Worship Matters

I’ve been asked more than once how you can lead people in singing God’s praise when you’re going through your own personal trials. This past weekend I had the opportunity to find out first hand.
I was out of town last week and on Wednesday morning received a call from my son, Jordan. He and his [...]

I have a sweet job. One of my responsibilities is to oversee the production of Sovereign Grace albums.
Some of you have asked where the songs for those albums come from, and what the process looks like. I’m right in the middle of a three day retreat with 18 songwriters from various Sovereign Grace churches, so I [...]

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 [...]

Joshua is interested in teaching his church the song, “Beautiful One,” by Tim Hughes. He wrote:
As I began to think about it, I couldn’t come up with a scripture verse that refers to Jesus as ‘beautiful.’ I did a word search in the NIV and the NASB for beautiful, but it seems to always refer [...]

My friend, West, left a question on another post. He was asking about comments I’ve made to the effect that it isn’t a worship leader’s responsibility to lead people into God’s presence. Only Jesus can do that. West wrote:
Heb. 9 through Heb. 10:1-22 call us to enter the Most Holy Place confidently. John Frame [...]

Matt wrote in to ask:
What do you think about singing songs that have a lot of me/we/I content. Is it wrong to sing a lot of songs that talk about us? A couple come to mind right now: “We stand and lift up our hands…” “I love you Lord…” etc…I think there’s value in having [...]

West sent in this question.
Do national holidays have any influence on your worship planning? To what extent? Specifically, would you use the Sunday before Independence Day to focus on our utter dependence on Christ, our freedom from bondage to sin, our slavery to Christ (and so acknowledge, but spiritualize the holiday), or do you have [...]

Shirley sent me this request today:
Please ask your readers to let me know where I may find songs taken directly from Scripture.

One of my favorite collections is the six CD’s recorded by my good friend, Mark Altrogge. They go under the title "Hide the Word." They’re a contemporary pop-rock style and use both the NIV [...]

Kevin sent in a question after attending two conferences. At one, the corporate worship times were about 90% congregational with a few special songs that everyone sat and listened to. At the other, the attendees only sang about 40% of the worship time. The rest was choirs, special numbers, and soloists. Here’s his question.
Is [...]

I received this question from Evers:
I’ve at times received well-intentioned
“suggestions” from folks who’ve enjoyed one song or another while visiting other churches (perhaps on vacation).  While occasionally these are nice songs, I’ve often felt that many of the songs simply lack Biblical substance but are musically very catchy…How might you respond to members of a [...]

I started this post last Friday as a Q&A Friday, but never finished it. Oh well…
Jacob sent me this question:
What is your take on the exclusive use of Psalms in worship?…Since the Psalms were the only Spirit-inspired songs given to the people of God, and because instrument use in the Old Testament is tied to [...]

I figure it’s okay to answer a Q&A Friday question on Saturday…I recently received this question from John:
We currently have four worship teams, giving 15-20 people a month a chance to lead in music, either by singing or playing an instrument. I’d guess that a quarter of these people are very skilled musically, and have [...]

More than once I’ve heard Christians claim that worship should be fun, or act like they had a responsibility to prove that Christians knew how to “party” in church. I’ve always been uncomfortable with that connection, so I started thinking about the place of “fun” in worship, if one even exists. I’d like to address [...]

I received this question from Dennis:
What would you say are the benefits of a “worship team” (several singers leading at the front) as opposed to one “songleader”? From what I can see, at least one major benefit is, to have many voices projecting the volume of a song *AT* the congregation, to help them [...]

This question was sent in by Larry:
Yesterday, I was listening/singing to the song, ‘I Will Glory in my Redeemer’ [by Steve and Vikki Cook]…I was struck especially by these words:
I will glory in my Redeemer, My life He bought, my love He owns.
I have no longings for another, I’m satisfied in him alone.
What is [...]