Worship Matters

Someone reminded me of a post I did back in May of 2007 on this topic. Here it is again. I pray that today fills you with gratefulness not only for the freedom of our country for which many have given their lives, but also for the eternal freedom from God’s wrath found only in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ.

West sent in this question.

Do national holidays have any influence on your worship planning? To what extent? Specifically, would you use the Sunday before Independence Day to focus on our utter dependence on Christ, our freedom from bondage to sin, our slavery to Christ (and so acknowledge, but spiritualize the holiday), or do you have a way of genuinely giving thanks for our nation without worshiping it? Is it just contextual - the answer depending on the congregation we serve? Surely we shouldn’t pull out the American flag, and sing “My County ‘Tis of Thee” in worship, but how can we show (if you think we should at all) heart-felt thanks to God for the United States?

I answered a similar question last year, and thought I’d repost that answer, slightly edited, here.

In brief, since God’s kingdom is not of this world (Jn. 18:36), we don’t feel any obligation to draw attention to, highlight, or celebrate civil holidays as part of our Sunday gatherings. There are a number of reasons. Our country doesn’t set the agenda and priorities for the meetings of the church – God’s Word does. Also, one country’s celebration may confront another country’s values. For instance you won’t find many Christians in Britain excited about Independence Day. Finally, we gather on Sundays to remember the covenant God has made with us, celebrate the redemption He has provided through His Son, and to encourage one another to live lives worthy of the Gospel. The values celebrated by a particular public holiday may not always line up with those goals.

However, that doesn’t mean we need to completely ignore civil holidays. I asked our resident theologian and my good friend Jeff Purswell for his thoughts, and he wrote:

“If [civil holidays] loom large in the mind of my congregation, I don’t want to draw more attention to it by ignoring it—rather, such occasions become opportunities to help people think Biblically about them and to place them in their proper theological context (e.g., on July 4th: “We’re most grateful for the freedom we have as a nation this day. We’re completely undeserving, and most in the world don’t experience this common grace. However, it should remind us of a greater freedom we have. . .”).”

For example, we use Mother’s Day as an opportunity to extol the value of motherhood in God’s plan, and will often honor them in some way. One year we had a mother/daughter choir sing two songs. We emphasize that Hallmark cards doesn’t determine who we honor, but we don’t want to miss an opportunity to draw attention to the significant role mothers play in raising the next generation. Near Memorial Day we might take a moment to honor and thank those who have served our country in the service. In previous years our church held a Labor Day picnic as an evangelistic event for the community. But we never allowed a public holiday to define or govern our decisions about how we led the Sunday meeting. In other words, we didn’t sing God Bless America, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, or any other patriotic song. Of course, we can always pray for our government, but that’s not limited to a particular holiday our country might be observing, and doesn’t assume God is required to bless us because we’re a “Christian” nation. (1 Tim. 2:1-2)

Finally, Jeff made the excellent point that we shouldn’t take the opposite extreme of unnecessarily criticizing the holiday or those who observe it.

“[Civil holidays] can be real expressions of common grace that enable us to rest, celebrate, and even to do so with a common frame of reference with non-believers. Therefore, I don’t want to be a dour, angry, graceless, ungrateful spiritual snob (e.g., “The 4th of July means NOTHING!!!! This country is under God’s judgment!!! The secular humanists have stolen this nation from the Christian vision of our founding fathers!!!!”).”

Good counsel. God tells us in Colossians 4:5-6, “Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”

Let’s make the most of every opportunity to exalt the superior glory, wisdom, grace, and truth of our Savior and His glorious Gospel that provides our only hope of lasting freedom and joy.

Life comes at you fast sometimes…

I’ve been finishing up a few projects, including our latest kids’ CD, To Be Like Jesus, and the Next Live CD, from our Next conference. That will be available next Wednesday. 13 songs for $5. I’ll keep you posted on the details.

But I just looked at my calendar and saw that it’s exactly five weeks until WorshipGod09 begins, and three weeks until registration closes. This will be our 7th conference since 1999, all held at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD.

I’m looking forward to WorshipGod09 for a number of reasons.

• We’ll be spending three and a half days hearing rich teaching, singing Christ-exalting songs, encountering God’s greatness and goodness, being equipped in the theology and practice of worship, and hanging out with around 1500 folks who want to live for the glory of Jesus Christ and help others do the same.
• My good friend C.J. Mahaney, whom I’ve served with in various contexts for about twenty years, will be joining me for an interview on “What We’ve Learned the Last 30 Years.”
• John Piper will be speaking twice on two of the most important things to pass on the next generation when it comes to worship: biblical truth and heart passion.
• Thabiti Anyabwile, one of the favorite speakers from WorshipGod08, will be flying in from his church in the Cayman Islands to talk to us about why the church should matter to musicians.
• My good and smart friend, Jeff Purswell, will be instructing us on how musicians should think about their role in the church.
• Keith and Kristyn Getty will be sharing thoughts on songwriting in two seminars and singing some of their songs for us.
• Shai Linne, Christian hip-hop artist from Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia, will be sharing his thoughts and songs with us.
• Ben Gowell, guitarist for Sara Groves and Paul Baloche, will be teaching two seminars on electric guitar.
• Don Whitney will be joining us again to talk about Thirsting for God and Family Worship.
• We’ll be releasing our newest Sovereign Grace Music album, Sons and Daughters.
• We’ll be giving away a lot of stuff.

If previous years are any indication, it will be an intense, exhausting, fun, eclectic, rich, fruitful time. I’d love it if you were able to join us. If you can’t make it, please consider praying that God’s Spirit will work powerfully in us to see Christ exalted, his people equipped, and God’s Word faithfully proclaimed.

My friend John Ripley, drummer for the band Generation Letter, recently emailed me some questions about how to figure out song writing credits. This is an area that can be sticky business because of miscommunication, no communication, ignorance, and indwelling sin.

After writing songs for 30+ years, I’ve seen songwriting from all sides. I’ve written by myself, written songs that others have edited, and edited songs written by others. I’ve also served as a songwriter and a publisher. To my shame, I used to be much more concerned about who got the credit on a song. I remember working on a project for GLAD years ago and writing up the song credits. I gave myself all the music credits and only shared the lyric credits. When one of the band members asked me about it, I felt justified in what I had done. I’d see it much differently now. At least I hope I would…

If you’re a song writer that has never had a song published, the decision about who gets the credit may not concern you. Then again, it might. It’s curious how our perspective might change when we realize that being listed as a song writer can result in financial benefits, however meager they are at first.

I thought John asked some good questions. Here they are along with my answers. Hope they’re helpful.

1. What is the overall “right way” of doing things when it come to songwriting credits?
There’s no “right way” of figuring out songwriting credits. The three best things to remember are: talk about it beforehand, be humble, and be generous. But don’t include someone as a writer when everyone knows that they really contributed nothing to the final song. Your conscience won’t leave you alone.

2. What amount of credit is given to the person with the original idea or concept?
It depends on what the writers have agreed to. If the person who came up with the idea did nothing to actually write the song, they generally don’t get a writing credit. But if it happens frequently that one person has a song idea, then it might be wise to consider giving them a percentage of the songwriting credits. If I never would have written a song without someone giving me an idea and talking it through with me, I generally like to give them some credit for that.

3. Is there a difference for a “band” versus individuals songwriters?
When a “band” writes a song the royalties are usually split between everyone, go into a band “kitty”, or a combination of both.

4. How would you treat members of the band that are no longer involved but were a part of a song in its original developmental stage?
If someone helped write a song, but is not in the band any more, they should be included as a co-writer. If there’s a question, go ahead and be generous.

5. What else are we not thinking about that we need to know going forward in the area of songwriting credits and or publishing rights?
See my answer to #1. Be more concerned about writing a great song, regardless of who gets the credit. Write for the glory of Jesus Christ, not your own. Write to serve, not to impress. Remember that every word we write, every lyric we craft, every tune we compose, every chord progression we come up with, has been made possible by the giver of all good gifts, who deserves all the credit and all the glory. Of course, if the song is bad, then we get the credit.

Any more thoughts?

I’m very happy to announce that our new album for kids, To Be Like Jesus, is now available at the Sovereign Grace online store.

Why another kid’s CD? A few reasons.

• We think there’s a need for more children’s songs that aren’t simply adult songs with kid’s voices.
• We’d like to see more kid’s songs that proclaim truth rather than express love for God, which many children don’t have yet.
• We wanted kids to see that God wants us to be joyful, loving, faithful, gentle, etc., because that’s the way he is.
• We also wanted kids to see that it’s impossible to be joyful, loving, faithful, gentle, etc. apart from believing the gospel and being empowered by God’s Spirit.
• We wanted to serve children’s ministries and families who are looking for contemporary worship songs with substance for kids.

While the target age is 6-10, we think older children, and even adults will enjoy the project. Here’s a list of the songs, and the corresponding fruit of the Spirit (some are fairly obvious):

To Be Like Jesus
Because You First Loved Me (Love)
Joy
Peace
Gotta Wait (Patience)
You Show Me Kindness (Kindness)
Nothing Better Than Jesus
Jesus, You’re My Hope (Self-Control)
Good and Gracious (Goodness)
Make me Faithful (Faithfulness)
Give me Self-Control
Gentle Like Jesus (Gentleness)

Putting the album together was a joy. Steve Cook produced it, using Sara Groves’ rhythm section. We utilized 13 Sovereign Grace songwriters and 8 vocalists. All but 4 of the songs were co-writes. I loved the fact that so many folks were able to contribute.

We included two general songs as well as two songs on self-control because we couldn’t decide which one to include…and we figured no parent would mind their child hearing more about self-control.

The To Be Like Jesus CD contains guitar charts for all the songs as well as MP3s of the accompaniment tracks. We hope that will make it easier to use these songs both in churches and families.

I couldn’t be more excited about the project. If you have any ideas for helping us to get the word out, let me know.

You can now sample songs from our next children’s CD, To Be Like Jesus, at the Sovereign Grace Music website. The album is scheduled for release later this month.

To Be Like Jesus contains 12 songs. Ten of them are based on the qualities listed as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. I know only nine are listed there, but we included two on self-control because…well, any parent knows why we have two songs on self-control. The other two songs teach that God wants to make us like his Son, and when he does, we bear the fruit of the Spirit.

We tried hard to avoid two extremes on this project. The first is assuming that every kid singing these songs is a Christian. Obviously, that won’t be true. So the songs are primarily meant to teach and proclaim, rather than express the thoughts of a converted soul (although there are some of those songs as well). Second, we wanted to be sure kids understood we can’t be joyful, patient, kind, good, etc. apart from the Spirit’s work in us. The goal isn’t simply to be a “good citizen.” It’s to be transformed by the power of God’s Spirit into the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. And it’s all made possible through Jesus dying in our place for our sins.

The tracks were played by the drummer, bassist, and guitar player for Sara Groves. They did an outstanding job. The rhythm tracks overflow with creativity and joy. We used vocalists from Sovereign Grace churches in Orlando, FL and Gaithersburg, MD. The whole project was produced by Steve Cook.

Check out the samples and let me know what you think.

Next was simply amazing. Teaching from Josh Harris, Kevin DeYoung (a new favorite speaker), D.A. Carson, C.J. Mahaney, and Sinclair Ferguson. All the messages are available for download at the Next website. Do yourself a favor and download them all — now. Listen to them soon. I guarantee your passion for the glory of Christ and your desire to make him known will grow.

I had the privilege of putting together the song list for this year’s Next conference. Listed below are the songs we ended up doing. In the next three weeks, we plan to offer a download of 12 songs recorded live at Next for five bucks. You’ll also be able to purchase them individually for $.99. Charts will be available for free. We’ll get the news out through the Sovereign Grace websites, as well as Facebook and Twitter. Stay tuned.

Saturday PM
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus (chorus)
Be Praised – Michael Gungor
All Because of Jesus  - Steve Fee
What a Savior – Devon Kauflin
I Need You – Kristian Stanfill
All I Have is Christ – Jordan Kauflin
Speak, O Lord – Getty/Townend

He is Jesus – Stephen Altrogge
Jesus Shall Reign – Isaac Watts

Sunday AM
All Hail the Pow’r of Jesus Name –Edward Perronet/Judah Groveman
The Name Above All Names – Judah Groveman
By This We Know Love – Judah Groveman
Jesus Paid it All – Elvina Hall/Kristian Stanfill
The Gospel Song – Drew Jones/Bob Kauflin

It Is Well – Horatio Spafford/Phillip Bliss

Sunday PM

Praise the Lord –Doug Plank/Bob Kauflin
God Over All – Devon Kauflin
Nothing But the Blood – Matt Redman
O the Deep, Deep Love – Bob Kauflin
Blessed Is – Doug Plank
In Christ Alone – Keith Getty/Stuart Townend

I Need You
I Will Glory in My Redeemer – Steve & Vikki Cook
All I Have is Christ
Amazing Grace – John Newton 

Monday AM
All Because of Jesus
He is Jesus
Redeemed – John Reilly
I Need You
Jesus Paid it All - Hall/Stanfill

Jesus, Thank You – Pat Sczebel
Before the Throne – Vikki Cook/Charities L. Bancroft

Monday PM
Across the Great Divide – Mark Altrogge
The Name Above All Names
By This We Know Love
The Power of the Cross – Getty/Townend
My Hope is Built On Nothing Less – Edward Mote

Happy Day – Tim Hughes

Tuesday AM
Be Thou My Vision - traditional hymn
Happy Day
What a Savior
All I Have is Christ
Let Your Kingdom Come - Kauflin

In Christ Alone

The Next conference is now history. What a fantastic time. I’ll be posting reflections and the song list on Worship Matters in the next few days.

In the mean time, it’s time to turn to the next big event on my calendar - WorshipGod09: From Generation to Generation, Aug. 5-8, to be held in Gaithersburg, MD, near Washington, D.C. We have a great line up of speakers and musicians including John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, Thabiti Anyabwile, Jeff Purswell, Don Whitney, Keith and Kristyn Getty, Shai Linne, Ben Gowell, and more.

As in years past, we’ll have plenty of giveaways, free lunches for registrants, new songs to learn, and teachings meant to inspire and equip you for your role in your local church. Whether you’re a worship leader, pastor, musician, tech team member, songwriter, or someone who wants to learn more about worshiping God, you’ll benefit from the conference. 

We’ve almost hit the 1100 mark in registration, so there’s still room for you and/or your team. But some of the seminars are already full, and rates go up $25 on June 1, so you may want to head over to the WorshipGod09 website now.

I’m in the middle of preparing for the Next conference, that starts this Saturday, May 23, and ends on Tuesday, May 26. Over 2500 mostly single men and women will be gathering in Baltimore to hear D.A. Carson, C.J. Mahaney, Josh Harris, Kevin DeYoung, and Sinclair Ferguson expound on the glory of Jesus Christ.

Next was previously called New Attitude, and was started by Josh Harris. It’s continued almost every year since 1999. From the website:

Next isn’t built on “new.” It isn’t about the next trend or fad. Next is built on the old, treasured, and true. It’s about rediscovering old truth and recommitting to it.

The vision of Next is to gather worshipers of Jesus Christ who burn with a passion to see the gospel transferred to the next generation. Next is about faithfully receiving the gospel—the message of Christ and him crucified–from those who have gone before us, holding fast to the gospel personally, and passing the gospel on to those coming after us.

I have the privilege of leading the conference in times of corporate worship and will be serving alongside three different bands. The first is the Na Band, led by my son, Devon. We’ve led together in the past and it’s a joy to anticipate serving with him again, singing many of the songs from their CD Looked Upon. For two sessions I’ll be playing with Zelos, led by Judah Groveman. These are guys from my home church, who have a heart both to reach unbelievers with quality original music and to serve the church in leading corporate song. Finally, I’ll be leading one session with the band, Reilly, fronted by John Reilly. Hence the name. The members of Reilly hail from the Sovereign Grace church near Philadelphia, and they’ve produced two CDs. Because they feature two violinists, they sometimes refer to their music as “violin rock.”Like the members of Na Band and Zelos, they count it a privilege to use their musical gifts to serve others in magnifying the glory of Christ through song.

In addition to the bands, we’ll also add a choir for two sessions and a 15 piece string section for another two sessions.

What does all this mean for me? Well, it makes putting together the songs for Next something like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I’ve tried to take into consideration the following factors:

• songs that fit the message of a particular meeting
• songs the follow a particular message
• songs that people know 
• new songs that we want people to learn
• songs that each band knows
• songs we want to repeat
• songs that Josh wants us to sing
• songs that we’ll have choir parts for
• songs that we’ll have string parts for
• songs that we might want to do “as the Spirit leads”

It’s been a longer process than I anticipated, but I think we’ve finally gotten a list together. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Chris recently wrote me to ask a question about the tension between congregational-friendly keys and leader-friendly keys.

I have a upper-mid range tenor voice and though I can sing lower fairly easily, I find that if I transpose a song to a “congregational friendly” key the song loses energy, sometimes significantly. I want to serve the people in my church well and I am willing to put up with less energy if they are more comfortable singing along, but if the time of singing is musically flat, I wonder if it may be more detrimental to the overall “experience” (for lack of a better word) than to have people stretch vocally or sing in parts. Any thoughts?

This topic came up in planning for our meeting this past Sunday. I led the singing with John Reilly and his band from Philadelphia. John is a tenor and usually sings songs in a higher key than a congregation would be comfortable with. So we made the decision to drop a couple of the songs a step. Being a humble guy, John was fine with it. (By the way, Reilly is one of the bands I’ll be leading worship with at the Next conference later this month.)

There’s a wide variety of opinions when it comes to what’s an “appropriate” key for congregational singing. My basic approach is to keep songs from a low A to a high D, but there are certainly exceptions and other aspects to consider. The strongest range for the congregation seems to be between G and D. That’s where a lot of up tempo choruses end up (Blessed Be Your Name, for example). Here are some thoughts I hope are helpful, in no particular order.

Listen
How do you know if you’re singing songs in keys that are too high? If the men in your church regularly switch to a lower octave, if people look like they’re straining trying to hit the notes, or if half the congregation drops out at the chorus, you should probably think about dropping the key. Your key is too low if it’s difficult to hear the congregation on the lower parts of the song. Of course, most of us have members in the congregation who will gladly let us know if the songs are too high or too low.

Tempo
Slower songs with a narrow range (less than an octave) can work fine in lower keys because they don’t require as much energy. So “Here I am to Worship” (range of a 5th) could be done in C, D, or E. On the other hand, uptempo songs naturally require more energy and people can often belt out the higher notes without a problem. For instance, I’ve been in meeting where people didn’t seem to have a problem singing an F# on the chorus of a Did You Hear the Mountains Tremble (although I’m not exactly clear on what that chorus means).

Range
The widest range a song will go is usually an octave and a fifth, the same range as The Star Spangled Banner. In those cases, I opt for a range of G to D or A to E. Shout to the Lord is an octave and a fourth, so A is a good key, although it can also be done in Bb. The hymn Jesus Paid it All has the range of an octave, but Kristian Stanfill’s version makes it an octave and a 4th. So I do that in A or Bb. It can be done in C, but the bridge briefly hits an F.

Repetition
If much of the melody stays within a certain range, I’ll factor that into the decision. So if a song has a chorus that stays up around a D, I often drop the key of the song a step, as long as it doesn’t make it too low in other parts. So I typically do Beautiful One by Tim Hughes in the key of C. Hark! the Herald Angels Sing has a range of a 9th, but the chorus hits the high note six times. So I’d generally choose the key of F over G, making the high note a D.

Modulation
For hymns or hymn-like songs, it’s also possible to modulate on the last verse or two. That way people are only singing the highest notes for a brief time, usually when their hearts are full of faith and it’s easier to sing higher. So we start “In Christ Alone,” which has a range of an octave and a 4th, in D, then modulate to E between the second and third verses. That makes the top note an E, but we only sing it 2 or 3 times.

Parts
If your church naturally sings in four parts, it’s possible for the melody to go up to an E or F without a problem, because the guys who can’t hit those notes will generally be singing the bass part.

Serving the Church
Finally, I have to choose, I want to sing songs in keys that are comfortable for the congregation, not me. Ideally, we haven’t gathered simply to listen to my voice, but to each other’s. I want the energy to come from the congregation, not me. That doesn’t mean I can’t do a solo in a key that works for me. But when we’re singing together, I want to serve the congregation. If I’m more comfortable in a higher range, I can always add harmony or vocal fills in strategic places.

While churches can genuinely worship God with songs that are too high or too low, the right keys can help people express their faith-filled praise in ways that are effective, encouraging, and enjoyable.

Over on the Sovereign Grace Music Facebook site we have a race going on.

In mid-June we plan to release our second kid’s CD, To Be Like Jesus. (The first was Awesome God). It’s 12 songs based on the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5. The songs teach that these qualities (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.) come from God himself, and that we can’t have them apart from knowing Jesus as the Savior.

Yesterday, Stephen Altrogge let our Facebook fans know of a way to get two free songs from the CD when it comes out. Here’s what he wrote:

Okay here’s the deal. At this exact moment we have 5,348 [UPDATE: now 6220] dedicated fans of Sovereign Grace Music, which is pretty awesome. We’d like to reach 7,500 fans by the time we release the children’s album on June 15th. If we reach 7,500 fans we’ll give away two songs from the album to every fan of Sovereign Grace Music. In case you missed it, that’s two songs for the price of zero.

And this is where you come in. We can’t reach 7,500 fans without your help. Can you help us spread the word? Here’s how:

- Go to the Sovereign Grace Music fan page
- Click the button in the top left corner that says “Suggest to Friends”
- Select friends that you think would enjoy Sovereign Grace Music. Go ahead, get a little mouse happy.

That’s it. It takes thirty seconds (if you’re slow). So that’s about it. Let’s do it (insert theme song from “Chariots of Fire”).