I’ve been listening to Mumford & Sons “Sigh No More” record with equal parts enjoyment and intrigue. Before I knew really anything about the band I could tell the writing was wrestling with a lot of good spiritual issues. After I saw them live here in Phoenix and saw the response in the crowd I was blown away by how the songs were reaching people. Then I discovered that Marcus Mumford has strong Vineyard ties, son of the Vineyard UK regional directors and is friends with some local Vineyard friends. All that to say, I love their music and pray for that band in a different way now.

One of their songs “Awake My Soul” really caught me as something that, in pieces, could work really well in a worship set. I’ve been playing around with it and came up with a few minor, but important, lyric changes and introduced it as a tag this past week. The congregation responded well and I thought it served the aim of the set and what God had been stirring in us. I’m not sure if we’ll do it again, but it’s a possibility. The lyric we sang was very simple:

Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For we were made to love our maker

The bluegrass feel went quite well sandwiching our first song by Ryan Delmore. We teased the tag at the beginning of Ryan’s song and then reintroduced it at the end. Here are the details of the set:

1. The Gift of Gifts – Opening Puritan Prayer
2. The World Can’t Take It Away – Ryan Delmore
3. God of this City – Bluetree (loop available)
4. My Soul Sings – Delirious (loop available)
5. Nothing But the Blood – Robert Lowry (Page CXVI arrangement linked)
6. Our God Reigns – Delirious (loop available)

In Deuteronomy 31- 32 we read about the final days of Moses’ life and how God would have him pass his leadership but also how he would deliver a parting revelation to the people of Israel. It’s all too popular for Christian songwriters to explain every song with the phrase “God gave me this song“, but this is one of the few cases in scripture where this can be said. God gives Moses a song to write for the people of Israel, for His glory and for the benefit of His people. In this blog series we’ll look at 5 lessons learned through the story of the Song of Moses. In Part 1 we looked at how worship songs are a response to God’s revelation to us. In Part 2 we discussed confrontative worship and in Part 3 we discussed knowing our churches inclination to idolatry.

Unforgotten in the mouths of our children

The song of Moses is sandwiched in scripture with a couple statements about the impact of this worship song to the children(literal) of Israel. First as God gives his directive to Moses in the middle of Deuteronomy 31:21:

[21] And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give.” (Deuteronomy 31:21 ESV)

Then after Moses writes and recites the song to the people he clarifies the importance of the worship song:

[45] And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, [46] he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 32:45-46 ESV)

So we see clearly that a very important purpose of this song is to deliver lasting theological clarity and purpose upon the children of Israel. This worship song was meant to confront Israel, turn their hearts back to God, and for this song of repentance and redeemed worship to be instructed to the kids to the point where they’d never forget it.

I love that the point of instruction for the father’s from God isn’t to have the kids watch them live in response to truth. No God has already bluntly revealed their own wicked hearts and inclination to false worship, instead God has them teach God’s truth to their kids. So both father’s and children are aligning themselves to God’s truth, the only true barometer of righteousness. With that in mind there’s 2 points I’d like to focus on:

1. The value of song in teaching our kids theology

It’s been said many times in many different ways that song has a tremendous impact on teaching and framing our theology. I don’t think there’s any denying that and depending on your background it may be that the only thing you know about God is what you remember singing. Whether or not that’s a good thing is another discussion, but the truth is that’s reality and we can’t ignore it. My Dad was a pastor for many years, all through my youth. I can’t remember many of his sermons but I remember almost every song we sung. What I knew of the gospel as a boy predominantly came from what we were singing, song is and was instrumental in my growth in the gospel.

The Song of Moses shows us that song is a gift from God, intended to glorify Him and teach us about Him. Thank the Lord for song but what an incredibly heavy responsibility it is and the church needs worship leaders that aren’t afraid of carrying it. Too often I hear worship leaders shirking that responsibility and excusing bad teaching in song through some belief that it’s just some kind of “musical venting”. Just something they “felt” a responsibility to release but somehow “felt” no responsibility to consider what it communicates about God. I love creative worship songs sung from different perspectives in different contexts, that’s awesome. But know that ultimately you are teaching something about God and it’s either truth and God glorifying, or a lie and destructive. We’re accountable for that worship leaders.

2. Look at me vs. look at Him

The way we live as parents is a huge influence on our children, but the way we use that influence is what needs to be considered. I’d much rather use my influence as a father to continually point my kids to Christ, his accomplishment and the work of the Holy Spirit instead of hoping my influence and works somehow regenerate their hearts. Now I’m not trying to shirk my responsibility as a father to mirror Christ to my kids. It’s absolutely vital we mirror Christ to our children, but we also must teach them about Jesus, pray for them to know Him, sing songs with our kids that teach them the truth about Jesus and make sure we are mirroring our own need of Jesus to our kids.

We can’t just drag our kids to church and hope that through some form of osmosis they are made into the likeness of Christ. A godly environment is important but it’s not enough, godly influences are important but they aren’t enough, Jesus is enough, Jesus is what needs to be taught and aligned to. And if we as parents mirror that truth to our kids, then we’re doing as God commanded Moses, for parent and child to look to God, worship Him and be changed by Him.

I’ve been so blessed the past 6 weeks or so with our new instrumental/puritan prayer reading openings to service. I’ve been blessed on multiple levels. First, I’ve loved see more people involved in Sunday service. We’ve opened this prayer reading up to the body and man we’ve had some incredible readings. Secondly, the content is just crushing. We’ve been reading through “The Valley of Vision – A collection of Puritan prayers & devotions” and the prayers are a brutal combination of truth, wisdom, passion, pain, joy…I mean they are just incredible!

Third, the tone we’ve been able to set from the get go with the music in support of the reading has been really beyond my expectations and become something I look forward to the entire week. Every week we work on a new original instrumental arrangement and I’ve been blown away by what we’ve come up with and I can’t wait to turn these core riffs into full songs. Creatively I feel like we’ve hit a real groove and it feels amazing to be part of. If you’ve played in many bands you’ll know that it’s really special when you find that creative groove that seems to come easy, that’s rare.

Here are the songs that made up our set…

1. Opening Prayer – “The All Good“
2. You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band
3. We Will Run – Gungor
4. Nothing But the Blood – Robert Lowry (Page CXVI arrangement linked)
5. How Deep the Father’s Love For Us – Stuart Townend (Chad Gardner arrangement linked)
6. None But Jesus – Hillsong
7. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin (After Sermon)

Laugh, cry, throw up…do whatever you think is appropriate in response…in Jesus name of course

[via sahdpdx]

Currently I’m in day 2 of my week long vacation and as I look back 2 days ago, from way out west on the beach of Santa Barbara, I see God’s goodness, grace and power in the desert of Phoenix more clearly. The closer I am it seems to what God’s doing in my family, friends, church, city, the harder it is to see God’s grace and progression of his will. Whether that be the persistent work of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives as they are made more into the image of Christ, or the unifying work of the Spirit in our church body, or the provision, or the healing, etc, etc…

When I’m in the middle of it I find it hard to step aside and just be thankful for what God is doing, instead I’m usually focused on the work that lies ahead to move forward. Some combination of the two is where I’d like to be and not so dang fixated on the work, but able to rest in the goodness and just enjoy the benefits of being in Christ.

What does this have to do with Sunday’s set? Well as I reflected Sunday night on the set my mind of course goes straight to where we need to improve, the songs I need to finish writing, the equipment we need, the recording time, yada yada yada. Now I’m just thankful for what God did Sunday, his goodness in allowing us to be part of what He’s doing in Phoenix through LCC, and the tremendously gifted musicians he’s brought to LCC. As I’m on vacation, our other worship band “Green House” will be leading worship this upcoming Sunday and I know they’ll do an incredible job. Churches much larger than ours would kill to have the musicians we have. None of them are paid(including me), they come and serve because they are on mission with us and I’m just humbled and thankful for our church body, it’s leaders and servants. Here’s what we played.

1. Puritan Prayer – “God the Source of All Good”
2. Prayer for Faith – Joe Day
3. God of This City – Bluetree (loop available)
4. We Will Run – Gungor
5. Nothing But the Blood – Page CXVI
6. Death In His Grave – John Mark McMillan (loop available)

I’ve always wanted to blog through the process of creating a loop and include folks along the way to get feedback at each portion. Then look back and see the evolution of the song as I made changes. So this post starts that journey.

Part 1. Main Groove

I’ve started to write a loop for an original arrangement of In Christ Alone by Stuart Townend. This arrangement may be pretty far out for those that know the traditional arrangements, but I hear it all coming together in my head well and if you’re a worth anything as a writer, you gotta trust that inner head arrangement. At this point I just have the main groove looping over the verse progression. This was done all in one session, total session time was probably 6 hours or so. I think I spent 3 hours on the drums alone, finding the right kick/snares and making tone adjustments and such. Spending time on each individual instrument’s (drums having many instruments -> kick, snare, toms, etc…) tone is so important.

Here’s how I organize my thoughts when searching for drum sounds. I make a list of all the candidates (all that I think may work) for each sound and then I go through each one comparing one to another and selecting the better of the 2. Repeat process until you only have one left and last sample standing wins!

So here’s what I have so far, just a few measures looped over. From here I’ll peel it back and get the instrumentation for the verse with vocals.

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The charismatic worship formula is pretty well defined and though we don’t follow it in many ways, we do follow it in at least one way…fast songs first. And truthfully this is always the hardest portion of the set list for me for a few reasons, but one major reason being, there just aren’t very many good up tempo worship songs. Most are either super churchy and cheesy or sound like a Kids Incorporated tune. So I have a very limited rotation on the up tempo songs and often it feels like I’m force fitting them into the set.

This week I just had enough of it and said I’m not force fitting anything. Instead I opened with a couple mid tempo songs, though both are high intensity (Burning Ones especially). I thought the transition from our opening instrumental/prayer into Where We Belong was the smoothest opening we’ve ever done. I thought the response was fantastic and God was praised and magnified from the get go. I’m not saying we will never play an up tempo song to open again, but I am saying I won’t force fit them again, so you’ll probably be hearing less of them.

LCC I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you felt it went. Comment publicly with your encouragement and file all complaints with my secretary and she’ll forward them to me.

1. Puritan prayer
2. Where We Belong – Hillsong (loop available)
3. Burning Ones – Jesus Culture (loop available)
4. My Soul Sings – Delirious (loop available)
5. The Solid Rock – Edward Mote (loop available)
6. Jesus Paid It All – Elvina Hall (loop available)

p.s. I don’t have a secretary

There’s a great wave of new, fresh, creative, beautiful arrangements of old hymns. These are the top 5 that I’ve found, please comment below if you have any others you’d like to nominate.

1. Jesus Paid It All – Chad Gardner (Mars Hill Good Friday Live)

I think I listened to this on repeat for a week straight. One of the most powerful arrangements I’ve ever heard of one of the most powerful worship songs ever written. Hard to beat that.

If any are interested in a loop for this arrangement I have one published.

2. Battle Hymn Of The Republic – Page CXVI (Hymns II)

Page CXVI has plenty of awesome arrangements but this is one of the more surprising ones. I didn’t expect to be blown away like I was with this arrangement. It’s hard to rock this one with it’s march shuffle rhythm, but they found a way. When the chorus opens up it’s a beautiful thing.

Other killer songs from their Volume I Hymns album: Nothing But the Blood, Joy

3. Come Thou Fount – Coram Deo Church (Doxology)

Vocals on this are just killer, the lead male vocal channeled his inner Rufus Wainright perfectly. Probably the simplest arrangement on this list, but all the great arrangements of this song I’ve heard are simple, it’s just the way this song was meant to be played I think.

4. I Sing the Mighty Power of God – Ex Nihilo (Rain City Hymnal)

So many great songs of this album, but this arrangement builds on each verse just so well and when it eventually goes for it towards the end, the pay off was well worth the build up. Also for you more adventurous types that dig some electronica, there’s a Sandman Theory Remix of this that’s awesome!

Other killer songs from this album: Doxology (The Northern Conspiracy), The Solid Rock (E-pop), Here Is Love (Ex Nihilo)

5. How Deep The Father’s Love For Us – Chad Gardner (Mars Hill Good Friday Live)

It’s only appropriate that this Mars Hill’s Good Friday Service sit as the bookends to this list. I said before I think that set is probably the best worship set I’ve heard start to finish. Just absolutely incredible.

So what songs did I miss that deserved a mention?