I grew up in church on a steady diet of children’s musicals. My favorite was Fat, Fat Jehoshaphat! I recall singing a solo as one of the priests in the aforementioned musical which, while it displayed a callous insensitivity to the morbidly obese despite the complete lack of textual evidence that poor Jehoshaphat was actually fat, also contained some killer … Read More
AND THE GOVERNMENT SHALL BE UPON HIS SHOULDERS
Recently Jess and I released a brand new Christmas single, Unto Us (Isaiah 9), with a text based entirely on one of the most familiar Christmas passages in scripture. You can watch the video below and download it on iTunes here: http://apple.co/1jbWccj. The song also references one of our favorite pieces of music, Handel’s Messiah. With our involvement in various … Read More
TO MY FRIENDS WHO PLAY COLDPLAY SONGS IN WORSHIP SERVICES
Dear Friends Who Play Coldplay Songs in Church Services, What in God’s name are you doing? Okay, intentionally inflammatory opening sentence aside, I mean that without a trace of sarcasm: what are you doing in the name of God? Don’t get me wrong. I love Coldplay. I love U2. And I love you, too. (Although, in the interest of full … Read More
STEP OFF THE STAGE
Worship leaders, there’s something that all of us need to hear. We need to hear it because we are in a constant battle with our egos, pulling us toward whatever is most visible, whatever gives us the most chance of recognition, whatever offers even the faintest glimmer of hope of advancing our status and position. Worship leaders, your most important … Read More
STUFF I HAD TO LEARN #3 – SONGWRITERS, YOU NEED SOMEONE TO TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE NAKED
About Stuff I Had to Learn: I’ve been leading worship for almost two decades now. I started out thinking I knew everything, while actually knowing very little. Now I’m painfully aware of how little I know, even though I know much more about my craft than I did seventeen years ago. Along the way there have been a host of people, … Read More
STUFF I HAD TO LEARN #2 – REHEARSING IS A SKILL, TOO!
About Stuff I Had to Learn: I’ve been leading worship for almost two decades now. I started out thinking I knew everything, while actually knowing very little. Now I’m painfully aware of how little I know, even though I know much more about my craft than I did seventeen years ago. Along the way there have been a host of people, … Read More
STUFF I HAD TO LEARN #1 – OPEN YOUR EYES!
About Stuff I Had to Learn: I’ve been leading worship for almost two decades now. I started out thinking I knew everything, while actually knowing very little. Now I’m painfully aware of how little I know, even though I know much more about my craft than I did seventeen years ago. Along the way there have been a host of people, … Read More
A PLACE TO BE BAD
Worship leaders, there’s a question that’s been gnawing at me for the last few years. And it’s actually a part of my story. Maybe your story is something like mine. After taking piano lessons when I was a kid, I picked up a guitar when I was thirteen and taught myself to play my favorite songs by Audio Adrenaline, DC … Read More
THE LAW OF GUITAR CABLES
There are a handful of things that I’ve learned along the way as a worship leader: how to act natural when you capo on the wrong fret, how to switch from guitar to keyboard when you forget to change the batteries in your acoustic pickup, how to tell the drummer to kill the backing track when you inadvertently skip a … Read More
WORSHIP AND THE WORD
We are categorical people; our brains work in categories. We love dividing things based on essential elements. We divide music and literature into genres. We divide stores into departments. We divide people into a host of categories based on a seemingly infinite number of criteria. At its best, this is a highly efficient method of processing information. At its worst, … Read More