This past weekend, while leading worship, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. I was leading the church in a song with some pretty amazing Gospel centered lyrics. They were singing it out with gusto. There was only one problem, while the words of the bridge left my mouth, I had a thought… “I bet a good amount of people in this room have no idea what we are singing about. ”
Continue reading “Context Is Everything”
It’s the start of a new year and I thought it would be fun to compile a list of the top songs that we sang during 2014 at Shepherd’s Gate Church. To qualify for this list we had to sing a particular song at least 5 times throughout the year. If you find yourself asking, “Why would they choose that song?”, you can check out my previous post about our song selection process, here.
So, without further ado, here’s the list:
You’ve probably heard the term “worship set”. Someone has probably come up to you and said something like, “The worship this morning was so powerful!” or “I was so moved during worship.” We even go so far as to call our church services “worship services.” Worship does indeed happen during all of these things, but the Bible tells us that worshiping the Lord includes so much more. Vaughan Roberts writes about this in his book True Worship. This is absolutely one of my favorite quotes: Continue reading “Deconstructing The Worship Set”
When we gather as a church community for worship, we are participating in the most dynamic story ever told. It is a rich story that starts with a creating and sovereign God. This God is three persons, each distinct, yet mysteriously one. The narrative is riddled with the failure and brokeness of humanity, and it ends with God’s salvation and the restoration of His people. Lastly, the very words of this story have the power to turn death to life. Why would we ever want to deprive our people of participating in it?
I seriously doubt that any of us would say that our goal is to keep our people away from God’s gospel, but are we subtly doing just that by what we’re omitting? Continue reading “Are We Choosing The Right Songs?”
