Yesterday I received an email from another guy in ministry asking for some ideas for new music. Looking for something for the 18-30 year old crowd. I had some suggestions of my own, but I wanna hear yours!
What bands/groups/singers are you digging for church music outside of the normal Hillsong, Fee, Crowder, Tomlin, etc.?
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Spill it!
As some of you may have noticed this morning, I am on vacation and therefore not at church! My gorgeous family and I have trekked up to Alaska to vacation with the Family Fun Network (or so it has been named) for family vacation this year. We are only 3 days in and we are having a blast. So since I’m not there and I don’t have setlist for this morning, I thought I would give you a few songs that I’m loving right now for you to check out!
We Will Shine – Nick Thurmond – Not Alone
Beautiful Things – Gungor – Beautiful Things
Wake Up My Soul – Andy Kirk – Wake Up My Soul
Our God – Chris Tomlin – Passion: Awakening
Yesterday I posted about a couple of my favorite songs with lyrics that paint amazing images. I want to stay there for another post. Actually I want to stay on one specific song for this post. I’m gonna go back to the song How He Loves.
As you may have read yesterday, the lyrics are beautiful. This song to me is just an amazing picture of the way that my God loves me. At least that was until today. Today as I was writing out the chords and lyrics to this song getting ready for this up coming Sunday, I stumbled onto a video on YouTube of the author of How He Loves, John Mark McMillan. I didn’t even really know what I was clicking on until I started reading the description as he started talking. He is leading worship at some sort of conference and telling the story of the song. For those of you that like the song or have heard it or sing it in church, this is absolutely worth watching. I haven’t wanted to get the song out of my head and I can’t think about it like I did before, just as another great worship song. The video is a little long, but for all you worship leaders out there (and for everyone else for that matter) I think it is definitely a must see!
He is jealous for me
Love’s like a hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
And I realize just how beautiful You are and how great Your affections are for me.
We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way He loves us
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chx6s3qXKt4]
Are we that willing to serve our God?
Well, I think I have officially moved to WordPress. I know the site isn’t perfect and my page is busy/boring and I don’t have my cool palm trees anymore, but there are some other things that I can do here that I couldn’t before. As you may have noticed I have a couple other pages at the top that you can choose to go to that have been more or less a dream of mine to do. One of the things that I love to do is help others in their ministries. Obviously, the music side of that is the easiest thing for me to help with, but still. There is a church in Amarillo that I have had the chance to help with switching to multiple sites and using a click track and Pro Tools. That stuff is a blast to me.
So for those of you that are interested, I am hoping to continue using the other pages on this blog as a tool for other worship leaders. The more input we have there the better it would be for all of us. The page Setlists is a page that we can use to share the songs that we are doing and that we like (you don’t have to be a worship leader to give input). The churches around me aren’t my competition they are my team. Let’s work together and share some of the basic stuff! The page Worship Resources at the moment is just a list of the songs that I could email out to someone that needs one of those songs chorded for them or is in a hurry. I am not sure yet, but hopefully I can figure out a way to just upload stuff to the page itself and cut out the emailing. But my vision for that page is that we can share some of the actual resources that way. Maybe just a way of connecting us there. Who knows. But its all the start of a vision that I believe could make us better worship leaders and help us realize that we are a team and not competition.
As you may already know, I am a worship pastor. One of my favorite things about working for LifeChurch.tv as a worship pastor is that I have the freedom to play what I want. Of course, what songs go over well, songs that are rather new, songs that are singable, etc. goes into it as well, but I still get to choose. That is great. But one of the things that I think every church and worship pastor deals with is the question of how to get people to engage in the music we are doing. Several of the things that I think help are songs that are singable, understandable, catchy, powerful, familiar as well as a band that believes what they are playing and singing. Obviously as a worship pastor, this is something that we always strive for. What are your thoughts?
