This is a song that you’re probably familiar with but if you’re like me you’ve never, ever seen the lyrics to the second verse. I came across them the other day on CCLI and they have been rattling around in my mind ever since. Wow!!

We will be singing this song on Sunday and I’m looking forward to the challenge of getting my congregation to get past the “beautiful”-ness of the lyrics to the real heart of what these words are saying – that God, majestic, royal, sovereign Creator of the universe came as a man, lived among His creation and then gave Himself up to death, even death on a cross. A brutal, agonizing, humiliating death – bruised for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.

Of course, the good – no, great! – news in all of this is the next half of that verse from Isaiah 53: the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Read these words – the second verse lyrics which are new to me are in bold:

I Stand In Awe

And I stand I stand in awe of You
I stand I stand in awe of You
Holy God to whom all praise is due
I stand in awe of You

You are beautiful beyond description
Too marvelous for words
Too wonderful for comprehension
Like nothing ever seen or heard
Who can grasp Your infinite wisdom
Who can fathom the depth of Your love
You are beautiful beyond description
Majesty enthroned above

You are beautiful beyond description
Yet God crushed You for my sin
In agony and deep affliction
Cut off that I might enter in
Who can grasp such tender compassion
Who can fathom this mercy so free
You are beautiful beyond description
Lamb of God who died for me

CCLI Song No. 23914
© 1987 Sovereign Grace Praise (c/o Integrity Music, Inc.)
Mark Altrogge
For use solely with the SongSelect Terms of Use. All rights Reserved. www.ccli.com

Many of you are familiar with Compassion and the incredible work they do around the world through child sponsorship. I was asked to write an article for Compassion Canada’s magazine talking about why we should care for the poor. The magazine has gone to print so I thought I’d share the article with you here.

If you are interested in sponsoring a child through Compassion Canada, you can find more information here – www.compassion.ca

There’s a story told of Picasso claiming that his own original works of art were actually forgeries. When confronted by the purchaser of an alleged forgery, Picasso would reply, “I can paint fake Picassos as well as anyone!” The very same work of art has a very different value if, in fact, Picasso is not the artist. The worth of a painting changes dramatically based on the identity of its creator.

As people created in the image of a creative, artistic God, it is good to be reminded that our inherent worth comes from the fact that we are created by Yahweh, who knit us together in our mothers’ womb and numbered each hair on our heads. Knowing that our origin is the creating Spirit of God, we are reminded that every human life carries the same value.

When we think of the poor, we affirm that this same image of God is on display in the lowest of the low just as it is in the wealthy, well-fed, and comfortable. Caring for the poor is much more about honouring the Creator than it is about simply feeding or clothing the created. Loving the poor is a demonstration of our belief that God is good, and that His creation has inherent value and worth.

Living as the hands and feet of Jesus for the poor, we are indeed meeting practical needs but we are also proclaiming the worth-ship of our God, the Creator of all things. We are saying that the value of the person we are serving and caring for comes from our certainty of the identity of their creator, that they have been created by this great God.

For me, as an artist and a worship leader, loving the poor means using songs on Sunday morning which remind us of our dependency on God, presenting passages of Scripture that tell of the worth of all people, and leading our congregation to a place of reverence before our God who is Sovereign.

As someone in full-time ministry, caring for the poor means being passionate about our own church’s desire to bless, care for and disciple the poor in our own region. It means encouraging our church family to recognize the opportunities they have to speak of the love of Christ while being a display of Christ’s love in our community.

As a global citizen, caring for the poor looks like sponsoring three kids at a project in Uganda, believing that the influence of a solid education, good nutrition and an understanding of the gospel will given them an opportunity to tell others of the grace they have been shown.

As a follower of Christ, caring for the poor must be rooted deeply in the conviction that we are all created by our Creator, recognizing worth in each life in a way that gives honour and glory to God.

Intertwined in all of these is our deepest hope: that God the Father has created us; that Christ has redeemed us; and that His Spirit is among us. Caring for the poor then becomes one more way for the church to carry on the prayer of Revelation 22, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Matthew Westerholm posted two really great articles recently – “Worship CDs are Impoverishing our Worship” & “Worship CDs are Enriching our Worship”

Both are worth reading – check them out.

This is one of those issues where people like to draw a pretty strong line but Matthew does a great job of laying out the case where recording a worship CD might be the right thing for your church to do.. but it might also be a bad idea. I appreciate the good points that he raises on both sides.

More info here – Covenant Award nominees

Congratulations to all of the nominees – pretty incredible to see the amount of Canadian talent that is being shared with the world. Make sure you head over to the site and check out the full list of nominees.

Here are the artists nominated for Artist of the Year -

• Matt Maher
• Manafest
• Newworldson
• Greg Sczebel
• Starfield

The fine people from the All About Worship podcast managed to get Chris McClarney to put together this quick teaching video for his song “Your Love Never Fails” that has been recorded for his own CD as well as by Jesus Culture.

Check out the video here –

We tried this song a last summer at OBC and it never really caught on. Maybe we’ll have to revisit it. Seems like lots of churches are singing this one these days.

If you’re a worship leader, you’re probably already pretty involved with twitter. Not sure what it is with us worship leaders but we sure do love us some technology! :)

(By the way, if you’re on twitter, you can follow me @chrisfromcanada – I’m not one of those guys who only uses twitter to blast my blog posts. I talk about worship stuff and real life stuff there all the time. Lots of fun.)

Some of you may think twitter is a waste of time. If you think that, you’re probably right. But.. let me pitch an idea for tweeters and non-tweeters alike.

One thing I’ve been doing for the last few weeks is taking time on Saturday and praying for worship leaders, pastors and churches all around the world – mostly people I don’t know – by searching for the #WorshipSet hashtag in twitter. It’s been a neat way to gather names of churches all around the world quickly and to pray for their leaders and their congregations.

Want to know what that looks like? Check this out –

(RSS readers – you might have to click through to the blog to have a look.)

Wouldn’t it be awesome knowing that around the world there were worship leaders praying for each other every Saturday? It’s an easy thing to do and using this little twitter trick makes it easier.

“Whatever we do is pure invention.” What a statement for what is happening in the arts world right now. Incredible.

I love what Mr. Cameron has to say in this video – especially everything he says about the shift in the arts from consumption to participation.

And I love that he called Kirk Franklin a gangster rapper.

So.. who are the pro-ams that you have come across that have blown your artistic worldview away?

At OBC we have an opportunity at the beginning of the ministry year (now) to hilight the different ministries and programs of our church and to let people know that there are opportunities for them to serve.

You might do something like this at your church so I wanted to give some insight in to how we do this kind of event here.

Rather than having a parade of different ministries setting up their own tables and trying to draw crazy attention to what they have to offer, we make sure that all of our staff are on board with the idea that Expo is a unified event where we are trying to serve the people of our church – letting them know what’s happening at OBC this year and how they can be involved. (For a longer discussion on this, you should definitely read Kem Meyer’s book “Less Clutter, Less Noise“!)

For two Sundays, we set tables around the edges of one of the rooms of our building, each table with the same kind of look. We have leaders from those ministries at the tables to talk with people who may be interested – so instead of having me as the worship director standing at the Arts table, we have Arts leaders who are there to talk to people about what it’s like to serve in our Arts ministry.

As a breakdown, here are the different “categories” we came up with for our different tables at Expo -

• Children (nursery, kids leader, security)
• Men (leadership team, event planning)
• Outreach (global, regional single moms’ ministry)
• Students (group leaders, event planning, ball hockey)
• Women (event childcare, setup adn clean up, greeters)
• Behind The Scenes (meal ministry, visiting shut-ins, hospital visits, kitchen team, office help, property)
• Arts (worship, A/V, website, video, writing)
• Seniors (event setup and clean up, event planning)
• First Impression (welcome centre, greeters, ushers)

We put cards in our bulletin that people can fill out and take to one of the tables at Expo or they can drop it in a box at the front of the room. We also put refreshments in that room to encourage more people to head over there – whatever it takes to get people in the room and engaged in conversation about what is happening in our church.

If you’re doing an event like this, remember that the desire at the core of all of this is that people would continue in their journey as disciples of Christ, NOT that all of the ministry roles would get filled. Of course we want great ministry to happen and programs take people in the planning and leading but this whole process is about people becoming more like Christ rather than people becoming more involved in your church.

We opened registration for our next WorshipRises (tw|fb) songwriting events last week and the response has been great. We have people signing up to attend one of EIGHT events happening across the country on Monday, October 25.

We have limited openings at each venue and some of them will be full soon. Most of the events are free to attend but if there is a cost it means that lunch is included. Everyone who attends is responsible for their own transportation and meals at the event.

So what is WorshipRises all about? Basically it’s a collection of Canadian worship leaders who are passionate about developing worship resources for & from the Canadian church. We’ve been running events like this for about a year and a half and released our first EP this past summer. You can hear (and buy!) the songs on iTunes (US|CDN) and if you’re looking for stuff like lead sheets or chord charts, there’s lots available thanks to our friends from PraiseCharts.

Are you a Canadian worship leader? Interested in getting connected with what we’re doing? We’d love to have you join us! Register right here or you can visit our Eventbrite site to get signed up – http://october25.eventbrite.com

WorshipTogether.com released a new song from Chris Tomlin last week called “I Will Follow”, co-written by Chris Tomlin, Reuben Morgan and Jason Ingram. The WT.com site has audio of the song as well as a free lead sheet and links for more resources.

You can also head over to PraiseCharts.com and find lead sheet, chord chart, piano music and orchestration. I’m sure they’re working on a click track and rhythm track right now.

Have you heard the song? What do you think? Definitely a new direction Tomlin and Jason Ingram’s songwriting influence definitely comes through on this one. If this is a hint at the sound of the new Chris Tomlin CD “And If Our God Is For Us…” available November 16, I think we’re going to see lots of these songs sung in the church very soon.