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

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.

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.

PolyTune for iPhone

PolyTune website – http://www.tcelectronic.com/polytune-iphone-app.asp

iTunes link – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/polytune/id364009203?mt=8

 

“When Things Go Wrong”

Not that anything goes wrong.. right??

You can find more helpful videos and other resources over at WorshipTeamTraining.com –

“Everlasting Light” from WorshipRises

“Everlasting Light” from WorshipRises
Co-written by Drew Brown (music director at The Meeting Place in Winnipeg, MB – blog|facebook|twitter), Bob Cottrill (worship pastor at North Park Church in London, ON), Luke Holst (ministry intern at West Park Church in London, ON) and Keith Sparrow (worship pastor at The Campus Community Bible Church in Aurora, ON – twitter)

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“Worship Rises” on CCLI

Thanks to the fine people over at CCLI.com and CCLI.tv for featuring the video of “Worship Rises” on their websites. My friend (and co-writer) Joshua Seller led this song at a Harvest Bible Chapel conference in Chicago and the Harvest folks were kind enough to share the video.

You can watch the video over at CCLI.tv by following this link – http://www.ccli.com/CCLITV/Default.aspx?v=11db77d0-c0b4-43c2-8ba6-6a1f8169fb42

This song is part of a movement of worship pastors/leaders from across Canada who have come together to begin writing songs for the Canadian church. We’re excited about releasing a 4-song EP this summer and can’t wait for you to hear the songs. Lots more news coming about WorshipRises very soon.

Uncover the Color – new resource site

This looks pretty interesting – Uncover the Color.

 

 

From their website:

Uncover the Color is a collection of artists committed to creating high quality art in a wide variety of visual, auditory and live media. Whether in a worship gathering, in print or part of an original project, we believe that art is meant to reflect the deep creative heart of God. Our artists seek to challenge The Church into deeper expression and authentic experiences through a renewed depth in the creative process.

Our website features a combination of completed works, elements for use in your original works, services and training tools – all designed to help you do what you do more effectively.

Giveaway – “Equipping The Saints” from Harvest Bible Chapel

My friend Joshua Seller has been working on a live hymns album with his church Harvest Bible Chapel this year. Here’s what Joshua had to say about this project -

We are excited to release Harvest Bible Chapel’s second live worship project capturing 11 amazing hymns of our faith.

The vision behind this project was to align with our year long theme, “Equipping the Saints”. The past year as a church, the goal was to not only know what God’s Word says, but apply it to our lives in such a way that we actually grow in godliness. Growing in godliness begins with a right view of God and that includes worship. This project was recorded with the hopes that it would become a rich resource for you and your family as you sing back to God what you have come to know through His Word to be true. And in singing biblical, theologically correct truths back to Him you can know your times of worship will be meaningful as He has intended worship to be. The hymns are a great place to find some of the greatest truths and the best part is these truths can be sung at anytime. Its our prayer that this album would be played, replayed and pass down to your family as you grow in godliness.

 

I’ve got five copies of this CD to give away. I’ve been listening to it for the last week or so and these guys have done a great job. I think you will really enjoy these songs! To be entered in to the draw, leave a comment here and let me know what your favourite hymn is. You can get more entried in the giveaway by posting something to twitter or your blog or facebook – just leave a second, third, fourth comment with links to where you’ve posted it.

Good luck! We’ll draw a winner one week from today, June 2nd.

UPDATE: We have our winners! Congratulations to Dan, Jonathan, Erin, Mark and Aaron on winning the CD! Thanks to everyone who entered. Another giveaway is coming very soon!

“Worship Rises” – Live at HarvestU

Here’s video of my friend Joshua Seller singing a song that he & I co-wrote together:

This song “Worship Rises” has become the anthem for a movement of worship pastors/leaders across Canada who are writing songs together to share with the church. We will be releasing a 4-song EP (including “Worship Rises”) very soon and I can’t wait for you to hear the songs.

Until then, you can get more info on WorshipRises here –

Facebook – www.facebook.com/WorshipRises
Twitter – www.twitter.com/WorshipRises

Video – “Made Us Alive” by Michael Bleecker & Seth Jones

Additional resources for this song here -- http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/blog/worship/?p=168

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.

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.

“Recording 48 Tracks with Studio One and the FireStudio”

If you are thinking about doing any kind of live tracking of your church services, you need to watch this video from PreSonus to see how you can do it without spending a ton of cash. These are solid products and pretty straightforward to use. We are hoping to install a similar system to this (24 channels instead of 48) to be able to live track our services on Sunday morning.

Videos for Worship

Someone (sorry, I don’t remember who!) linked this site on twitter and I thought it was pretty interesting. If you do any kind of “mood” or architectural projection in your sanctuary or if you are just looking for some video content to use in your worship services, check out this channel on Vimeo – Videos for Worship. Very cool.

Here are a couple of examples –

Check it out. There is some very, very good stuff here. Awesome to see people producing incredible content and then sharing it for the benefit of other churches.

Great work, guys!

WorshipTogether.com Training Conference

WorshipTogether.com is hosting a training conference in Kansas from April 12-14. Looks like a great event with some great people involved.

Anyone planning on attending?

 

YouVersion Bible Reading Plan – convert RSS to email

Lots of people are jumping on board the YouVersion Bible Reading Plans right now and one question that has been coming up is how to get those daily readings delivered to your email inbox. Right now on the YouVersion site there are three options – visit the site every day, use a mobile app or have the content delivered by RSS.

Want to have the daily readings delivered right to your email? Check out this video and follow a few easy steps to make it happen -

Here’s helpful step-by-step instructions to go along with the video -

1. Go to www.youversion.com and create an account.
2. Click on the “New Reading Plans” button and find the plan you’d like to follow this year.
3. Look for the orange RSS icon, right-click and copy that RSS feed address.
4. Go to www.notify.me and create an account.
5. On the “Sources” page, paste the RSS feed address you copied from YouVersion and select email as your preferred platform.

10 Free Christmas Worship songs

The fine people over at WorsthipTogether.com have put together a tasty little Christmas treat for all you worship leaders who are starting to freak out that Christmas Eve is only a few sleeps away! They’ve put FREE sheet music online for 10 songs that you can use this year for your Christmas series or Christmas Eve. Check it out here – www.worshiptogether.com

The songs they’ve featured -

• Emmanuel (Hallowed Manger Ground) – Chris Tomlin
• All Creation Sing (Joy to the World) – Fee
• Sing – Josh Wilson
• Born in Bethlehem – Third Day
• Here Is Our King – David Crowder Band
• Glory in the Highest – Chris Tomlin
• Silent Night (Emmanuel) – Matt Maher
• Joy Has Dawned – Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
• Love Came Down – Ben Cantelon
• Born That We May Have Life – Chris Tomlin

There is some goooood stuff here! Thanks Worship Together folks!

Video – Listening Skills

One of the big steps in maturity for a musician is learning how to listen. Listening skills are just as important as playing ability and this video talks about how it applies to worship teams. Lots more good stuff like this over at www.musicademy.com –

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