Worship Matters

Just a little over thirty six years ago, I received the greatest gift I’ll ever receive: salvation from God’s wrath and adoption into his family through the gospel. After that, the gifts I’m most grateful for today are in the picture below, taken this past Thanksgiving. Six children, three spouses of my children, seven grandchildren, [...]

This past Sunday I had the privilege of leading the singing at my home church. At Christmas time there’s sometimes a tension between choosing to sing songs that are “comfortably Christmasy” or songs that help people glory in the miracle of God becoming man. So here’s what we went with: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing [...]

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 [...]

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking to the parents and youth of my home church on the topic of listening to music for the glory of God. The parent/youth ministry is currently discussing the book, Wordliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World. My message was something of an adaptation of a [...]

Just when I start thinking all the best worship songs have already been written (which I don’t really believe), I hear a new song that affects me profoundly. A friend recently sent me an email letting me know that he just taught his church My Soul Finds Rest (Ps 62) by Aaron Keyes and Stuart [...]

I had the privilege of speaking at the Desiring God National Conference last Saturday morning. It was a whirlwind trip that I made with my daughter (and assistant) Chelsea. We got there for dinner on Friday and caught a 7 PM flight out on Saturday. It came at the end of our two week beach [...]

The feedback from the Valley of Vision CD we produced earlier this year has been very encouraging. But nothing is more meaningful than someone who takes the time to write and let us know how God has used the truth in the songs we write to make Him bigger in their eyes. I wanted to [...]

I attempted to post this yesterday, which was Friday, but we passed the day playing games, cutting down and decorating our Christmas tree, and enjoying Thanksgiving leftovers. Definitely time well spent. Travis Seitler asked a great question on a previous post. I’d sum up his question like this: “Should the fact that God describes his [...]

When asked how he’s doing, my friend C.J. Mahaney often answers, “Better than I deserve.” He’s been responding that way for years, and it always reminds me that my sins far outweigh my trials. Yet God has dealt with my sins by punishing his own Son in my place. I will never know His righteous [...]

I don’t even know how I came across a book I read recently called, “And Now Let’s Move Into a Time of Nonsense: Why Worship Songs are Failing the Church.” It’s by Nick Page, a prolific UK author. What I do know is that I’m not aware of another book on congregational song that is [...]

What do we sing when evil seems to be rampant and ongoing? This past Sunday Christians across the world observed a Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Over 200 million Christians daily face oppression, discrimination, torture, or worse, simply because they own the name of Jesus. In addition to taking time to pray for [...]