Background

It has been 2.5 years since our last album, Merciful to Me, and this fall we’ve sensed the Lord’s promptings to begin another album. This album will be a bit different than the last one. Merciful to Me was a huge project, and was intended as a kind of introduction to our songs in general. We included 4 modern songwriters, used 5 studios in 4 cities, included dozens of musicians, and used extremely varied styles of music. The end result was really neat, but it was a very exhausting and involved project.

If we were to embark on another recording project anytime soon, I knew it would have to be one much simpler in scope. Over the past year, a vision for an album of mostly original songs, using just a few key musicians, crystallized. This project aims to present some of my own more recent original worship songs that have ministered both to the people of Redeemer Bible Church and around the world. Though these songs are still congregationally friendly, they are a bit further musically (and sometimes lyrically) from traditional hymns and would be better fit into the modern worship song or singer-songwriter/Americana genres. For the first 10 years or so of my worship songwriting, I wrote almost exclusively “updated hymns.” But for the past few years, I have been writing more and more original lyrics. Maybe the thousands of hymns I have been studying for all these years are finally starting to soak into my lyric writing soul! 2012 has been a particularly fertile time of writing for me.

Once I settled on choosing songs that were more singer-songwriter oriented, the first person that came to mind to help arrange and produce the album was Jake Armerding. One of the ways God has shown me guidance and confirmation in this project has been not only Jake’s agreement to get on board, but in hearing how God has been prompting him to get more involved in worship as a songwriter and leader, even before I contacted him. Jake is a fine musician with a variety of instrumental and stylistic skills, and is also becoming a good friend. He arranged and performed “Begone, Unbelief” and “Glory Is Certain” on “Merciful to Me,” so you may be acquainted with his voice and instrumental skills. If you want to check out more of his original music, visit http://www.jakearmerding.com/

Tentative Song List (Our song list isn’t final, but will likely include):

For the Sake of His Name
You Are My Righteousness
I’ll Never Forsake You
You Make Me Beautiful
I Have a Dad
When Sorrow Comes
My Precious Savior Gave His All
He Alone Is God
Wave Upon Wave
Do Not Fear
Come Down
Uncondemned (by Jake)
Unfinished song (by Jake)
[ Complete in Thee - Informal ]
Why We Need Help

We need your financial help to make this project. Thousand Tongues (Reformed Praise) is still a relatively small, independent “publisher,” and we can’t reasonably expect enough album sales to offset our costs. What’s more, while we will “sell” this music through retailers like Amazon and iTunes, we always make it available by suggested donation (our policy for everything and end up giving a ton of product away for free as well, both for evangelistic and “marketing” purposes. The sales we had for Merciful to Me went into covering the manufacturing costs and in funding our ministry in general over the past 2.5 years. Right now, particularly because of our organizational transition, we have almost no money.

What Are the Needs?
I am estimating that the project will cost about $10.5k. It’s amazing how quickly things can add up, even for a project with a simpler scope than Merciful to Me. If you’d like a breakdown of our estimated budget, just contact me and I’ll be happy to send it to you.

If you’d like to donate towards this project, click here:

Your donation is tax-deductible

How God Has Been at Work Already

Before we created this public Kickstarter project page, we approached various friends and supporters of Thousand Tongues, including those who have helped in the past. Over the past 40 days, we have managed to raise almost $7k privately, even though one of our key large givers for the last project isn’t contributing this time. What a picture of God’s grace and hand in this project!

Donations vs. Sales

We were blown away 2.5 years ago to see how God met the almost $12k need for Merciful to Me. Though it was step of faith, we were convinced that it was something God wanted us to do and were so blessed to see how He worked to make the project happen. The process of asking for donations rather than transactional sales has always given us a more personal connection to those who support what we are doing, and we look forward to how God will use this project to help us connect with and minister to people.

Since we’re a non-profit organization (our status is in process, but our lawyer says it’s fine to offer tax-deduction receipts since the status is retroactive) donations to the project can be deduced from your taxes.

Time Table

Jake and David have been working on arrangements in December 2012 and early January 2013. They will record at Redeemer Bible Church the week of January 28th, and will head to another studio February 4th-6th. By late February we should have some rough mixes coming together, by early March we should have mastered audio files, and by late March we should have physical CDs.

Thank You

Thank you for considering partnering with us in this project. Please let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to how God will use this process for His glory!

For Christ and His church
David L. Ward

Worship leader and songwriter David L. Ward will be hosting an evening of worship concert with friend and fellow singer-songwriter Jake Armerding on Friday, February 1st at 7pm. In addition, local singer-songwriter and friend Ben Rosenbush will be opening the show with several of his original songs. The concert will feature several of Minneapolis’ best independent artists and will also be an opportunity to enjoy Redeemer Bible Church’s brand new building in Minnetonka on Highway 7. The concert will be the culmination of a week of work by David and Jake on a new album for Thousand Tongues featuring songs by both artists written for congregational singing.

Concert Details

Where: Redeemer Bible Church, 16205 Highway 7, Minnetonka, MN 55345
When: Friday, February 1st, 7pm
Cost: $10/person, $20/family. Coffee will be served at the intermission
Tickets: At the door or pre-purchase using form to the right:

# Attending

Singe Admission $10.00 USD Two or More (Family) $20.00 USD

Personnel:

Jake Armerding – guitar, violin, mandolin, vocals
David L. Ward – piano, sax, vocals
Ben Rosenbush – cello, guitar, vocals http://benrosenbush.com/
Aaron Fabbrini – bass
Zach Miller – drums http://www.pureworshipinstitute.com/guests/bio/174
Lyndsay Peterson, vocals

Artist Bios

Jake Armerding

http://www.jakearmerding.com/

It was the early 1980s when Boston bluegrasser Taylor Armerding, co-founder of the band Northern Lights, started his 5-year-old son, Jake, on Suzuki violin. Jake studied classical violin into high school and absorbed bluegrass just by being around the house. At 13, he joined Northern Lights on fiddle and recorded three albums with the band during his high school and college years. He soon turned his attention to songwriting, and recorded his first CD, Caged Bird, while at Wheaton College (IL). In 2003, Nashville independent label Compass released Jake Armerding, a collection of folk-pop songs written over a year living in Music City. The Washington Post lauded Armerding’s instrumental skills as “remarkable,” while the Boston Globe heralded him “a master at bending boundaries … his real achievement has been to break the conventions that define country music.” Armerding has logged over a thousand performances and has shared the stage with Bela Fleck, Nickel Creek, Josh Ritter, David Wilcox and Toad the Wet Sprocket.

David L. Ward

David L. Ward has served as the Director of Worship Ministries for Redeemer Bible Church in Minnetonka, MN for seven years. David has been leading worship and writing songs for congregational singing for eighteen years. His passion for songwriting and leading worship led him to found Thousand Tongues (formerly Reformed Praise) in 1999. As a musician, David L. Ward is best known for his saxophone playing. He has his own jazz quartet, belongs to several jazz groups in the Twin Cities, and has shared the stage on the sax with many touring artists. As a songwriter, David’s worship songs have been published and used by thousands of churches around the world.

First, we have become incorporated and are in the process of getting official non-profit status (501c3). The corporate structure helps us prepare for future growth with better accountability, and the non-profit status allows us to accept donations that are tax-deductible, including physical gifts. We have a board (the identities of which we will share in the coming months) and are excited to have more gifted leaders helping make decisions about our future.

Second, we have decided to change our name from Reformed Praise to Thousand Tongues (you can see the new logo at that link). Since we were in the process of a major structural change, the time seemed right to evaluate whether our name effectively summarized what we are all about. After research and prayer, we decided that a name change would be good for at least two reasons.

• First, by using the word “reformed” so front and center, the initial impressions people had of our organization were tied to their impressions of the word reformed. For many, the word “reformed” has a lot of negative baggage. That needlessly casted suspicion on us or even closed doors of ministry opportunities. Our doctrinal convictions haven’t changed, but our desire to give people the chance to hear from us before drawing conclusions has.
• Second, by using the word “praise” we felt that the name tied us too closely with music or the activity of praising God, which while being one way to worship God, is not synonymous with worship. “Reformed Praise” was coined in 1999 without much thought. David started taking hymns from a hymnal named “Psalms and Hymns of Reformed Worship” and casting them in what was then called the “praise song” format – more contemporary tunes, often with a chorus.

So why Thousand Tongues? Here are some positive things we like about the name:

• It doesn’t have clear associations with another group or theological system
• It is filled with imagery, engaging the imagination
• It fits with our mission, which simply stated is to see thousands of tongues worshiping God in a way that shows how glorious He really is
• It is associated with perhaps the best-known hymn in the English language, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”

We hope to have the new site live by the end of the year and will begin the arduous task of updating all of our several hundred songs to reflect the new organization name. So stay tuned for big changes around here!

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For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

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We’ve been encouraged by the response to the music video we released last fall. And, we’d love to see more people hear the truths of the Gospel presented in this song. We pray those trapped in guilt and condemnation would hear and revel in the glorious grace given to us in Jesus.

To that end, would you consider nominating for “There is No Sin That I Have Done” and then sharing this with your friends? You can submit your nomination here.