Hey all,
I just posted a new section featuring some of my own music.  You can listen to complete songs and download chord charts, all for nothin'.  So click on over and enjoy.
-matt

Two new song lists are up (organized by theme and by service element), along with updated versions of the previous two (by song name and composer).  They will continue to be revised and expanded, so check back for new versions every month or two.  

Note that the theme index includes seasons of the church year.  For example, “Beautiful Things” by Gungor is great for Ash Wednesday.  There are also sections for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.  

For many church praise teams, Christmas can be a challenge.  Where do I find good contemporary arrangements of Christmas music?  What songs from our regular repertoire work for this season?  Here’s your all-in-one Advent/Christmas guide.  I realize this will already be too late for some of you to use this year.  If so, keep it bookmarked for next year, and I'll be sure to update it early.  

Everything I have written so far could be summed up in a simple, two-part rhythm.  I believe this rhythm is the very essence of Christian worship, transcending denominational, stylistic, and even theological lines.  Christian worship does these two things, which are always working in harmony with each other:

1) Acknowledges our need for God.
2) Celebrates Jesus as the fulfillment of that need. 

If you are doing this in your worship, you are leading people toward experiencing the gospel, and therefore experiencing God.  This applies to our singing, as well as to preaching and to our celebration of the sacraments.  Over and over again as we worship, this rhythm is either right beneath the surface or explicitly displayed. 

Musically, it may happen within one song, with two songs, or it may be a broad movement over an entire set.  As you plan worship, look for this rhythm.  Plan it into your worship.  In this rhythm God is glorified.  In it God comes to meet us where we are.  In this rhythm we are ushered into God’s presence.    

As an example of the ideas presented in the last several posts, here is a breakdown of the worship service at my church from today.

Movement 1: Gather
        Happy Day (Tim Hughes)
        Everyday (Joel Houston)
        Love the Lord (Lincoln Brewster)
In this particular service we are afforded quite a bit of time for music, so we are able to develop the theme significantly through music in the Gathering section.  Today we used “Happy Day” to recall and celebrate our baptism, by which we are united into Christ’s death and resurrection: “The greatest day in history/death is beaten you have rescued me/Sing it out/Jesus is alive/…/O happy day/You washed my sin away/Forever I am changed.”  We didn’t do this today, but during this song we could have invited folks to come forward, dip their fingers into the baptismal font and make the sign of the cross on their forehead (or one another’s foreheads), saying “I am (You are) a baptized child of God.”  Another method is for a pastor or member to walk around and “spritz” the congregation with a branch dipped in water.  Good times.

During the years leading up to the turn of the century, a revival of worship music that began largely overseas – particularly in England and Australia – made its way to American shores.  Worship music was infused with a new level of passion.  But the best had yet to come.  In the decade-plus that followed, the music became more innovative and the gradually the lyrics were written with a higher degree of theological reflection.  Here are some of the best albums – especially featuring songs for corporate worship – that have come out since 2000.

From the earliest liturgies of the Christian church, the celebration of Holy Communion has been the pinnacle of worship.  It is, according to my tradition, the second pillar that makes our worship truly Christian (“Word and Sacrament”). An important concern is whether this ritual, repeated every week, becomes stale and meaningless.  But this is not cause to abandon it altogether.  Instead, as with the earlier part of the liturgy, it is important to examine the intention behind the ritual and see what might be important for us to adapt today.  

This is part III of a series about worship order and liturgy, so it will probably make most sense if you’ve read part I and part II first. 

This post will focus on the part of worship that comes right after the sermon or message.  Traditional liturgies include several gifts in this section that allow us to respond to hearing God’s Word.  These are often left out of simplified modern worship orders. 

1) The Hymn (or Song) of the Day.  This is a song chosen for that day’s worship specifically to work alongside the sermon or message.  It allows the assembly to respond corporately to the Word of God that they have just heard proclaimed, and even allows them to participate in its proclamation.  Ideally the assembly is invited to stand and sing, without having to do anything else (dig in purses/wallet for an offering, etc) simultaneously.  Hopefully the song is chosen in partnership with the preacher, to ensure that it adequately captures the theme of the sermon and/or an appropriate response.

This is part II of a two-part post. Read part I here.

In examining traditional liturgy, I have tried to detect the intention behind each part – that is, how does this particular piece of the liturgy move worship forward?  What does it communicate? What purpose does it serve, that we might be able to apply even to the most simplified of modern formats?

Exploring the historic liturgies of several denominations, I began to notice a collection of common themes.  I have distilled them here in their most typical order, presented as seven “movements” (a very convenient number!).  The elements of a traditional liturgy are in italics under each movement (for a brief explanation of each traditional liturgical element, see this document).

Among mainline denominational churches that are using contemporary music, there have been two main approaches: (1) incorporate some of the new music into an otherwise traditional liturgical form, or (2) follow the example of non-denominational churches and abandon almost all liturgical form, reducing the worship service to a “music-and-a-message” model.  In reality most churches fall somewhere between these two poles.  But many churches seem unsure of exactly what they should be doing.  How should we order our worship?