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 [...]
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 [...]
Ben, a 28 year old worship leader, is in the midst of some career decisions. He emailed me the following to me: You seem to be actively employing several different gifts and passions. You’re sort of a hybrid preacher/producer/worshiper/blogger guy.  You are living outside the box – and that’s exciting to me. As I dream of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I’ve mentioned the blog of our tech director, Dave Wilcox, before. It’s called “Undistract,” which I think is a great name for a blog devoted to the media and technical aspects of a church. Recently Dave shared some thoughts on how a stage manager can best serve a band during rehearsal. The relationship between bands [...]
I just finished reading Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Geoff Colvin. Fascinating book. Giftedness is a topic that I’ve thought about a lot. Are we selling ourselves short by assuming that we’ll never be as good a keyboardist, vocalist, guitarist, drummer, or whatever, as the people we esteem? [...]
I’ve been musing recently about how we express our musical opinions. Why do we feel so strongly about songs, bands, and styles? And why do we draw conclusions so quickly? Nope. Don’t like it. That stinks. I can’t stand that kind of music. You like that stuff? Is there anything wrong with raving about the [...]
Last month my church started memorizing great hymns of the faith. We’ll be memorizing a hymn a month for ten months. Ken Boer, who oversees music at Covenant Life, explains on the church website why we’re doing this: Memorizing hymns is one of the ways we can obey Scripture’s command to “let the word of [...]
Over the years I’ve tried to streamline our rehearsals. Part of it is knowing that folks have other things they’re involved in. Like being with their family. But the other part is that sometimes we just don’t have a lot of time to rehearse. So I’m always looking for ways to maximize that time. At [...]
This past weekend I spoke at the Christian Musicians Summit on Why Theology Matters to Christian musicians. When Christian musicians get together, our tendency is 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 [...]
