“Oh Lord You’re Beautiful” by Jesus Culture

Don’t ever believe the lie that “old songs” have nothing left for the church today.

“…for my reward is giving glory to you.”

Where’s this baby?

For those of you playing at home, you may or may not know that we are anxiously awaiting the birth of Vacher child number four. We’ve got 3 girls and are excited (I think) about bringing home a boy.

If things don’t go on their own, my wife will be induced Wednesday morning. You can be sure that pictures will be soon to follow.

(And, no, I won’t be posting many labour updates from twitter but you may want to follow along – @chrisfromcanada)

What is the Bible Basically About?

WorshipRises – October 25

Many of you have been following the story of WorshipRises (facebook|twitter) over the past year or so. You’ve heard about our songwriting days, the EP that was released in July and how churches all over North America are singing these songs written for the church by Canadian worship leaders.

From the very beginning, my heart in all of this is that WorshipRises should be a national movement with national impact. I didn’t want WorshipRises to become a Canadian thing that only happened in Ontario I know how much you westerners love stuff like that! Ha!

So.. what’s next for us?

On Monday, October 25 we will be hosting our next songwriting day, gathering together Canadian worship leaders to write songs for the church. This will be the fifth time we’ve run an event like this and this one is going to be very different than the previous four. Instead of hosting one event in one location, we are stepping out in a huge way and we will be running EIGHT events across Canada on the same day.

We have had conversations with worship leaders all over Canada who want to be part of these events but because of travel, budget, etc they haven’t been able to attend the events in Ontario. We think it’s time to make these opportunities available to more people across the country who are passionate about God, about the church and about worship.

Here are the cities where we have confirmed events -

• Ajax, ON
• Waterloo, ON
• Barrie, ON
• Stoney Creek, ON
• Chatham, ON
• Moncton, NB
• Winnipeg, MB

If you’re keeping score (and can count) you’ll notice that list only have seven cities. You are right. We are still hopeful that we’ll be able to add one more event out in western Canada.

What are some of the dates and details you need to be aware of if you are interested in participating?

Registration? When is that?

• Final event cities and venues will be announced the first week of September
• Registration will open at 9 AM Eastern on Wednesday, September 8
• Registration is free, attendees are responsible to cover transportation and meal costs for the day
• Registration is limited for each site so be sure to register early

Who can attend?

• WorshipRises songwriting days are designed for Canadian worship leaders who are passionate about the church and seeing its members engaged in God-focused, Spirit-driven worship
• Please pass this email to other worship leaders who you think may be interested in attending

We definitely have the sense that this will be a significant day for the movement of WorshipRises but also for the church in Canada. Our prayer continues to be that God would unite the church in Canada and that our entire country would be flooded with worship.

Worship Confessional – August 15, 2010

The last four Sundays of our Romans series has been spent in Romans 8 and it’s not hard to figure out why. This chapter is jam-packed with incredible theology and is deserving of deep study.

Consider for a moment the implications of any of these snippets taken from Romans 8:

• there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
• if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness
• those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God
• the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children
• our present sufferings are not worth comparing wtih the glory that will be revealed in us
• hope that is seen is no hope at all
• we hope for what we do not yet have
• in all things God works for the good of those who love him
• if God is for us, who can be against us?
• it is God who justifies
• in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us
• …nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those are all taken from a single chapter of Scripture! How could we NOT give several weeks of emphasis to this passage??

Here’s what our service looked like on Sunday -

• Welcome/Announcements
• Q&A w/ Paul Sadler, our global ministry partner in Japan
• Call to Worship – 1 Chronicles 16
• Jesus, You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown, Don Williams – C
• Our God – Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jesse Reeves - A
• In Christ Alone – Keith Getty, Stuart Townend – E
• Message – Romans 8:31-39 “When You’re Under Attack”
• Our God – Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jesse Reeves – A
• Everlasting God – Brenton Brown, Ken Riley – A

A few hilights from this past Sunday -

1. It was great having Paul Sadler, his family and some Japanese students here with us this weekend. Paul & his family are ministering in Tsukuba City, Japan and are global ministry partners of our church. We love what they are doing in a place that is very resistant to the gospel. Having them here this weekend to encourage them and hear an update was great for our church family. Also great to have Paul preach on Sunday morning and share some thoughts from this incredible passage of Scripture.

2. I’d been holding on to “Our God” from the new Passion album for a while, knowing that it would fit perfectly with the service this Sunday. I was right – people were definitely familiar with the song and really sang out. To teach it, we started with the bridge – “If our God is for us, who could ever stop us / If our God is with us, what could stand against.” We repeated that line with a little space in between four times so that people were familiar with it. We then hit the intro, to the verse and chorus a couple of times and then back to the bridge. When you’re teaching a  new song, don’t feel you always have you teach the chorus first.
3. I began our songs by encouraging our church to think about what it means to ascribe glory to God. We see that phrase a few times in Scripture – “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name.” This ascribing is not about bragging, beating our chests, frothing at the mouth with how great our God is compared to all of those other gods out there but is instead about lifting God up, increasing His greatness, making Him known with the hope that one day the whole world would know of our God’s greatness, majesty, strength and power. I read several verses of 1 Chronicles 16 as a way of demonstrating what this ascribing looks like. The songs we sang, the prayers we prayed together were all examples of ascribing glory to God.

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You can read a bunch more posts like this over at TheWorshipCommunity.com

ChrisFromCanada.com 2.0

I wish I was savvy enough to do one of those cool “this is what’s coming!” screenshots that gets everyone excited about a new design.. but I’m not. Actually it’s because of my design un-savvy-ness that I’m using the Standard Theme to rebuild the blog from scratch and bring a whole new design to this bad boy.

Coming soon – even without the super slick screenshot of awesomeness.

SongSuggest – desktop app

SongSuggest is an iPhone app written for worship leaders by worship leaders. I’ve got it and use it fairly often. I blogged about it a while ago and encouraged you to check it out. Apparently, you did -- with 12,000 downloads this year they have released a desktop version of the app so that everyone can have access to it.

Check out this video -

If you want to get a copy of the desktop app (available for Windows, Mac and Linux) the link is here -- http://bit.ly/cbsavS

Lighthouse or Yacht Club?

Lighthouse or Yacht Club. Both?

WorshipRises – chord charts & lead sheets at PraiseCharts

We released the WorshipRises EP last month and we are very encouraged to hear how many churches are singing these songs on Sunday morning. If you’ve got the EP and are looking for resources to help lead the songs with your band at your church, our friends at PraiseCharts have what you need.

There is a page setup with chord charts and lead sheets for the four songs from the EP and you should find what you need there.

Leadership Summit 2010

Last week I had the chance to attend a satellite location of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit (say that five times fast!) and really enjoyed my time. The content of the sessions was great, the venue was perfect, the hosts were very kind and the guys I got to with were top notch. If you’ve spent any time on twitter in the last few days, you’ve definitely seen the quotable moments from the talks by Tony Dungy, Andy Stanley, Jack Welch, Bill Hybels or any of the other great speakers.

(Quick way to find some great Summit hilights is to search for the #wcagls hashtag on twitter and see what pops up.)

I don’t want to re-hash everything that happened during the two days because you’ve likely experienced it yourself or you’re sick of hearing about it from people who were there. So.. Let me give you three quick hilights and then talk about what really impacted me.

1. Bill Hybels can bring it. Even in a talk where he’s focusing on four simple leadership concepts he is able to dig deep and have solid impact.
2. Jeff Manion can preach. His leadership sermon from Numbers 11 was one of the best I’ve heard – and the meaning was probably increased for me since we had worked through that passage as part of a sermon series here about a year and a half ago.
3. Daniel Pink gets it. I had seen a couple videos of him giving talks before but I was really impressed with his ability to deliver content in a way that is engaging and memorable.

 

 

Okay.. so what was the bigger takeaway for me? The thing that I’ve been thinking about the last few days is how engaged the audience at my satellite location was with the content being provided by video. We were watching people speak or sing on a screen and yet the interaction between the audience and the presenter was very similar to what I would have expected if the content was being presented live.

During the singing, the crowd sang along. When the song got loud, the crowd got loud. When the song was done, the crowd clapped just like the live audience. During the talks, when the speakers got fired up the crowd would shout back their encouragement. During a couple of strong moments, the crowd actually cheered and clapped when the speaker made a great point. At the end of the talks, the speakers got a nice round of applause while they went back to their seat.

I don’t think that we should dismiss this too quickly or just accept it as normal. But.. think about it. This HAS become normal.

We have become so used to interacting with content on a screen that we now treat it in a way very similar to content that is presented live right in front of us.

Even though we know the band can’t see us clapping for them, the speaker can’t hear us cheering them on or thanking them at the end of their talk with applause, we go ahead and do it.

So  here are a couple of questions that I’m left with after this -

1. As a video audience, do we interact with the screen content in this way so that we feel included in the event in the same way that the live audience does? Is it about making ourselves part of the genuine experience?

    

2. For churches who use video (either as a satellite location or with online experiences) how are you leveraging the emotional connection that the audience is feeling with your content so that follow-up/next steps happen in the same way they would for the live audience?

In all honesty, this was the biggest takeaway for me from the Leadership Summit this year. As tech-oriented as I am, I was very much surprised by the willingness of the crowd to have this emotional investment in what was being presented in the way that they did. There is, of course, the whole discussion about the need and importance of having what’s presented on screen being high quality, engaging and relevant – and the need for that is probably higher than it is for a live audience.

Anyone else attend a Leadership Summit site and find the same thing? I’d love to hear some more thoughts on this.

Andy Tallman – Go EP giveaway

I’ve had the chance to get to know Andy Tallman this year through WorshipRises and have been really impressed by his passion for songwriting and his love for God. Today, Andy is releasing an EP of five original worship songs for the church. If you know anything about my heart for the church to be singing new, fresh, innovative songs, you know that I am excited about this project.

I’ve been able to listen to these songs for the past week or so and I’m pretty impressed. Andy has lots of energy in his writing and the production of these songs is really solid.

Click over to Andy’s site – www.andytallman.com – for more info on how to get the EP but I wanted to make some available to the blog readers so we’ve got five copies of the EP to give away. All you have to do to enter is comment on this post. If you hit the retweet or like buttons on the bottom of this post, include that in the comments and you’ll get a second entry. Five winners will be drawn from the entries on Thursday. Good luck!

Article – “Music That Encourages Participation”

Someone sent me a link to this article from Worship Leader Magazine and I loved it so I wanted to pass it on. Curt Coffield wrote this piece called “Music That Encourages Participation” and talks about his personal growth in the area of worship leadership as it relates to actually leading his congregation on Sunday morning.

He has some great stuff to say and I’d encourage you to read the whole article here – http://www.worshipleader.com/index.cfm?tdc=dsp&page=features_detail&aid=185 (The top of the page is a solid article from Sally Morgenthaler but keep scrolling down to find the article from Curt.)

I won’t quote the whole thing – go read it for yourself! – but his first paragraph is great:

In recent years I have observed brave worthwhile attempts at convincing the worshiping masses that “worship is not singing.” We, of course, have meant to say that there are far more ways to worship than simply singing. We have invested much effort in educating the church to see the many different ways to worship. I have whole-heartedly joined in the efforts at educating, and I have been thrilled to see the church at large growing in its theology of worship. However, I have chuckled at times because it has felt on occasion as if we’re leading worshipers to believe that “singing is not worship.” So let me shout this loud and clear:

Singing is a great way to worship the Lord!

Go read the article to find out more about what he has to say about each of these:

• Use Singable Songs
• Arrange Songs Mindful of the Novice Singer
• Ask Nicely

Good stuff.

As well as being a clinician for Maranatha’s Worship Leader Workshop and a workshop teacher at multiple National Worship Leader Conferences, Curt Coffield has led worship for Promise Keeper events around the country, has been a part of numerous recordings, and has penned nearly 50 songs that are used in churches around the world. Curt Coffield is currently the Pastor at Sewickley Valley North Way Christian Community in Pennsylvania.

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex

Wow. Love it. How the “meeting & mating” of ideas has had a profound impact on cultural development since the very beginning of human history.

WorshipRises EP release – what a day!

Wow. Incredible. How encouraging to know that people all over Canada & the US decided to support this whole WorshipRises (facebook|twitter) movement by spending four bucks on the EP that we released yesterday on iTunes, Amazon and a bunch of other digital platforms.

At the end of the day, the EP was sitting at #2 on the Canadian Inspirational chart and had peaked at #20 on the full iTunes Canada chart. We had an incredible response from our friends online who told us how much they are loving the songs.

Those nasty Newsboys fellows. Releasing two albums on the same day!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! When we launched this thing a year ago (our first WorshipRises songwriting day was on May 25, 2009) we had no idea that we would be here a little over a year later. Thanks for your encouragement and your support. We are excited about where things are going and excited to know that we have lots of cheerleaders

A few things to keep in mind now that the songs are out there -

1. Chord charts and lead sheets are available right now from our friends at PraiseCharts. Each of these four songs are already being sung in churches all over Canada & the US so please join the club and let us know how your church responds.

2. We are working on creating a “resource edition” of the EP that would come with chord charts, lead sheets, click tracks and maybe some video content. More news on that soon.

3. We really do live in a whole new world. We saw the success of yesterday happen despite the fact that we spent a grand total of ZERO dollars on marketing. Not one facebook ad, not one sponsored blog post, not one magazine placement. Nothing. Like I posted on our facebook page this morning – Solid vision + Solid product + Solid relationships = Solid results. Artists – be encouraged! People want to support you and the work you are doing and the avenues to allow them to do that are wide open. Go for it!

 

WorshipRises EP – Available July 13

UPDATE: The songs are now live on iTunes (USA|Canada), Amazon.com and most other digital platforms. Worship leaders – you can get chord charts and lead sheets for the songs over at PraiseCharts.

Thanks for all of the encouragement and kind words leading up to today. Praying that these songs have great impact in the church for the glory of God.

UPDATE #2: Today has been an incredible event in the life of WorshipRises. The EP is sitting at #2 on the iTunes Canada Inspirational chart, peaked at #20 on the full iTunes Canada chart (we’ve been fighting it out with Bieber all day!) and we’ve seen some movement in the right direction on the iTunes US Christian chart. Thanks so much to everyone who blogged, tweeted and bought the EP. Your investment in the kingdom today is significant!

Over the past year and a bit I’ve been spearheading this thing called WorshipRises (facebook|twitter). I’ve mentioned it a bunch of times on the blog and you may be familiar with it. Basically we’ve been gathering Canadian worship pastors/leaders together to develop worship resources for & from the Canadian church.

It’s been amazing to see the response to this thing so far – we’ve had 3 writing days attended by a total of about 50 worship leaders from every kind of church/worship expression you could imagine. Young, old, men, women, white, black, hispanic, conservative, charismatic – it’s been incredible. At our last writing day we were very fortunate to have Paul Baloche and Jared Anderson join the 32 worship pastors/leaders who were there in attendance.

Out of our writing days, we’re releasing our first EP on Tuesday, July 13. We’ve got four songs recorded for this all co-written by the WorshipRises crew. Each of these songs are being sung in churches all over North America and we are excited about releasing them to a wider audience. We are very thankful for our friends at PraiseCharts who are helping to create some additional resources for worship leaders that will help you teach these songs to your bands and to your congregations.

So.. How can you help? Here’s a few things -

1. If you are a Canadian worship leader, I want to hear from you. Comment on this post or send me an email (chrisvacher@gmail.com) and introduce yourself. If you have a passion to see the Canadian church go deeper in her worship, WorshipRises may be something you will want to be involved in.
2. Buy the EP. It will be available on every digital platform on Tuesday, July 13 – iTunes, Amazon, etc. Four songs for under $4 – it’s hard to go wrong with that. Consider it an investment in the Canadian territory of the kingdom of God. (You can actually preview the four songs over at Amazon before they release. Here’s the link – Amazon.)
3. Head over to PraiseCharts and check out the chord charts and lead sheets they have created to help you teach the songs to your bands and churches. We really do want to be writing songs that churches will actually sing and are trying to do whatever we can to make that easier for you. If you think that one or more of these songs will be helpful for your church’s worship, I’d love to hear how it goes when you teach it to them.
4. Blog, tweet, facebook, talk about WorshipRises and spread the word. We have a facebook page, a twitter account and are having conversations with people all over Canada & the US about how they can be involved.

Let me leave you with this – a live video of my friend and WorshipRises compadre Joshua Seller leading a song that he & I co-wrote at one of our writing days called “Worship Rises”. This song has become a theme song for the collective movement and is being sung in churches all over Canada & the US already. It has been amazing to see God use this song in incredible ways. Praying for more!

Romans 8:1

We have been working through the book of Romans since January of this year and have arrived in Romans 8 this week.  The first verse has been rattling around in my head for the past couple of days -

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The implications of that are huge and I’m looking forward to hearing our pastor preach through this passage. I know he’s excited about it too.

I received this quote by email today and loved how well it fit with what we’ll be talking about on Sunday -

“There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves: to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to. We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own. Tolstoy got it halfway right: anything that makes me feel comfort with God’s moral standard, anything that makes me feel “At last I have arrived,” is a cruel deception. But Dostoevsky got the other half right: anything that makes me feel discomfort with God’s forgiving love is also a cruel deception. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” That message, Leo Tolstoy never fully grasped.”

The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey, pg. 142

WorshipRises – chord charts & lead sheets available

PraiseCharts has officially released chord charts and lead sheets for the four songs from the WorshipRises (twitter|facebook)EP! The tracks will be available on iTunes, Amazon, etc next Tuesday, July 13th but starting today you can get resources for your worship team (including mp3s!) from our friends over at PraiseCharts.

To find the WorshipRises songs on their site, click here – http://www.praisecharts.com/albums/8015

(Just in case you got the email newsletter from PraiseCharts, I should just be clear that this EP is really from the WorshipRises collective and not really from me as an artist. I’ve had the privilege of spearheading this whole thing but it is very, very much about WorshipRises and this movement of Canadian worship leaders working together to develop worship resources for & from the Canadian church.)

Thoughts on leading your family in worship

Tim Smith has some great thoughts for those of you who lead worship at your church and also have the privilege and responsibility to lead worship for your family at home. Check out the whole article on the Resurgence blog here – http://theresurgence.com/leading_your_family_in_worship

As a pastor who leads others in worship through song and teaching, there is an overwhelming temptation to value what happens in public over what happens in private. It’s so easy to value public gifts over private faithfulness, and what happens on a stage more than what goes on in your closest relationships. This is true in many areas, but one of the most troubling is the neglect of fathers in leading their families in regular times of family worship.

Psalm 78

A while ago a friend encouraged me with this verse from Psalm 78 -

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.

The whole Psalm is this beautiful remembrance of some of the history of Israel set in the context of the importance of passing this story on from generation to generation. Those of you who are parents will understand the depth of meaning there is in family tradition, family storytelling, family gatherings and this would be so much more important in a culture where storytelling is really the main way of passing history along.

O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old- what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done.

This Psalm traces the story of men of God who were faithful, those who were unfaithful, those who kept their covenant with God and those who did not.

The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned back on the day of battle; they did not keep God’s covenant and refused to live by his law. They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them.

The reminders of God’s miracles, the incredible things He has done for His people, tell us of God’s might and His power, His authority and sovereignty. They also serve to remind us that even those who walk in the very presence of God, seeing Him do what only He can do – even they turn their backs, forgetting God’s faithfulness and His promises.

He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas; he brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers. But they continued to sin against him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High. They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved.

The pattern of this Psalm is really the pattern of Israel – God makes a covenant with His people and shows His faithfulness, God delivers them from their enemies or from wandering or from sin and the people praise Him. Soon they forget His goodness and turn away, making way for God’s judgment to come. When it does come, the people return quickly to their love for Him.

Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again.

But soon, their faithfulness disappears and they are again found in their sin. God, in His mercy, forgives and moves toward reconciling and renewing His covenant with His people.

Yet he was merciful; he forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath.

And on and on it goes. The cycle continues – covenant, deliverance, obedience, disobedience, mercy, covenant.

The Psalm ends with the man who may typify this cycle more than any other – David. The pattern of covenant, deliverance, obedience, disobedience, mercy, covenant just repeats itself over and over in his life and as worship leaders we are the better because of it. David’s life, his own successes and failure, God’s faithfulness to him – all of that combined with David’s artistic temperament and ability results in this incredible library of songs and poems written to the Lord. Written from a heart of faithfulness, sometimes very full of questions, even anger, but all of it included as part of the great “book of praises” that we have as the Psalms.

The last line of this Psalm, verse 72, states so much in very few words.

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.

This verse has helped shaped a new way of thinking for me when it comes to my role as a worship leader for my church. I have some thoughts I want to share with you but I’ll save them for the next post.

Video – “Dad Life”

Alright.. a little late on this one but Happy Father’s Day. For the dads there, check out this video from Church on the Move – I’m sure you can relate

PS You can get this video and a bunch of other free resources at CotM’s Seeds site.

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