Worship pastor position available in Ontario

Innerkip Presbyterian Church in Woodstock, ON (right in the heart of southern Ontario) is an evangelical church looking to hire a contemporary worship leader. The only information I could find on the church is located on the town’s website here but that page has a phone number and email address where you can follow up for more info.

Happy birthday Emmy!

As things on the blog have aged (and, honestly, as twitter has become my main connection point with other worship leaders) I really haven’t spent much time talking about my family here. You may be a read of the blog and not know that my wife & I are the proud parents of three incredible girls or that we are expecting our first boy in September. When the baby arrives, we will have 4 kids under the age of 5 – you can pray for us!

On April 28, 2007 we got to meet our second daughter, Emerson Paige. She has brought so much joy to our family – her jokes, her silly voices, her dimples, her big-as-the-moon brown eyes. I can’t imagine life without her and consider her to be an incredible blessing from God.

Today we celebrated Emmy’s 3rd birthday. We woke her up and congratulated her on the big day. We sang songs and danced around her bedroom, making sure all of our neighbours heard that it was Emmy’s birthday! Tonight we had Emmy’s favourite dinner – pineapple pizza, from scratch! – with homemade cupcakes and blue icing for dessert. We sang happy birthday, told Emmy how much we love her and how special she is to us and then we opened some presents, gifts from mom & dad and also gifts from some friends. Nana made a special appearance by phone during dinner to give Emmy a special birthday message.

At bedtime, I told Emmy again how much I love her, how happy I am that I get to be her daddy and how thankful I am that God has given her to our family.

 

Emmy on the day she was born. Little angel.

At about 18 months. Check out those dimples!

Emmy has the most incredible big brown eyes, just like her momma.
This is just after her 2nd birthday.

I took Emmy and her big sister Avery out for ice cream on Monday night.
Look at those pearly whites!

West Ridge Church – worship leader position available

Tony Morgan posted info on a worship leader job opening at West Ridge Church near Atlanta, GA. Have a look at the post and send your info along to Tony if you think your interested. Here’s the quick recap of what they’re looking for:

Specifically, we’re looking for someone who will lead worship primarily at our current campus and periodically at the new campus.
I offered to take the role, but, besides not being able to sing, they said I didn’t meet these expectations of the role. We need a…

• person driven with a passion for worship and a calling to serve the local church
• leader who instinctively knows how to recruit, develop and shepherd staff and volunteers
• gifted musician and vocalist with the ability to create charts, arrange music and communicate effectively with other musicians
• team player that enjoys collaborating and leading others to produce excellent worship environments
• highly creative individual who is motivated to dream of new and innovative ways to connect with a diverse culture
• person able to multi-task and manage details related to producing excellent worship services

Carlos Whittaker – Ragamuffin Soul available today

If you’re a participant in blog-world or twitter-land you are probably familiar with Carlos Whittaker (blog|twitter|viral video) so you have likely heard that his album “Ragamuffin Soul” (taken from the name of his blog) has released today around the world. We did a giveaway of his EP back in January and I received a copy of the full CD from the good folks at Integrity a couple of weeks ago. There are some good songs here.

In reality, though, this isn’t an album about great songs or catchy melodies or insightful lyrics. This is an album about a movement, about what God is doing in and through the life of a very unique man and his family. I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago and I said to him that it seems like Los has this incredible ability to step in to poop-filled situations over and over again yet always come out smelling like roses. In the four years that I’ve known him through re:create I’ve seen that scenario play out a bunch of times.

So.. don’t buy this CD because it’s a bunch of great songs or because you’re looking for the next worship hit, buy this CD because you believe that God works through ordinary guys like Carlos and that he is going to continue bringing the light of Christ in to poop-filled situations involving people who need to hear about the hope, the grace, the  mercy, the compassion of our God.

Worship Confessional – April 25, 2010

After Easter we launched a new 4-week series at OBC called “Kingdom Seeds” (we got the title from some great series art we found over at PowerpointSermons.com). We’ve been looking at different episodes from the book of Luke and how an encounter with Jesus leads people to radical generosity, in so many ways.

Here’s what our service looked like on Sunday -

Sunday, April 25, 2010 – “Kingdom Seeds”
Luke 20:1-4
Song of Hope – Robbie Seay Band – Bb
Jesus You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown – C
Responsive Reading – Colossians 1/Philippians 2
In Christ Alone – Keith Getty & Stuart Townend – D/E
Message – “Extravagant Generosity”
All Because of Jesus – Steve Fee – A

Three things from this past Sunday -

1. A great song is a great song is a great song. “All Because of Jesus” is a familiar song for our church and we normally use it as an opener or near the beginning of the service and do it pretty close to the original tempo, but not with big rockin’ electric guitar. We sometimes have one electric player but we still like bringing lots of  energy to our songs. After some wrestling with our setlist between practice on Thursday night and Sunday morning I landed on the idea of closing our service with that song but bringing the tempo and feel way down – one of our guys commented at run-through on Sunday morning that it felt more like a Fleetwood Mac song We took the tempo to about 108 (we didn’t use a metronome, I’m just checking a tempo online now and I think that’s close), added a shaker as the only percussion on the first verse and chorus and then brought the drums in with just hi hats and kick through the rest of the song. The bridge became the highest part of the arrangement and the whole song had a very different feel. Great songs can do that – they work with different feels, different tempos, different arrangements. Don’t be scared.

2. Worship leaders, get your people reading and singing scripture. This is important. You should be able to explain the theological stuff behind the songs you are singing but get your people reading scripture in your services. The idea of responsive readings might be strange for you or your congregation at first but don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be afraid of putting God’s word in the mouths of His people on Sunday morning. We do this fairly regularly at OBC and it’s great – it allows people to hear themselves speaking words of truth about Christ, it allows (some of) the congregation to move from an audience mindset to a participant mindset and it reinforces that the words we are singing have basis in scriptural truth. On Sunday we sang two songs about Jesus with a Jesus-focused responsive reading right in the middle – can you get much better than that? Having people sing about Jesus, read scripture about Jesus and then sing again about Jesus gave the whole section some added impact. Beautiful. (Added bonus - I needed a moment in between those two songs to switch my capo position. Tada!!)
3. I love my church. Seriously. God is doing some amazing things right now and I love being a part of it. That’s not something just about this Sunday, it’s most Sundays. God is so good to us.

 

You can find more posts like this over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

SongSelect vs. Planning Center Online – Top 10

Here’s a quick look at the Top 10 lists of songs on these two popular websites, based on the worship songs that churches are singing in their weekend services:

CCLI SongSelect

1. Mighty to Save – Ben Fielding & Reuben Morgan
2. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves & Ed Cash
3. Blessed Be Your Name – Beth Redman & Matt Redman
4. Here I Am To Worship – Tim Hughes
5. Everlasting God – Brenton Brown & Ken Riley
6. Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio & John Newton
7. Open The Eyes Of My Heart – Paul Baloche
8. Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher
9. Jesus Messiah – Chris Tomlin, Daniel Carson, Jesse Reeves & Ed Cash
10. Holy Is The Lord – Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio

Planning Center Online

1. Mighty to Save – Ben Fielding & Reuben Morgan
2. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves & Ed Cash
3. Blessed Be Your Name – Beth Redman & Matt Redman
4. Hosanna – Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown
5. Everlasting God – Brenton Brown & Ken Riley
6. Hosanna – Brooke Fraser
7. Revelation Song – Jennie Lee Riddle
8. Here I Am To Worship – Tim Hughes
9. Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher
10. Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio & John Newton

I think for a while the general feeling was that the SongSelect list (particularly the middle and last third of the Top 100) is a pretty dated list that is influenced by lots of small churches still doing songs from the late 80′s and early 90′s. Interesting to see that the top 3 on each list are identical (can you say cha-ching!) and that 8 of the 10 songs appear in both lists.

As a worship director, I use both of these sites pretty regularly.

We have a subscription to both CCLI & Planning Center and both sites get used almost every day in my work. I use the CCLI site to print chord charts and lead sheets, collect copyright information on songs we are playing and also to find songs that other churches are using through the Top 100 list.

We have used Planning Center for about 3 years and it has become our main planning and programming tool for our Sunday morning services. We use it for scheduling musicians, planning services, distributing chord charts and tracking what songs we’re doing at OBC. I also use the community feature to see what songs are being done in other Planning Center churches around the world.

WorshipRises – recording blog #1

Joshua Seller – EP release today

My friend and WorshipRises compadre Joshua Seller (blog|twitter) is releasing his new EP today and I really want to encourage you to check it out. Joshua is the worship leader at Harvest Bible Chapel in Oakville, ON and has become a good friend this year. He has a heart of gold, a love for the church and a real desire to see people of faith expressing their love for Christ through worship.

Check out this video to learn a bit more about Joshua and these songs -

One really neat thing for me is that a song I co-wrote with Joshua called “Worship Rises” has been recorded for this EP. You might have seen my post a couple of weeks ago about a new thing that has been going on for the last little while where we’ve been gathering worship pastors/leaders from all over Canada to write songs for the church and “Worship Rises” is one of the songs that has come out of those sessions. We’ve been singing it at our church and the response has been fantastic – you can download a chord chart at this link if you’re interested in learning the song for yourself.

So check it out – Joshua Seller’s EP “Passionate Reverence” available on iTunes in Canada and the US.

Giveaway: Vicky Beeching – Eternity Invades

Vicky Beeching (blog|twitter) is releasing her new CD “Eternity Invades” tomorrow and we’ve got 5 copies to give away. Check out this video to learn more about Vicky, her ministry and this album:

So since this CD releases tomorrow let’s make this a 24 hour giveaway, shall we? Entries will be open for the next 24 hours only and I’ll choose FIVE winners at 5:00 eastern tomorrow afternoon.

How do you enter?

1. Leave a comment on this post and tell me why you’re excited about winning this CD. Lots of comments are great but it will still only get you one entry in the contest

2. Post about the CD and the giveaway either on your own blog or twitter – make sure you include a link back to this blog when you are posting! Post a link to your post as a second comment and you’ll get entered TWICE in the contest.

Easy as that! Good luck! If you don’t win but are still interested in buying the CD, you can find all of the info you need at Vicky Beeching’s site -- www.vickybeeching.com

UPDATE: Congratulations to Shannon Lewis, James Hanson, Gord Millar, Mike Vickers and Octavian Vlaicu on winning copies of the CD. I’ll get you connected with the good people at Integrity and they will work out the details to get you the music. Thanks for entering, everyone! And thanks to Vicky Beeching for stopping by and leaving a comment as well as tweeting about the giveaway.

Easter Sunday responsive reading

Here is a responsive reading we used on Easter Sunday at Orangeville Baptist Church. We took the traditional Paschal greeting and added some resurrection scripture to it. Great way to start our services together.

Leader:
Christ is risen

Congregation:
He is risen indeed!

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 1 Peter 1:3
He is risen indeed!

Jesus has come that we may have life, and have it to the fullest. John 10:10
He is risen indeed!

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17
He is risen indeed!

God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. Acts 2:24
He is risen indeed!

Christ is risen
He is risen indeed!

 

Image from Flickr

 

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