Worship Matters

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) has few peers when it comes to stirring up biblically informed passion for Jesus Christ. My wife made me aware of one of his quotes today from The Daily Spurgeon. It’s from a sermon called “The Fulness Of Jesus, The Treasury Of Saints,” that Spurgeon delivered February 28, 1869. Spurgeon describes how both preaching and music grow [...]

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 [...]

Paul Baloche’s song, “Open the Eyes of My Heart,” has been sung by millions of Christians throughout the world. It’s a song based on Ephesians 1, asking God to open our spiritual eyes that we might know him better. But I wonder if those of us who lead congregational worship shouldn’t be asking God to [...]

What do you do when you start leading a song in two different keys? At our WorshipGod08 conference, we had the opportunity to find out as Joseph Stigora started “Psalm 96″ in one key and the rest of the band from Covenant Fellowship came in a step higher. I posted on this previously, but here’s [...]

If you lead worship, you may not think of yourself as a biblical counselor. Maybe that should change. Last month I had the joy of leading the singing at the CCEF conference. While I was there David Powlison asked if we could chat about the relationship between singing congregationally and biblical counseling. There are a [...]

Here’s another video clip from WorshipGod09, where Jeff Purswell is interviewing CJ Mahaney and me about some of the things we’ve learned over three decades of leading. In this section we talk about the importance of planning as well as listening for  the Spirit’s leading during the meeting. In my experience, people tend to value [...]

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 [...]

Just finished Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice, by Bryan Chappell. Bottom line — if you’re responsible for leading, overseeing, or planning corporate worship in your church, you should read this book. Chappell divides the book into two sections, Gospel Worship and Gospel Worship Resources. A casual look at the Table of Contents [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

I received this suggestion for a WorshipGod09 seminar from Mike: I am on the leadership team of a new church here in Harare, Zimbabwe. We have combined two congregations – one of which used to worship in Shona and the other which is more comfortable in English.  In the new combined congregation, we have some [...]

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 [...]

A friend recently emailed me and expressed a dilemma he was facing when teaching new songs performed by an artist who varies the way he or she sings the melody. My friend asked: When do we go with the lead sheet, and when do we go with the CD melody?  And when do we go [...]

A while back I recorded four brief videos (3-4 minutes each) that serve as an introduction to the four sections of my book, Worship Matters, but can also be used as stand-alones. They deal with four areas: The Leader (what do I love the most?) The Task (what exactly is a worship leader trying to [...]

Over at the Sovereign Grace website, we’ve finally posted 29 WorshipGod08 seminars for you to listen to or download for free. . . . Here’s the list: Band on the Run (Bob Kauflin) Building Bridges: Pastors and Worship Leaders (Bob Kauflin) Caring for Your Sound System (Darryl Wenger) Copyright Law and Church Music: The Eight [...]