I watched this video for the first time with tears streaming down my cheeks in the lobby of an Orlando hotel. We have been so blessed over the years to have our songs travel all over the nation and even occasionally around the world. (I’m not exactly sure how it happens, I just know that my ASCAP statement includes royalties from Norway.) … Read More
We are incredibly honored to be selected this year as an Editor’s Pick for Worship Leader Magazine’s annual Best of the Best issue in the category of Worship for Kids. Each year, Worship Leader’s November/December issue includes a Best of the Best resource guide with their favorite resources in a variety of categories. A big thank you to our friends at … Read More
This morning I read a thought-provoking blog by Daniel Darling called “Don’t Let Non-Christians Write Your Liturgy.” The core message of the article is that we should be careful how far we go in attempting to make our worship services attractive and accessible to non-believers. There are certainly important steps we can take in this area, for instance: Making everyone feel welcome … Read More
You had one job. In the world of internet memes, this might be the one that makes me laugh out loud the most. Hilarious pictures of job-related fails have spawned websites and multiple Twitter accounts. The common thread in each snapshot is a seemingly simple job that was botched in a way that should have been obvious. Woe to … Read More
Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is making the right decision in spite of fear. Fear can be a powerful, debilitating enemy. For some of us it can be all-consuming. None of us can escape it entirely. It rises unbidden, unexpected, ready to paralyze us with indecision. But experiencing fear does not mean that we have to be fearful. In Joshua 1, the … Read More
Perseverance. I don’t think there’s any character trait that I need more as a parent than perseverance. When you finally fold that last load of laundry and put it away only to find the hamper is full again, when you keep giving your kids the same instructions over and over, when you think that if you have to go to one more … Read More
Seems like there’s blogger out there with a reason for everything in worship these days 10 Reasons to Do This. 11 Reasons to Do the Exact Opposite. 12 Reasons Why the First Two Guys Were Dead Wrong. Most of the time these types of posts are helpful. They can help us think outside our context and consider a new point … Read More
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
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
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
