If I get to church Sunday and all we do is worship through these songs, I think that’ll be time very well spent…

What’s missing?

Looking for some good, new music?

Check out Kristian Stanfill’s new EP, ‘Attention’.

I downloaded it last week and I’m liking it a lot! Very worshipful lyrics with pretty cool, original music to boot.

I have no doubt that we’ll be singing some of these songs in church before long.

You can preview each song and purchase a download of the whole album from Amazon for less than five bucks here.

This is the message I want to spend the rest of my life communicating in every way that I can.

I daily beg Jesus to pay off our debts and give me a job where I can spend all day, every day proclaiming this message:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=moW_x1M-VaU

(ht: Zack)

I especially like #6:

6. Make sure the majority of your songs talk about what we do and feel rather than who God is and what he’s done.
Why clutter up our songs with clear, specific, and compelling descriptions of God’s character and works? Why not just emote and talk about how passionate we are? Because an emotional fire that has no doctrinal fuel dies about pretty quickly or ends up trying to feed on itself.

What is one worship song that you LOVE to sing? What is one worship song that drives you crazy?

For me, a worship song that I LOVE to sing is “From The Inside Out” by Hillsong United. We still don’t sing it at our church fellowship, which is beyond me, but it’s been on my iPod for at least 2 years and I still love it because it almost forces me to come alive with worshipful thoughts about God.

A worship song that I struggle with is “Above All”. Musically, it’s beautiful. And I believe that Michael W. Smith had pure desires when he wrote it. But to me, that song is depressing, and theologically incorrect. I’ll stop there, because everyone else I know really likes that song, and I don’t want to step on your toes. If you love that song, then more power to you!

Alright, so let’s have yours…
(ht: Zack N)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmC44K0xQLE

Most of you know that I’m a huge fan of music, and especially worship music.

By far, the majority of my favorite music comes from Passion (did you know that David Crowder, Charlie Hall, and Chris Tomlin are all on the Passion record label?). I have never, ever in my life been disappointed with a new release from the Passion guys. Under the leadership of Louie Giglio, God just has his hands all over it.

So a couple of weeks ago, Chris Tomlin’s newest album, “Hello Love” was released, and K-Love played the whole album with Chris in the studio, along with Shelly Giglio. It was really cool driving in to work and hearing the new music, and also the stories behind them. One of the songs, which is also the title track from the last Passion compilation CD, “God of This City”, has an awesome story. I already loved the song, and I had heard that it wasn’t written by Tomlin, but a band he heard called “Blue Tree”, but since I’ve heard the story, it has become 10 times more refreshing and encouraging to me.

I did a quick google search and found that the folks at “Extending the Kingdom” already have it written out, so I copied part of it from this post.

Check it out (this is the band talking about the day they wrote the song while on a missions trip in Thailand):

“There was a bar called The Climax Bar -- on a street that’s about 10 metres wide, it’s a kilometre long and it’s filled with everything you can physically imagine. And I promise you, as a red-blooded male, to keep your head in the right place you’ve got to look down at the ground and walk down that street and pray because it is just so in your face. People hit you with menus about everything, flashing lights, just everything you can imagine goes on in that place. You see kids as young as eight, nine, 10, just selling themselves, you know?! You see 60-year-old guys walking down the street with two 13 or 14-year-old girls. Forget about the Christian thing, you just get raging! You properly get raging when you see that happening, you know?!”

. . . We got the chance to play in this bar, a two-hour worship set in this bar. I don’t think the people in the bar spoke a word of English but we basically got to go in. The deal was that we play and we bring a following of people with us; so we’re there, set up, really good gear! So we all set up and there was like 20 Christians all standing in front of us, and the deal was we play, they buy lots of drinks, alright? I don’t think the place has ever sold so much Coke in its whole life in one night!

And we got to play for two hours. And just the way the band set up, we like using loops, and at one point I just started singing out. I started singing “Greater Things”, something along those lines, almost prophesying over the city. And without going into the band dynamics, slowly this groove emerged from this thing. And long story short; we walked out of that Climax Bar with pretty much a nailed song, as strange as that sounds. Then we were on the way home.

We were all. . .it was that tumbleweed silence, you know? It was like, ‘What actually just happened in that time?!’ It was one of the most powerful worship experiences we’ve ever had. I actually remember looking out, and you’re looking down a wee alleyway, into the street, and it was just 50 or 60 probably British tourists and they’re just sitting there listening going, ‘What is this all about?’ Coming from The Climax Bar which is pretty much a strip club. Just, here we are singing about Jesus in the middle of this. . . It was one of the most random experiences but it was a God thing, God was there.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd4PBZgxCB4

We stayed at a camp ground with no electricity, which meant no amplifiers or flashy lights, just guitars and voices worshipping the King.

Check it out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlzJwWAvx58

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-6YJrzxvgc

Jeremy and I went to hang out at Mike D’s house last night. We broke out the guitars and had some fun.

Watch Mike and tell me he’s not the fastest guitar player you’ve ever seen :0)

PS -- Go visit Jeremy’s new blog and show him some love!

Right-click here and choose ‘save as’

So this morning, on the way to work, I had the music cranking, and I have to tell you, “At The Cross” by Daniel Renstrom is constant repeat right now.

The whole song is pretty upbeat with a really joyful spirit about it that would make it a great corporate worship song, and the words are fantastic. The chorus says,

At the cross – wrath was taken away
Christ was in our place
Oh what marvelous grace!

At the cross – justice was supplied
By the blood of Christ
Forever we will praise

If you haven’t picked up Daniel’s new CD, “Adore and Tremble”, you can get it on iTunes here. It’s the best 5 bucks you’ll spend this month. You can even preview some of the songs on his myspace page.

And Brody has apparently got Daniel blogging these days, so go check out his blog. He even chimed in on the worship conversation that I mentioned earlier this week.

Do you have “Adore and Tremble”?

As luck (or providence) would have it, the mic battery went out half way through, so the sound guys or going to see if they can get me one mp3 file so I can share it with all you wonderful people.

But in the meantime, Flowerdust and Ragamuffin Soul have some fantastic dialog going on about the topic of worship.

In particular, Carlos is asking:

Question One: What do you see the purpose of a church weekend gathering is? (I emailed him and asked him to ask this question on the blog MONTHS ago :0)
Question Two: Do you believe God can engage a persons heart in a weekend service where there is a goal to help manifest this through musical worship, production, creative video elements??

This should be interesting and could be very beneficial!

(and it turns out that Hillsong gave permission to use the song, but not to change it)

What do you think?

I get the opportunity to teach on worship this week.

Steph will be in what our book says is the hardest week of the first 6 months of pregnancy.

…and she’s teaching on women in missions somewhere in podunk Va this morning.

…and she woke up with a nasty cold…

I foresee potential for high highs and low lows.

Please keep us up in prayer, and hopefully I’ll have some great things to share next week!

Also, if you have any recommendations or thoughts or suggestions or resources related to the topic of ‘worship’, please share!

Just about a year ago, Steph and I went to the last major Passion Conference: Passion ’07.

For weeks afterwards, they promised that some of the new music would be coming out via iTunes in the near future, but then they went and decided to do a world tour, so a full year later, it’s here:

Passion: God of This City

Here’s the track listing:

Let God Arise – Chris Tomlin
You Are God – Charlie hall
God Of This City – Chris Tomlin
O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing – David Crowder*Band
Hosanna – Christy Nockels
Sing Sing Sing – Chris Tomlin
Beautiful Jesus – Kristian Stanfill
Walk This World – Charlie Hall
We Shine – Steve Fee
God Of Our Yesterdays – Matt Redman
Glory Of It All – David Crowder*Band
Shine – Matt Redman
Dancing Generation – Matt Redman
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Chris Tomlin

At a glance, I’m most looking forward to live versions of ‘We Shine’ by Steve Fee and ‘Beautiful Jesus‘ by Kristian Stanfill, and finally having a high-quality recording of ‘Walk This World’ by Charlie Hall (I ripped the live video feed from the conference, but it’s pretty poor quality :0)

How ’bout you?