Worship Matters

One of the topics in the church that leaders rarely address is modesty. It’s awkward. You can be accused of legalism. People can be offended. It can seem politically incorrect. But that doesn’t mean it should never be addressed, nor that there’s not a gracious way to do it. Ideally, those who participate in a [...]

In the process of hosting this ESV Bible giveaway, I discovered that the “Contact Me” link on my blog hasn’t been working for a while. Like for a year. So the wonderful IT folks here at Sovereign Grace did some research and found that any emails sent through the “Contact Me” link ended up in [...]

As a pastor and professional musician, I find American Idol interesting on a number of levels. It’s fascinating to see how a simple idea can capture the attention of millions, how people respond to evaluation, how people can be so misled about what they actually sound like, how ordinary people handle massive fame, the difference [...]

Sovereign Grace Ministries is one of a growing number of ministries (including Desiring God and 9Marks) working with and supporting Open Source Mission. The goal of OSM is to build a community of volunteer translators who will collaborate to make gospel-centered resources available in as many languages as possible. Once the books or articles are [...]

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 [...]

Welcome to the new look of Worship Matters, designed by my son-in-law, Kerrin Russell. Kerrin is married to my oldest daughter, Megan. Not only is he a godly husband and dad, he’s a true servant. It helps that he’s great at solving computer problems and fixing things. The most recent example is my blog site. [...]

I received this question from Tracy: My husband has recently become a Pastor in a small Outback Queensland (Australia) church and holds a complementarian view of women in ministry. This is a very uncommon viewpoint in the church movement my husband is Pastoring under. We have had queries as to if I will lead worship [...]

I recently finished The Future of Music by David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard. It was a fascinating read. The authors discuss how the face of music distribution has changed significantly in recent years and insist that many changes are still needed. Bottom line, they think that increased access to music and freedom to distribute it [...]

This morning the Washington Post business section ran a column called, “To Me, With Love: Retailers Embrace Valentine’s Day as an Excuse for Singles to Celebrate Themselves.” Among other interesting facts, the article reports that Piperlime, an online shoe store owned by Gap, has a “Be your own Valentine” category. Sales are strong for Valentine’s [...]

No doubt you’ve been following the recent events concerning Ted Haggard. After being publicly accused of engaging in illegal drug use and sexual immorality for three years, and acknowledging at least part of it to be true, he was dismissed as pastor of 14,000 member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, the church he founded [...]

Patrick referred me to this article from the Biola University website. It’s entitled, “The Feminization of the Church: Why Its Music, Messages and Ministries Are Driving Men Away.” The article includes references to Why Men Hate Going to Church, by David Murrow, and The Church Impotent, by Leon Podles. Both are sitting on my shelf, [...]

In recent years God has allowed C.J. Mahaney, my dear friend and former senior pastor, to develop some unexpected but meaningful friendships with Mark Dever, Al Mohler, and Ligon Duncan. Unexpected because CJ barely graduated from high school and these guys have lots of letters after their names. They also come from Baptist and Presbyterian [...]

At the risk of being redundant, I wanted to share a few more thoughts on blogging, in response to a question I received from Steve. He wrote, “Is there the potential for there to be recognized "elders" among Christian bloggers? I wonder what that would look like, and if it would help foster a more [...]

My post from yesterday is already out of date. Technorati.com now says it searches 24.5 million blogs. That’s 100,000 more than yesterday. Which leads me to ask two questions. What are all these people saying? And why are they saying it? The past two days we’ve been talking about ways Christians can distinguish themselves in [...]

Today, Technorati.com told me that it searches 24.4 million blogs. That’s up from 14.2 million two months ago. Apparently, in the past 8 weeks, at least ten million people have decided they have something the world needs to hear. Maybe. Maybe not. However, as Carl Trueman succinctly points out: “The danger of the web is [...]