Sing unto the Lord

My last blogger post

2008-01-16T14:19:00.000+11:00

See ya.
Now you can come hang out with the new me at:
www.singunto.wordpress.com
This site will be closed soon...

Jesus, Mission and Music

2008-01-14T21:25:00.000+11:00

This last week I have been involved in our church's annual mission, Summerfest. It was a fantastic week and many people have indicated that they would love to hear more about Jesus. It is exciting to be on mission with Jesus. In 2 Corinthians chapter 2 Paul expresses that same joy:
'But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.'
What a God! he leads us on his mission and it is a TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION!
I have been thinking for some time about how we can be spreading the fragrance a bit more through music in our church. Our culture on the Central Coast (Sydney too) is soaked with music. I went to shows probably every second weekend of my late high school years. I don't think that I'm too unique in that. I would say on the coast that particularly outside of surf culture there is an underground music culture that many belong to. Music is important and good music is important. The Coast has had some of the country's best acts start here. We have an ear for good music.
God loves good music too.
Psalm 33:3 says 'Sing to him a new song. Play skillfully and shout for joy'
So why not use good music as an avenue for mission? In the past I think that music at mission events has been thrown together at the last minute in conversations that generally go like this..
"We are having an event tonight to people to invite their friends to. It will be informal and relaxed."
"Do we have music?"
"We could put on a CD."
"No live music is better."
"alright I'll call bob. He can play guitar."
I'm exaggerating of course but you get the drift. And this is as musch my fault as anyones. I never give time to thinking about how music can be integrated in a much better way. Adrian, our Nite church mission coordinator saw this as a problem and he and I came up with a little idea.
We have started an initiative in our music team to create a band that is skillful and well suited to doing this sort of stuff. We want to have music that is an attraction for outsiders, not an added extra and not a distraction. It will take time and practice but there already some who have committed to making good music for cafe style stuff. They are going to practice regularly and hopefully will help in creating a culture of good music at events.
My mind boggles at the endless possibilities for a group like this. They won't play 'church songs' but to start with they are doing Jazz standards and maybe in the future their own compositions. Come and hear their first efforts this Friday nite at 'Cafe del Freeo' - Bakehouse cafe, Erina. Bring your friends and they will be challenged to consider Jesus and his claims - all while listening to some sweet tunes!

Radiohead play it all for free

2008-01-04T10:22:00.000+11:00

If you missed Radiohead's album that was available for whatever you wanted to pay.. don't miss seeing them play it live on Youtube (I don't think you can miss it because it may just stay there forever).
It is an awesome album!

Alright. Now we are set to go

2008-01-02T10:04:00.000+11:00

This is a bit more conventional. It's probably very unprofessional to comment on my editing through posts, but the two of you who read this will have to get over that. Just to make the page look extra special, heres a photo:

Temporary template

2008-01-02T09:16:00.003+11:00

I know this is hard to read but it looks kind of cool. I'll be fixing it shortly

Got a new look for the new year

2007-12-31T10:17:00.000+11:00

Blue and black is the new white.
What do you think? I might change the header a bit but I really like this template. I still need to add links.
Leave a comment.

Axis and Allies Christmas

2007-12-28T10:06:00.000+11:00

I had a fantastic Christmas. I bought some friends Axis and Allies. It's a board game for nerds. Last night they played it at my house. It was awesome.

Hark the Herald Angel's Bling

2007-12-17T12:13:00.000+11:00

I wrote this for the latest J-Walk. It's not out yet so here's a sneak pic:

Some people can’t stand carols. They find the music kitschy and old fashioned. The words are hard to understand (in exlcelsius Deo anyone?). Everything about Christmas carols seems irrelevant to our culture. I can understand this argument because we want to move with the times and keep making music for people now not people three hundred years ago.
Something that turns me off carols is the packaging. I hate green and red, I hate reindeer and I hate the Wiggles. These are the things that always seem to pop up around carols at Christmas time. The reason I hate all this stuff is that it all smacks of fakeness. There is nothing more hypocritical than having a bunch of pagans get on TV and sing about the great news of Jesus. I hate the way that a nation that has spent the last twelve months breaking all kinds of commandments comes together to sing ‘Joy to the world the Lord has come’ and go back home to their lives of rebellion.
I hate it when people don’t sing genuinely. That’s why I love singing at our church and youth group. When we sing we mean what we say. The stuff we sing changes our lives and our hearts. I can see it in people’s faces when we sing together and I see it in people’s lives as they interact with each other and the world.
What about the guys who wrote the carols? Three hundred years ago were they just the rockers who were commissioned to write some songs about Jesus or were they really on about what they wrote?
Some were. Isaac Watts wrote ‘Joy to the World’. He also wrote about 1500 other hymns and songs to praise Jesus. His songs stand out as being centred on Jesus and what he has done, the same way as the Bible is. He was totally blown away by the fact that Jesus would die in his place.
‘Twas for my sins my dearest Lord
Hung on the cursed tree,
And groaned away a dying life
For thee, my soul, for thee.’
Isaac Watts was sold out, genuine, on fire for Jesus. He would shudder now to think of the many who have used his songs but have not been moved to love Christ more. For many his songs are just songs that are sung each year to keep us feeling good about ourselves rather than helping us to see our own sin and God’s grace more clearly.
Another Carol writer who was genuine was Charles Wesley. He wrote ‘Hark the Herald Angels sing’. He became a Christian while he was at uni. His brother and he were so convicted of their new faith that they gave up their careers and studies and traveled the world telling people about Jesus. Charles’ brother John would preach the sermon and Charles would write music to go with the sermons. Charles was also blown away by the grace God offered him through Jesus’ blood.
‘And can it be that I should gain
an interest in the Saviour’s blood
died he for me who brought his pain
for me, who him to death pursued’
This is why I love carols. They stand for genuine joy. Joy that is seen in people’s hearts and lives changed by Jesus. Sometimes in all our newness and desire to have new music, we can lose the heart of many of the old hymn writers. They were guys and girls who stood for Christ and wrote songs that exalted him.
Some carols are rubbish. ‘Silent Night’ is a load of garbage. ‘Away in a manger’ has nothing to say and all it does is it makes me think of Jesus as being a little baby who doesn’t cry.
But there are carols that are all about the real joy that can be found at Christmas. The joy that is found in a savior who has come. Keep singing carols and sing them the way they were meant to be sung. With joy. With love. With genuine sincerity. Perhaps then we can show the world what they are missing when they sing each year.
‘Let earth receive her King.’

Devendra Banhart

2007-12-16T12:14:00.000+11:00

Devendra Banhart makes me smile. He's bizarre but he writes cool songs.

Big week, New Year

2007-12-03T07:52:00.000+11:00

This week I've done a lot of self evaluation in terms of how I have led the music team this year. I think that although there has been awesome progress, that is in spite of my leadership not because of it. Now is the time to start looking to next year and what we will do differently. One thing that I'm challenged with at the moment is the need to introduce new songs.
I used to be quite good at doing this but due to stress and a lack of time, have slowed down. I actually have about seven songs that I'd like to introduce to the band, but the problem is getting everyone together to learn them.
What do you think is the best way for a band to learn new songs? All at once? Over time? On a Sunday? At another time? The other consideration is the different needs of Morning and Night church congregations. Ideally I think I'd like them to both be doing the same songs but playing and arranging them differently. How is the music different between morning and Night at your church?
Next year is going to be exciting but with lots of challenges. Pray for us as we keep trying to help people feel what they know, through song.

Dave Crowder interview

2007-11-29T07:59:00.000+11:00

On my way to work I almost ran a cyclist off the road. He hit my car and his buddies gave me the finger. I was on Galston Gorge so I couln't stop and apologise... I felt terrible though so I'm confessing online.
I got cheered up when I got here by an interesting interview with Dave Crowder. Go check it out.

Big difference part II

2007-11-28T16:39:00.000+11:00

Joel Brown at Doxologist says...

"As Christians we can't worship art as an end in itself, but it seems like more often than not, we're so afraid of doing so that quality gets sacrificed. Is God more glorified when our offering of worship is more excellent by human standards? I find it curious that so many of the greatest artists of all time have been in it for their ow glory and not the glory of God. What does this say? Can you not be simultaneously a worshiper of Jesus and someone whose craft is perfected in a more humanistic way?"

NPR music

2007-11-28T16:14:00.000+11:00

Thankyou Rolling Stone magazine for pointing me to npr.org/music a site with stacks of free streaming concerts and songs of the day plus more. Worth checking out! I'm currently rocking out to a set by New York band 'The Holdsteady'. I bought their album in the snow season so I'm feeling nostalgic for bruised hips and hot coffee.

What's the big difference?

2007-11-28T14:24:00.000+11:00

Just read through the notes of a presentation Bob Kauflin gave at the Christian Musician Summit on 'Does God even like our music?'

I was helpfully reminded of the big difference between Christian music and Secular music and why they will always be different. Secular music is created ultimately to serve the needs of the secular artist. Although there may be a desire for people to get enjoyment and pleasure from listening to the music, this is ultimately so that the artist will feel good, get money or gain fame.

Christian music is created for serving others and ultimately to be an artifact of worship to Jesus. The Christian musician desires Christ's fame above all other things.

This means that Christian and Secular music will always have differences. While the White Stripes (for eg.) may rock, their music has a flavour of arrogant pride about it that you would not want to see in a Christian music maker. What other stylistic differences should be expected do you think?

Derek Webb - Wedding Dress

2007-11-26T13:30:00.000+11:00

Hey all. Downloaded a song this morning that is one of the best I've heard all year! Big call but there it is. Derek Webb is a Christian singer/songwriter from the states who also fulfills the role of frontman for Caedemon's Call. This song, Wedding Dress is about greed and the desire for God to bless us with riches. Rather than being a punk song that gets angry at false doctrine in others, Webb adresses the issue with humility and a sense of self awareness. The song is beautiful and I strongly reccomend downloading it. Here are the lyrics for you think over...

if you could love me as a wife

and for my wedding gift, your life

should that be all i’ll ever need

or is there more i’m looking for

and should i read between the lines

and look for blessings in disguise

to make me handsome, rich, and wise

is that really what you want

(chorus)

i am a whore i do confess

but i put you on just like a wedding dress

and i run down the aisle

i’m a prodigal with no way home

but i put you on just like a ring of gold

and i run down the aisle to you

so could you love this bastard child

though i don’t trust you to provide

with one hand in a pot of gold

and with the other in your side

i am so easily satisfied

by the call of lovers less wild

that i would take a little cash over your very flesh and blood

The religion of the Mac

2007-11-22T20:37:00.000+11:00

I have been off the interwebs for a while. Mainly because I've been trying to get my head around my new computer. It's very exciting and white.

Apple has made it's way into my house and now I am really conscious of design lines in everything. If you go to the apple site and watch some of their tutorials you will soon see that even the apple people have a cool look. Everyone looks a bit like they are from some prosperous North American cult. Actually I think that is exactly where they are from.

The IT guy at my school is brilliant with computing stuff and a cool guy to chat to. As he was setting up my Mac to be used at school he told me about how simple it was to use and how compatible it was with everything and generally how fantastic macs were. I asked him then, why doesn't he have one. His answer was very perceptive. He said that in 'my job I have to see computers as a tool. PCs are great tools but Mac users act like their computer is their God.'

It's true! Apple have created such an image with so much propaganda that I have inadvertently come to believe that my computer can solve all my problems. How stupid of me to put so much trust in a piece of machinery and to forget to trust the God who made the minds who thought up the imperfect gadget in the first place. Much better to trust God and look to Jesus.

P.S - While you are webbing (my word) check out 'commuting with Christ'. A new blog for Christian commuters. It's been made by a good friend of mine Joel and he is awesome.

Music-review-a-go-go

2007-11-08T07:50:00.000+11:00

I get a weekly email from Christianity Today's music branch. Their interviews are pretty interesting and their reviews of CDs are really helpful and generally on the money. Many christian reviewers can be too positive in order to be loving. These guys are much more objective. You can get all their music reviews here. Make your next visit to Koorong a little more informed.

The best book I've ever heard

2007-11-08T07:35:00.000+11:00

I'm currently listening to 'The Religious Affections' by Jonathan Edwards. It's one of those books that I've never taken the time to read but knew that it would be worthwhile. This is why audiobooks are so cool! There is heaps to write about the book itself so I'll save that for another time but you should definately download it from here and have a listen. The dude doing the commentary has a silky voice (I can say that can't I?).

My afternoon

2007-11-05T18:38:00.000+11:00

This is me after hearing I couldn't get my macbook this afternoon.

This is me after hearing I can get a brand new fandangled model that just got announced today. I just have to wait two weeks.

Crossing over to Mac

2007-11-05T07:49:00.000+11:00

I'm buying a Macbook today. Very exciting. Dave said that you don't need to say you are crossing over to Mac because no one ever crosses the other way.

Music and gospel growth

2007-11-03T06:38:00.000+11:00

Does music effect whether people will come to your church?
There are lots of differing opinions on this. Most people would say that they think the music should be as good as it can be, but what this means in practice varies dramatically.
Ideally I would say that people come to church because they want to find forgiveness and reconciliation with their maker, but in reality is this the reason people come or is it something that they find once they get to church?
Music has two attractional values that it can be judged by.
1) To what extent it engages culturally with the world
2) To what extent it engages emotionally with the heart

The world is a music saturated place. We now have the ability to carry around in our pocket more songs than previous generations heard in their lifetime. This means that more and more people have opinions on music. Through saturation it means that the standard is lifted. For churches that want to engage with culture, music is essential. Not only that, but good music is essential. Music that is done in church needs to avoid being a distraction for those who come in from the world and in fact can work as an attraction. Now how you attract people is a different topic altogether. You could attract them by doing the world's music really well and using it to worship the God of all music... or, you could provide a counter point to the world's music and attract people to a different style to what they are used to (R.C Sproul is an exponent of this thinking). I think that music for centuries has been used to attract. Isaac Watts put theological gold to popular bar tunes to get people to church and thinking about Jesus. It is not a new thing to match the world's music with our own. I believe that music should be accepting to the outsider musically but challenging spiritually. Which means you have great music that matches cultural trends and you don't fill up the lyrics with fluff but rather use the lyrics to present the gospel to hearts that need to sing it.

The second way that music is attractional is that it has the ability to engage the heart. We live in a culture that craves real feeling. It is a symptom of Post Modernity that people struggle to feel strongly about anything. That's why we have 'emo' culture - because those Post Modernists can only feel strongly when they despair. Music takes the truths that we know should shape us and it makes them emotionally engaging. It charges truth with feeling. No Post Modernist would come to a school hall hear a lecture and go home and feel as if they had been to something worthwhile. The Spirit works through the word so that people's hearts are changed and one tool of the Spirit is music. Music gives emotional legs to what can seem like abstract truths. It can turn an idea like Propitiation and give it personal implication.

Many will say that people don't come to church now for the music so why would things change. I'd say have a look at who your church is reaching. Perhaps your music matches their age bracket. Perhaps you r church has lots of people who in their minds know that what is important in church is for the Word to be preached faithfully from the pulpit, yet they can't explain why they aren't overflowing with thankfulness and joy. It will only be a matter of time before they leave and they won't point the finger at the music, they just won't feel like coming any more. Lets throw ourselves into making sure this tragedy never happens. Let's write and play music that engages culturally and emotionally and results in growth from people coming from outside and in growth from people owning the truths they already know.

Music is special

2007-11-01T07:56:00.000+11:00

I love music. All kinds. Music is profound. It is just organized sounds that can shape our feelings and even have been proven to shape and assist in healing our physical bodies. It can be so tremendously complex that you could lose yourself within it's theories and mathematical formulae or you can skim the surface with a three chord pop song. Music is it's deepest and most profound when it is created to give weight or shine light on it's ultimate creator, God. Luther called music the 'handmaiden of theology'. Lots of people can become lost in music and totally miss the creator of sound himself who all music is created to point to. Instead we worship the creation and become idolaters. What a waste of such a precious resource. It's like going to the Taj Mahal and just looking at the lawns instead of walking down them to the monument.

Love music. I do. But love God who made it for you to shape and enjoy for his glory.

(Picture is of the score to the Mario Bros music)

CCEC Nitechurch site

2007-10-29T13:27:00.000+11:00

The art fart team have been busy! Check out our brand new Nitechurch web site. It's got a page devoted to music. Hopefully we can eventually post live recordings on there. Until then it will have some articles, cd reviews, vids plus a security enabled site for our music team to get chord charts. It's all rocking.

crazy font

2007-10-25T05:08:00.000+10:00

sorry about the crazy font on that last post. It's because I don't edit in HTML cos I've never learned.

Three marks of a biblical music ministry: Joy

2007-10-20T07:28:00.000+10:00

I was reading through Redeemer Presbyterian Church's website last week and came across something interesting in the worship and music section. They said that 'artistic expression is such an important part of everyday life that God wants us to engage in it with joy, originality and with intellect.'

I thought it could be useful to do a quick summary of all three and what they may look like in a church context.
joy
Psalm 67:4 says this:
'May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples justly
and guide the nations of the earth.'
Joy and singing are inextricably linked in the Bible. They are seen together all over the place. Check these verses if you have the time: Gen 31:27, 1Sam 18:6, 1Chr 15:16, 1Chr 16:23, Neh 12:27, Job 38:37, Psa 5:11, Psa 27:26, Psa 28:27, Psa 33:1, Psa 33:3, Psa 43:4, Psa 65:13, Psa 71:23, Psa 81:1, Psa 89:12, Psa 90:14, Psa 92:4, Psa 95:1, Psa 96:12, Psa 98:4, Psa 98:8, Psa 100:2, Psa 107:22, Psa 126:2, Psa 126:5-6, Psa 132:9, Psa 132:16, Psa 137:3, Psa 145:7, Psa 149:5, Isa 12:6, Isa 16:10, Isa 35:10, Isa 42:11, Isa 44:23, Isa 49:13, Isa 51:3, Isa 51:11, Isa 52:9, Isa 54:1, Isa 55:12, Isa 65:14, Jer 31:7.
Now that you are 50...
Joy is an inner thing. It is both compulsive and can be learned. We feel inexpressible joy towards God for so many reasons. I feel joy when I remember God's goodness in creation, in election, in saving, in mercy, in grace, in love, in restoring, in justifying, in atoning, in sanctifying and in promising an eternal home where we can know him face to face. He himself brings us joy because He is good.
Singing is an overflowing or an outpouring of that inner joy. You feel joy so you sing. Like how when you feel happy you smile. In the Bible the two are connected because one reflects externally an inner reality.

Would you describe your music ministry as joyful? When you sing do you seem to be singing from a heart overflowing with thankfulness or do you seem to be going through the motions? Often our music can look like it's just something we have to do before the sermon while the seats are still being filled. If joy and singing are linked, then it should seem as if we cannot help but sing. You should be just giving words and a tune to the joy pouring out of the restored hearts within your church. Perhaps if you are leading singing you should ensure that you look joyful. Not because you have to be cheesy, but because it will encourage the people watching you to be reminded of their own joy. Before church remind yourself of the incredible things that have been done for you by Jesus. Think on each song and the truth that it promotes. Be naturally joyful and sing your heart out.

(Who can name the band at the top of this post?)

Best church drama ever

2007-10-19T12:17:00.000+10:00

Church drama is often cheesy. This video brought tears to my eyes and I don't tear up very often at all. There are some things I would change about the drama but it's pretty awesome. Watch till the end.

Paul Baloche continued

2007-10-18T07:51:00.000+10:00

If you still are unaware of who Paul Baloche is Christian Music Today did an interview with him that you can read here. Again, his new album, 'Our God Saves' sounds like it's going to be awesome! You can hear soundclips from it here.

Art and the Artist

2007-10-17T07:59:00.000+10:00

I was browsing the interwebs when I came across Sojourn Community Church in Lousieville, Kentucky. They are an Acts 29 church that are seeking to reach their culture with the gospel. One intiative that they have is called 'The 930'. It's an art studio/music venue that they sponsor because they believe that they have a mandate to support the arts.

I was thinking... what is the role of visual art within Christianity. I dig art. It's one of my things. I can definately see a push within some Christian circles to 'take back the arts.'

Three great reasons I can see for doing this are:

1. God is creator, we are creatures who use creation creatively. It is part of or nature to shape creation. Adam did it through gardening, Beethoven did it with music, why not do it with art?

2. Christians have always been at the forefront of art and music until recent times. Our faith has always reflected itself in creativity.

3. Art and media are cultural indicators. It is important that Christians maintain influence in these areas so as to be light in a world of darkness.

All this said - sometimes as we pursue art, we can find ourselves worshipping beauty rather than worshipping God. For eg, we cannot bear to meet somewhere unless it pleases us aesthetically, or we go home from church up or down based on the cool power point slides rather than God's word, or we give up coming under the word altogether and start just spending time listening or participating in music and creating art. The experience of art making and art participation is powerful because it stirs our emotions. We can begin trusting this experience to fuel us rather than trusting God and his word where he meets us.

Harold Best has spoken of this in one of his lectures at SBTS. He says that art while beautiful can never replace words for expression of the gospel. God uses words to meet his people and they will mainly come to an understanding of him through words (by the power of his Spirit). The spoken or written word has never been surpassed as a communicative form because it is stable, reliable, unchanging, and has much less abiguity than a piece of music or a painting.

All of that being said, Best argues that artifacts should be part of the christian life, not as a way of explaining the gospel, but as offerings of worship to the creator God. I draw a picture as an expression of the creativity God has given me, and people can see his creative nature through my work. He gets glory from art. Artifacts are offerings, not tracts.

Therein lies the balance. Don't worship art, worship God. Trust his word to communicate and use your gifts to praise. Keep being arty for God's glory.

Picture above is called 'redemption' from the exhibition 'How Quickly comes the Night' showing at The 930.

Bob K, Paul B and Steve Y

2007-10-05T09:07:00.000+10:00

Hey all. Just read a great review of a new CD that Paul Baloche has put out. Bob Kauflin did the review. He also mentioned the dreaded 'Above all' song that Paul wrote (if you don't know what I'm talking about - don't worry). We sing a few Paul Baloche songs at our church.
My mate Steve Y used to be part of the music team at church and he was a mega Paul Baloche fan. He introduced the baloche factor to church (I just termed it). Paul put out a bunch of instructional dvds at one point that were brilliant at teaching layering and dynamics within a church band. Our church owns them and they are part of our library so if you want a borrow give me a bell.
I'm sure they are all on you tube though. I'll have a look.
If you don't know Paul Baloche, he's the guy who wrote 'All the earth will sing your praises', 'offering', 'Above all', 'Open the eyes of my heart' + a few others. His new CD sounds like its going to be great.

Simple Carols

2007-10-04T15:08:00.000+10:00

Had a good chat with Andy Miers recently about Christmas carols. Its getting to that time of year where carols have to be organised. It's always a big deal and guitarists always freak out because they are handed a bunch of lead sheets that change chords 16 times in each phrase. It doesn't have to be this way!
Andy gave me this link that had a bunch of the most common carols already arranged into singable keys with chord charts for guitarists. A few chords have been taken out to make it a bit easier for guitarists.

Amy Wood (art fart)

2007-09-29T17:21:00.000+10:00

Amy is part of the 'Art fart' team at church. They design our powerpoint slides and videos as well as cover art for our daily reading notes and flyers. They make stuff look good and they help get rid of any bad design distractions that people may have as they come to church for the first time.

Amy has her own website with photos of work she has done on it. You should check it out. She does really simplistic stuff thats effective. She uses lots of different mediums. Her husband Grant has designed the site and he's currently working on one for church. He's a humble guy with great gifts and he is a good friend to me.

Sweet Musical Action

2007-09-27T15:45:00.000+10:00

My friend Simon has written and is starring in a musical that is on during the Salvo's mission week. The musical is designed to ask big questions of people who may not have asked them before. Good opportunity for arty friends. It's called 3:16. I'ts about a train crash. Showing in Redfern. I'm going. Here's more details...

Sibelius

2007-09-25T12:41:00.000+10:00

How good! Yesterday someone sent me a message offering me an old version of Sibelius 3. Awesome. They offered 4 and 5 too but couldn't give me the seal of legality for those. Project Philippi is on it's way!

Project Philippi update

2007-09-24T12:42:00.000+10:00

Spent a bit of time on the weekend tightening up roles for Project Philippi. First job is to get all the charts and lead sheets done. Our church doesn't own Sibelius so we need to source it or something like it from somewhere. Because we write songs all the time it may not be a bad idea to buy it.

The current song list is...

Count the Mercies

Glory to the Lamb

Crown him with many crowns

????? another one???????

If you are from our church or you have visited and liked one of the songs we wrote, let us know which one you'd like us to record.

"Great singing everyone."

2007-09-23T07:37:00.000+10:00

We have all seen it happen. For many of us it is just second nature so we don't even bat an eyelid. We have come together and sung a song that clearly expresses the joy we have in our hearts to God. The song reminds us of our sin and depravity and we are moved. It also reminds us of the hope we have in God's grace and this lifts our hearts. The final verse is belted out in thanksgiving and joy and as the final chord is played the leader holds up the microphone and says...
"great singing everyone."
No prayer of thanksgiving. No final reminder of the awesome stuff we have been singing about. Not even a moment or two of silence so that we can chew over what we sung and felt. Rather it is a banal, cheery, well done to all.
Good on you for singing. You are good at it. Now sit down.
I don't know where this has come from - whether it is a reaction to emotionalism or whether the song leader is not trusted to say anything. Perhaps the song leader wasn't really singing to God but rather just listening to hear if you were.
I think that this comment does more damage than silence. It teaches people that their singing is all about them and putting on a good sing. It ignores God and it ignores the real affections that singing can produce in people's hearts. It rewards people as if it is a job well done rather than recognizing the spirits work in teaching people God's word and showing fruit through joy and affection.
Please just take a moment or two before you say anything and don't be so keen to save the music from being about God and delighting in him.

Worship.com and Riley Hapuka

2007-09-21T22:45:00.000+10:00

I have been published a couple of times on an American site lately called Worship.com.
I recently posted something about the state of Evangelical music in Australia.
What I love most about putting up these posts is that my brother Tim who is trying to support me posts comments under different aliases to make me look popular. I wonder if anyone has worked out that my commenters all have the same email address?

Redemption Songs and Judgement Songs

2007-09-18T07:53:00.000+10:00

I can already tell that this week will be a week of listening and reviewing. I'm doing an i-pod review on Sunday night at church so I'm churning through lots of music. I listened to lots of MarsHill music last night. My all time favorite song that they sing there is called 'Destructor'. I blogged about it a while ago but I thought it may be apt to stick in what I wrote way back then...

Here are the words:"From the first time you flooded the earth; to the last time you burned up the curse; to the way that you hated your son when you hung all the sins of the world. Holy, Holy, Holy... heavens disappear with a roar, hosts of God will come to destroy, send his declaration of war, God will have his glory one way or another."

The second verse is all about Jesus and that he is glorious. The lyrics are different to most contemporary songs being written. We don't often sing about Judgement although we do sing about God's holiness. I wonder if our hesitation comes from the way that we have been taught about evangelism. Growing up in church and youth group I always believed that the prime reason for telling others about Jesus is because we should not them to go to hell. The urgency we have for evangelism is the urgency you would have to prevent a friend from making a bad mistake. You don't want them to get hurt. The focus is on the person. You don't want them to go to hell. A sensible person wouldn't want that on anyone. Therefore we shouldn't sing songs about God's judgement because that is the big bad thing that we are trying to get everyone away from. There are two big problems with this view. The first is that as a sinful human, I don't care enough about others. I am self-centred and unless someone is very close to me, I don't feel the need to save them from God's wrath. The second is that this isn't what the Bible holds as the primary goal of evangelism. The bible teaches that all things are being brought under the headship of Jesus (Eph1:10) and we as christians are part of this new world order (Eph1:11-12) and so when a new believer puts their trust in Jesus and is sealed with the Holy Spirit they are giving glory to Jesus (Eph1:13-14). We should be so captivated by all of God's glory that we can't help but tell others about him, to the praise of his glory. This is why David can cry out for God to come in Judgement on the wicked (Psalm 10:12-15). He cares about God's glory being upheld more than anything else. This is why we can praise God for his holiness and the way that it is seen in his judgement upon the earth, because his holiness and it's display in the final judgement is glorious.So songs like "Destructor" are helpful to give me a wake up call. Remember what matters most is God's glory, and he will have it one way or another.

MARS HILL ALBUMS ONLINE

2007-09-17T15:57:00.000+10:00

WOO HOO!
Check this out and download. Good music. Good times. These albums aregreat for rocking out to in your car or sitting and reflecting.
Go to music in the drop down menu and then click worship albums. The Red Letter album rocks. Lots of posting today...

Church Context - do I have one?

2007-09-17T12:44:00.000+10:00

My previous post about EMU music and Hillsong started a bit of a discussion about church context. I thought it might be good to put a few of my thoughts up about what a church context is, particularly in regards to music, and how to go about trying to respond to it.

1. Geographical

Most churches meet in a geographical location. Perhaps the church in second life is the only exception, although second life still works for this argument. Some meet in a hundred year old stone building with an in-built organ, others meet in a school hall, still others meet in a multi-purpose auditorium with their own sound gear and matching lights. All of these factors will impact what sort of music will be best in your context. It is easy to say we all want to sound like the next big church that meets in the megaplex down the road, but that will never happen in an old stone building. Deal with it and learn to play to your strengths. Having a big band may not work in your geographical context but having a tght intimate sound may be spot on.

2. Cultural

All places have a culture. Some cultural contexts may be similar but there are always nuances. Different ages in congregation create culture too. What is the dominant culture at each of your church's services? What does the leadership intend to be the dominant culture? These questions will influence who chooses your songs and what styles they are played in.

3. Textual

Whichever book of the Bible your chuch is looking at currently, different themes will be more prominent. If you are looking at Revelation you will be singing lots about Christ's victory. You will sing songs about the Lamb of God and his sacrifice. You will sing about the hope we have. If you are looking at Philippians you may sing songs of Joy. If you are looking at Habbakuk you will sing of God's faithfulness and so on. Too often we just sing what is on the song list and what gets a good response. We need to think more intentionally (particularly after the sermon) about what is sung.

Hope this helps with choosing songs. Maybe you should write up a contextual profile of your church and think about what sorts of music you sould be playing to meet the needs of that context.

Why I had to be 34 before I planted a church

2007-09-17T10:49:00.000+10:00

Ryan Mobley from Delta church in Springfield, Illinois wrote this cool article that gives an interesting take on experience and ministry. Give it a read if you are a cowboy.

Should I go out and buy Garage Hymnal's new CD?

2007-09-15T07:05:00.000+10:00

Catchy title for a CD review?
The answer is... probably. For an in depth review of the CD click here. I bought it this week but haven't listened to it heaps yet.
But I thought it would be helpful to encourage you with something that I'm fairly passionate about. Garage Hymnal write great tunes. Their lyrics are theologically rich and yet easily accessible for youth. I have heard lots of people say that the great thing about Garage Hymnal is that now we have young people writing cool songs that our youth can sing if we don't sing Hillsong (for whatever reason).
The reason this annoys me is that it sees the world in two columns. Many people rely heavily on EMU music (the label GH are signed with) for the songs they do in church, in much the same way as others rely heavily on Hillsong tunes.
So you can end up being a 'Hillsong' church or a 'EMU' church. This can be really unhelpful for a few reasons but one main one is that you stop thinking creatively. In fact you will stop thinking at all. You will end up teaching whatever new hit comes out of your favorite source and you will stop thinking about what is the best song for the congregation you minister to or what the lyrics you are singing are going to be teaching your congregation.
At our church and Youth group we don't sing much EMU or Hillsong. Lots of people would love us to sing more of one or the other but I have opted to look overseas to get songs, or create them ourselves.
Going overseas for songs makes it harder for you to find good music, but it pays off in our context. When people from either camp come to our church they don't feel as if we have chosen a side, rather we are different altogether. That is helpful for first impressions.
All of this being said, I thoroughly support what EMU are trying to do in making songs for churches that are theologically rich and contemporary but I think they have a way to go yet. I also love the music that Hillsong put out, while I have strong reservations about the teaching at Hillsong church itself.
My passion is to see churches writing their own songs out of their own context and to stop just regurgitating everything they are fed.
Meanwhile buy the Garage Hymnal CD. It's pretty cool and it may be an encouragement to you and a creative boost to help you write some of your own tunes.

Adopt a Sound guy

2007-09-10T10:16:00.000+10:00

Hey all. Haven't written anything for quite a while now.
This weekend our youth group ran a conference called Coast Youth Revolution
It was a good weekend. There was lots of different things that had to be taken into consideration in terms of sound with this weekend because the event was in a different venue to normal. This meant we had to hire a bunch of gear and use stuff from a variety of sources.

All of this needed good coordination between sound guys and musos so that the whole thing could run smoothly and not be a negative experience.

This sort of coordination is crucial in running a team. A music team does not function if there is no sound/tech team assisting. Likewise, there is no need for a sound team if there are no musos playing or singing. Thus their relationship is symbiotic (like the jedi and midi-clorians in Star Wars).

But too often there is unnecessary friction between sound teams and music teams. This leads to ungodly gossip, resentment, and relationship breakdown. So I thought that I'd post a couple of my thoughts about sound and music teams and some keys to success in both parties.

1. The Gospel comes first. It is great that we have good music and awesome sound but in the end you won't be sitting behindthe sound desk in heaven. What matters first is hearing God's word taught and seeing it work in people's lives. This is more important than presenting a polished production on a Sunday. It is more important than making sure your foldback has heaps of you in it. It is more important than your early morning or your late night. I's more important than rolling leads properly. We should never compromise the gospel for music or sound. And by that I also mean that we should strive to not sin on account of music or sound. If being part of a production team that doesn't suit your standards is causing you to hate others and to gossip about them... get out. Preach Jesus. That's why we have church, to get together and to preach Jesus to one another. That should be expressed right from set up to pack up.

2. Communication is not just for marriage weekends. Learn to talk to the sound guys in your church. Let them know what you are planning. Give them lots of time to prepare. Make their job as easy as you can. Don't just learn to communicate with them about sound but actually befriend a sound guy.

Something that has helped me lots this year has been having weekly catch ups with the guy runing our sound team. We spent a lot of time trying to coordinate the direction we are both heading and giving each other helpful insight into leadership and teamwork.

3. Learn a bit of sound stuff. Spend one week just sitting behind the desk watching what goes into sound/tech stuff. You will gain a great deal of insight into how rude some musos can be. You will see how hard it is to give just you, just the right amount of keys in just your foldback. Plus it may help you in seeing how musos can help more with pack up or set up.

4. Share the vision. The guy who oversees a lot of the sound stuff at church (h/t to Blake) and I often send each other emails sharing resources like talks or articles that we find. We try to head in the same direction. I know what he wants from the sound, and he knows what I want from the music. When we eventually get our Music team retreat off the ground, the sound people will be there too. The sound team at night church come to every second rehearsal to read the Bible with musos and think about theology. In the past the sound people have used that time to talk tech with musos and teach them things like microphone technique and rolling leads. Spend time each week making sure you debrief with the sound people after a gathering so that you can laugh about what went wrong and scheme about ways to be better.

A helpful blog both I and Blake read is this one by Dave Wilcox, the guy who does sound at Covenenant Life church in the states. I find it really helpful. Hopefully you will too and you might find it in your heart to adopt a sound guy.

Song list

2007-08-31T08:02:00.000+10:00

How many songs do you do at your church?
I had a conversation with some guys recently who had a song list of 157 songs. That's heaps! They were concerned that the congregation would get bored if they sang the same songs lots. At church we have probably a cycle of about thirty songs.
The benefit of having less is that you can be well practised in them. So the band at Nite church no longer need chord charts. We only use charts for new songs.
The benefit of lots of songs is that there are lots to choose from, but I see it more as a lot of excess songs that you shouldn't play. What do you think? More or less?

TWIST stuff

2007-08-28T16:42:00.000+10:00

TWIST was good. I was only there for three hours on Saturday though. I was setting up for a workshop so missed most of the main session so don't listen to my opinions.
I did have a good time in the workshop. Jon Baldwin and I led a session on teaching new songs to the congregation. It was fun. Lots of people had good ideas to share and it was a really productive time.
Main points I think could be gleaned from the workshop would be:
- there are more than one way to teach a song and different songs require different ways of teaching them.
- Be enthusiastic and confident or you will never get your church to enjoy the song.
- Be directive with your band and the congregation (this can mean that you sound a bit like a teacher sometimes eg. 'lets go over that bit again cos I don't think you got it', but it will pay off in the long run)

It was great hearing a bunch of music leaders having a go at this and I was encouraged by a lot of the delegates there.
I also had heaps of good chats with different people that I found encouraging. Overall although I could only be there for a short time, it was a good time nonetheless.

TWIST

2007-08-25T07:13:00.001+10:00

I'm off to TWIST this morning. Maybe I'll see you there.

We are un-teaching ourselves grace

2007-08-24T07:49:00.000+10:00

On the weekend we sung a new rewrite of an old hymn called 'Before Jehovah's awful throne'. It's by Isaac Watts and the new version could be online sometime soon.

It got me thinking again about why we teach Hymns to a modern congregation. Don't we have enough people writing praise choruses without going back to the old stuff? A freind of mine told me that he doesn't understand why our church does hymns because surely people can't relate to something that says 'thee' and 'thou' in it. It seems that singing hymns needs some kind of explanation. I reckon there are heaps of reasons why we should still sing hymns. Heres just one of them. (I haven't written about this stuff for a while so I thought it would be apt. Sorry if you have heard me talk about this stuff lots. I will continue to do it.)

Modern Praise Choruses are filled with longing and promises: "I want to worship you" "I will sing of your love forever" "Here I am to worship" "Lord we want to bow before your throne" Some are quite explicit vows: "I make a vow that I will always honour Christ whether I live or die".

As you look through the songs that we sing we are obsessed with promising things to God. We will love him more, we will worship him harder, we will be fired up everyday of our lives.

I wonder if with all this promising and longing, we are teaching ourselves that we need to work for our salvation. We need to prove something to God. I think that there is a place for making some sort of vow to God or for expressing a longing to serve him, but to quote Kevin Twit, 'a constant diet of promise songs leave you spiritually immature'.

Compare this to the Christian life seen in the hymns. I will take Rock of Ages as an example because it is so well known 'could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone, you must save and you alone.'

Rather than only feeding us with songs of response the hymns bathe us in God's grace. They show us God's saving power and teach us to rely only on him. I think that many modern song writers do this too, but our individualistic western culture always drags us into thinking that we need to do something.

Keep singing hymns and keep trusting God.

Project Philippi

2007-08-22T15:55:00.000+10:00

I am excited to announce a new initiative that we are undertaking with CCECNiTECHURCH music this year. After previous recordings that our church has done (these can be downloaded at http://www.singjesuspraise.com/) the Nite church music team (we know how to spell night we are just cutting edge cool) are going to put down some tracks with a little bit different purpose.

In the past there has been a tension in our recordings... who are they for? Our church? other churches? private listening pleasure? teaching a song? so in answer to these questions we've decided to break it all up and put out a little something for everyone.

Project Philippi is an initiative to help out other churches in the area of music. For now it is just a recording but we hope in the future to do more things to help out others, the way that the Philippians poured themselves out for the church in Jerusalem.

The Project Philippi recordings are going to be a small selection of some of our new songs that we have written along with chord charts, lead sheets and backing tracks for each song. We are hoping to print around 200 CDs and send them to music directors around the place as a free gift. Because they are free we will not be getting the most expensive sound out of the recordings. Their purpose will be more to give a new selection of songs to a church.

We are soon to begin work on this so you can be praying for us as we do this that we will be humble and driven by Jesus glory and magnifying his name around our country.

I'll keep you posted from here about where we are up to with it. Eventually I would love it if you would send me a contact person from your church who could benefit from this initiative.

Totally nothing about singing in this post

2007-08-20T13:34:00.000+10:00

I have been made aware of a christian organisation called STOP THE TRAFFIK based in the UK that are on about ending human trafficking in the world. apparantly there are more slaves today then there were when William Wilberforce was around. This horrifies me.

Check out their website its really cool (particularly check out the chocolate campaign. eye opening!)

I'm excited by seeing Christians passionate about this stuff. It reminds me that God is a God who cares about justice and who loves the oppressed. As we are changed to be more and more like Jesus, do we care more and more about this stuff?

Creative Arts college and John Newton

2007-08-20T11:13:00.000+10:00

Found some cool stuff on the web this morning. The first was an imagined interview between Brian Thomas and John Newton. It's a bit geeky but kind of cool.
The second is some ideas about an Anglican Creative arts college in Sydney. My gut reaction is that it's a good question to be asking but I reckon Graham Stanton is on the money when he says the secular colleges are already awesome. It's exciting seeing an interest in the creative arts though!

Crown him with many Crowns

2007-08-13T11:15:00.001+10:00

Here's a video of a hymn rewrite that I did. Charles Wesley is great at using words to glorify Jesus.

Mission music

2007-08-13T11:06:00.000+10:00

This weekend our church spent our meetings with a focus on mission. We had 'double-up' at youth on Friday night, cafe del-freeo on Saturday night and Evangelistic night church meeting Sunay night. There was different kinds of music at all of these events and gave me opportunity to think a bit about the role of music in mission. With a view to posting something on it next week, give me some of your thoughts on:
Should we sing at mission events?
Is it ok to have non-Christian artists perform at mission events?
What should music look like in different mission contexts?
Should we have door to door carol teams?

The trouble with 'and'

2007-08-06T07:43:00.000+10:00

Colossians 3:16 in the NIV says:
"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God."
I find this very helpful as I think about church music. Our singing is in response to God and it springs from his word in our hearts. This means our singing should be biblical and it should be filled with thanksgiving and joy. But... the ESV translation of the same verse doesn't contain an important word. Check it out:
"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."
In the ESV there is no 'and' between teaching and admonishing and singing. In the NIV translation it depicts these two activities as being separate but both springing from the word. The ESV and the greek however depict singing as being something you do to teach and admonish one another.
This is HUGE!
When we sing to one another we are teaching each other. I asked the music team at our church how they saw this happening and they came up with two great responses.
1. We teach each other by singing truths to one another. We remind each other of great things that Christ has done and how awesome He is. This is the proclamationary (?) nature of church singing. Proclaiming God's wonderous deeds.
2. We teach each other by responding appropriately to what we sing. If I am singing a celebratory song about Christ's victory then my face will show others that I am celebrating and this will encourage them and remind them that yes, it is exciting that Jesus is Lord. If my expression shows sorrow in a song that talks about repentance then I am teaching and reminding the congregation to feel the weight of their sin.
Sinful humans do not naturally respond emotionally to God's truths. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It is something that grows as we grow in maturity. It can be taught. The same could be said about thankfulness or repulsion at our own sin. These are emotions that grow.
Musos and singers at the front of church should be teaching the congregation how to respond to the truths we sing. Leaders can do this by highlighting lines in the song before the singing begins. Another way that all of the team can be involved is by themselves reading through the words that they play and responding visually to what they sing. Too many musos don't sing in church because they just read chord charts. Learn the songs at home and sing your heart out while you play the guitar. This will be a great service to the congregation.
If you are not part of a music team at church then you can fulfill the same role by visually expressing what you sing so that those around you will be reminded of an appropriate response to God.
May the Spirit be constantly shaping our dark hearts so that we can love God more and hate our sin.

We love a good mystery

2007-08-03T07:45:00.000+10:00

Humans love mystery. Particularly in worship we are generally drawn to the mysterious. There is a sense in our post modern society that if it is mysterious it has meaning or value. This is why there has always been a cultic fascination with mystery. This phenomenon is not just part of the new age spirituality movement or eastern mysticism but is often seen within those churches who claim allegiance with Christ. Christians love mysterious and ethereal experience.

The Catholic mass in many ways captures this fascination. We build cathedrals that evoke a feeling of mysterious awe towards God. We institute rites that only certain people may perform at certain times. Often rituals are in place to give us a sense of other-worldiness. In the modern comtemporary Christian music movement there is a move towards more ethereal instruments such as chimes and synth to create a sense of a God who is beyond us. Not all of this is negative. There is something profound about being in awe and wonder at a God who is bigger than our sensory world.

However there can be a problem when we prefer a good mystery to a revealed truth. Jesus is God in flesh. He is a tangible reality. He ate. He died. He walked around. He was not a spirit being who was beyond us but rather was God with us. No doubt this is a earth-shattering concept but salvation itself is tangible. One group who were around at the beginning of the early church were the gnostics. These guys thought that because God is spiritual and spiritual means other-worldy then to have a God who became a man was inconcievable. They believed that Jesus' fleshliness was just an illusion and that really he was a spirit. They also believed that Jesus did not physically rise from the dead as a real dude, but rather he rose spiritually as a ethereal being. John argues against this line of thought in his letter 1 John. He is writing to a bunch of guys who were being persuaded by gnostics. This is what he says in chapter 1:

1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

John's confidence is in his senses and in what he has heard. For him Jesus and the gospel were a very physical reality.

There is a sense of mystery in the Bible. The mystery is, 'How is God going to bring all things together and reconcile a defiled people to himself and remain Holy?' But the mystery is revealed.

Rom 16:25, Eph 1:9, Eph 3:3-6, Col 1:26-27, Col 2:2, Col 4:3 all tell us that this mystery has been revealed. Because we worship the God of revelation, he reveals things to us. God is no longer a mystery in the hidden sense of the word.

So what does it mean in our context of meeting together? We should not chase the mysterious. God is a revealer. He has revealed himself in Jesus. I think that many churches tend to sing more songs about God as a distant deity and they celebrate this instead of singing about God's revelation... Jesus. Count the times that the incarnation is sung of in your church. Are you as on about Jesus in your singing as God is? Do you prefer to be in the dark about God or do you want to sing about what you know of him?

mewithoutyou and boring Christian pop

2007-08-02T07:58:00.000+10:00

I don't generally listen to Christian music unless I am trying to choose songs for church. Part of the reason for this that I find a lot of Christian bands trying to fit generic moulds but with cool Christian catch phrases. I have heard people saying that for every big Non-Christian band there is a Christian equivalent with edifying lyrics. I don't think that that is as exciting as people think. It just shows that Christians can lack the creativity to push the boudaries of genre and set standards for musical creativity and excellence. In the past it was Christians who were the creative geniuses of their day. Beethoven, Bach and others wrote music for their churches but in so doing influenced the world with their genius. It was their understanding of us as creators with God's creation that allowed them to shape ideas and set trends.

HOWEVER, I have recently been listening to a Christian band who have changed my mind. Their name is Mewithoutyou. They use poetry and musical phrases that are not always conventional. I seriously recommend. Their album Brother, Sister has some sweet tunes and awesome poetic lyrics that capture things like faith, God's sovereignty, Man's helplessness, and sin. Download it. It will change your mind about Christian bands. There may be hope yet.

extra hour of rehearsal

2007-07-31T08:00:00.000+10:00

About six weeks ago at our church I asked the band who were playing on a given night to turn up an hour earlier than they had previously. I was nervous about this because I didn't want to be taking up too much of the guys time. I thought that as everyone only plays 2 in 6 weeks, they could afford the arvo. The purpose of it was to look at the bible together, chat, and to think more creatively about the music they played rather than just rushing through each song.
I was reflecting yesterday how this has been really successful.
Each week one or two songs have new arrangements that I get feedback about. Most people find the new arrangements realy helpful in re-thinking about what they are singing. I also think that a sense of team has developed amongst the bands and they are working well together. All in all I think it was a good move. If you are a muso or a member at our church let me know what you think. If you are from elsewhere let us know how your rehearsals run.

Recruiting Non-Christians into your music team

2007-07-25T08:00:00.000+10:00

Had a good chat with a friend two weeks ago who runs the music at his church and we were talking about recruitment for music ministry. He had the dilemma of having awesome musos in his church who were not christians. He was asking whether it is a problem to have non-christians as part of your music team.

I reckon heck yes for three reasons.

1. Historical/ Old Testamental (?)

David appointed Asaph and his descendents to oversee the music ministry within the temple in the Old Testament. These were a group of guys who were already part of the Levitical priesthood. Even when Solomon was king and had access to the best gentile musicians around, the music within the temple continued to be run by those within God's covenant.

When the Israelites returned from exile in Babylon, one of the first things that gets re-established is Asaph's descendents making music in the temple.

I don't think this argument is flawless but I do see a pattern in the Old Testament practise that could be carried on to the New... except, in the New Testament, all who are God's people are his priesthood and in the New Testament we are all told to make music in our hearts to the Lord. These passages are directed to christians still. Those in relationship with God. So a pattern is there.

2. Biblical church model

The second reason is that Non-Christians are spoken of as observers in church in the New Testament but never as partakers. In 1 Corinthians 14:24 it is expected that the idiotes (unbeliever who does not understand) will visit and if we are speaking in tongues without any interpretation it will confuse the visitor. However there is no mention of the idiotes bringing in his guitar for a sing along.

The fact that there are no self proclaimed non-christians in the early church says something about practise to me. However there are many non-christians in the church calling themselves christians. Annanias and Sapphira, all the Judaizer dudes, the Nicolaitions... All of these groups claim that they belong to Christ and seem to be part of church but the gospel shows them up for what they are.

3. Different Kings, different Kingdoms

This is the most convincing argument I see as to why we don't have non-christians in our music team. They are not there to worship God. They are there to show their talents. Even if they are trying to help out due to some altruistic motive, their king is ultimately not Jesus, it's them.

A Non-Christian in the music team will not understand the importance of humility, scriptural truth or attitude of service to the same extent that your christian musicians would.

In our team we put certain expectations on the musos spiritually that a non-christian has no obligation to meet.

As great as it may be to get that person along to church because they love playing in the music team, there are bigger things going on. How hypocritical to have those who are leading the congregation in corporate affection for Jesus with black unrepentant hearts to the very one who we sing to.

If you begin allowing Non-Christians to play in your team, you will end up losing purpose and drive within your team. The desire for excellence musically will outweigh the desire for excellence spiritually and you will have a bunch of guys putting on a show every week. I haven't addressed every issue in this topic so raise your questions and objections in the comments.

Luther and Dave Miers

2007-07-25T07:43:00.000+10:00

Two weeks ago, Dave gave a talk at church about Jesus from Luke 4 when he was preaching to his homies in Nazareth. Dave mentioned how the Nazaretheans reacted against Jesus because they had known him as a boy.

Read this quote from Luther this morning that made me laugh out loud.

'...For what is more wonderful than the unspeakable mystery: that the Son of God, the image of the eternal Father, took upon Him the nature of man? Doubtless, He helped His supposed father, Joseph, to build houses, for Joseph was a carpenter. What will they of Nazareth think at the day of judgement, when they shall see Christ sitting in his divine majesty?

Surely they will be astonished, and say: "Lord, you helpest build my house, how comest you now to this high honour?" '

Mind songs/ heart songs

2007-07-22T14:46:00.000+10:00

Some would say that there are two types of songs that Christians sing in their churches. Mind songs or Heart songs. What they mean is that some songs are written to proclaim a doctrinal truth or to fill out a theological idea. Many would say that these songs are generally subjective, proclamatory (proclaim something to the world rather than 'prayerful' to God), and dry. These are the Mind songs.

Heart songs are all about how I feel towards God. They evoke emotion in me and they are filled with a lot more feeling. These songs are not so heavy with theology but are strong in helping me respond emotionally to God (emotional response is a good thing). Many different people accuse others of singing one group or another of these songs.

Mind people think that heart people have no substance and heart people think that mind people don't care.

The whole division misses the point of scripture. We as Christians are called to respond to the truths of God with our hearts. How often do I hear Christians who believe that they are strong theologically point the finger at others for being too emotional. God is the god of our affections. If we say that we believe we are deserving of God's unquenchable fury, that we have no good in us and yet Jesus came and took all of that upon himself so that we could be adopted as the children of God, if we believe all that and are not moved emotionally then one would question the validity of our belief.

And how often do I hear others who believe that they respond to God with appropriate emotion say that others are just obsessed with doctrine and truth and the Bible. Without truth emotion is just emotion. You are not responding to anything but vague ideas and ethereal spiritualness.

Strong biblical theology is nothing without a heart that sings with thankfulness, and emotional expression is nothing without something to be emotional about.

I want to sing songs with my mind and my heart. I want to proclaim the things that Christ has done and will do with tears streaming down my cheeks. The things of Jesus are not abstract thoughts, they are saving truths!

For myself, I struggle at times to be emotional in the way that I should. Too often I sing lyrics that should leave me broken and yet I am unaffected. I am praying that the hardness of my heart will be done away with and that I can worship my saviour with all my mind, and all my heart.

How great thou art (or something like that)

2007-07-19T22:13:00.000+10:00

And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art, How great Thou art.

I sang this song with great gusto recently at an event where I had the opportunity to sing with a bunch of people from different backgrounds. A lady across from me sang her heart out in the chorus (particularly in the '..THEN SINGS MY SOUL'), but in the above verse she yawned and turned around to smile and chat to people nearby until the chorus came up and then she belted it out again.
It got me thinking... Why is God great? What does God do that makes him worthy of our praise and worship? Do we just sing to him with gusto because it makes us feel good to sing?
Jesus! Jesus is God's greatest revelation to us of his mercy, kindness, compassion, justice, might, sovereignty. Jesus and his work on the cross are the reason why we sing praises, and live lives of worship to God. My soul sings because Jesus has bled and died in my place. He took my burden and God's wrath for me has been satisfied. My Saviour God, Thou art indeed great! May we never stop singing about Jesus because we want to sing about how much we love singing. May we never stop singing about Jesus for any reason. How great Thou art!

Running an intentional Music ministry

2007-07-19T10:02:00.000+10:00

I have been thinking a bit lately about the way we do stuff in music ministry. So often, the people who are responsible for making this area of church life happen, are not paid to give their time to music ministry and so are rushed and busy in the way that they conduct it. I have spoken to a few guys lately who are running music in their church and they would love to try and do different things and to teach more songs or reorganise the roster or write new arrangements but it doesn't ever happen because life is so busy. So we fall into the default mode of just doing whatever we did last week and we keep being dissatisfied with the result.
Last year I had a chat with a close friend about the way I was spending my time. He introduced me to a word that has changed my thinking not just about my time or music ministry but about all of life. He told me that I should be 'intentional' with my time. To be intentional means that there is always a goal or result that you are hoping to achieve. Basically you will always have 'intent'. No minute or act is wasted. As Christians we are called to be intentional. We are to 'run the race', 'persevere', 'fight the good fight'. We should be doing these things with the intention of bringing glory to our Lord Jesus. We are to worship him with our time and our bodies, constantly seeking to refine ourselves through the power that God gives us in his Spirit. Being a worshipper of God is not shift work. It is a constant. Not only that but it is never over. There is no point in this life where you can say that you are done with worship. It is a continuous process, an intentional process.
I believe that we should take this approach to ministry. There is no time when your ministry is complete. You can never say in this life that the congregation and the music team have a perfect theological understanding of worship, are perfect at loving one another and encouraging one another, and are perfect masters at their craft of music making for God's glory. And I don't believe it is enough to accept that there are problems but to respond apathetically to them. To be satisfied with sub-par music, dodgy theology and an unloving music team is to say that you do not care for God's glory.
That all being said, we still face the issue of time and how to best utilise our time to see results - particularly in the case of unpaid workers who need to earn a living elsewhere. One thing that I have tried to do that you might find useful is to write out a five year action plan. Where do yo want to be in five years in this ministry? What are you doing year by year, and roster by roster to reach these goals. In every action that you do are you working towards your goals or are you continuing to spend your time in an activity that doesn't need to be done? You may find that doing something like this frees up time because you begin to streamline your activities to reach goals. Some questions that might be helpful in setting goals are:
- How large do I want this music team to be? How can I reach that goal?
- What culture do I want to develop amongst the congregation in terms of singing? How can I reach that goal?
- How proficient or what level of excellence do I want to see among the musos? Why? How can I rach that goal?
- What acts of creativity would I like to see develop? Song writing? More arranging?
- What kind of leadership structures will I need to see these things happening effectively?

I hope these thoughts have inspired you to go and begin shaping a future for your ministry area. Remember that this will only happen through God and for his glory. Keep yourself humble, keep Jesus exalted.

In a rush

2007-07-17T07:01:00.000+10:00

Just a quick note to tell you all I haven't left the blogosphere. I've just had a bit on lately. I'm about to head off to Meroo for staff conference but I will be back Wednesday night. Look here again on Thursday because there should be two good posts by then.
While you are on the web check out Cardiphonia. It is a music site run by some clever Pressies. I like it's layout a lot. It caters for a more liturgical/traditional style of music ministry.

Cruisos and reading part 2 (100th post)

2007-07-05T07:19:00.000+10:00

This is post 100 for Sing Unto the Lord (Hoorah Hoorah). I thought I would come back to what I had said a while ago about how important it is for Christian musos (Cruisos) to read and think about theology. I want to add to that to talk a little about why Cruisos should think about theology and how it applies to the way we do music, as well as sharing some stuff that I have found helpful.
Unfortunately, music in churches have been the cause of innumerable divisions and schisms (same sort of thing but schism is a funner word). From the reformation and before to now people have always fought about church music. What should we sing? Only Psalms? No Psalms? With music? No Music? With a wordly instrument like the Pipe Organ? With drums? Can we sing music written by heretics? Should the band be on stage? Should we dim the lights? Do the congregation sing or is it just the choir? Are there styles that shouldn't be sung? Can we sing secular songs and change the words? All of these arguments and more have gone on since the beginning of church history.
The first thing to note is how sad it is that these trivial things cause so much division. While many stakeholders in these arguments care for God's glory, too many care for their own preferences.
The second thing is that it is crucial for cruisos, music directors and pastors/ministers to be well thought out about why they do what they do. In an area that has had so much error over the years it's important that we are careful and deliberate in all decisions we make. Part of this will be making sure that we are always reading God's word to shape our decisions. But there are many issues that are not covered explicitly in the Bible. How can we be wise and thought out about stuff if we don't have it written down for us?
That's where reading and discussing comes in. I think that Cruisos should be regularly reading stuff that helps them sharpen their minds in thinking about why they do what they do. Particularly because there is good material out there for consumption.
Below I'm going to list some stuff that I have found extremely beneficial. Some of these things I have mentioned before but that's because I really think they are worth checking out. Perhaps you can grab some of these resources and distribute them to your music team with the intention of discussing them at your next meeting. This will force people to read and think. The last thing that we want is a group of musicians performing a task that can have the potential to fall into heresy and man-pleasing, who have never thought about why they do what they do.

Websites
Sovereign Grace - Heaps of song downloads + sermon downloads. Not too many articles for reading but there are some.
Worship Resources - This is the home to the monthly webzine 'Worhip Notes'. The site deals mainly with a European context but often the zine has some stuff that relates to us in Australia.
SBTS Institute of Christian Worship - This is the worship arm of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Here you can find lectures galore. Spend days listening to them. There are some gems here.
Indelible Grace - This site is devoted to hymns and rewriting hymns. Lots of thinking has been done about this area of church music. These guys have some good articles about this.

Blogs
Bob Kauflin 'Worship Matters' - This is pretty much the best blog on this area of church life that I have come across. Lots to wade through.
Doxologist - This is the music arm of Mars Hill church in Seattle. They often have interesting stuff but spend more time on critiquing music culture in the secular world. Good reading. Not heaps regularly updated.
Worship.com - This is a multi-contributor blog on church music and worship related stuff. It has a wide readership and references to lots of good blogs. It would be great to have something similar in Australia.
Garage Hymnal - Here you can read guys who think more about our Australian context. Not regularly updated but well thought out.

Books
'Music through the Eyes of Faith' Harold Best - This book has heaps to say about the 'why' of Christian music. I have found this book to be brilliant in the way it deals with creativity in a music context. Must read!

'Singing and Making Music' Paul S. Jones - Lots of essays on different issues in church music like... Kids music, hymn writing, is there a place for clapping?, other stuff. Deals with issues through the Bible.

'Worship by the book' Don Carson - This book has a lot of great stuff in it but the first chapter is particularly fantastic. It deals with worship from a biblical perspective.

'Engaging with God' David Peterson - This is similar to the above book but a more in depth look at what the Bible says about worship.

There are lots more resources than just the ones I have described. These are just some of those that I have found really helpful as I've tried to think through why we do what we do in our context. I would encourage you to check these resources out particularly if you are serving in a music team but also if you want to think a bit more about how we can worship God in the way he has told us to worship him.

Luther and youth music

2007-07-02T11:18:00.000+10:00

Martin Luther had a heart for Youth group music ministry. He wanted to make great songs relevant to the kids... check it out in his intro to his mate Johann Walters hymnal, the Wittenberg Geistliche Gesangbuchlein.

'Therefore, I too, with the help of others, have brought together some sacred songs in order to make a good beginning and to give an incentive to those who can better carry on the Gospel and bring it to the people... And these songs were arranged in four parts for no other reason than I wanted to attract youth (who should be trained in music and other fine arts) away from love songs and carnal pieces and to give them something wholesome to learn instead... It is unfortunate that everyone else forgets to teach and train the poor young people; we must not be responsible for this too.'

I find Youth group music ministry really hard. In our context it is difficult to practice and get a team of youth and leaders together to do a good job. We generally run our music in a rock band format with a guitarist, bass player and the guitarist usually sings. This is partly because the sound we produce can be heavier and more fluid, but it is also because I'm always pushed for time. Unfortunately, I end up spending lots more time on Night church music than youth.

I think however that these two ministries are inextricably linked. Our night church singing culture has shifted dramatically over the last two years from being stiff and non-expressive to being more vibrant and joyful. This is mainly because of youth group guys coming to night church and shaping the culture to match what they loved about music at youth. This shift showed me how important the youth group are to night church ministry. I had a chat with a mate of mine, Tim, about this phenomenon. He saw the same thing happen at his old church. He said that the youth became 'a dominant minority who were intentional in the way that they shaped night church culture.' (check out Tim's new church here)
Last year I spoke to the senior youth group about their impact on night church. They wanted to see it's singing culture change from the way it was to the way they saw Senior Youth music (alive). There were three main ways that they helped to change culture and these were the same three ways that stuff changed at Tim's church.
1) don't hang in the ghetto. Too often Youth group guys who come to church choose a group of seats at the back or to the side of church and they all sit there. They don't mix with other guys and they end up becoming a ghetto. I asked the youth to move away from ghetto mode and to sit at the front and in the middle. The reason being that everyone else can then see them and the way they are singing and it will be infectious.
2) Sing loud, sing proud. For some reason Youth were singing their hearts out at youth group but were shy and timid when it came to night church because they felt intimidated by the older guys. This had to change if they were going to have an impact.
3) Get involved in church ministries. We are blessed to have a youth group that is committed to seeing its members hook in to ministry at church. Dave has taught the guys to be passionate about having a life of ministry. We have youth group kids involved in teaching Sunday School, sound, music and the ministry of looking out for those younger than them at youth group. It was through the kids being involved in music ministry and being up the front that helped to shape the culture the most.
Youth group music ministry is strategic because the kids who are singing there may well shape the culture of church for the next ten years. While the situation our youth is in makes it hard to give youth music a good go, it is well worth investing the time and energy.

The week just gone

2007-07-02T11:06:00.000+10:00

Hey all. I've been away this last week - hence no blogging. I went with some year 7 kids from school on a mission trip to Newcastle. Had a great time and learned heaps. Holidays now!!!
There has been a few things popping up in the music ministry blogoverse (universe for bloggers). Craig S had a good suggestion that I've started looking into... Bob Kauflin posted a hymn re-write of 'what a savior'... and Andy M discovered Mars Hill music.

Rehearsal time

2007-06-25T10:02:00.001+10:00

Our rehearsal times at CCEC are OK. We run them at 4 on a Sunday arvo. We only have about an hour before the band have to prepare for the set that night. We try and do something a bit different that can allow the band to try out creative ideas that a normal practise doesn't have room for. Too often Sunday night practises are stressful because of the time restrictions. The four o'clock pracs are supposed to be less stress so more creative juices. We also have a look at the Bible and sing together. Its hard to fit everything into an hour - especially because musos love being late for stuff. How do you do your rehearsals? Do you only practise just before church? How can I make ours more effective?

contemporary music is contemporary

2007-06-22T12:06:00.000+10:00

This is a no brainer, but understanding where contemporary music has come from and why we do it may help us in being more intentional about the songs we choose and sing. Contemporary music comes from two different movements in history that converged in the 1970s. The first of these was the movement among churches in the last century to move from Hymns in corporate worship to 'gospel songs'. To start with these new 'gospel songs' were quite good. They had simple riffs and taglines that people could remember and they were gospel focused. This wasn't always the case. As the secular world developed it's 20th Century individualism and humanist thinking, church music followed a similar trend. The popular gospel songs stopped being about the gospel and started being pithy moralist dittys that said a lot about nothing. Look at songs written in the 50s and sixties and sadly, this is the trend that you will see.
At the same time another movement was becoming a catalyst for change. That was the Hippie movement. Many hippies in America and elsewhere became disillusiond with their 'free' lifestyle and through the work of university groups and others, many young people started turning to Jesus. This is what has been called 'the Jesus movement'.
New converts that were part of the Jesus movement found themselves excluded from traditional churches through a disapproving undertone that churchgoers gave to these new christians. The music didn't suit them, the clothes and 'starchy formalism' didn't suit them and so they formed their own communities. They created their own music based on the pop folk tunes that were big in the sixties and seventies. These new songs were stronger lyrically and soon churches began to sing them instead of the older gospel songs.
Contemporary music is designed to be culturally contemporary. It should be moving with culture. It should be relevant. Contemporary musicians should be to a certain degree listening to contemporary music in order to stay contemporary and engaging. This was the way contemporary christian music was designed anyway.
In Australia, things were a bit different to this and so there are different implications. Australia is culturally behind America. That means that for many of our curches we embraced this contemporary music but we didn't go through the process of working out why to do it. The Jesus movement didn't occur here to the same extent so the imediate need for contemporizing didn't exist. What this has meant is that we have contemporary music with a hymn attitude. We treat contemporay songs the same way as we treated hymns. Are there ways that you can see that still happening - even now?

The spontaneity of contemporary music

2007-06-21T15:57:00.000+10:00

Contemporary music is spontaneous. Organ based - hymn music is designed in a way so that it will never change. An organist can play a score and hit every note just the way it should be hit. Generally, traditional hymn music changes chords on each syllable. So the organ follows and complements the vocal melody. The beat must be just so for the church to sing the song. There isn't room for improvisation or spontaneous arrangement changes (by spontaneous I'm not suggestin you just go off on your own doing your own thing mid-set but I mean changing a structure on a given night).

Contemporary music is written to be disposable. I mean that in a positive way. The chord progressions are generally simple and chords are held for longer. There is room for a piano or electric guitar to improvise in space. This means that for contemporary music, more instrumental voices can be heard and expressed to proclaim God's majesty. Contemporary music is fluid. It can be changed and molded without losing the essence of a song. For example... Blessed be your name can be played slowly or more subdued but it can also be played with a driving rythmn and a celebratory tone.

Contemporary music lives in the chord chart.

What I mean is that contemporary musicians should not feel locked in to a score in the same way as more traditional musicicians. Contemporary musicians are free to create within a song and thus can themselves be praising as well as serving through their strings/keys/skins.

Not only this, but also vocally. Contemporary singers are free to use dynamics in a way that traditional music could not. A singer can inflect emotion with their voice by introducing different volumes and accents. A singer can repeat a line over the top of the congregation or write new harmony and so continually create in praise to God.

This is why I feel that many who have introduced the contemporary music genre into their churches have missed the point. They still enforce a strict regime of following 'the way it is on the cd'. They don't allow their musicians the freedom to express themselves and they continue to enforce 'formal diction' in their singers (formal dction is pro-nounce-ing-your-word-sss-per-fec-tly. Its when the t's sound like d's and every K is heard loud and Klear through the mix). Contemporary music doesn't follow formal diction. It is more like speaking. It is casual. It's spontaneous and it serves us in teaching us not to worship the form but to worship the focus - our great God and his mercy.

With this freedom comes much responsibility but I'll save that for later.

P.S - Photo is of me with the two most spontaneous people I know

Why I love Contemporary Christian Music

2007-06-21T07:58:00.000+10:00

I spend a lot of time devoting myself to defending the place of hymns in our church context. I have all the arguments and reasoning down pat and I'm sure that I rant about it probably too much! What can happen then is that we forget why we do Contemporary music. Sometimes you can get so good at arguing one way that you forget why you do things another way.
I think that often churches that want to be contemporary miss the point of contemporary music and why it is so useful. Over the next week I'll put up a few posts that outline the question - 'why comtemporize (I love making up new words)'.
Contemporary music has heaps of historical, cultural and musical implications that people don't take the time to think about and so just charge in without being intentional just because everyone else is contemporary. I'll try and put something up this afternoon or tomorrow on 'Why contemporary music is different and how to use it well.'

Our Primary Muse

2007-06-20T16:05:00.001+10:00

A few posts ago I mentioned that I expected men like Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman and Lincoln Brewster to soon create more cross centred songs. WhatI meant was that these men write beautiful poetry to describe God our creator and Jesus our friend but less frequently write songs about our salvation or where Jesus ransomed us. I wanted to quickly outline what I meant and I want to give three reasons why the Cross should always be sung.

People (songwriters and cruisos) seem to find the creating majesty of God the primary muse for their reflection. What that means is that above all other things, people love to sing about the creator-ness of God. Another pillar of modern Christian song is an emphasis on vague statements about God's God-ness. eg (I'm trying to make one up without bagging out any particular song) "You are High and wonderful, my God".

This statement is true and so is the fact that God is creator, and we should keep singing songs about these things - but... should they be our primary muse?

I believe Christian song should be primarily reflecting on the cross. Heres why.

1) God is on about the Cross. All of his revealed word points to the cross. The Cross is where we see God's nature and mercy and grace. Hebrews 1:1 says that while in the past God told us about himself in heaps of different ways, now he speaks through Jesus. Jesus who died. We meet God in the cross. Yes, he is the God who created all things, but all things find their fulfillment in the cross.

2) We can only worship God because of the cross. Heb 13:15 says that our sacrifice of praise can only come through Jesus. It is only through his blood that any of us dare approach God. We should be consumed for presuming to come before God and praise him, but we are not because Jesus death has made us holy in his sight.

3) Thirdly, the singing in heaven will all be the cross. Read Rev 5. What get's the angels going? Jesus, the sacrificial lamb. We want to sing now about what we will be singing about then.

Keep writing and singing songs about the cross! There are so many more reasons why but these three were the first I could think of. We should be cross people. We should be cross singers. May we keep being cross centered and may Jesus work there be our primary muse to his glory!!

P.S - The photo is of the band 'muse'. Check them out, they rock.

Resource frenzy

2007-06-19T07:42:00.000+10:00

I'm on a bit of a resource frenzy at the moment. I thought it would be good if I stuck up here a bunch of sites I'm looking at that could be helpful in different ways..

Andy M posted abut hymns and comtemporizing (is that a word) them. One group that are brilliant at this and have already written new music or updated old music to hundreds of hymns is Indelible Grace.
They have a hymn book that is free to download with guitar chords, lead sheets and vocal sheets.
Another site worth checking out is Cyberhymnal. I have a link to them in my sidebar. The site is really daggy and the midi files that play over the top of some of the pages are atrocious. It is a good site for finding out information about hymns that you love though.

For sound and thinking about tech stuff... there has been a good post up on the Garage Hymnal blog this week about sound gear. I also found a cool blog from a guy who runs the sound team at Covenant Life church in the states. Interesting stuff.

For thinking about theology and music... I've been greatly encouraged by the free lectures you can download from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary school of Worship. There are heaps of great gems here. Particularly listen to the lectures from Dr Harold Best, Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend, and David Peterson. Great stuff.

All that should keep you going for a while.

Hymns and arranging

2007-06-18T12:43:00.000+10:00

Andy has some good ideas for updating hymns without changing the tune (not that there is anything wrong with that!) I am currently reading a book called 'Exploring the Worship Spectrum '. It's a book that has writers from 6 different church styles (Liturgical, Hymn based, contemporary, charismatic, blended, emerging) arguing their particular preference. Harold Best writes the article on hymn based worship and it is very good! I'll post some more about my friend Harry later. Check out his website if you are looking for some great stuff to read.

P.S Just discovered Google Books! you can read 'Exploring the Worship Spectrum' for free here

Rosters and Post Traumatic stress

2007-06-14T18:10:00.000+10:00

I love and hate doing our church roster. I hate it because it looms over me as some massive undertaking where I have to line up all the right people with all the right people and fit in everyone and not look biased or self-seeking. It takes a lot of drafts before an ideal roster can be produced.
The love comes from the excitement of trying new things, hearing new combinations, and being reignited to pursue our our goal as a ministry team.
Myself and the music leadership team did a bit of thinking before we put out the latest roster (it's not out yet).
The model we have gone for in the past has been get musos to do as much as they can with each other. We have been aiming to get people to mix with different people all the time so as to create team. With a music team of just under thirty all we have created is a pastoral nightmare! Our new approach is to have three separate bands. These bands will be two weeks on, four weeks off. This allows them to develop ideas together over their two 'on' weeks but also gives them time to arrange their own stuff in the off-weeks. We are hoping this leads to a better sense of 'band' among the smaller groups. Within those groups we are aiming to set up a mentoring system within those smaller bands having older dudes looking out specifically for one or two younger dudes. This may help in keeping up with everyone and having everyone feeling like they belong.
The band model means that rather than being a bunch of christian musos, the cruisos (my affectionate term) can be a band. A single cell.
They can bounce ideas off each other and learn how to serve each other in a smaller context.

As well as all of this we are launching an event called 'Project Sinai' (the first of many 'Projects': watch this space!!!). Project Sinai is an event aimed at keeping our Cruisos passionate about God's word. We are going away together as a team... not really to do too much music stuff, but rather just spending some good time reading God's word and praying to him together. This will help with still feeling like a larger team even though people will be more connected to those in their own band.
How do you do music rostering in your church? What dramas do you see and how do reckon they can be resolved?

P.S - These guys are not from our church band. That would be cool though.

New address

2007-06-14T10:45:00.003+10:00

Hey all. I now have a new url for this site. Welcome to www.singunto.blogspot.com

Please change links accordingly.

See the Morning - CD review

2007-06-13T17:56:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I bought Chris Tomlin's new CD - "See the Morning". It's an album full of hope. That is why it is called 'See the Morning'. Tomlin encourages listeners to 'see the morning' when they feel as though they are going through a period of 'darkness'. God's glory and the joy that it brings to witness it is what ultimately gives hope to those who feel overwhelmed.
There are two songs that I'm particularly hooked on. I won't tell you which they are because I don't want to influence your listening.
Overall the album doesn't have the depth that Tomlin's previous album 'Arriving' had. However, it does rock out a lot more. The energy of this album far surpasses that of Arriving which at times felt lethargic.
I'm sure lots of these new songs will make their ways to our church music books before long.

CS Lewis and praise

2007-06-11T09:21:00.000+10:00

I've been reading a book by CS Lewis called 'Reflections on the Psalms'. Yesterday, I read the chapter on praise in the Psalms. He brings up an interesting question... Is it selfish for God to demand praise from his worshippers? Not only that, but God wanting his people to worship him makes it seem as if he is weak and needs our compliments.
There are two good answers to the question.
Lewis goes on to say that someone who genuinely values something can't help but praise it. Whether it's a poem, a song, a good joke or a piece of art, valuing something leads to praise. His challenge is that if we value God above all things and if we see him as supreme, then the praise we give him should be supreme over the praise we give everything else. It isn't as if by praising God we are just giving him a compliment to satisfy some meglomaniacal urge he has - like a tyrant or dictator. We praise him because we genuinely value him and what he has done. He is valuable above all things - so all things praise him. Luke 19:40 'If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out!'
I listened to John Piper's sermon from New Attitude this week on God seeing God as the most important thing in the universe. It gave a second answer to the question. God is the only being in the universe who can ordain praise for himself without being selfish. This is because God is the best thing to Praise. The action of praising God is supremely valuable for us as we do it. We are recognizing God for who he is and this is right - as opposed to worshipping anything else in all of creation. God is the only true God. So for God to command us to praise him is the most loving, generous thing he can do. Go could have chosen to hide himself from us and to let us continue to worship idols but instead he reveals himself to us and shows us the only being worthy of our praise... Himself!

Yamaha

2007-06-08T07:55:00.000+10:00

The Yamaha site in the states has a page dedicated to church music. Heaps of interesting tech stuff. They are having some online courses throughout June that are free. Might be worth checking them out if you are into sound or recording for Church. I haven't checked everything on the site out so this is not a blanket endorsement.

The mid-section (the leatherman of church music)

2007-06-07T14:05:00.000+10:00

As a guitarist, my main use for a leatherman is as a pair of string cutters. If I was a fisherman, I would mainly use my leatherman for cutting fishing line. If I was an electrician I could use my leatherman to strip wire. If I was a person who was strapped for cash, I could use my leatherman as a weapon and rob a servo. A leatherman is a tool that can be used for all sorts of different things depending on the context.

The mid section of church is surrounded by so many different elements of meeting together (prayer, community announcements, bible reading, sermon, mission spots, givng) that the songs that you sing in this time could be used to help people respond to God in so many ways. You could sing songs about mission to connect with an interview on mission or evangelism or perhaps a song about church and the people Christ has called together to connect with anouncements. Alternatively, you could sing a song that prepares peoples hearts for the sermon or prepare them to give their money for the work at church. All of these ideas have merit.

This set of songs does not have to have the same effect as the first set as the people are already in the door. They have already been singing joyfully together. These mid-section songs can be used to reflect deeper on a more specific facet of Christ's saving work. Sometimes it is appropriate to have an item in this time that might emgage with the part of the Bible the church has been looking at.

All in all, the mid-section is the leatherman of church music. There are so many different roles that it can perform. I think it is important to think intentionally about this section of the meeting. What do I want the congregation to be reflecting on? What do I want them to remember? Too often we stick our filler songs in this section. How much more beneficial it would be if we used this time intentionally and thoughtfully.

as a quick aside

2007-06-06T15:27:00.000+10:00

As a brief aside from singing and purpose... Ren and I have been listening to this year's New Attitude sermons on Discernment. You can download them for free here. If you are pushed for time and can't sit through 8 talks... have a listen to talk 1 by Josh Harris and talk 4 by CJ Mahaney on idolotary. I found them very helpful.

The Final Set (and all it's dramas)

2007-06-05T20:26:00.000+10:00

For a while, let's forget about singing together in the middle of our meeting. I want to focus on the song(s) we do after the sermon.
Historically, there have been many who have shied away from singing after the sermon because they believe it takes away from the message that the congregation have just heard. Ideally, for these people, church-goers will leave church with God's word on their hearts and won't be distracted by singing a song afterward.
I think that this can be true if the song that is sung is unrelated to the sermon. That is the power of song. A 45 minute sermon can be forgotten in a 3 minute song.
But ...a 3 minute song can cement an idea heard in a sermon just as effectively. This is the first reason why I believe it's important to sing after hearing God's word. If done correctly, it can be a tool in helping people retain an idea of what the sermon was about for longer.
The second reason why I think it is important to sing after hearing God's word is that this is the pattern for singing in the Bible. We sing to God and to each other in response to God revealing himself to us. We can't praise God until we know him. As we see more of him, our hearts are ignited to worship him with our lives - and our singing. This is the biblical pattern for praise.
So, while I think it is good to sing at the beginning of church, singing praise to God and being joyful and thankful as a body is much more meaningful after God has spoken through his word in the sermon. How often have you just heard a sermon that reminded you of your need to throw yourself on Christ because he alone can save you and then sung a song like 'In Christ Alone' and it has meant so much more to you. When we sing in response to God's word, our affections are stirred to match what our head is thinking through.
The question that remains for me is... should we only sing one song so that we aren't too distracted or should we sing more because this is the prime time for singing? The answer is easy. Mix it up. Sometimes it will be appropriate for the singing to extend after the sermon. Other times it is difficult to find a song that matches clearly with what has been taught and so to do more than one song would be a stretch. Perhaps at these times it might be more appropriate to have extended prayer rather than singing. Too often, churches fall into an outline rut. There is a fear of change from the way things have always been done. We are blessed at our church to have a ministry team who are not governed by traditional outlines, but are more interested in serving the church in the best way possible. It is important to be flexible.

P.S photo is related because samurai films have extended endings

PPS. 'Seven Samurai' is the greatest film ever made. I stole it from my new brother-in-law.

First set and the Big Bang theory

2007-06-05T08:00:00.000+10:00

Most people start their working week on Monday. Some in our church even work all day Sunday and just knock off work in time to get to church. They are depressed about the week stretching out ahead of them. If Church is in the morning then parents have been waging a war to get o church on time. If it is the evening then most young people have been spending the day with their family. They are tired, they are tense, they are not excited.

Imagine if the first song we sang was a new slow number in a minor key - about man's depravity. This will just disengage the congregation. They already don't feel like being there. How can we use the very first thing we do to turn people's eyes and hearts heavenward? We want people to suddenly get a reality check and gain perspective about their weariness. We want people to stop wallowing in their self-pity and start loving and glorifying Jesus. How?

I choose songs that proclaim big victory ideas. Things like God being Lord of all things or Jesus being King of the world. I also choose songs that are simple lyrically so that it is easy for people to engage with them when they are feeling very disengaged. You want people to suddenly walk out of the world and come and experience something of the Big Bang theory. Their hearts should ignite and suddenly their minds see the week just gone in perspective. This process brings sudden change and evolution so that people are ready to serve one another and hear God's word. The Spirit is the only one who can bring this change and He works through the word of God. That's why I don't choose songs just because they are lively. A lively song that doesn't have biblical truth will do nothing for people's hearts. They need be engaged with God's word and his spirit working through the word.

I try and fit songs in with a theme or idea that will presented in the Bible that night. Of all times, the first set is least crucial for doing this. People will probably forget what they first sing and this time is much better for building a joyful community who love Jesus and who love praising him together.

If you are part of a church use the first set to encourage one another loudly in song. Be a servant by singing with enthusiasm even if its the last thing you feel like. Help others forget their worries and remember their savior.

How deep the Father's love and Purpose

2007-06-04T15:08:00.000+10:00

On Sunday night Dave M preached a sermon from Philippians 3 on valuing the right things. A focus of the sermon was on the fact that Paul's earthly religiosity was never going to save him and only Christ was worth valuing.
Our band had organised a set before the sermon with two songs - "How Deep the Father's Love" and "I Come by The Blood". As time wore on we worked out that we wouldn't be able to fit both songs in. One of the songs (How Deep) we were much tighter at playing but it didn't fit with the flow or content of the night as much as the other (I come by the blood).
While both songs were good songs lyrically, one fitted better than the other. This brought up many questions for me... Which is more valuable - a good song which will be easier to sing along to and that the band and congregation know well, or a song that will teach and encourage the congregation and complement what is being looked at in the Bible?
The question, I think, comes down to purpose. What is the purpose of singing different songs at different times? What is the purpose of the songs sung at the beginning of the night? What are the songs for that we sing before we hear God's word? Why do we sing after the sermon? What should we be singing?
If the purpose of singing before the sermon is just to loosen up and have a good sing of some great truths then I would decide to sing "How Deep the Father's Love" because we were more confident with that song. But if the spot has a far more intentional purpose and we are helping people to recognise something before they hear it explicitly taught, then "I Come By the Blood" is the better choice.
I thought that it could be beneficial to look at purpose all this week. I'll try and post about Why we sing in the broader sense but also why we sing at different times and what is helpful and what isn't. I'm keen to hear your thoughts... What would you have sung?

Song choices

2007-05-30T15:10:00.000+10:00

Hey all.

I got an e-mail from a guy in our youth group the other day asking about a post he had read at the garage hymnal blog in response to the Briefing article on Hillsong and whether to sing Hillsong songs or not. I thought I'd post my reply to him because it explains a little of why we choose the songs we do at Church.

Hey,

Yeah, I've read that garage Hymnal post. I like the way that Andy writes. He doesn't give his views he just humbly questions those of others. I admire someone who can write without arrogance but with humility and a genuine love of the truth.

You may or may not be aware that in our church context there are people who hold all kinds of views on whether to sing Hillsong or not. At Youth the general rule is (not saying it's the best one, or the worst one) - "There might not be anything intrinsically wrong with the song but lets avoid causing any problem and find good songs elsewhere". My personal view is that I would be happy to sing a song no matter where it came from if it is the best song to sing.

By best song I mean: Does it speak truth (with no grey areas), Does the music match the words in a helpful way that is easy to sing and captures the right emotions the words are seeking to portray, And does it fit with the whole direction of where the night is going or what the over arching theme is.

Often I find that the best songs to do this with are the songs we write specifically for the purpose of matching these three criteria. Why look for songs elsewhere if they don't match what you are looking for when you have people who love to write new songs right at your doorstep.

The other category that fit this are hymn texts put to music that can reflect the words in an appropriate way for our time. The reason Hymns are so great is that many were written by guys who were deep thinkers who make me feel dwarfed in their understanding of God and of language and how to use language for God's glory, and that there are so many of them, it's easy to find texts to match what we are studying.

That's why although I would have no problem singing a Hillsong song, I haven't found any lately that have jumped out at me to match these criteria in the best way possible. It's important not to just choose songs because they are popular in Christian circles or because new comers will know them. Lot's of things have been popular before in Christian circles that are bad! We choose songs to lead our congregation in giving appropriate praise to God. This is our chief aim.

Hope all this helps.

Dan

Musos and reading

2007-05-29T22:32:00.000+10:00

I am still getting some responses back from the last post so I should be able to put up some thoughts by Friday.

I've been reading through a series of posts Bob Kauflin wrote in January last year about Christian musicians and why they don't read theological books. He said that in his experience musos don't read many christian books as a general rule. He then explains several reasons why he thinks this is the case. His reasons are:

1. We don't understand the purpose of theology
2. Studying theology is harder than learning a new riff
3. Learning theology takes time
4. We think we can know God better through music

You can look them up here and read more.

One thing I'd like to point out and expand is why Christian musicians should read more theological books.

The musicians and singers at church lead the congregation in magnifying God's name and his glory together as a people. We are the ones who choose which songs best fulfill that role and which ones don't. We arrange the music depending on what we are wanting to teach the congregation about God and how their affections should be ignited towards him.
Too often the musos in church are the guys who want nothing to do with deep thinking. They are the shallow, touchy-feely people who sit through the sermon thinking about the awesome arrangement they have put to the next song. They love vibe over truth. They enjoy the feeling of a good set but miss the cut of a faithful sermon. They love the idea of God because the idea fills them with a sense of mystery and love and awe but if you start talking to them about doctrine they yawn. This is all of course a generalisation.
First and foremost, Christian musos (or Cruisos) should be people who love God's word. It should be God's revelation to them that inspires them to praise him.
If I spent all of my married life telling my wife I loved her - I loved her so much that I just had to sing - all my days the only relation I have with my wife is to sing to her about how great she is, but I never spend any time getting to know her, then whats the point! How much do I really love her? Perhaps I just love singing about her.
Cruisos should want to sing because they have a passion for God's word. I wish more guys came to me and said 'I have been reading ... in the Bible and it has made me feel overcome with a passion for God's glory. I'm so keen to sing to him with his people tonight!'
And if Cruisos are people that are passionate about God's word then their next greatest passion should be those things that help them read it better - those things that help them get to know Christ better. If I loved my wife then I would do anything I could to get to know her more. And if I love Jesus the way that so many songs I sing say I love him, then I will be doing all I can to know him better.

That's part of the reason why I revamped this blog. I want it to be resource for musos not just to help them think about music, but rather to help them think more about Jesus. I pray for a music team that exists for God's glory above all things. I pray for a music team that love to read God's word and love to read those books that help them see him better.

Keys players and freaking out

2007-05-27T07:59:00.000+10:00

Everything I said in that last post might be well and good if you have a band that can improvise and work with chord charts. I'm blessed that the guys I play with are skilled in this way. But what if your piano, trumpet, flute, strings player has no idea how to work a chord chart out? What then?
We had the same problem with these instruments in our context. Most woodwind or strings players have been trained to play within an orchestra setting, and most Piano players have been trained through AMEB. Both of these factors go into having musos who love being told what to do and who struggle with improv. This doesn't mean they are not skilled, they are probably very skilled, but they haven't yet learnt the art of making stuff up.
My hope is to post up here this week some ideas for developing this skill. I'll get some thoughts from some guys who have gone from scores to chord charts and see what they found helpful.
Watch this space.

Chord charts, lead sheets and postmodernism

2007-05-27T07:23:00.000+10:00

Recently I've been able to play music with some guys who go to a church in Sydney. When I first met the music director at the church she told me that they were planning on teaching some of the songs from our church's cd (Wonder of the Cross). Her frustration was that while for our first cd we wrote lead sheets and provided them for every song, our second cd came with none. We also hadn't put out many piano scores. She told me that while they loved the songs, it would be very difficult to teach them to a band without clear set guidelines on how to sing them. This bothered me because I had always assumed that there were lead sheets, and I was perplexed how other churches would be playing the song without them. I think that it would be a worthwhile project to come up with a resource like that so that other churches can find our music helpful in their contexts... That being said, when I give out music to my keys players, I never give them piano scores - I give them chord charts.
That's because I don't want them to feel locked down into one way of playing a song. I can see the importance of having a lead sheet because then the melody is set for the congregation, but piano scores and structural notes lead to a concrete, locked-in way of playing a song.
I think that as creators in God's image, we are continually creating new things - for God's glory. So when the band gets together on Sunday, they are going to create something new. It might be similar to other times but you would hope to never become stale and rigid so that each time we play the song it is exactly the same. I think that post modern congregations appreciate this. Post Modernism, while in it's purest form is foolish and human-centred and non-sensical, can also help us as we think about how to 'do' music for our congregations. Post Modernism has been so accepted by our culture that now most younger people have a mindset that appreciates new things and different forms of expressing the same truth.
At CCEC nites we capture this by trying to create new arrangements of songs all the time. The tension is to do it in such a way that doesn't confuse the congregation but rather helps it see in a fresh way, the truths a song contains. So much church music can become liturgical in the way that we approach it eg. "the verse must repeat twice and then a chorus with a certain predictable lick in the musical interlude". And so the congregation finds the song predictable and belts out the words without having to engage with them - like driving on a road you know well. But just like driving on the road, you never notice little changes or nuances because you aren't concentrating, you are just going through the motions of driving. The exact same thing can happen to a congregation when singing a well known song. But if you change the song enough to make people notice, they will be forced to re-engage with words and ideas that they may not have previously. I don't believe it is such a travesty in a post-modern culture to play a song very differently to how it was written. Often when I teach a song to my music team we get the chord charts and do our own arrangement of the song before we ever hear the artist themselves play the song on a recording. In the end we may go with the original arrangement, but we will never stop creating - even with old songs.

Stephen Lungu and a great encouragement

2007-05-24T10:43:00.000+10:00

Psalm 113 says "Praise the Lord. Praise O servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD. Let the name of the LORD be praised, both now and forevermore. From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised."

At school today we had Stephen Lungu give devotions on this passage. He was a great encouragement to me in the way I go about my life... "always praise the Lord." Often on a Sunday night or a Friday night when we are meeting together, the temptation is for musos to get caught up in the set and how the different arrangements will work, and all the mechanics and forget the very reason why we serve. We serve to praise the Lord. And we don't just praise him when we meet together, we praise him in all things every day.

Mad big ups

2007-05-24T07:48:00.000+10:00

Mad big ups to Dave and Ian (Rodeo Clown) who have made the page look so much better. Thanks so much guys.

The kids don't like to sing

2007-05-23T17:19:00.000+10:00

I have been having an interesting debate with a friend about how to 'do' music at an event geared towards youth who don't know Jesus. I'll present the two views here and let you think about it. Give me your thoughts.

View 1/ We shouldn't do music on 'evangelistic' nights because non-christian teens are already weirded out enough by sitting through a talk on the Bible. They don't know why they are singing and for them to sing would basically be blasphemy anyway. If we are gearing a night towards them then it would make more sense to just have a couple of items. This isn't to say we should never sing, but rather on these special nights we should make youth as accessible as possible. Paul became a Jew to the jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles.

View 2/ People are drawn to Jesus as they see his people worshipping him- in their lives, and as they meet together. Therefore, it's important that on 'evangelistic' nights we do things the way we always do, but with more explanation for why we do it. When we sing we explain that as christians we are so overcome by God's glory that we have to sing. The other thing is that you choose songs that teach those who hear them. Songs that present the gospel in a simple way. The New Testament expects that people will observe the way that we do things and think that they are foolish. There is no point in hiding. However the spirit makes sense of the Gospel and with their eyes opened, people see the importance of worshipping God and praising Jesus.

This is interesting stuff to think about as we plan for doing music at events. Thoughts?

new look blog

2007-05-23T14:39:00.000+10:00

Trying something new. New look, new style, new name, new content. What do you think? (I need some help getting rid of those links in my header. Anyone come to my rescue?)

Chris Tomlin - Frequency

2007-05-23T08:48:00.000+10:00

Chris Tomlin is cool. He looks good, his music is slick and everyone is singing it. Usually that puts me right off someone. I borrowed his album 'Arriving' last year and I came to it with the preconception that I wouldn't like it. Initially I wasn't heaps into it because of the really 'capo-y' chord progressions. However the more I listened the more I loved Chris' exaltation of the trinity and the way that he captured salvation and revealtion history through the album. I still think that he's very hip and very 'christian music', but I think his lyrics are refreshing in a culture of trite phrases and shallow themes. Today I have joined 'Frequency', a site where you can download vids teaching you to arrange the songs better, articles about stuff and have some sense of community with other music leaders and pastors. The coolest thing is though now that I'm a member of Frequency, if Chris Tomlin comes to Australia (he is in july) I get to go early to the concert and be part of a question time about music ministry stuff. Pretty cool I reckon.

Judgement songs

2007-05-22T18:22:00.000+10:00

I go through periods of listening to different music around the place. I've been listening to a lot of music from Mars Hill this week. One song that has struck me as I've listened is a song called "Destructor" written by Team Strike Force (one of the MH bands). Here are the words:
"From the first time you flooded the earth; to the last time you burned up the curse; to the way that you hated your son when you hung all the sins of the world. Holy, Holy, Holy... heavens disappear with a roar, hosts of God will come to destroy, send his declaration of old, God will have his glory one way or another."
The second verse is all about Jesus and that he is glorious. The lyrics are different to most contemporary songs being written. We don't often sing about Judgement although we do sing about God's holiness. I wonder if our hesitation comes from the way that we have been taught about evangelism. Growing up in church and youth group I always believed that the prime reason for telling others about Jesus is because we should not them to go to hell. The urgency we have for evangelism is the urgency you would have to prevent a friend from making a bad mistake. You don't want them to get hurt. The focus is on the person. You don't want them to go to hell. A sensible person wouldn't want that on anyone. Therefore we shouldn't sing songs about God's judgement because that is the big bad thing that we are trying to get everyone away from. There are two big problems with this view. The first is that as a sinful human, I don't care enough about others. I am self-centred and unless someone is very close to me, I don't feel the need to save them from God's wrath. The second is that this isn't what the Bible holds as the primary goal of evangelism. The bible teaches that all things are being brought under the headship of Jesus (Eph1:10) and we as christians are part of this new world order (Eph1:11-12) and so when a new believer puts their trust in Jesus and is sealed with the Holy Spirit they are giving glory to Jesus (Eph1:13-14). We should be so captivated by all of God's glory that we can't help but tell others about him, to the praise of his glory. This is why David can cry out for God to come in Judgement on the wicked (Psalm 10:12-15). He cares about God's glory being upheld more than anything else. This is why we can praise God for his holiness and the way that it is seen in his judgement upon the earth, because his holiness and it's display in the final judgement is glorious.
So songs like "Destructor" are helpful to give me a wake up call. Remember what matters most is God's glory, and he will have it one way or another.

massive week

2007-05-17T21:37:00.000+10:00

I've had a massive week. I've been writing school reports and going to meetings and bible studies and still tried to be a loving husband. Keep praying for me as this week I feel particularly drained by everything.
I am loving phillipians though!

Philip. 1:20
According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.

Oceanworld Manly

2007-05-03T14:48:00.000+10:00

I thought when I heard I was going to Manly Oceanworld it would all about masculine men hunting in the sea.
Turns out it's an aquarium (in Manly). I went there today with my class from school. It was great. Only disappoinment was the lack of eels. Two octopuses though so that was ok. I spent about 4 minutes watching one. They watch you back. You can see their highly developed sea brains working out stuff while they look at you. Part of me loves looking at them in a tank because I'm like "Ha! take God-ordained stewardship you pitiful octo-legged slime beast" On the other hand part of what they represent frightens me. What if they attacked us while we slept?

Why I blog infrequently by Daniel Godden

2007-04-22T08:26:00.000+10:00

The reason is that there is always so many things happening at once. I could blog about Phat camp or about having a week of playing MAX PAYNE2 ( it rocks). But it seems silly to post about heaps of things at once. Another reason is that every three months or so I give Myspace a go. The most recent foray has been with Tammy and the Wolverines. You can check out our page www.myspace.com/tammyandthewolverines. Last day of holidays today. Hanging with family all day then church. Looking forward to hearing Craig Dobbie speak on the Trinity.

Katoomba Easter Convention

2007-04-11T07:22:00.000+10:00

It was really good. Great talks on suffering from David Cook, Robert Amess, and Steve Young. Highlight for me was Robert Amess talks on Christ in Gethsemane and Paul writing to the Phillipians. I got to sing a song there. You can check out the video here.

300

2007-04-11T07:04:00.000+10:00

Went and saw 300 last night. Loved it. I walked out of the cinema desperate to do something manly. What I found really interesting in the movie was the theme of temptation. The temptation to do anything for power, for sex, and for acceptance. Leonidas is offered all these things if he would just bow the knee to Xerxes. Others fail this temptation but he holds true. There is another man who was once offered the world if he would just bend the knee, but he stood up under the temptation. Jesus and Leonidas are real men. Men who don't compromise. My mate Adrian said after the movie that it didn't inspire him to go to war, but it did inspire him to be determined. Men, be determined and don't back down in your resolve to live a holy life.

Mumma and Poppa G

2007-04-01T08:40:00.000+10:00

Yesterday we went to a conference about how to reach Generation Y with the gospel. Lots of good stuff was said by Greg Clarke and Jodie McNeill. One thing that stood out for me though was the two parents who shared what it is like to live with four Gen Y kids. It made me think of my own parents and things that they had done when Tim and I were growing up. Mum and Dad have always welcomed my friends into their home. There was rarely a holiday where Tim or I didn't have mates come along. By doing this they became good friends with our friends. I don't think I appreciated this at the time as much as I do now. It has meant that I have grown up close to my parents and my friends rather than abandoning my family to pursue friendship (a common Gen Y trait). Even now my parents have involved themselves in Night church as kind of 'Mumma and Poppa' Night church. they have a growth group in their house and they spend time with younger people even though Tim and I are not there as much. I appreciate this, and I hope that as I grow up I will keep looking for ways to be involved in ministry rather than just settling into life comfortably.

Renae, my Ruth

2007-03-23T18:19:00.000+11:00

I haven't listened to Mark Driscoll for a long time. My friend Tim uses me to download all his sermons and pass them on on a CD. This morning I decided I would listen to some sermons in the car and I downloaded the recent Redeeming Ruth series from Mars Hill church. The sermons themselves were good but the presentation of the bible reading was awesome. It presented the story to me in a way that was fresh and helped me to focus.
I was struck by Ruth's character. She chooses responsobility to look after her mother-in-law over a more comfortable option living with her own people. She is smart and knows how she can get food and shelter for herself and Naomi. And finally, she puts God and worshipping him above anything else. She gives up her pagan life and joins with God's people and trusts in his providence. I think that in many ways I have married Ruth. My wife has integrity, smarts, and good looks as well as a solid, unshaking faith in God and his promises. I love her and I hope that I can be Boaz to her. (P.S - not to copy other famous photo competitions that take place on other blogs, see how many people you can recognise in this picture... I'm related to at least 4 of them)

Love divine

2007-03-10T11:11:00.000+11:00

This was my Grandpop's favorite Hymn. It is fast becoming one of mine...

Love Divine
Love divine, all loves excelling-
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling.
All thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion.
Pure unbounded love thou art.
Visit us with Thy salvation.
Enter every trembling heart.

Come almighty to deliver-
Let us all Thy life recieve.
Suddenly return and never,
never more Thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
serve Thee as Thy hosts above.
Pray and praise Thee without ceasing.
Glory in Thy perfect love.

Finish, then, Thy new creation-
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before Thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.

I'm working on a good tune to match these words.

Powerpoint backgrounds and fonts

2007-03-10T10:51:00.000+11:00

These are key. I have had a lot of fun this week downloading backgrounds and fonts. I feel that sometimes a good background makes a difference in a person as they come into church in whether they are instantly engaged as the song starts. Our youth group has developed this idea. Our night church hasn't yet. I got mine from two sites Dave M put me on to. www.dafont.com is where you can go to get cool fonts, and www.simplyyouthministry.com is where you can get free powerpoint backgrounds. Once you get into fonts and backgrounds though, you will never stop. it's a drug.