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.

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

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!

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!

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

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.)

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.