i am an offering

I went and saw Amazing Grace on Friday with a co-worker. Wow, what a movie. I highly recommend it. It was really well filmed, had great acting, a great story, and lots of great actors. The use of the hymn was slightly cheesy at one point, but that’s really the only complaint I have.

But, sometimes we think that slavery is over because we don’t experience it fisthand in the U.S. Read this post from my friend and coworker. He really shares some great thoughts and challenges.

You may have noticed that we’re singing a few new Christmas songs this season. While the traditional Christmas carols are great and tell great truths about Christmas, sometimes we get bombarded with them from every direction.

And while contemporary music is great, sometimes it fails to tell great truths about God like the hymns do. The new CD, Savior, from Sovereign Grace Music, is a fantastic resource of new Christmas music that tells the classic story with timeless truth about Jesus.

The opening song, “Christ the Lord is Born Today” is a fantastic call to worship the newborn King. It communicates what Christ has done while still keeping the joyous sound of Christmas.

The next track, “Hope Has Come,” is another awesome call to worship declaring that God has “come to rescue sinners,” and “come to meet our desperate need.” The song declares that “we once were slaves in misery, til You appeared and set us free.”

Throughout the entire CD, the sound of Christmas is not lost amidst the contemporary rock/pop style, the truths of Christmas are not lost amidst keeping the lyrics real and worshipful, and the story of Christianity is not lost amidst singing about the events of Christmas.

One song that particluarly hits home is the sweet lullaby, “Sleep, Jesus, Sleep.” In the song, the mystery of the event where God became a baby on this earth is explored. The lyrics declare, “You who reigns forevermore, Ruling as the Lord of lords. You who never had a need must sleep.” The song also contains the amazingly worshipful line, “One day, You’ll deliver me.”

I highly recommend this CD, especially if you need a fresh sound for the season of Christmas that does not lose the amazing truths of what Christmas is.

This is mainly a review that will be beneficial for worship planners and worship leaders, but if you are interested in part of the process of how I plan and keep track of administrative items with Lord of Life’s worship services, then read on.

A couple of years ago I happened upon an ad for Church Assist’s Worship Assistant software, and I must say, for an organizationally challenged guy like myself, it helps me immensely! (and no, I have not been paid to recommend the software)

The website describes the software as being “designed to help church worship leaders plan services and present song lyrics using a video projector.” I think this sentence doesn’t do the software justice. It really should read that the software is “designed to help church worship leaders plan services, track and store song usage and information, track and store worship team involvement and information, and track and store lists of every service. And that’s just the half of it!”

This software does it all. You can store all of your song information including author, copyright, CCLI#, theme, Scripture, key, tempo, last used, first used, chords used, how many times it’s been used, plus user-defined categories as well.

You can store all of your worship team member information, and email a member right from the program.

You can store service information including which songs are in the set, notes for the songs, copyright reporting information, worship team information and more.

On top of all of this, you can do endless reports, print out master lists of your songs, search songs for a particular word or phrase; you can even specify a location of sheet music or mp3’s for a certain song within that’s songs information window. So if you want to remind yourself of how the song sounds on the recording, you just hit the little play button and it’s automatically there.

The one drawback to this software is the projection side. I am a huge fan of software specfically made for projection, and I wish that Worship Assistant was specifically tailored just for database and administration purposes. That said, however, it is a great option for people who don’t have the budget for separate pieces of software for projection and for record storage.

I really have only recently begun to fully utilize this great piece of software, but I plan to continue to use it daily to help me become more organized, which is an area of my life that definitely needs more help. I highly recommend this software!

WorshipGod Live from Sovereign Grace Ministries is seriously one of the best worship CD’s I’ve ever heard. There are a few reasons for this:

The doctrine and theology is rock solid. There are no “fluffy” songs on here. Every song is filled with rich Biblical truth that sinks into your soul. I especially love the truths of “Count it All Joy,” a song about Paul’s teaching on considering all of our trials joys. This CD isn’t afraid to get down and dirty with some difficult issues, yet keep the music listenable and singable.  Check out these powerful words from the song:

Lord I’ll count it all joy
When the weight of sorrow
Drives me to my knees
Every heartache and pain
In Your mighty hands
Is forming Christ in me
And I know that Your Word is true
Yes, I know every trial
Will only prove

You have always been my Rock
I will trust You forever, forever
You have never failed me God
I will trust You forever, forever

Secondly: The music is singable. I understand that a lot of pop artists these days have tenor voices, but it’s rare that you’ll find a church that can actually sing that high, so if you don’t have a competent worship leader who knows how to change keys and who’s sensitive to these things, the congregation isn’t going to be able to sing many of today’s songs. Not so with WorshipGod Live. Almost all the songs on here are in a singable range that’s comfortable. And the CD has more than two-part harmony! So many times modern music only has the ability to have two-part harmony and I have enough singers to have 3-part or 4-part harmony. These songs have plenty of oppurtunities to incorporate lots of harmony.

Thirdly, this CD is a great example that having sound doctrine does not mean you have to sacrifice sound musical quality. The musicians and singers on this CD are phenomenal, being able to play a range of styles and moods. Well, no wonder, after I look at the sleve and see that Carl Albrecht, Don Harris, and Ben Gowell played, I’m not very surprised at all. Kudos to Steve Cook for producing such wonderful styles and textures for the music.

This is a fantastic CD and I would highly recommend it! I have and will continue to use these songs in congregational worship.