My home church, Life Connection Church in Phoenix, AZ, is hosting a men’s conference this March 6-7 called Anthropology. We have Ryan Delmore from Vineyard Music and 5 Cities Vineyard coming in to lead us in worship throughout the conference as well as Sunday morning service. And we have Dr. Richard Hanner , professor at CFNI, as our featured guest speaker.

Here is the official conference description.

Anthropology is a gathering of men who desire to walk in maturity, responsibility and authority in Christ. We will confront the tough issues men face, soul ties, sex, addiction, and pornography and encourage and speak God’s truth in fatherhood and restoration. We desire to see men young and old know who God has created them to be and not surrender responsibility, but to be mature men, passionate after Christ, free from sin, bold and mature in their faith, leading their families as Christ intended.

You can get the entire conference schedule here as well as registration info. We also have a Facebook event for Anthropology, so if you aren’t already a fan of the Life Connection Church facebook page, get on it. I hope those of you men in the Phoenix are will come check it out, it’s going to be a blast.

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 3:1-12” 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.

A small group of us recently went to the Continuous Worship conference at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I’ve read much of Mark Driscoll, subscribed to his podcast and I love what he’s doing so I was really excited about this conference. I knew very little of their worship music theology or style. I think I had heard one or 2 tracks that I thought were very strange but couldn’t quite remember why I thought so. I would be reminded why shortly.

They opened up the conference with their style of worship and it was such an interesting dichotomy of current, cutting edge music set to hymnals. I found myself loving the music, and really they play exactly the style of music that I love to write and love to play, but being lost in the words. Despite being raised in the church, I didn’t know hyms because I was raised in the Vineyard and we didn’t sing hymns. So I didn’t know really any of the lyrics and the things about hymns is there are 5 verses and none of them repeat. So I found it very tough to sing although I really wanted to. From the looks of it a lot of people were in the same position as I. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they played at all, they are powerful songs, I just didn’t know them. I’ve never attended a regular Sunday morning service at Mars Hill but I’d imagine the congregation doesn’t have trouble since they’ve heard the songs numerous times. For us non-hymn knowing visitors it was a challenge.

Since then I’ve downloaded a ton of their songs from their music RSS feed and the songs have really grown on me. I admire their creativity, their maturity in arrangement and how much they value theologically sound worship music. My taste doesn’t line up exactly by any means, it’s hit and miss for me, but that’s not unique at all. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone that I like every tune from(not even Jeff Buckley). One of my favorites is the arrangement of Come Thou Fount by E-Pop. The leader of E-Pop, by the way, is in a band called Barcelona who’s recent album is amazing. Checkout Come Thou Fount below:

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E-Pop: Come Thou Fount