13 Jun, 2007
New Songs, New CD’s, and a New Website
Posted by: Bob Kauflin In: —Sovereign Grace Music
I’m currently in the middle of moving my office from Covenant Life Church to Sovereign Grace Ministries. The two buildings are actually connected, so it’s not that big a deal. As my responsibilities at Covenant Life have been assumed by Ken Boer, it’s released me to give more time to writing, training, and overseeing music for Sovereign Grace. We’ve also needed more office space at Covenant Life, so it was the right time to make the move. Right now all my books and CD’s are boxed up in an empty office as shelves are being installed. I should be in my new office next week.
There are plenty of things I’d like to be blogging about right now, but haven’t been able to carve out the time. So here are a few miscellaneous items.
Spontaneous Songs from the New Attitude Conference
At times when I lead corporate worship, I get an impression while I’m preparing or leading that God wants to minister to a specific group of people through a prophetic, or spontaneous, song. At the recent New Attitude Conference, I sang two which people have asked for. At one point we sang the phrase “If you should speak or should remain in silence,” during “Great is the Lord.” I shared that I thought people were present who felt God had not been speaking to them as a result of some loss they had experienced. I then sang this song. At another session, we sang a line “I’m singing freedom all my days” from “All Because of Jesus.” Afterwards I felt God wanted to specifically address those who weren’t “singing freedom”, but were battling the guilt of past sexual sin or the power of present sexual temptation. You can listen to or download that song here.
Brian Oaks CD
Brian Oaks sent me his CD, There Still is Room, at the request of our mutual friend, Kevin Twit. I listened to it over 25 times (according to my ITunes) in the first couple weeks as I was working on my book. Brian is a fine guitarist from the Northwest, who has a great voice and has written some excellent revisions and arrangements of hymns. You can check it out here.
Glorify CD
The Sovereign Grace church in Orlando, FL has released their own project, called Glorify. It’s the first of what I hope will be many regional Sovereign Grace recordings. It’s a live project with twelve new songs for corporate worship. My good friend Todd Twining oversaw it, and Steve Cook produced it. Todd tried to involve as many people as he could and ended up using nine different vocalists, eight composers, and multiple instrumentalists. He’s doing a great job training songwriters, musicians, and worship leaders in the Florida region. Although all the cuts are worth listening to, I particularly recommend High Above All (an up-tempo song exalting God’s sovereignty), Breathe on Us (a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to work in us in specific ways), Jesus Died for Me (a beautiful celtic sounding hymn that focuses on the heart of the Gospel), and Keep Me Near (a three verse hymn that could be sung for decades).
New Site for Artists and Musicians
Another friend, Jason Harms, has started a site called The Gaius Project. Jason is part of John Piper’s church in Minneapolis, and is committed to promoting a God-glorifying pursuit of the arts. The mission statement of the Gaius project is, “To exhort and shepherd Christians in the arts and missions to go out for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ, and to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God.” He includes an Artist’s Creed that is a compelling and concise statement of how a Christ-exalting artist should think and act.
That’s it for now. Hope to get back to normal blogging at some point. Although I’ll be getting my book back for editing in a few days…
