My pastor sent me the link to the upcoming Desiring God conference and I was blown away by the material. The  full title is “The Power of Words and the Wonder of God.” The speaker list and topics are incredible.

• Sinclair Ferguson - “The Tongue, the Bridle, and the Blessing: An exposition of James 3:1-12James 3:1-12
  English: American Standard Version (1901) - ASV
  3 ¹ Be not many [of you] teachers, my brethren, knowing that we shall receive heavier judgment. ² For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. ³ Now if we put the horses' bridles into their mouths that they may obey us, we turn about their whole body also. ⁴ Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by rough winds, are yet turned about by a very small rudder, whither the impulse of the steersman willeth. ⁵ So the tongue also is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire! ⁶ And the tongue is a fire: the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell. ⁷ For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind. ⁸ But the tongue can no man tame; [it is] a restless evil, [it is] full of deadly poison. ⁹ Therewith bless we the Lord and Father; and therewith curse we men, who are made after the likeness of God: ¹⁰ out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. ¹¹ Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet [water] and bitter? ¹² Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs? Neither [can] salt water yield sweet.  
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  ” This is going to be incredible. Some amazingly difficult scripture here.
• Bob Kauflin - “Words of Wonder: What Happens When We Sing.” I love Bob Kauflin and have received so much encouragement from what he has to say. This session is going to be critical, foundational worship doctrine and man am I looking forward to it.
• Mark Driscoll - “How Sharp the Edge? Christ, Controversy, and Cutting Words.” Are you kidding me? Set aaaand spike! This will be intense, Driscoll will bring the heat on this topic. There will be a firestorm on You Tube if they release video of this sermon, guaranteed.
• Daniel Taylor - “The Life-Shaping Power of Story: God’s and Ours.” Never heard of Daniel Taylor, but this will be a good songwriting session whether he realizes it or not.
• Paul Tripp - “War of Words: Getting to the Heart for God’s Sake.” - This is going to challenge the heck out of me. I’m scared to be in this session actually.
• John Piper - “Is There Christian Eloquence? Clear Words and the Wonder of the Cross.” I’ve never heard Piper preach in person, I’m incredibly excited to get there.

Another part of this conference that will be awesome are all the panel discussions. I loved the Q&A sessions at Mars Hill Continuous Worship conference and I expect some great discussion with these guys.

In a strange way I think this conference will shape, assist, speak into, clarify, instruct, guide my leadership in worship more than any other conference I’ve been to. Even though this isn’t particularly about worship. I don’t know if you’ve realized that I’ve been posting a lot on that topic in this blog but lyrics and truth mean a lot to me in worship. I need to do a better job at building a community of worshipers (as Bob would say) by not just leading a rocking set but singing truth that unifies our body, glorifies God and promotes wellness in our souls by singing hard truth.

If this promo video doesn’t get you pumped, there’s something wrong with you, go seek help.

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I started doing some “worship metrics” I suppose you’d call it, on our set lists. I pulled out some interesting stats on the songs we use. One metric I wish we had was “anointing level.” Some kind of sliding scale that shows which songs God is using and the congregation is responding to(only partially joking). I suppose the play count is a reflection of that. So here are the worship song stats for my band at Life Connection Church.

Top 5 worship songs in the last year…

1. Hosanna - Hillsong United, We Cry Out - Kim Walker (tie)
2. How I Live - Kyle Campos (me)
3. I Am A Temple - John Mark McMillan
4. (4 way tie)
   1. Salvation Is Here - Hillsong United
   2. Ready Now - Desperation Band
   3. Rescue - Desperation Band
   4. Sweetly Broken - Jeremy Riddle
5. (4 way tie)
   1. What the World Will Never Take - Hillsong United
   2. Everlasting God - New Life
   3. Rain Down - Delirious
   4. Solid Rock - Delirious

Biggest Rotation Increase from 2 years ago…

1. Hosanna - Hillsong United (played 11 more times this past year)
2. We Cry Out - Kim Walker (11 more times)
3. How I Live - Kyle Campos (10 more times)
4. I Am A Temple - John Mark McMillan (9 more times)
5. Rain Down - Delirious (7 more times)
6. Solid Rock - Delirious (7 more times)
7. How He Loves - John Mark McMillan (6 more times)

All of the above songs were introduced this past year.

Biggest Rotation Drop off from 2 years ago..

1. Let Everything that Has Breath - Matt Redman (played 6 less times in the past year)
2. From the Inside Out - Hillsong United (5 less times)
3. Friend of God - Israel Houghton (4 less times)
4. Shout Unto God - Hillsong United (4 less times)
5. *Holy Spirit Come - Rita Springer (4 less times)
6. *Meet With Me - Michael Gungor (4 less times)

* Haven’t played at all in the last year, out of rotation

Would love to hear from some other worship leaders on what songs are topping their rotation currently.

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Lacrae and his group did a concert at Mars Hill Church but also joined Red Letter on stage during worship to lead a song this past Sunday evening. Amazing worship song. So cool that MHC has the courage to do things like this. I love seeing people with a conviction and identity and just going after it.

‘Send Me’ - Live at MHC | Ballard from Mars Hill Church on Vimeo.

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There has been a lot of mention in various blogs about the recent survey report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It was incredibly revealing, maybe not shocking though as many have seen the clear trends nationally and globally. But never the less, it was painful to be confronted with some of the facts. Here’s a few that caught my eye:

• 66% of Protestants believe there are other ways to heaven than through Christ
• 11% of Protestants who claim the existence of God is an absolute certainty, say it isn’t very important to their lives
• 27% of Protestants do not believe in hell

The survey results should be sobering for church leadership and certainly is for me. A professor from Rice University summed up the report in an article well by saying,

“The survey shows America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only 3 inches deep.”

That is just a beautiful way of describing a horrific reality. It makes me examine what I’m doing as a worship leader to either contribute or combat this. Am I leading hundreds of people every week in singing a wide variety of songs that only go 3 inches deep? Do we sing songs that confront the notion that there is no hell, that there is a way to heaven besides Christ, or that Christ life, death and resurrection shouldn’t be that important to our lives? I sure hope so.

I think the important thing as a worship leader is to get prayerful and purposeful not just in our sets but in our leadership of our teams and songwriting. We focus a lot on unity, singability, melody which are all important, but what good is unity without truth? More specifically, essential truth. What the findings in this report tell me is not just that 66% believe in other ways to Christ, but that 66% feel comfortable showing up to church with that lie and aren’t confronted by truth.

I have no desire to lead such weak and sanitized worship that the flesh and lies of the enemy aren’t offended. In the coming weeks I’m going to start a series of posts on how our phrasing and word choices in worship lyrics can contribute to essential biblical truth. No ambiguous language, no vague interpretation, no confusing imagery.

If you have any examples of worship songs you feel do this I’d love to hear them in the comments.

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At Life Connection Church we very much value songs written specifically for the local congregation. That doesn’t mean that they won’t have any relevance outside of our church, but just that it was written with our body prayerfully in mind. I believe that’s not only how the best songs are written musically, but spiritually I think that’s where the greatest gift is to the kingdom, in building of the local church.

Recently I’ve been examining ways to get my church body even more involved in our songwriting process. As a worship leader and elder I’m aware of the larger spiritual issues impacting the body, and as my role as discipleship leader I’m privy to more personal issues on a smaller scale as well. But in order to bring in everyone something else had to be done.

The idea is this. We will write a song around a theme and ask everyone in the body to submit a 1 sentence response to a question around that theme. The song’s lyrics will predominantly be made up of these responses. First up we will tackle grace. The question to the body is this…

How has God’s grace changed your life specifically?

Huge question I know, so many aspects to grace so I expect a wonderful wide spectrum of answers. The goal is to answer personally(can be anonymously) and not generally. An example of a general response would be, “He took this sinner and made me clean“, a personal response would be, “He took my life of drugs and death, and gave me a life of purity and hope.”

I’ll then take these answers and shape them poetically to fit musically, rhyme etc… I’ll probably write a chorus that captures the entirety of the submissions, but if someone submits something that God puts heavy on our hearts then we may very well use it for the chorus as well. I don’t really know what to expect out of this exercise, this is new ground for me.

By God’s grace at the end we’ll have a skillfully crafted song of worship that glorifies God by demonstrating the life saving, transforming, empowering impact of God’s grace in our church body, by our church body. I’m incredibly excited to get started on this. I’ll keep everyone up to date on how well or poorly this experiment goes, should be fun.

Let me know what you guys think, am I nuts?

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I don’t claim to be the Associated Press of all that is Christian music. Sometimes I arrive at the scene a little late, this would be one of those times, but I don’t think too many people knew about this. One of my favorite bands in the 90s was Superdrag, they are best known for their hit “Sucked Out” off their cd “Regretfully Yours”. I saw them live with Ben Folds Five and that show to this day goes down as one of my all time favorites.

John Davis founded the band, led on vocals and guitar. Incredible songwriter, incredible rock voice, killer guitar work, what else can you say, dude was just a flat out rock star. He also lived the life of a rock star and hit rock bottom. One night, prior to the release of their last album, while driving to his parent’s house Davis pulled over and prayed to God. John said he felt God answered him right there and it was life changing for him. John sobered up and soon left the band.

John’s latest solo album Arigato is awesome. It has a lot of the Superdrag grit but lyrically he’s all about talking about the greatness of God. It’s amazing to hear modern day Damascus road stories and to see the fruit of that experience lived out in someone’s life. Go check John out on myspace, I’ll be working on getting an interview with him. Oh and Superdrag is reuniting and releasing a new cd….yes!

On January 8th, 2008, John Davis announced on the Superdrag news section that the band is reunited indefinitely, stating that “Superdrag’s original line-up will reconvene in the recording studio in February to begin work on our first new recording project together since 1998’s Head Trip In Every Key.”

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Yesterday I posted the video of Tim Smith’s interview with Bob Kauflin and I must say how blessed I was by listening to the interview. I respect both of those men and value both of their insight. I mention in the same post some of the wonderful things that were brought up and I’ll blog more on those in a bit. The first follow up I have though is a disagreement in application of musical gifting in the church.

Around 34:50 of the interview. Bob says,

“…in the church I’m never going to achieve, or want to achieve the degree of musical excellence that I’m probably capable of, because I don’t think all that musical excellence will serve the glory of Jesus Christ in the gathered church.”

I would simply ask, “Why not?” The implication here is musical mediocrity will serve the glory of Jesus in the gathered church and I just don’t buy that at all. I think we’re all grateful Michelangelo didn’t have this attitude when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Surely those in worship would be distracted by the beauty of his art and the level of excellence he demonstrated. Surely it would have been better for him to paint in a more mediocre way so as not to draw attention to the art. Of course not, I don’t think there are many who would make that argument. The Sistine Chapel is one of the world’s greatest artistic expressions of worship ever created, if not the greatest. It’s easy to see the folly in this logic with other forms of art, but for some reason many make this argument when it comes to music.

Bob goes on to refer to something John Piper calls “an undistracting excellence.” Which states that “you are so excellent at what you do that no one really notices” but instead notices how great God is. Before I get rolling here I want to point out, I’ve never read John Piper’s thoughts on this, I’m only commenting on what Bob communicated in the interview. I love John Piper, and Bob Kauflin for that matter, and will certainly look for some text or audio on this topic to see what John has to say.

Now, while I agree fully that our focus should be completely upon the greatness of Jesus I disagree that the better you are musically the more of a barrier you become to that purpose. I also disagree that art is in someway a “distraction” from worshiping God. Our art should be a reflection of good, great and loving God just as our lives should be a reflection of Christ as the image bearers of God. Art is an expression, and to pick a point on a the scale of excellent artistic expression and say, “beyond this point you’ve expressed too well and now you’re a distraction” I think is pretty silly. Quite honestly I find mediocre and poor expression much more distracting than excellent expression and I think most would agree.

Looking at a crappy painting on a wall doesn’t reflect anything of God to me. Looking at the Sistine Chapel however reflects the beauty and majesty of God, not of Michelangelo. Listening to a bunch of mediocre musicians lead worship music by playing an uneven time, singing out of key, and writing terribly boring and poorly crafted melodies does not “better serve the glory of Jesus Christ.” Now I’m not saying Bob is saying this, but what other option are we left with?

We either strive to improve, play our best and craft the most beautiful music we can in response to God giving us the best of himself in his Son, or we stop working at our craft and say this is good enough for God and the body of Christ. I say the latter is not a good option as Malachi 1:7-10Malachi 1:7-10
English: American Standard Version (1901) - ASV
7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar. And ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of Jehovah is contemptible. ⁸ And when ye offer the blind for sacrifice, it is no evil! and when ye offer the lame and sick, it is no evil! Present it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee? or will he accept thy person? saith Jehovah of hosts. ⁹ And now, I pray you, entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he accept any of your persons? saith Jehovah of hosts. ¹⁰ Oh that there were one among you that would shut the doors, that ye might not kindle [fire on] mine altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, saith Jehovah of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.  

warns, we must offer our best sacrifice of praise. This also means using all wisdom in crafting beautiful but singable songs for the body to unite in. It’s possible folks, we don’t have to sound like Grade C musicians in the church to unite the body, please believe me…please!

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Resurgence posted a video interview with Tim Smith, worship leader of Mars Hill Church, recently interviewed Bob Kauflin, Director of Worship Development at Sovereign Grace Ministries. It’s a good long interview with a lot of great topics discussed, so make sure to watch the whole thing. I just want to point out a few points that were made that I find very poignant.

Tim explained the culture in Seattle and how stoic and passive people are even at rock concerts and how that culture is mirrored in their church. Tim asked how physical expression in worship might be impressed upon the congregation without going overboard and have physical expression just as habitual as non expression. Now I’ve heard this a few times from the Mars Hill worship leaders and I really appreciated Bob’s response. Bob explains how a non-christian should notice in the church something more significant happening than a rock concert. That the transforming relationship with Jesus Christ has made this church respond in major ways.

The important idea here I think is that sometimes we are so concerned in the church now with engaging with culture and not freaking out the lost that we forget we are supposed to be counter cultural in many ways. We shouldn’t measure our worship to rock concerts, because what we’re doing is orders of magnitude greater in not just importance but in life impact and purpose.

One of the great takeaways from this interview is this gem:

“I’m not called to lead a worship experience…I’m called to build a worshiping community.”

That statement is so rich and true, so much to talk about there, inspiring a few more posts I think. let me know what you guys think of the interview.

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Technorati is a blog search engine that indexes millions of blogs. It then “ranks” your blog based off the number of times other sites link to it. This helps determine what they call your blog’s “relevance”. The higher Technorati rank the more visibility you get in the searches. There are a few things you can do to help this blog increase its ranking.

1. Link to posts you find interesting on your own sites/blogs. This would include Facebook, Myspace and any personal blogs. In our interview with John Mark McMillan we are doing a giveaway based off of people linking to the post. So spread the love.
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Tim Hughes has posted an interesting question on his blog raising the question, “Can we sing songs of worship directed to the Holy Spirit?.” I think the question is more interesting in its choice of phrasing and inference then the actual answer to the question. We should all agree that we can’t sing any songs of redeemed worship but through the empowering of the Holy Spirit. And if we can agree that worship is a response to God rather than self instigated, than the direction of our worship becomes evident by whom we are responding to.

The question posed implies a dissection of our theological view on the trinity. But to me that question is working of an improper assumption that redeemed worship(I quite purposefully distinguish between redeemed/fallen worship) could be “directed”, employed, engaged in, taught or experienced by, to or through anyone but the Holy Spirit. Our model of a perfect life of worship is of course Jesus Christ and Luke 10:21Luke 10:21
English: American Standard Version (1901) - ASV
21 In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight.  

gives us insight into how Jesus worshiped in a trinitarian life:

At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”

The Son worshiping the Father, full of joy, through the Holy Spirit. Jesus was also full of and led by the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:1-2Luke 4:1-2
English: American Standard Version (1901) - ASV
4 ¹ And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit in the wilderness ² during forty days, being tempted of the devil. And he did eat nothing in those days: and when they were completed, he hungered.  

). I don’t think we should be fearful of addressing the spirit of God we are to be filled with and led by. For it’s the same spirit that gives us the ability to worship the Father, Son and Spirit at all.

Tim does acknowledge this in his blog and points to more of a practical question of lyrical content.

“…can we sing ‘Holy Spirit, glorify Your name?’”

I don’t think we have any basis for removing worship of 1 part of the trinity. From a trinitarian view that would be to deny the worship of God entirely, and that my friends, I don’t intend to do.

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