Here’s what caught my attention over this week:

• John Piper’s 4 part interview with Matt Chandler. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Matt Chandler has the highest CWPM(Convicting Words Per Minute) rating out of anyone I’ve heard.
• ChurchCrunch’s 3 tips for not sucking at ‘Christian’ blogging. I can’t say the post is entirely insightful, but there are some good portions. The problem is it makes some big assumptions and oversights, namely assuming that every Christian blogger wants to become a large blog with diverse readership. That overlooks the very nature of niche blogging. You aren’t going to have diverse readership because your content is very narrow. I do talk a lot about non-christian music and topics but it’s always how it relates to or impacts worship.
• Church Soundguy posts on Dynamics 101: Compressor Application Notes. This details compression settings for the most common instruments coming into your board. This blog has some incredibly useful information, I highly recommend checking it out, especially for you sound men.
• TwiTip’s 11 useful twittor tools that don’t require your password. Good list of useful and safe Twitter tools.
• Joel Brown, worship leader and deacon at Mars Hill Church, talks about his decision to get baptized this Easter. Great story.
• Randy Elrod unleashes on Perry Noble’s Unleashed rant. I understand where Randy is coming from and do agree there was a general irreverence present in Perry’s rant. But I don’t necessarily disagree with Perry’s ultimate conclusions, just in how he presented them, the language he used and the audience they were spoken to.

I read a lot of great blogs from some amazing worship leaders, pastors, geeks, you name it. I feel bad hoarding them and not sharing with you all. I want to take each Friday and share the love. So here’s some of what has captured my attention over the last week.

• Pastor In a Box – My friend and pastor’s brother in Dallas is doing this promotion/hype event/joke that is causing quite a stir in the church world. I’ll be honest when I was told about this before it was publicly announced I had a good laugh. Knowing Ben (Pastor Ben Dailey excuse me) it’s just hilarious to me. Pastor Ben Dailey just did an interview with Church Executive Magazine, Church Marketing Sucks had some critique for him, and there’s been a smattering of other blogs chiming in. Ben is an amazing man of God and is doing incredible things over there. Much love.
• Advance ’09 Conference: Resurgence of the Local Church – John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Ed Stetzer and more speaking. Nuff said.
• Perry Noble saying he’d like to meet with Matt Chandler and John Piper. Perry did a blog series on 5 leaders he’d like to meet with and it’s quite an eclectic group. I’m encouraged with him including Matt and John.
• Tehilla Music on dealing with worship music complaints in church. Great insight into dealing with people relationally and turning them from complainers into helpers.
• Mark Driscoll Marriage and Men sermon. One of the most challenging, convicting, butt kicking sermons I’ve heard in my life. Every man needs to watch this.

Enjoy.

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.

Yesterday I posted the video of Tim Smith’s interview with Bob Kauflin and I must say how blessed I was by listening to the interview. I respect both of those men and value both of their insight. I mention in the same post some of the wonderful things that were brought up and I’ll blog more on those in a bit. The first follow up I have though is a disagreement in application of musical gifting in the church.

Around 34:50 of the interview. Bob says,

“…in the church I’m never going to achieve, or want to achieve the degree of musical excellence that I’m probably capable of, because I don’t think all that musical excellence will serve the glory of Jesus Christ in the gathered church.”

I would simply ask, “Why not?” The implication here is musical mediocrity will serve the glory of Jesus in the gathered church and I just don’t buy that at all. I think we’re all grateful Michelangelo didn’t have this attitude when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Surely those in worship would be distracted by the beauty of his art and the level of excellence he demonstrated. Surely it would have been better for him to paint in a more mediocre way so as not to draw attention to the art. Of course not, I don’t think there are many who would make that argument. The Sistine Chapel is one of the world’s greatest artistic expressions of worship ever created, if not the greatest. It’s easy to see the folly in this logic with other forms of art, but for some reason many make this argument when it comes to music.

Bob goes on to refer to something John Piper calls “an undistracting excellence.” Which states that “you are so excellent at what you do that no one really notices” but instead notices how great God is. Before I get rolling here I want to point out, I’ve never read John Piper’s thoughts on this, I’m only commenting on what Bob communicated in the interview. I love John Piper, and Bob Kauflin for that matter, and will certainly look for some text or audio on this topic to see what John has to say.

Now, while I agree fully that our focus should be completely upon the greatness of Jesus I disagree that the better you are musically the more of a barrier you become to that purpose. I also disagree that art is in someway a “distraction” from worshiping God. Our art should be a reflection of good, great and loving God just as our lives should be a reflection of Christ as the image bearers of God. Art is an expression, and to pick a point on a the scale of excellent artistic expression and say, “beyond this point you’ve expressed too well and now you’re a distraction” I think is pretty silly. Quite honestly I find mediocre and poor expression much more distracting than excellent expression and I think most would agree.

Looking at a crappy painting on a wall doesn’t reflect anything of God to me. Looking at the Sistine Chapel however reflects the beauty and majesty of God, not of Michelangelo. Listening to a bunch of mediocre musicians lead worship music by playing an uneven time, singing out of key, and writing terribly boring and poorly crafted melodies does not “better serve the glory of Jesus Christ.” Now I’m not saying Bob is saying this, but what other option are we left with?

We either strive to improve, play our best and craft the most beautiful music we can in response to God giving us the best of himself in his Son, or we stop working at our craft and say this is good enough for God and the body of Christ. I say the latter is not a good option as Malachi 1:7-10 warns, we must offer our best sacrifice of praise. This also means using all wisdom in crafting beautiful but singable songs for the body to unite in. It’s possible folks, we don’t have to sound like Grade C musicians in the church to unite the body, please believe me…please!