Worship Matters

Recently I posted on Twitter: The fact that Psalms doesn’t include a soundtrack or notation clues us in to what God values most in our worship songs. I find it fascinating that God gave us a “songbook” with numerous musical references, but no actual music. It’s not that music is unimportant. Badly played or written [...]

Matt Mason has been a good friend for over a decade now. He faithfully served in the Sovereign Grace church in New Orleans until last year when he took a position at The Church at Brook Hills with David Platt. I’m grateful God is now using Matt to provide gospel-centered, theologically informed, pastorally wise musical leadership [...]

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 [...]

What do you do as a leader when someone wants to play a specific role on your music team but is better fit for something else? What do you do as a member if that’s you? A number of years ago I preached a message from 1 Cor. 12:12-31. Paul has been answering the Corinthians’ questions [...]

The past few days I’ve been posting on issues related to God’s “active” presence, especially in corporate gatherings. A couple people suggested that “active” isn’t the best word to use. When we say God is “present” we are implying He is active, whether that’s to sustain, illuminate, bless, convict, or something else. What I call [...]

Yesterday, I posted thoughts on attempts to manufacture and market the presence of God, both wrong responses to God’s experienced presence. One person commented that what I wrote seemed to “create hesitancy about pursing His presence” and encouraged me to “stir people’s faith to encounter God and His presence.’” Today, I want to do just that [...]

A few weeks ago a friend and I were glancing through a Christian magazine and noticed how often people referred to “God’s presence.” It’s a hot topic these days. In his kindness and mercy, God often reveals his active presence to us. By “active” presence I mean God’s presence as distinct from his omnipresence and his [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

During the charismatic outpouring of the 1970s many churches became more aware of the Holy Spirit than they had ever been. That awareness then, and in subsequent years, resulted in songs to and about the Holy Spirit which weren’t always as theologically precise as one would hope. Given the number of times we repeated some [...]

One of the drums I will never tire of beating is this: All biblical worship is rooted in and made possible by the cross of Christ. In my experience, the contemporary church (and any church, for that matter) is always in danger of neglecting the gospel in its songs. I said it this way in [...]

On April 10 we’ll be releasing our next album, From Age to Age, a collection of 14 new hymns for the church. We call them “hymns” because either they were based on or inspired by hymns of the past, or because the lyrics adhere to a metrical pattern in the verses. The songs also contain [...]

The worship song outpouring in the last two decades has resulted in thousands of new songs for the church to sing. Many have been expressions of praise, thanksgiving, love, and commitment to God. Others intentionally seek to help us engage directly with God’s Word to us. That’s one of the purposes of music Paul refers [...]

When we were putting together the songs for The Gathering: Live from WorshipGod11, we ended up having not one, but two songs that served as a “prayer for illumination.” One is Your Words of Life, written by Pat & Joel Sczebel. The other is Show us Christ, which I co-wrote with Doug Plank. Show Us [...]