Worship Matters

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Each year as Christmas approaches we have the opportunity to remember in a more focused and thoughtful way why Jesus had to come to earth. It wasn’t plan B, it wasn’t optional, and it certainly wasn’t something we asked for. Paul tells us, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his [...]

Last month I had the privilege to lead a few songs at John Piper’s Gravity and Gladness seminar, and participate in a Q&A with Dr. Piper. It was somewhat of a surreal experience sitting next to John answering questions about worship. I first heard the audio of John preaching this series around 2000. As I [...]

In his outstanding book, Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice, Bryan Chapell writes, “Liturgy tells a story. We tell the gospel by the way we worship.” That thought influenced the song choices and order for our latest album, The Gathering: Live from WorshipGod11, 15 songs that tell the story of the gospel and our [...]

Since August 2010, Ken Boer (music director for Covenant Life) and I have had three men working for me at Sovereign Grace: Nathan Edwards (Florida), Matt Richley (Merthyr Tydfil, UK) and Mauricio Velarde (Gaithersburg). It’s been a joy to have them around, growing and learning with them how to serve people more effectively in magnifying [...]

I’m happy to announce that our latest album, Risen, came out yesterday — a whole album of songs that celebrate the reality and meaning of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When we first were planning Risen my hope was to get it out in time for Easter. God helping us, we did. [...]

Some people had questions about my recent review of Doug O’Donnell’s book, God’s Lyrics, which I want to attempt to address in this post. The basic question has to do with the place of singing about God’s judgments. O’Donnell makes the point that many of the songs in the Old Testament rejoice over God’s just judgments (Ex. [...]

This past weekend I had the privilege of presenting a workshop at Crowder’s Fantastical Church Music Conference in Waco, TX. Through a series of email discussions, David and I came up with the title, “The Functional Limits of Creativity: How Innovative Can We Be with the Gospel?” When Crowder first contacted me about participating in the conference [...]

A few years ago, at the recommendation of C.J. Mahaney, I read The Cross and Christian Ministry by D.A. Carson. Carson exposits select passages from 1 Corinthians, explaining how the cross affects our understanding of preaching, the Holy Spirit, factionalism, Christian leadership, and being a world Christian. I’d highly recommend it for any Christian leader [...]

Not too long ago I came across the work of Chris Powers, who put together an animated video of one of our songs, The Prodigal. I was moved by the way he used simple animation to illustrate the song in a powerful way. Recently Chris told me he had animated another one of our songs, [...]