At last year’s WorshipGod conference, I gave a message on The Future of Worship, based on the opening verses to Psalm 78. I’m increasingly aware of is how important it is to pass on the right things from generation to the next, and this message was an attempt to address that topic.
Here’s a 3:45 video [...]
I first met guitarist Ben Gowell when he played on our Worship God Live album back in 2005. He regularly plays for  Paul Baloche and Sara Groves, and is currently on tour with Michael W. Smith. In other words, he’s pretty good. But really makes him special is that he played on our second kids’ [...]
Our upcoming Spanish project, Alli en la Cruz, was recently mixed in Nashville by Billy Whittington, a gifted and humble engineer who has participated in other Sovereign Grace projects. He was assisted by John Behrens, who interned with me this past year, and Mauricio Velarde, whose songs and vocals are featured on the album.
When I [...]
The Rolling Stones, not generally known for wise words of instruction, reminded us of the truth that, “You can’t always get what you want.”
Next week I have the joy and privilege of leading 7000+ Together for the Gospel conference attendees in singing the praises of our great Savior. Typically I lead with a full band, [...]
My daughter, Brittany, sent me this video today.
It’s by the folks at Desiring God, who excel at using technology in a creative way to draw attention to what’s being said.
The content is part of a John Piper sermon set to techno music. Piper addresses the question, “How do we treasure Christ above all things?” which is at [...]
Here’s another clip from the message I gave at WorshipGod09 on “The Future of Worship.” (You can find two posts from the same message here and here.)
In verse 8 the psalmist references a previous generation “whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.” They were remembered as NOT being faithful, and NOT [...]
At WorshipGod09, CJ Mahaney and I were interviewed by Jeff Purswell on various things we’ve learned over the years about worship. I posted the entire clip of the interview in a previous post.
One of the topics we touched on was the place of creativity and excellence when we gather to sing God’s praise. The world [...]
On Friday night at WorshipGod09, Jeff Purswell interviewed CJ Mahaney and me about some things we had learned over thirty years of leading, much of that together. From the early 90’s I was involved in leading the music at various Sovereign Grace conferences, and then in 1997 I became the worship pastor at Covenant Life Church, [...]
At WorshipGod09:From Generation to Generation, I gave the last message on The Future of Worship, based on Ps. 78:1-8. The previous messages had dealt mostly with the biblical values of worship we want to pass on to future generations - the nature of God, the importance of the heart, the role of leadership, the significance of [...]
At the recent WorshipGod09 conference, I taught a seminar called, “Let the People be Glad: Corporate Worship and Expressiveness.” I attempted to present some biblical principles for what we’re supposed to do with our bodies when we gather to praise God together. I know for some of you that’s a no-brainer, but for others it’s still [...]
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 [...]
Last year, at WorshipGod08, we presented a choral arrangement of “Glorious and Mighty,” from the Psalms CD. Unfortunately, the recording didn’t turn out very well. But at this year’s Sovereign Grace Pastors Conference we sang the piece again and recorded it to 24 track. I thought it turned out much better.
In any case, you can [...]
Over at Christianity Today, John Stackhouse, Jr. expresses his thoughts on the volume of worship teams in an article called, “Memo to Worship Bands.” He gives five reasons why church music teams should tone down the volume.
1. Cranking up the volume is just a cheap trick to add energy to a room.
2. When your intonation [...]
As 2008 turned over to 2009 I was in the midst of reading When God Comes to Church by Ray Ortlund, Jr. I didn’t want the year to get too far before I shared some great quotes from this book that came out in 2000. The first half of the book describes what God does [...]
What do you do when in the middle of leading worship you have a train wreck? We had the opportunity to find out at the WorshipGod conference last August.
Joseph Stigora, from Covenant Fellowship in Philadelphia, was doing a great job leading with his team. But as he started into a musical rendition of Psalm 96, [...]