LEXINGTON, Ky. (BP)

Harley Cannon, being blind, doesn't read music.

But that doesn't stop him from playing a crazy clavichord or a mean trumpet.

"That Harley is a piece of work, a talented musician," said Mike Hoover, minister of music at North View Baptist Church in Lexington, Ky. "Not only does he play keyboards and trumpet, but he sings too."

Hoover and Cannon have been the worship-leading team at North View for nearly five years -- in a match made in digital heaven.

Hoover uses the Worship Project on LifeWayWorship.com to coordinate all the music for the church. LifeWayWorship.com is a set of resources designed to provide the tools worship leaders need to create a rich and full worship experience for their churches. LifeWay Worship is a department of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Hoover, unlike most ministers of music, is quick to admit that he, too, doesn't read music.

"No, not at all," he said with a chuckle. "I've depended on technology to help me do worship planning since the days of the 'Celebrate Jesus' book with split tracks!"

Being bivocational, Hoover doesn't have a lot of time for planning. He spends his mornings and afternoons driving a school bus route, working at the school bus garage in between.

Hoover and Cannon learned to use LifeWayWorship.com to quickly and seamlessly create an order of worship that both of them can follow.

Hoover prepares the order of worship on Monday and Tuesday nights.

"What I love about having access to the resources on the Worship Project," he said, "is that I can find out from the pastor what the Scripture passage for the week will be and then go online and find music that will coordinate with it.

"I can download the order of worship and music and put it in a dropbox for Harley to download," Hoover said. "Once he gets it, he translates the order of service into Braille and listens to the music two or three times and he's ready to play. It's so easy!"

Cannon said he usually listens to the music while he's exercising.

"I walk on the treadmill for about 45 minutes every day," he said. "Having the music to listen to helps. By the time we get together, we've heard the same music and we're ready to go."

Hoover said LifeWayWorship.com has revolutionized the musical worship for North View.

"It just makes so many things possible for us," he said. "I can find the music I want, download it for Harley and send it to him. I can download the song from the digital hymnal portion of the Worship Project so my choir can listen to it. I can get printouts of the music for the choir. It works!"

Cannon agreed that the resource makes things simple, adding, "You don't have to be blind to appreciate the convenience of it. It'd work for anybody."

One Wednesday night, for example, Hoover had some cold and allergy issues and couldn't sing. He needed to introduce a new song to the choir for Sunday morning. So he played the MP3 and had them sing along while Cannon played the keyboard and added in a trumpet part.

"Without the technology that LifeWayWorship.com offers, I couldn't have made all that happen in the time we had," Hoover said.

Having had time to go over the music in his head for a couple of days, Cannon has the opportunity to experiment with some sound.

"Every once in a while, I'll throw in something Mike doesn't expect," Cannon said with a laugh. "I'll drop the keyboard and just let the choir sing a chorus or a verse or maybe improvise a variation on the melody, but they are good to just follow along wherever I take them. I just tell them to keep up!"

North View isn't a large church, running about 100 on Sunday mornings. Hoover said as helpful as LifeWayWorship.com is, he imagines it would seem almost like a miracle for smaller churches.

"My brother is the pastor of a tiny church in Viney Fork, Ky.," Hoover said. "He does everything -- preaching, teaching and music. He uses LifeWayWorship.com too. He doesn't have musicians. He may just have three or four people in the choir, but he'll have good music."

Mike Harland, director of LifeWay Worship, noted that many Southern Baptist churches struggle to find musicians. "LifeWayWorship.com could be so beneficial to these churches, giving them the means to provide a quality worship experience no matter how many worshippers they have," he said.

"It was our hope and prayer from the inception of LifeWayWorship.com that ministers of music, as well as the single staff member churches, would be able to have a quality worship experience for their members, no matter how many or how few," Harland said.

Polly House is a writer for LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention

For more information about the Worship Project, the digital hymnal and other worship resources, visit LifeWayWorship.com.

From Christian Post

By Mark Hensch

For Andrew Greer, Scripture is most alive in song.

The singer-songwriter burst onto the Christian contemporary music scene with 2009's Open Book, a collection of achingly vulnerable songs about faith. His current release - Angel Band: The Hymn Sessions - sees Greer going in a completely different direction. It's a sophomore album heavily slanted toward covering classic hymns, a move he says reminds him of home.

"Hymns take me back to my roots," said Greer. "They're where I learned music so it's a very honest place for me. There's a purity being able to connect with that again as an adult. I think hymns are very personal, and very much my story."

Angel Band: The Hymn Sessions includes the title track "Softly and Tenderly," featuring renowned bluegrass singer/songwriter Sonya Isaacs; the song "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus," a duet by Greer and Dove Award-winning singer/songwriter Cindy Morgan; and "I Am Thine O Lord/Near The Cross," performed by Dove Award-winning singer/songwriter Ginny Owens.

Greer said the tale of his life begins in rural Texas. Raised by parents of "strong but not overbearing" Christian faith, he said he frequently attended church and fell in love with choir hymns. Hearing their harmonies and melodies, he said he found the majesty of Christ.

"Music has played a large role in starting, growing and sustaining my relationship with God," he said. "Hymns in particular matured my faith and anchored it. They're a conversation with God. That's what I want to do with my own songs."

Greer relocated to Nashville's Belmont University to study music and find his muse. Upon graduation, he worked at singer Michael W. Smith's Rocketown Records, only to discover he valued songwriting more than business sales. The solo artist has worked as professional musician ever since.

"It can be scary working in a critical and artistic field," Greer said of his work. "You have to get a tough skin and just go for it. All the same, it's very fulfilling surrendering yourself to what you love to do. It's both wonderful and harrowing at the same time."

Greer's path to musical success was not without its struggles, however. Greer said he recorded Open Book during a time of deep personal anxiety. Alone and afraid, he used his music as a way of finding his faith again.

"I was in a really raw place with my relationship with God and my back was against the wall," Greer said. "I wanted him to show up and I was in a place where I was OK if he didn't. I needed help and a sign. He showed up in an extremely personal way."

After going through the personal trial, Greer said he started focusing on exploring Jesus' sacrifices for humanity through hymns. He reached out to a collection of other Christian artists for input, and the resulting hymn reinterpretations are Angel Band: The Hymn Sessions. Returning to the music of his youth, Greer said he realized the hope present in hymns.

"I've been through bouts of anxiety and it's literally felt like my body is crying out," he said. "What I've learned is that I'm not in my final state yet. I'm not home. My soul is anchored in Jesus."

Greer said he hopes his new hymn collection makes listeners understand the effort needed for an energetic relationship with Christ. The best faith takes place in personal interaction, he said, and grows the more people approach God.

"I've learned from life that God must be a very interesting and intriguing person," Greer said. "We can't just bottle him. We have to have a relationship with him to understand who he is."

Among the notable titles on the album is a beautiful rendition of The Lord's Prayer, featuring the renowned banjo playing of Ron Block of Alison Krauss and Union Station.

Other featured guests on Angel Band are the McCrary Sisters, Marc Scibilia and Julie Lee.

The band has played their final show.
What are they going to do now?

The inventive final album from the David Crowder*Band debuted at no. 2 in the US.
Lead Sheets are available here.

From Kingsway Music

Tim Hughes: 'we need to move back to being Spirit led.'

Spirit Break Out is the debut live album from the London-based Worship Central team.

For a movement dedicated to helping unleash praise and worship within local churches across the world, 'Spirit Break Out' is a live album full of energy and experience. But this is no empty title. 'Spirit Break Out' is the perfect summation of a profoundly held belief that we need to allow God more freedom and power within our worship.

Tim Hughes - songwriter, worship leader, co-founder of Worship Central and vicar-in-training - puts it clearly in an interview with Mission Worship magazine:

"We've never had better quality songs to choose from. There are amazing songs on amazing themes coming out of Hillsong, Passion, Soul Survivor and - I guess - Worship Central too. But there's a danger here: that we rely on those songs to create the amazing encounters in worship. If we let the song become the king, then worship becomes more about what we can create and less about our response to God's initiating love and glory.

"We always need to be looking to be Spirit led in our worship. The Spirit gives life, releases freedom and joy, puts a new song on our lips and reveals the beauty and majesty of Christ."

The message is well-explored through the album, which features Tim Hughes, Ben Cantelon, Al Gordon, Nikki Fletcher and Luke Hellebronth. The team combined forces to lead at the HMV Forum in March this year, and the album's 14 tracks draw out the very best of the evening's worship. Established songs like Tim Hughes' 'Counting On Your Name' and 'Wake Up' as well as Ben Cantelon's 'Saviour Of The World' are found on the album, along with a great selection of new ones.

From the opening moments of 'Spirit Of The Living God' - rising up, phoenix-like with a call for the Holy Spirit to take control - through to the closing moments of 'Undivided Love' and 'All Glory', the album is urgent, focused and engaging.

'Now Is The Time' brings in some beautiful arrangements while 'Sing Alleluia' clearly has the potential to become a big congregational winner. 'New Day' jumps about, 'At Your Name' gets epic while the title track builds into a mountain-sized cry for something bigger and bolder than can be created by human hands, as Tim explains:

"The title track feels like a revival song: it's a heart cry to see God smashing out of the box, turning us upside down, inside out and leading us into more of His presence and glory. Our heart at Worship Central is that these songs and this album will fire people up and inspire them in their worship and will lead people into a deeper relationship with Christ."

Worship Central is a school of worship from Alpha International with a vision to encounter God, equip the worshipper and empower the local church. Led by Tim Hughes and Al Gordon, since launching in 2006, over 100,000 worship leaders, musicians and worshippers have attended training events around the world, as well as using the online resource, Worship Central.

While this is the first live album from Worship Central, they previously released a studio album - 'Lifting High' - in 2009. They have also just put out their first ever album sung in Mandarin, featuring worship leaders from across Asia.

Worship Central continues to run training conferences internationally, in Holland, Germany, London, Scotland, California, Hong Kong, and India.