i am an offering

God was kind enough to bless me to be able to be one of the winners in a contest to win Bob Kauflin’s new book, Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God. I am so glad I had the opportunity to read this book. It has shifted my thinking in many ways. It has challenged me, encouraged me and convicted me. One of the requirements of getting the free book from the contest was that we would write a review. So here it is. Forgive me for the length of this post, there’s just no way to do a short review of this book.

Content

Like any book of these matters (no pun intended, well, maybe a little bit intended), the content is king. It doesn’t matter how good the writing style is or how funny the author is because we’re dealing with a serious, eternal subject. The content in this book is broad, relevant to any worship leader at any stage and very easy to grasp. Bob could have gone into much more doctrinal and theological depth (he has the capability) but made sure that those things were stressed without going over the heads of those who might not yet realize the immense importance of correct doctrine and theology.

At first I wasn’t quite sure if I liked the format of the book. It seemed like every chapter had a bunch of lists and sublists and seemed a bit mechanical. I continued reading, however, I realized just how helpful those lists were and how simple Bob made things easily remembered and marked. There are several sections in the book that I have underlined Bob saying something like, “Here are five ways that…” or “Here are five things to remember…” and then numbered these things in my copy.

The best part of Bob’s Content is “Part Two: The Task” where he unpacks his definition of a worship leader. My pastor was browsing through the table of contents and said, “Wow, this guy’s got his thesis right in the table of contents.” Indeed he does. This section was so helpful amidst so many different cultural expectations and definitions for worship leaders present in today’s society. Bob constantly keeps the focus on Jesus, and that He is the ultimate worship leader and the only one that has the ability to bring us into God’s presence. I loved these thoughts from the chapter on “…A Faithful Worship Leader…”

If our leadership focuses on musical experiences, we’ll reap a desire for better sounds, cooler progressions, and more creative arrangements. If we sow to immediate feelings, we’ll reap meetings driven by the pursuit of emotional highs. If we lead in such a way that we’re the center of attention, we’ll reap a man-centered focus, shallow compliments, and ungodly comparisons.

On the other hand, if we sow to God’s glory in Christ, we’ll reap the fruit of people in awe of God’s greatness and goodness. But to do that we must faithfully paint a compelling, attractive, biblical picture of the Savior.” (pg 59-60)

And the book never strays from those words. All the content is aimed at learning how to “faithfully paint a compelling, attrative, biblical picture of the Savior.” There are plenty of practical tips on music, teams and real life examples, but the majority of the book rightly focuses on builidng a community of worshipers that sees God’s glory in a new way and magnifies Him every day.

Writing Style

As I mentioned before. Bob keeps the writing style simple and easy to follow. Almost every chapter is made up of great lists that are easly applicable to any leader or team, no matter their stage of growth. Bob is mostly serious, but adds some great humor in several spots that helps to lighten things up.

Application

This book is written in such a way that it applies to any worship leader and any worship team, from any denomination or church background for any length of time these ministries have been established. It is also extremely applicable to pastors. In fact, Bob even saves the last chapter specifically for pastors and encourages pastors to read through the whole book. He mentions that

Humanly speaking, the pastor is the worship leader. He is the one responsible before God for the corporate worship of the church…” (pg 54)

I’m very glad to see Bob taking the Pastor’s role so seriously and highlighting the wonderful relationship he had with his senior pastor when first coming on staff at his current church.

Extra Goodies

If the extremely thoughtful and helpful content of the book isn’t enough, Bob goes on to add a “brief, annotated bibliography” and a whole section of “notes.” Both of these sections of the book are worth the price you’ll pay for it. Don’t skip them, as they include many valuable resources and some great extra thoughts from Bob.

Definitely Worth Many Re-Reads

I highly recommend this book. If you’re just beginning worship ministry, this will provide a solid foundation that will last your whole ministry. If you’re an experienced worship leader, this will challenge and convict you to really think about what your doing. No matter who you are, this book will ultimately cause our “view of, trust in, and desire for God’s glory in Christ and him crucified to increase…” (pg 79)

You can order Worship Matters here. You can read more from Bob about matters of worship and why worship matters here.

I totally apologize to Craig Groeschel for trusting me to write a review of this book in a timely fashion and taking months to do it! I want to live up to my word, however, and make sure this does get reviewed, as this book is a very valuable resource.

Craig Groeschel of Lifechurch.tv recently wrote a book called “Going All the Way - Preparing for a Marriage that Goes the Distance.” It is a fantastic book. It’s easy to read in the fact that Craig’s humor and writing style are very personal and it is easy to relate to him. It’s hard to read in the fact that there are a lot of challenges to popular culture’s view of love and marriage that might be hard for some folks to get through. But bravo, Craig for hitting the nail on the head. From the first chapter:

Let me warn you: this book may require a radical shift in your thinking. If small changes would do the trick, everyone would be making them. Minor adjustments produce marginal results. Most of us need to overhaul our thought processes. To experience the kind of relationships we long for, we must, with God’s help, prepare to be genuinely different.” (pg 7)

Well said. The one thing I appreciated most out of all of this book was that after the introductory chapter, the first chapter is about “finding the one.” In common cultural language, we immediately think that he’s talking about finding the one person we’re meant for on this earth. But he doesn’t write about that at all. He writes about Jesus being the one. Jesus being our first love. The person you marry will always be “the two” and Jesus will always be “the one.” Fantastic way of opening the book.

The rest of the book goes on to present some great challenges in how we handle relationships. Friendships, romantic relationships, engagements, roles of husbands and wives.

This book is a very, very good resource, especially if you are struggling with wondering how to handle a romantic relationship in a godly way while being immersed in a culture that’s full of lies about relationships and sex. Craig breaks through the confusion and lies of our culture and sets things straight.

Tomorrow is December 1st.  Hopefully you’ve been planning for Christmas services already at your church and hopefully you’ve already incorporated some of the great classic hymns into your services (Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; Of the Father’s Love Begotten).

But what of the modern?  Where in the world is the depth that we’ve known in Christmas hymns yet repackacked in a modern style?  It’s all here, in “Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man” from Sovereign Grace Music.

I know I’ve reviewed this before, but I can’t stress enough how amazing this project is.  Not only is the music singable, it somehow still feels like classic Chritmas music, even though it is a modern project.  And although it is all new music, the timeless truths communicated within are brought to life with fantastic new imagery and thoughtful lyrics.

The album opens with a triumphant call to worship in “Christ the Lord is Born Today:

Death and darkness surely tremble
Light has come to all the people
The Lion comes to crush the serpent
He comes a Lamb, a lowly servant
Let the earth rejoice
O come and lift your voices

From this beginning track, we know that the album will be full of the awe of beholding the newborn King and the triumph that King has brought to us through His death on the Cross.

Often it is hard to wrap our minds around the fact that God took human form to redeem us, and even though the project’s song “Glory Be To God” helps us begin to see that fact a little more clearly,  the song still keeps the God that became human who He ultimately is, a God who is infinitely more than we can imagine.

Emptied of His majesty
He comes in human form
Being’s source begins to be
and God is born
All our griefs He’ll glady share
All our sins He”ll fully bear
He will cover our disgrace
And suffer in our place

And finally, keeping with the theme of God’s incarnation, lyrics on “Sleep, Jesus, Sleep” that perhaps helps us see for the first time what “we do not have a High Priest who is unable sympathise with our weakness” really means:

Sleep, newborn King
We’ll gently sing
You who reigns forevermore
Ruling as the Lord of Lords
You who never had a need
Must sleep

This project paints a beautiful picture in a modern, yet classic way of the birth, life, death, resurrection and ultimate victory of Jesus Christ.

…and hopefully you are, since there’s just a little over two months until Christmas eve, and since Advent starts very soon.   I wanted to point you back to a review I wrote last year of Sovereign Grace’s Savior CD.  I think that this is the best Christmas praise and worship CD I’ve ever encountered.  I highly recommend it.

No, those two things don’t go together, but they’re both on my mind.

Usually I write a review on Thursdays, but didn’t end up having time yesterday, so I thought I’d share one today. I was blessed to spend an entire day in an Adobe workshop on Adobe CS2 products. With CS2 comes the Bridge application, which I had previously opened, looked at, and then quickly proceeded to shut down because I didn’t really know why I needed another file browser. Thankfully, my eyes were opened!

We spent a significant amount of time in the morning just on the Bridge, and let me tell you, it was worth it. So, designers, if you don’t use it yet, I highly recommend that you do.

Some things that I am already using:

• Favorites: These are favorite folders that you use on a daily basis that you can specify, and they always are quick to get to. No more digging for files. And since the Bridge shows you thumbnails of every type of Adobe file (.psd, .indd, .ai, .pdf, and probably more), you can see and find your files really easily.
• Metadata: Yep. You can tag and categories all your files. This is beneficial for searching, keeping track of versions, and attaching metadata that is Google searchable to your files. Very cool.
• Compact mode: This absolutely rocks. You can switch the Bridge to compact mode, which then basically makes it a Palette just like in any other Adobe program. It will stay in the forefront of all your applications. You can then just drag and drop any kind of files into any kind of Applicaction. No more having to do file > place all the time!

The bridge has already saved me a ton of time.

Secondly, Brian Bailey, author of The Blogging Church, has just posted a great series on blogging for ministry. Anyone who is getting into the church or ministry blogging world should definitely read these.