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time for another stop-motion installment of worship practice.

hooray!

[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Vf8vVfvYM[/youtube]

blessings

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a couple sundays ago we had an evening worship meeting to talk about our vision for worship at calvary hanford.

here’s the media from the event, should you desire to check it out.

quicktime

windows media

blessings

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this past sunday i was on the rotation to lead worship, which i am every third week. in my preparation last week i decided i wanted to try something ‘different.’

what does that mean? i don’t know. that’s why it’s different. i like to try out new things because i feel it causes me to grow and develop and helps to keep me from becoming stagnant in that area of service to the Lord.

the problem with wanting to try something different (as opposed to it happening accidentally) is that i don’t usually know what that difference will actually be…leaving me with the curious responsibility of coming up with something meaningful, yet not usual for our corporate worship services on sunday morning.

the other problem is that i only have about 4 ideas per year…you can see the mess i had made for myself.

at least six times in the Psalms, once in Isaiah and twice in Revelation we are encouraged to sing to the Lord a new song. as a worship leader i think it’s fair to take that attitude and apply it to my methods, techniques, song selections and other miscellaneous parts of worship.

it’s not that change for the sake of change is good. rather, to me it is about cultivating what God has allowed me to be a part of. pruning leaves, planting seeds, insert other farming metaphor here.

so, this time around i decided to do 4 songs instead of the usual 5 (well…to be fair, 4 with a little medley before the 5th song), we introduced 2 new songs instead of none and i broke my rule of never doing more than 2 songs consecutively in the same key (we did 3).

i also continued something newish i’ve been doing, reading an excerpt from a Psalm, or the Psalm in its entirety, to help us all focus on the Lord during our singing.

in the end, the changes were beneficial for our corporate worship. the people seemed to connect with the Lord in a wonderful way. i learned (once again) that even ‘good’ rules i make for myself in preparing worship sets can be changed or broken from time to time if it is Christ-centered and purposeful.

have a listen here

have a…watch…here

what helps you to focus on the Almighty during worship?

: click me :

recently i’ve been wanting to do a bit more posting on ministry topics (the most astute of observers might have noticed…did YOU?!?).

now, frequenters of worship leader blogs know that lots of worship leaders post 2 types of entries quite frequently…’worship confessionals’ and set lists.

set lists are self-explanatory…but is there anything more boring than reading a plain list of song titles? i hardly think so. maybe a list of I Love Lucy episode titles…so, if i were to post set lists there must be an interesting way to do so…maybe…i’m a bit skeptical now that i think about it. there must be a better way than to just enter the text titles of that week’s worship songs.

‘worship confessional’ is a term that may be new to some of you. the idea is that the worship leader gets on his mac and records himself talking about his inspiration for the set, the preparation (or lack thereof), how the actual music went, what was going through their mind at the time, etc. etc. LOTS of worship folks do this. it is an interesting concept.

to be honest, every time i’ve started to watch a worship confessional i get about 15 seconds in and then become so disinterested i surf somewhere else. anywhere else. it’s not that the habit isn’t meaningful, it’s just usually not very meaningful to me, a person who doesn’t know this confessing worship leader, doesn’t know their church, their songs, any of that stuff. so, i don’t make it past the first sentence. i’m sure that the people involved with that worship leader or the church would find this practice meaningful, even fruitful, but i don’t find myself connecting to such a post. thus, i don’t want to do worship confessionals.

so what to do? not sure. there must be either a sythenthis of the two ideas, or even an original idea mulling around in my brain. only time will tell. i’d love for you musicians (and you worship leaders who stumbled upon this site after googling ‘worship confessionals’) to give me your input as to what might be though provoking or read-worthy.

that said, sunday’s worship was warm. sadly, my wife still hadn’t recovered her voice, so it was me, zach and rob pounding out I-V-VI-IV-I with all our might.

we opened up with We Are Hungry, and we did so for a couple of reasons: first, i love this song. it’s just one of my favorites…easy to sing, fun to play, great message. second, i find it to be a great way to focus the congregational thoughts on what is going to take place over the next 90 minutes or so.

what helps you commune with God better when it comes to sunday morning worship music?