LifeWay Worship Project.blog

Today we introduce a new type of music chart for your praise team. We call them SuperCharts. It includes a note for note transcription from the artist recording, additional harmonies for your praise team vocalists, full color markings to give your players direction, and a text box that allows you to type specific notes directly into the pdf document. ... Oh yeah, and a SuperChart offers you the song in all 12 keys.

We're thrilled to partner with Casting Crowns on the release of their new CD Until the Whole World Hears to introduce you to the power of SuperCharts. Find SuperCharts for all 12 titles:

Also available! Individual artist recordings and accompaniment tracks for selected titles. Here are the prices:

$1.99 - SuperCharts
$1.29 - Original Artist Recording
$1.99 - Original Artist Tracks

Try SuperCharts for FREE at LifeWayWorship.com. Simply enter the code WMU111709 at checkout and download any two SuperCharts absolutely free! (Maximum Value $1.99. Must be used in one session. Offer expires December 17, 2009).

An improvement has been made today regarding the shopping cart. Now, when you add a song to your cart, the orchestral parts are grouped together based on instrumentation rather than alphabetical, descending alphabetical, most popular, well, I'm not sure how they were ordered. But, today all of the woodwinds are grouped together, all of the strings are grouped together, and so forth.

The little things make all the difference, no?

LifeWayWorship.com announces the rollout of Release 1.95, which includes a fresh, contemporary arrangement of the hymn "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty," Gary Sadler's "The Power of Your Love," Martin Smith's "What a Friend I've Found," Robin Mark's "Take Us to the River" and Don Moen's "Blessed Be the Name of the Lord." Download the complete list. All songs are mappable.

If you have ever been to one of our training events, you know what a great service it is to be able to open your laptop, browse our website, and experience SongMap free of charge and in the presence of one of our trainers to answer your questions.

We have not been able to replicate that experience with WorshipMap Pro, because of the nature of the service. We could show you the service and answer your questions, but you couldn't experience it for yourself without a credit card transaction and lots of work to set up user accounts for your volunteers. That has now changed. LifeWayWorship is pleased to announce WorshipMap Pro training accounts.

At selected events where WorshipMap Pro is demonstrated, you will now be able to use a free, fully functioning WorshipMap Pro training account during the course of the training event. The account is pre-populated with worship plans, songs, and users so you can experience this exciting subscription service right away and without risk.

Click here to see a list of planned training events in your area. If you are a host or facilitator for an event and would like to create WorshipMap Pro training accounts, contact our technical support staff at 800.436.3869 or worship@lifeway.com.

A few weeks ago, a reader named Bonnie posted a comment wanting to know what songs have been added to the worship project since she purchased "the hymnal and the CD tracks" almost a year ago. Since we're celebrating our one-year anniversary, I thought it would be a good time to compile the the list of song titles that we've released within the last year.

To address Bonnie's question directly and to make sure we're comparing apples to apples, let me remind you that the website has always had more titles than the hymnal. The hymnal has 674 selections. The website started with 975 (674 that are in the hymnal plus an additional 301). The CD track kit contains all of the initial 975 recordings. The document here is a list of what has been added since the initial 975 song titles and does not include the 301 songs / arrangements not included in the hymnal.

LifeWayWorship.com is the flagship component of LifeWay's Worship Project, our strategic initiative to equip the Church with resources for the rapidly-changing arena of worship ministry. After almost two years of arranging, recording, editing, and developing this little technology we called SongMap, the site finally went live on October 27, 2008.

1,200 songs and 22,000 active accounts later, we are celebrating our one year anniversary. It is our desire that we not just crank out the latest tunes and play with innovative technology, but to equip you with real solutions for your ministry.

To help us celebrate, I want to offer you 5 free downloads from LifeWayWorship.com. Simply enter the promo code: 2009ANNIVERSARY at checkout. (As always, be sure and get all of your downloads in a single session). This offer is good until December 1.

2010 looks to be another exciting year. Although, we're not adding another 1,200 songs, we will be adding new material on a regular basis. We''re not only growing our list of songs, but expanding our stylistic repertoire. Watch for our expanding list of genres to include kids, country, and messianic material. And I'm not allowed to reveal much yet, but be sure to watch for a special announcement on November 17th.

In order not to miss this announcement and to keep up with the happenings of LifeWayWorship.com, consider following us on Twitter and check this blog often.

I would love to hear from those of you who have been using the site regularly. Simply leave your comment below. Thank you. Thank you for what you do to serve the Body, of which we are all a part. And thank you for choosing LifeWayWorship.com.

We're excited to add stereo track mixes to our line of 21 titles from the Worship KidStyle series. If you're not familiar with Worship KidStyle, check out the embedded promo video below.

Also recently added are two more from country artist Dan Schafer: Trading My Sorrows and Indescribable.

Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research had an interesting post on his blog last week about worship wars that are all too common in today's church. You can read it here.

(originally posted on A Worshiper's Heart). John Mark McMillan posted a recent entry to his blog concerning his song, "How He Loves." With the right audience, this is a really powerful song regarding the passionate love of God. But, some people get hung up on the second verse, specifically the phrase "sloppy wet kiss" in the line "So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss." They find it to be too graphic and/or sensual. Others say the image gives them the "willies" or is just plain distracting to their worship.

The song will likely become even more popular now that the David Crowder Band recorded it for the new CD Church Music. Crowder changed the lyric to "unforeseen kiss," which is admittedly less jarring. I fault neither Crowder for changing the lyric nor McMillan for allowing him to do so. After all, the song is not really about sloppy, wet kisses and the metaphor is not essential to the message of the lyric. Crowder's lyric will, in the end, be the one the song will be known by.

But personally, I like the original lyric and I'm glad Kim Walker recorded it. It speaks of both the passion of God and the mess of humanity. It's both divine and gritty, much like the Incarnation itself. And if it makes people stop and think about what they're singing in church, so much the better.

iTunes has both Walker's recording and Crowder's. What about you and your church? Are you singing this song? What lyric do you use? Should this song be on our site?

Today, we're pleased to roll out new content to LifeWayWorship.com in what we internally refer to as "Release 1.9."

This release includes 15 brand new offerings, including five great selections for Christmas: "Christmas Candlelight Medley," a beautiful arrangement of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," and contemporary treatments of "Joy Has Dawned," "The First Noel" and "Joy to the World!"

Also in this release is the mappable function to classic hymns already online. These titles include some of the most classic, beloved hymns of all time, including "Amazing Grace," "Fairest Lord Jesus," and "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee." Nearly all of the original 975 are now live and mappable.

Non-seasonal offerings from this release include "I Will Glory in My Redeemer" by Steve and Vikki Cook, "Let Your Glory Fall" by David Ruis, "Lion of Judah" by Robin Mark, "Mission's Flame" by Matt Redman, and "Salvation" by Charlie Hall.

Finally, we're excited to say that all of our publishing partners have granted downloadable licenses for songs already in the new Baptist Hymnal. So songs like "All Is Well," "Awesome God," "We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise" and "We Will Glorify" are now live for the first time and completely mappable!

We are continuing to strive to make LifeWayWorship.com the best place to go for your worship resources. Let us know how we're doing.

Several new enhancements have just been added to LifeWayWorship.com. These features include new Quick Tips area of the Help Section and the ability to search for songs by key. For WorshipMap Pro subscribers, you can now print the attachments from your Song Database and the Reminder function will only contact those team members who have not yet responded to your request. Let us know what you think.

THANK YOU for the overwhelming response to Worship: Reverence v. Relevance featuring Ed Stetzer and Mike Harland! Over 1300 of you pre-registered for the event, and we're aware that some of you had problems viewing the live stream.

Because we know some of you may have had trouble, we decided to archive the event and let you know that the entire broadcast is available for on-demand streaming here. Feel free to share it with your staff, friends and congregations!

Click these links for more information about Ed Stetzer, LifeWay Research, and LifeWay Worship. You can also follow us on Twitter: @edstetzer , @mikeharlandlw , and @lifewayworship. Finally, click here for more information about online and in-person LifeWay events.

Attention church leaders and church members. Do you ever find yourself struggling with how worship is "done" in your church? Organ or guitars? Praise team or choir? Traditional or contemporary? Bulletins or Projectors? If so, be sure and tune into our FREE online event happening TODAY at 2:00 pm (central time), Worship: Reverence vs. Relevance. Register before it starts to receive 5 FREE downloads from LifeWayWorship.com.

At my church, worship is led by volunteers who rotate from week to week. This past weekend, I had the privilege of co-leading with another volunteer. We had a funny mishap during communion, which I wrote about on my personal blog. The experience has led me to consider how oftentimes real lessons are learned from awkward, funny, or embarrassing moments in ministry. So, I thought that I would pose the question here: What ministry lessons have you learned through an embarrassing moment? Leave your comment below.

Several new enhancements to our website have been rolled out recently , including the ability to preview WorshipChart pdf files. WorshipCharts include instrumental parts as well as leadsheets. To preview a WorshipChart, simply add the song to your cart and click the Preview link next to the item you are interested in.

Other improvements have been made to the WorshipMap Pro application. For those of you that like written instructions in your hand, we've created instruction manuals that you can download. We're also trying to make it easier to set up and start using the application by giving you the ability to invite folks by copying email addresses from an existing spreadsheet.

As a reminder, WorshipMap Pro comes with a 30-day free trial period. So, if you haven't subscribed, check it out and let us know what you think.