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Chris Tomlin – How Great Is Our God

Chris From Canada — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:32:04 +0000

There is this weird love/hate/love relationship between worship leaders and Chris Tomlin in the church today. I’m not sure if it’s that we love his songs but hate his popularity, love his songwriting but hate his (perceived) simplicity, love his songs but hate his success -- I don’t know. There are lots of blogs, articles, websites out there dedicated to tearing down Chris and his shallow ministry -- I was sent one again earlier this week and reminded at how we seem to be so, so willing to grab at any piece of inadequacy to try and tear apart someone’s success.

Listen, I’m no rah-rah cheerleader for Chris Tomlin but I do know this: more often than not, if I do a Chris Tomlin song with our church they are singing their hearts out for the glory of God. As a worship leader, what more could I ask for? Why do I care whether the last word of each line rhymes? Why do I care whether the melody is simple or not? Why do I care whether his range is three steps too high for any normal male to sing?

All I care is that I am putting words in the mouths of the people of this church which give God glory, stir the hearts of people toward Christ and proclaim the gospel to those who don’t know Him. If it takes famous songs, unknown songs, songs you’ve heard on the radio or songs you’re writing in your basement, I don’t care -- I’m going to find a way to get my people to sing them.

As I was reading that article this week which talked about the absolute shame of Chris’ writing, someone sent me another link. This time it was a video of Chris and his band leading “How Great Is Our God.” If your church is like ours, you’ve sung that song a million times and you’ve probably questioned whether or not you should actually sing it half of the times that you did. But.. give yourself a few minutes and watch this video. Hear the song again for the first time, if you can. I know that’s what I did when I watched it earlier this week.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OsyiGgSlqY

Forget, if you can, that it’s Chris Tomlin who wrote that song. Imagine it was (insert your favourite songwriter here) or someone from your church or someone from your family. Wouldn’t you be on your knees thanking God that He had delivered that song to the writer and now you are able to share that song with your church? That was honestly the response I had this week when I watched that video.. God, thank You for Chris Tomlin, for his talent, for his dedication, for his willingness and eagerness to see the church give You praise.

Martin Smith Horror Moment

Chris From Canada — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:49:51 +0000

Happens to the best of them!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NjOaV515iQ

Bluetree – “God of this City”

Chris From Canada — Wed, 26 May 2010 10:39:07 +0000

As a follow-up to this last post I thought it might be helpful to post a video from Bluetree (facebook|twitter) telling the story behind their song “God of this City” -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXh_tgjnYJw

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

Chris From Canada — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:30:11 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bXGogpvwD0

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

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

Chris From Canada — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:40:47 +0000

Last summer there was a video that went a little crazy, viral-ing its way around the world. Have you seen it? It’s the one where a brave, shirtless soul is dancing all by himself on a hillside at some music festival. There’s a crowd sitting on the grass near him, most of them chuckling at the dancing guy, impressed with his moves but unwilling to join in.

Until..

The first follower.

Derek Sivers put together a 3-minute video with some beautiful insight into what may be descriptive for a new era of leadership, helping us to get a better understanding of followership, as well. You can read the transcript of this video here –

“We Are More” by Shane Koyczan

Chris From Canada — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:32:54 +0000

Hundreds of millions people tuned in to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics opening ceremony last night and witnessed an incredible display of Canadian history, heritage, culture and talent. I watched the ceremony this morning with my family and was amazed at the production at the event as well as at the ability of the performers to really capture the sense of what being Canadian is all about.

I watched with great pride as Canada was represented so well in so many ways – from the First Nations welcome to the fiddlers from every region of Canada to the incredible use of staging and projection to bring BC Place alive. Beautiful.

My favourite moment had to be Shane Koyczan’s spoken word piece, “We Are More” – it captured so much of the heartbeat of Canadians and told a side of our story that is not often told.

This is not video of his actual performance but if you missed it, you need to watch this video -

“Recording 48 Tracks with Studio One and the FireStudio”

Chris From Canada — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:56:14 +0000

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.

Audrey Assad – Winter Snow

Chris From Canada — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:38:01 +0000

Lots of you have heard this song already because it’s on Chris Tomlin’s new Christmas CD (and if you haven’t got that yet, you are missing out!) but I wanted to share this with you. We did this song last Sunday at OBC and everyone loved it.

This is “Winter Snow” by Audrey Assad (web|twitter)- enjoy!

Paul Baloche – Today Is The Day

Chris From Canada — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:35:00 +0000

The new Paul Baloche (web|twitter) CD “Glorious” is coming November 3rd. I’ve had the chance to listen through a couple of times and I am pretty impressed. Stay tuned for details on a release day giveaway that’s coming for your chance to win a copy of the CD as well as the worship leader digital songbook from our friends at Integrity.

Here’s a video from the album. “Today Is The Day” is best-known as being performed by Lincoln Brewster (web|twitter)and Paul has his turn with the song that he co-wrote on this record. Check out the video –

RIFF iPhone Guitar App

Chris From Canada — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:36:15 +0000

This is all that I’ve seen of the RIFF iPhone Guitar App and it’s already got my vote for best iPhone app ever! Cannot wait to get to try this out.