our musical offerings is in light of our entire worship services. We must remember the overarching command to let all things be done for edification and ask such questions as “will this musical performance help our people prepare to engage with public worship or distract them?” Worship should never become an artistic playground. There is a time and place for artistic expression and experimentation, but that should be outside of our normal, regular gathered worship.

Beyond the Songs
This idea of encouraging participation by all goes beyond simply the songs that we sing. The New Testament is replete with commands involving “one another.” Many of these are naturally obeyed in the context of gathered worship. Our readings, prayers, and other liturgical elements should also be written and led in such a way as to encourage participation by all. Our people participate during public worship in two ways – either actively or passively. Passive participation involves listening and observing; this is how we participate in sermons. Active participation involves interacting with our voices and bodies (i.e. posture). Our services should seek to balance passive participation such as listening with active participation such as speaking and singing.

Encouraging Participation
Because of our culture’s natural drift towards passive participation, pastors and worship leaders should take up the call to help their people actively participate. This means leading by example and by giving much thought to the mechanics of leading such as giving clear bodily, verbal, or written guidance for when to sit, stand, kneel, read responsively, read congregationally, when to begin singing, etc. These small details can go a long way to helping people feel comfortable to join in without fear that they will be singing or speaking alone. Some practical suggestions for how to increase meaningful participation are to choose songs that are singable, limit the use of brand new songs, help the congregation understand the lyrics through verbal or written explanations, and to limit the volume of the instrumentation used to accompany singing so that the people can hear themselves sing. Singing songs or particular verses a cappella (without accompaniment) is a wonderful way to highlight the beautiful sound of the congregation singing.

In conclusion, our worship services should be designed in such a way to encourage and foster participation by the entire congregation, not just by the leaders performing and directing the service. In this way we will obey the command to “let all things be done for building up.” As the late Robert Webber put it, “worship is a verb,” it is something that we do, not that is done to or for us. May our churches grow in passionate participation so that as non-believers observe our worship they might fall on their faces, worship God, and declare that God is really among us (paraphrased from 1 Corinthians 14:25).