New Music
Michael Newnham over at the Phoenix Preacher recommended some new music in his weekly “Open Blogging” column today. One of those artists is Josh Garrels. Here is a video of him perfoming one of his songs. The dude is really good. If you go to his website www.joshgarrels.com you can listen to a sampling of his music as well.
[youtube 6tCRuqirCWg]
Worship
I believe the Church is in an absolute state of ignorance in regard to what is, actually worship.
There are at least 3 misconceptions that lead to this ignorance.
1. Music has been confused with worship -
Music is certainly a part of worship but we’ve made it the totality of how we define worship. This has bred the wrong thinking that “worship” is what happens at the beginning of the church service on Sunday mornings. Certainly worship includes singing and instrumentation but at other times it looks a like washing a dish, serving the needy, having a conversation with a friend, or some other mundane task that we’ve relegated to the secular portion of our life. It’s also created this “I’m of Apollos…” mentality that can only “worship” with a certain style of music. Leading people to say ridiculous things like, “the worship wasn’t very good this morning.” Really? Because last time I checked, God is still unbelievably amazing and completely worthy of our worship whether or not the band was tight.
2. Worship has been compartmentalized -
Worship is not something we can start and stop doing. Nor is it something we do only when we participate in certain activities. Worship is what we do with our entire life (Romans 12:1-2). The question is not, am I worshiping, but who or what am I worshiping. Unfortunately most of our worship is centered on self. We live in a self-consumed culture that believes the world revolves around me and my needs. There are many things vying for our worship. Like the Athenians whom Paul described as “very religious” so too we bow at the altar of money, sex, education, entertainment, pleasure, and a myriad of other gods on a daily basis. It’s no wonder that we struggle to “enter into worship” during our corporate times of music at church.
3. We’ve lost sight of the glory of God -
If we truly understood the glory of God we would never have difficulty “entering into worship”. We would never relegate worship to a style of music or to something so small as, whether or not I know the songs. In Luke 7 we find a crowd of people who just witnessed Jesus raise a widow’s son from the dead. This crowd is initially filled with fear but that fear turns into worship as they realize that this Man is a prophet and more than a prophet He is God in human flesh (Luke 7:11-17). No one had to whip this crowd into a frenzy…they didn’t need to repeat some trite phrase until they were delirious enough to truly “worship”. These people had a true encounter with the glory of God and the only logical response was to worship. When we truly experience Jesus and His glory it will create such an overwhelming need to worship that we won’t care what kind of music is being played, how we feel, or if everything in my life is going the way I think it should for God to be worthy of the effort.
The only response will be…
Here I am Lord. Take me. Consume me. Use me for Your glory.
For more information on this subject check out -
My latest message from Luke 7:1-17 (see the sermon player to your right)
Also check out John Piper’s writings and sermons on the subject.
U2's New Album
You can stream U2’s new album at their myspace site.
Just select No line on the Horizon from the drop down menu on the music player.
The album is available for pre-buy on iTunes and will be released on Monday March 2nd.
The few songs I’ve listened to sound really great. Don’t expect Joshua Tree and you’ll love it!
Leeland
Okay…now I’m really stoked. Leeland has a new album coming out tonight and it’s only $7.
I think Leeland’s debut album “Sound of Melodies” may be one of my favorite worship albums.
We do a few of their songs like, “Beautiful Lord” and “Carried to the Table” at church.
If you or your worship leader are looking for new songs check these out…Carried to the Table is an amazing song for communion and Beautiful Lord is my favorite worship song we do right now.
If you haven’t listened to these guys I bid you come partake of the sweetness.
Listen to them here
Everyday Sunday
It looks like we’ve booked ES for our summer outreach festival called SonFest. Each summer we put on SonFest as way to tangibly demonstrate Jesus’ love to our community with good music, tons of games and activities for kids, a skate or moto-cross demonstation, free water, and an infamous dance off, which my wife nearly won last year (think of Elaine in that Seinfield episode).
We’ve had bands such as Grand Prize (now called Esterlyn), Daryl Mansfield, Paul Wright, DecembeRadio, and now Everyday Sunday.
Everyday Sunday is a poppy punk band from Columbus, OH.
SonFest is planned for June 28-29, 2008 at the Pioneer Park in downtown Prineville.