LifeWay Worship Project.blog

While not explicitly about the musical content of a worship service, Tony Morgan's post challenges us to consider the question.

Does anyone have any scripture to back this up? :D

David Wilcox's comment is as close as I've seen:

First is this: I don’t think excellence of any particular type is a specific command of the Bible.... I would also go so far to say that excellence is not explicitly commanded anywhere (however, I haven’t memorized the Bible, so I am open to adjustment here).

However, the Bible does expect and call us to faithfulness. And there are at least a couple passages that define human faithfulness when it comes to evangelism and the gospel: in Colossians 4:4 Paul prays that he would make the gospel clear and in Matthew 10:27 Jesus commands his disciples shout the message from the housetops.

Daniel Godden posts an excerpt from Bob Kauflin's book questioning the use of the term. There's the beginning of a good discussion too.

What does your church call "the music guy?"

Although Mike Ratliff takes an extensive route through Purpose Driven and musical style to get there, his post on Spiritual Worship gives some good focal passages and testimony supporting his thesis:

God’s desire is that we live for Him in all parts of our lives

Lest you assume that tech folks are too busy fiddling with the dials, David Baxley, Director of Media and Technical Ministries at First Free Church in Onalaska, WI has two great posts on worship at his blog.

Gavin Brown posts his Wikipedia-length assessment of the evolution of worship music. Do you agree with his last two paragraphs?

IMO, decent theology flies the coop and solidifies the stereotype that worship guys (like me) are clueless about matters of doctrine and have little to no knowledge of scripture outside of the Psalms.

Worship music becomes an insanely profitable industry. There are now more worship conferences than Wal-marts (not really, but I’ll bet its close). Christian colleges and seminaries are adding worship leading degrees to their curriculum (my alma mater is one of them), and folks are getting straight-up rich off of worship music.

Have you seen the worshiptogether.com blog? Jimi Williams blogs pretty regularly about topics related to "doing church" for people involved in worship and music ministries... like this open letter to church gear swipers.

Keith Brenton remembers the Sabbath, and Jesus's new thoughts about keeping it holy.

Lead Pastor Bill Grandi of Owen Valley Christian Fellowship in Spencer, IN blogs about "full body worship."

There is another type of full-body worship-the kind that takes place every time God’s people get together. When the body (in our case known as OVCF) worships. Some laugh. Some cry. Some raise their hand or hands. Some put their hands across their heart. Some sing. Some are silent. Some whisper. Some sing out loud. Oh, the sweetness of that time!

Continue reading "full body worship?" »

Jeff Miller at consumingworship.org continues his interview with worship leader Jamey Ketchum of Park Hill Baptist Church.

Here's Part 1.

By the way, if you are reading consumingworship.org in Internet Explorer, the leftmost letter on each line is chopped off. It looks fine in Firefox, and Safari.

Kate Walker has a thoughtful post on whether the performance of "Shout to the Lord" on American Idol was out of context.