Worship Matters

Last week, I traveled to South Africa for the first time and had the great joy of participating in Rezolution 2013, a series of conferences that took place in Johannesburg, Durban, and Capetown. I was there with 5 other guys from the States, CJ Mahaney, Ligon Duncan, Kevin DeYoung, Mark Dever, and Brad Wheeler. The [...]

This post is based on a message I gave at the Christian Musician Summit in 2008. When Christian musicians get together, we tend to assume we all have our theology down and we can focus on honing our chops, discovering new gear, and improving our techniques and methodologies. Or maybe we think that theology isn’t that [...]

Yesterday, I shared bullet points from the first part of a message I recently gave at the Doxology and Theology Conference and the Christian Musicians Summit. I was seeking to highlight the centrality of Jesus in congregational singing. My first point was that Jesus is the leader of our songs. Here’s points 2 and 3. [...]

The past few weeks I had the privilege of speaking at the Doxology and Theology conference in Frisco, TX, and the Christian Musicians Summit in Seattle, WA. One of the breakouts I did at D&T was called The Worship Leader and Christ. I shaved about 40 minutes off that message, renamed it “Jesus and Our [...]

This past August we recorded The Gathering: Live from WorshipGod11. It’s a collection of 15 songs that progressively tell the story of the gospel and our response to it. From my perspective, it’s one of the best albums we’ve done to date, both in terms of song content and creative musicianship. I’m happy to announce [...]

Here’s another message I shared in Australia at the one day TWIST Pastor’s Conference. I first gave this message in 2004 and called it “Corporate Worship as Pastoral Care.” The talk developed out of a realization that we can often be unaware of how God wants to use the lyrics of songs and how they’re [...]

This coming week I have the privilege for the first time of ministering in Australia. It’s a trip I’ve been working on for about 3 years, waiting for the right time. This seems to be it. Philip Percival, of EMU Music was the first one to contact me about coming to the TWIST conference, an annual [...]

I shared my thoughts on New Word Alive in a previous post. I led at two meetings each night, one at 6:30, the second at 8:30. We sang 1 or 2 songs as people were filing in 2-3 songs at the start of the meeting, 2-3 songs before the message, then 1-2 songs after the [...]

If you follow Worship Matters with any kind of regularity you may have noticed a dearth of posts over the past few weeks. Most of April was taken up by the New Word Alive conference (Apr. 10-15) in Pwllheli, North Wales, followed by 13 days with my best friend, Julie, celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary [...]

In 1991 I had the privilege of participating in a church plant in Charlotte, NC. It was a thrilling, humbling, faith-stretching, unpredictable adventure that I think every leader should go through at least once. That’s why I’m excited about the Sovereign Grace Ministries Plant! Conference, taking place next month. I have the joy of leading [...]

During the Christmas season, many people find themselves in the midst of impossibly difficult circumstances. They find out the hard way that pain and sorrow are no respecters of holidays. For these individuals, Christmas becomes the most terrible time of the year. Recently I ran across an insightful and hopeful post by Matt Redmond called [...]

At Next 2010, CJ Mahaney challenged Curt “Voice” Allen to come up with a rap based on Kevin DeYoung’s book,  The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism. A few months later, Curt met the challenge and wrote a song, which he performed at the Sovereign Grace Pastor’s Conference. I [...]

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of leading the worship in song at the Sovereign Grace Ministries Pastors Conference. It was a wonderfully full schedule, which resulted in us singing primarily at the night sessions. On Wednesday night it was a joy to lead with my son, Devon, and the Na Band. On [...]

Well, I’m back from one of the more unusual conferences I’ve had the privilege of speaking at, Crowder’s Fantastical Church Music Conference, held in Waco, TX, hosted by the ever gracious and witty David Crowder. The schedule was non-stop, with speakers/presenters including Francis Chan, Rob Bell, Louie Giglio, David Dark, Matt Redman, and a few [...]

Last weekend I attended the Resolved conference, led by Rick Holland from Grace Community Church. The conference is based on the Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards, and this year’s theme was Jesus. In eleven sessions, we got a fire-hydrant dose of why the person and work of Jesus Christ is so glorious and life-changing. This was [...]