The Worship Artist

I Will Boast | audio | chord chart | lead sheet
God Moves In A Mysterious Way | audio | chord chart | lead sheet
Not All The Blood of Beasts | audio | chord chart | lead sheet

Cue Sheet

If you cannot worship the Lord in the midst of your responsibilities on Monday, it is not very likely that you were worshiping in Sunday!

A. W. Tozer

Stay tuned. Life is crazy. I’m finishing up my senior year at MBU. Exciting time, but (obviously) I have needed to decrease my attention on this blog. Thanks for sticking with me.

Who would have thought a forward in a book would stand out to me so much. Here’s Sally Morgenthaler in the forward to Dan Kimball’s book, “Emerging Worship:”

When it comes to irony, worship in late twentieth century evangelicalism takes the prize. Just as the world was reenchanting the universe (think Deepak Chopra, The X-Files, candle-and-teddy-bear grief vigils, Final Fantasy video games, and Lord of the Rings), user-friendly Christianity was practicing religious reductionism: shrinking the divine to the size of a three-point outline and four songs in the key of perpetual happy.

Time magazine lists their top 10 Ideas that are changing the world right now. Coming in at number 3 is “New Calvinism.” Check out Pastor Mark Driscoll, he has some great thoughts on Time Magazine’s article on New Calvinism:

1. Time Magazine Names New Calvinism 3rd Most Powerful Idea
2. More Thoughts on Time Magazine and New Calvinism

“One of the dilemmas I find among spiritual leaders is a propensity to downplay positive feedback and focus on negative feedback. This is a recipe for continued mediocrity because it pegs your productivity to problems and demoralizes you to boot. Remember, it is okay for you not to be good at everything. That qualifies you for being human. Being human is what qualifies you for spiritual leadership, not being perfect. The need to be good at everything is idolatrous. Besides, not getting all the talent is one more way God builds into us our need for community. We need other people’s talent to fully experience what God has in mind for our lives.”
-Practicing Greatness: 7 disciplines of extraordinary spiritual leaders by Reggie McNeal

How do you take compliments? Can you take them? I honestly really struggle with this.

I Will Boast [D]
[Church Life]
[Offering]
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) [E]
Jesus Messiah [E]
[Message]

You may be familiar with the Passion movement/conferences. It appears that they’ve decided to start a church plant in Atlanta, GA.

http://www.passioncitychurch.com/

Rich Kirkpatrick posted his Worship Mythbuster today, and it particularly resonated with me. I’m personally trying to hash all of this out, and he makes some excellent points.

Now, I am all for excellence in technique and production and good music indeed draws a crowd as much as great speaking. However, that is not the goal. That is the means. Evangelism is a purpose, but it is not always worship. Its one thing to make a worship setting that is friendly to unbelievers (see 1 Corinthians 14) it is another to make that the goal. Worship is the goal.

Read the full article

I haven’t done this in a while… but here’s a look into what we did on Sunday. We actually did a video recording for my resume for this service. I’ll probably have some videos up in a couple weeks.
We’re going to build another sanctuary onto our existing building and naturally people tend to give more money during these types of campaigns. I thought it would be appropriate for the congregation to pray over the offering, rather than myself of the pastor.

Everlasting God [B]
Church Life
Jesus Messiah [A]
Mighty To Save [F#]
Offering
[Congregational Offertory Prayer]
Message
God of This City [C]