Worship Matters

I thank God for the voices that help us sort through the confusion about gender that exists not only in our culture, but in our churches and homes. Confusion that results in a redefining of marriage and the family, splits in major denominations, and unisex bathrooms at universities, among other things. The world has seen [...]

Two Sundays ago I had the privilege of preaching at my home church, Covenant Life. We’re in the middle of a series on 1 Corinthians and I spoke from 1 Cor. 12:12-31. Paul has been answering the Corinthians’ questions about who is “really” spiritual. They were under the mistaken assumption that certain gifts, like tongues, [...]

Justin wrote me and asked: How do you handle the purchase of instruments, equipment, and supplies for your musicians? Does the church purchase all instruments, some instruments, or no instruments? What about supplies (e.g. guitar strings, picks, drumsticks, batteries, reeds, etc.)? Or effects pedals, percussion pieces, etc.? We’ve done this different ways over the years. [...]

I’ve been composing songs for forty years now. That’s a long time. In high school, my songs were very functional; I wrote them to meet girls. It wasn’t the most original plan, but it worked. A girl would catch my eye, and rather than introduce myself like a normal person, I’d go home and write [...]

As the Director of Worship Development for Sovereign Grace Ministries, one of the things I do is oversee the production and direction of the CD’s we produce. That means I talk to CJ Mahaney, who leads Sovereign Grace, and plan the themes we want to build our projects around. Our last project was a father-son [...]

I appreciate those of you who have taken the time to send me a specific question related to what you’re going through. Scott wrote in to ask: Is there a place for soloist/duets during the worship time?… If someone is gifted vocally, should I allow them to minister to the body (presuming that there are [...]

Recently a Roman Catholic bishop suggested that Christians could pray to Allah. Al Mohler posted a response on his blog. He wrote: From its very starting point Islam denies what Christianity takes as its central truth claim — the fact that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father. If Allah has no [...]

Chris sent me this question: My church, since its inception, has had a mostly traditional service. We sing hymns primarily with a spiritual song or two mixed in, and almost exclusively use a piano (we do sometimes have an acoustic guitar or violin play along with it). My pastor would like to integrate a number [...]

One of the joys of doing what I do is meeting people who share a similar passion for glorifying Jesus Christ through music. Will Pavone has been a good friend of mine for the past few years. He was part of the group Circadian Rhythm a few years ago, served as a worship pastor at [...]