Keith Green’s impact on the American church as a whole cannot be understated. He was a man way ahead of his time, his music was like nothing else being played. I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for his humility, love, passion and service to Jesus. I’m eagerly awaiting the release of this movie. You can read more about the movie here. Here’s an expert from the article:

Both Melody and Keith were born Jewish, but the couple began attending a home Bible study in Coldwater Canyon and became born-again Christians.

In 1977, Sparrow Records offered Keith a record deal. The album, “For Him Who Has Ears To Hear,” soon became the biggest debut album in the history of Christian recording. His second album in 1978, “No Compromise,” also rose quickly to the top of the charts. Outgrowing the homes in Woodland Hills, the ministry relocated in 1979 to a ranch near Lindale, Texas.

Keith negotiated a release from his contract at Sparrow and decided to give his albums away for whatever people could afford. The first free album was 1980′s “So You Want To Go Back To Egypt,” which featured Bob Dylan playing harmonica.

A few years ago, Melody learned that more than 100,000 people had gone to serve in other nations since Keith had challenged his fans in 1982 to minister abroad.

“I feel like those who knew of Keith – or find out about his ministry – that something gets ignited in their hearts and they get supercharged to make a difference,” Melody said. “I’m doing my best to do my part. Keith already did his.”

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now Arizona passed what many are calling the nation’s “toughest” immigration law this past Friday. Reaction across the country has been quite heated and I’ve talked to many of my Mexican friends here in Phoenix and most are at the least concerned if not angry. Now there have been reports of random councilmen(women) calling for boycotts over this law passing and now we have the Canadian band Stars starting their boycott saying,

“We love AZ, But until its racist new immigration law is repealed, Stars (and many others) will boycott this state.”

Some local music blogs have expressed concern about the “many others” portion of that tweet(because who cares about the Stars?) and it’s impact on the AZ music scene. I personally find it hard to believe that this music boycott will gain any steam and if it did that it would last for any length of time. But regardless of the boycott’s success or failure, one thing I realized is this is quite an ironic turn of events as it reminded me of the church’s all too common response to mainstream entertainment, and that is to boycott when we disagree.

Whether it’s a Dan Brown or James Cameron movie, or Jay Z talking about “Jesus can’t save you“, the gut reaction of so many in Christendom is to call for a boycott and disengagement instead of a missional engagement in the culture and bringing the truth of Christ to that situation. A boycott is such a shallow, temporal mean to an end and cares nothing of the people involved or any eternal implications that may be at play.

Look bands, if you hate the AZ immigration law that’s fine. But you should come down here and sing about it. Get involved in our culture and hear what people’s concerns are and use your creativity to speak what you feel is true. If you care at all about the “injustice” of it, or those you feel are impacted by the so called racist nature of this law, then you should be down here and playing every club until your message is heard. Right now all I hear is a whiny band from up north, that knows nothing about AZ, that probably had no plans to play AZ anyway and sacrificed nothing of themselves but rather made a superficial gesture to make themselves feel good.

I know this sounds crazy coming from a Christian, but I’m hoping that us Christians have learned our lessons from cultural disengagement and boycotts. So take it from us, if you want change, then get engaged in the culture and impact it from the inside out.

UPDATE: F****** Up’s Pink Eyes says bands should play in AZ now more than ever.

Loops in Worship recently interviewed me about my music background and loop work. I was humbled Will thought I might have something interesting to say or that people would be interested in hearing what I have to say. Anyway, check it out when you get a chance and make sure to browser around the rest of the site. They offer a lot of great resources for those interested in looping.

Leave a comment over there too if you are so inclined and please don’t be alarmed by my paleness in my picture.

The people are growing restless, dare I say angry that John Mark’s stuff has been taken down from Amazon and iTunes. Please everyone lay down your pitchforks, I just spoke with John Mark and here’s the deal.

• singles will be released in March and May
• Album + bonus tracks available July 6th

He’s on a new label (Integrity) and on tour now so go catch a show and buy one his vinyls. And while you’re at it, buy one for me and send it to me…pretty please. Keep up to date with his blog, website and twitter. And of course stay tuned here for all your JMM breaking news.

As I prepared for this past Sunday’s worship set I had a very heavy heart. The stories and images coming out of Haiti are truly heart breaking and challenging at many levels. This past week Dennis Miller was asking for Christians to call into his radio show and explain how God allows this to happen. I listened every day as people would call in and espouse 1 of 2 theories.

1. God had nothing to do with this, this was Satan. or…
2. This is direct punishment for Haitians sin.

It was frustrating and painful to hear people either run away from God’s sovereignty and appoint the power to call creation into action to Satan, or to run from grace and appoint judgment onto Haiti that all nations deserve and are under. It pains me to hear Christians disavowing the sovereign rule and reign of God over all creation, but it also pains me to hear Christians claiming they know why this happened. What a disgusting measure of pride in both circumstances. If you haven’t read Albert Mohler’s post on “Does God Hate Haiti?” I implore you to go read it.

So all of this is happening in my mind as I pray about what my responsibility is as a worship leader in light of what’s happening. It was a very similar feeling I felt after 9/11 and I remember the feeling that the church had no songs to sing after 9/11 because we tend to overlook worshipping in lament. Though the Psalms are full of worship in lament, our churches are usually void of them.

I felt it important for our church to not run from the gospel and hide in either of the extremes I mentioned above. That in light of what’s happening in Haiti we should respond corporately in a few ways:

1. We should grieve and mourn with those in Haiti

Romans 12:15 spells it out clearly, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Starting out the service with big smiles and happy clappy, dance in the aisles music seemed ill-fitting at best when viewed in the shadow of 50,000 dead with another 100,000 yet to be found. Paul says we should rejoice in our suffering, but doesn’t say we should rejoice in other’s suffering. In fact he says quite the opposite in 1 Corinthians 12:26 when discussing church unity:

“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (ESV)

Before and during our worship set we had a lot of prayer, acknowledging the heartache and suffering. And we mourned with those in Haiti dealing with this devastation first hand.

2. Worship the all sovereign God

The church has to recognize God’s sovereignty in all things. That God’s ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts and he has plans and purposes that we don’t see. I don’t see the number of earthquakes God has held back, the hurricanes he’s calmed or the tsunamis he’s diverted. Matt Chandler said,

“The entire universe is built around communicating to you that you’re tiny and you’re fragile and you control nothing.”

We are tiny and God is great, all powerful, all sovereign and all good. This earthquake as well as all creation should point us to God and illuminate his divine attributes (sovereignty being one of them). Romans 1:20:

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Our worship set was filled with these songs, every song had this at its core. Our God Reigns, The Solid Rock, Whole World In His Hands.

3. Worship the merciful, loving, good God

God loves Haiti, he loves the people of Haiti and his heart is grieved. At the cross we see God’s perfect justice meet his perfect mercy, grace and love. We live in the aftermath of that collision on the cross and our hearts should be eternally grateful. Ephesians 2:4-7

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

We opened with God of This City, a song I think does an amazing job of communicating God’s sovereign rule, but that things aren’t yet as they should be. That God is still at work.

4. Serve the broken and minister to the lost

If all you have is great context and point of view without your heart being impacted and propelled towards acts of kindness and mercy, then there’s a disconnect with the gospel. My heart is warmed by the tremendous outpouring from the Christian community towards Haiti. There are so many different avenues of service and help happening right now and they all are orchestrated under the mercy, grace and sovereignty of God.

I think it it incredibly important for our worship to not hide from any of these things in this time. Our view of the gospel in our worship needs to be enriched not diluted. We can’t hide from this and we shouldn’t try and cloak God or any of his divine attributes to make it more palatable to the world. I beg my fellow worship leaders to point their churches, their community to the gospel in this season. In devastation and loss their is great opportunity for God to be magnified, for the lost to be pointed to Christ and for the church to be mobilized to show Christ’s love.

One of the songs we did which I really felt God appointed for us in this time is a song by Tim Hughes called “Whole World In His Hands.” I’ll finish with the lyrics to that song.

Verse 1
When all around is fading
And nothing seems to last
When each day is filled with sorrow
Still I know with all my heart

Chorus
He’s got the whole world in His hands
He’s got the whole world in His hands
I fear no evil for You are with me
Strong to deliver, mighty to save
He’s got the whole world in His hands

Verse 2
When I walk through fire
I will not be burned
When the waves come crashing round me
Still I know with all my heart

As I watched this incredibly challenging and encouraging video of Matt Chandler discussing where he’s at with his sudden fight with a brain tumor, I felt such simultaneous heartache and joy seeing this warrior of our faith stand firm in Christ. Matt has had such a huge impact on me from afar, I’ve never met him or even seen him in person, but his impact on my faith cannot be overstated. It’s humbling to hear his words, it’s encouraging to see him live it out and it’s incredibly moving to see the love and wisdom shared through his family.

For those of you who don’t know, Matt Chandler is pastor of The Village Church and fellow member of the Acts 29 Network. According to the latest updates Matt is doing well, is out of the ICU and results should be back from tests on the tumor in the middle of this week.

This has been a big week for many reasons, all of which I’ll blog about. But one of the simpler ones to blog about is my church‘s entrance into full Acts 29 membership. The A29 blog just published an article introducing us to the network. I’m really excited to be joining the network, there are so many pastors, worship leaders and friends here that I respect.

As far as worship music goes, we do things differently than most A29 churches I know. That’s fine for us and I don’t expect any issues with that. A29 is a pretty diverse organization with a lot of different kinds of churches. We are a Reformed-Charismatic church, reformed in theology, non-cessationist, holy spirit believing, gift empowered body of believers that sing our guts out to loud, thumping, worship music. We are a creative bunch, that use lots of video, “concert” lighting, text messaging Q&A, twitter to organize our home groups, podcasting, vodcasting, live loops…  We’re in downtown Phoenix, in a rough neighborhood that frequently has police helicopters circling our building during night meetings. My point is we aren’t your grandparent’s reformed church.

But then again…we are complementarian, we are firm believers of sola scriptura, we love Piper, Chandler, Driscoll, Keller and many of us are 4.5 point calvanists. (Not a typo, that’s 4 and a half) We practice church discipline, are introducing formal membership, preach the cross relentlessly and by that I mean the rugged cross, penal substitutionary atonement, propitiation and expiation.

We’re a crazy bunch of misfits for sure, but we have deep conviction about what we do and who we are in Christ. We’re excited to team up with the group of A29 churches here in Phoenix and share the gospel with the lost and hurting. I pray this opens new doors for our church and that we’re able to reach more people for Christ.

When I first started leading worship in high school I led worship with a hat on backwards once. It was the nineties cut me some slack, plus I was an idiot. Anyway someone left the church because of that. Now reading that this guy stabbed his own son for just being in church with a hat on makes me feel soooo thankful that all that person did was leave. To add insult to injury, the dad stabbed him in the butt.