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 [...]

Registration for WorshipGod East and West has finally opened. And I can’t wait. This year’s theme is Called to be Faithful. A large number of past WorshipGod attendees have come from churches of 500 or less. In addition, when I posted A Salute to the Average Worship Leader a few months ago, it seemed to resonate with a lot of [...]

A few months ago I was shocked to receive an invitation to speak at John Piper’s National Conference, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, at the end of September. Shocked for two reasons. First, that I was asked. Second, that it came on the last two days of my vacation with my [...]

At the end of September I’ll be speaking at the Desiring God National Conference, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God. To help promote the conference, they videotaped interviews with all the main speakers, which include Sinclair Ferguson, Paul Tripp, and Mark Driscoll. Scott Anderson spent about 90 minutes asking me various questions [...]

This is the third clip from a longer video in which Tim Smith, worship pastor from Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA, asked me various questions related to worship. In this portion, Tim asked me about the relationship between music and worship. In it I talk about some of the factors that have made music [...]

Last week I asked people to answer the question, “Why does worship matter?” in 100 words or less. I said I’d pick the top 20 answers and send them a copy of Worship Matters, so that they could post a review on their blog. I received some great answers from as far away as Australia. [...]

Sovereign Grace Ministries has just released our 5th recording in the Overflow series. Overflow began because we simply weren’t able to put out enough projects to keep up with the songs that were being written by Sovereign Grace songwriters. Produced by local churches using local instrumentalists and vocalists, the Overflow highlight emerging songs that encourage [...]

I appreciate those of you who have taken the time to send me a specific question related to what you’re going through. Scott wrote in to ask: Is there a place for soloist/duets during the worship time?… If someone is gifted vocally, should I allow them to minister to the body (presuming that there are [...]

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 [...]

I’ve received a number of e-mails asking for the new version of the hymn “Hallelujah, What a Savior,” that we taught at the New Attitude conference, music and chorus written by my son, Devon. I promised a while back that I’d post them, so here you go. The original version was by Phillip Bliss, an [...]

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 [...]

I’m currently in the middle of moving my office from Covenant Life Church to Sovereign Grace Ministries. The two buildings are actually connected, so it’s not that big a deal. As my responsibilities at Covenant Life have been assumed by Ken Boer, it’s released me to give more time to writing, training, and overseeing music [...]

I woke up this morning (late) with the songs from the Sovereign Grace New Attitude conference flowing through my brain. What a joy it was to sing such rich truths and be reminded of the sovereignty, mercy, and goodness of the Savior. What a joy it was to hear such great biblical teaching from Josh [...]

This morning the Washington Post business section ran a column called, “To Me, With Love: Retailers Embrace Valentine’s Day as an Excuse for Singles to Celebrate Themselves.” Among other interesting facts, the article reports that Piperlime, an online shoe store owned by Gap, has a “Be your own Valentine” category. Sales are strong for Valentine’s [...]

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 [...]