For instance:
How Great Is Our God with How Great Thou Art

Have you used anything in your church that "just works" that you can share? Post it in the comments below, on Twitter with the hashtag #hymnandsong, or on our Facebook page.

From Twitter:
@RobTWillJr - "Great Is Your Faithfulness" with "Great Is Thy Faithfulness"
@AnthonyCroft - "Here I Am To Worship" with "I Surrender All."
@DennisCCook - "Mighty to Save" with "I Surrender All"
@FSBCWorship - "Stronger" and "It Is Well with My Soul" / "Revelation Song" and "Holy, Holy, Holy"
@jason_carson - "All Creatures of Our God and King" with "Let Everything that Has Breath"
@nathanphifer - "How He Loves" with "Oh, How He Loves You and Me"
@BobTRoberts - "A Mighty Fortress (Nockels)" with "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" or... "A Mighty Fortress (Nockels)" with "Holy, Holy, Holy," keeping the same tempo and rhythm pattern.
@PewPotato - "The Power of the Cross (Oh, to See the Dawn)" with "The Wonderful Cross"

From Facebook:
Linda: "Our God" (Tomlin-Redman) with How Great is Our God and How Great Thou Art.
Rodney: ‎"My Jesus I Love Thee" with "I Love You Lord"
Colby: "Holy, Holy, Holy" with "I See the Lord"
Josh: The creole hymn "Loue" and "Nothing but the Blood"
Kemuel: "In Christ Alone" with "The Solid Rock"
Dennis: "How He Loves" with "Oh How He Loves You and Me"
Leo: "Shout to the Lord" with "To God Be the Glory"
Robert: "Sing to the King" with "O Worship the King"
Alan: "Open the Eyes of My Heart" with "Open Our Eyes, Lord"
Jeremy: "I Know Whom I Have Believed" with "My Redeemer Lives" between verses 1 and 2

Every week, when we plan for worship, we have to take into account what we want to share in our service. You might follow the Christian year, the pastor's preaching plan, or search each week for exactly the plan that will help your congregation respond to God this Sunday.

This year, there is a Sunday with new significance; September 11th is the tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself as you make your plans.

How much do we let it influence our service?

Probably the biggest driver to the answer to that question is rooted in the people who are in your congregation. How were they touched by the attacks? Do you have military connections, or even church members whose families were affected by the lives lost?

Look at how your church responded to September 11th ten years ago. If you can locate the plan or a recording for September 16th, 2001, you can see what was said and sung immediately after the incident. If you're new, or don't have records back that far, talk to long-time church members and see what they remember.

Once you've got that picture, decide what is important for you to recognize based on the people in your church today. You may want to use some of the same songs or scripture, or go a totally different direction.

What kind of theme should the service take?

Again, the members of your congregation will largely influence this. Here are some options to consider:

• Thanksgiving and Celebration - focus on God's provision and protection. Celebrate how He has blessed our families, churches and nation in these past ten years. (Isaiah 43:2)
• Remembrance and Hope - make the message of the service one that lifts up God's creation of human life, challenging the congregation to share in the redemption story by sharing the hope that we have in salvation through Jesus Christ (Isaiah 55:6-11)
• Declarative Praise - exalt the name of the Lord, proclaiming that He rules over all things and all people, that even in the face of tragedy, we will rejoice. (I Thessalonians 5:18)

Should we do something patriotic?

There's no problem with including patriotic material in your plan for Sunday if it's something that will connect with the members of your congregation. Remember that the primary purpose of our worship is to respond to God's revelation, so be sure that the core of your worship plan is rooted in scripture.

Resist the urge to do something out-of-character for your church this Sunday just to impress people. If you normally have a praise band and worship team, have a praise band and worship team. However, you may want to engage people differently, using different media or combinations of people to create a special worship moment. If you do pre-recorded videos, consider interviewing some of your members about their experiences since 2001, and how God is working through their lives. Think about how members of your church are gifted, how they were personally affected by the events, and what the intersection of those two could create to help point people to God.

What should we sing?

This Sunday is probably a good day to focus on songs that your congregation already knows - songs that they can sing and not be distracted. You may find that this Sunday draws in irregular attenders and visitors, and you want your congregation to be engaged in worship so that they can see it modeled well.

Depending on the theme of your service, you can search for topics at LifeWayWorship.com. Here are some songs of thankfulness, songs of deliverance and songs of exaltation. If you click on the "I" button for any of these songs, you can see the themes we've attached to them in the "tags" section.

As we get closer to September 11, we'll be posting some service orders for the Sunday here at LifeWayWorship.com. If you'd like to submit one, paste it in on the feedback form on the homepage, message it to @lifewayworship, comment on our post at facebook.com/lifewayworshipdotcom or email it to worship@lifeway.com.

Thom and Jess Rainer's book on the Millenial generation is a must-read for any pastor or lay leader who has any connection to the generation born between 1980 and 2000. You can get it for FREE today on your amazon.com Kindle device or in the iBookstore for your iPad. Limited time offer! Download today!

Sure to interest even the secularists who study this group, The Millennials is based on 1200 interviews with its namesakes that aim to better understand them personally, professionally, and spiritually. Chapters report intriguing how-and-why findings on family matters (they are closer-knit than previous generations), their desire for diversity (consider the wave of mixed race and ethnic adoptions), Millennials and the new workplace, their attitude toward money, the media, the environment, and perhaps most tellingly, religion. The authors close with a thoughtful response to how the church can engage and minister to what is now in fact the largest generation in America's history.

If you haven't seen Second Baptist Houston's video Dance Your Shoes off, take a look! Inspired by last year's Easter celebration video from Budapest, it's been featured at worship.com, at CNN's iReport site, on Facebook, and on countless blog posts.

The song in the video is "Rise Up," written by Caedmon's Call keyboardist and Second Baptist Church member Josh Moore. We're excited to announce that very soon, you'll be able to get charts, tracks and more for "rise up" right here at LifeWayWorship.com! Stay tuned!

Bring the worship songs of the 2011 CentriKid camps home to your church with the new CentriKid Worship Charts series! Chosen specially for CentriKid camps this summer, these songs are made for first through sixth graders to lift up the name of the Lord in worship.

You'll find well-known worship songs from writers you know with lead sheets for singers and players and QuickCharts for your guitarist or bass player (no page turns!), ready for your kids' worship team to play.

Today's promo code is: ENCOUNTERGOD

Every weekday in February, we'll be featuring one of your favorite 20 Easter songs at LifeWayWorship.com, and giving you a coupon good for one free download. If you're interested in a song we feature, you can use the code to download the demo, track or chart and start using it in worship!

Christ Is Risen

One of the newer Easter songs on our site, Christ Is Risen was based on a 3rd century sermon that was centered on the idea that God used death to conquer death. In the video above, Matt shares how the song is perfect for any Sunday, helping us to proclaim Christ's victory.

Use today's promo code ENCOUNTERGOD to download Christ Is Risen today! (coupon good for one free download, up to a $1.99 value, expires 2/8/2011.)

Jeffrey Miranda over at NeoLogic Sound in Los Angeles, CA has a question... how do you protect your sound investments? Specfically... your sound system investments?

Many churches have invested multiple thousands of dollars in audiovisual equipment, and want to be good stewards of what they've bought. Some parts of your system are tiny, like in-ear monitors, and some are huge like speaker clusters, but all of them are tools that we've been entrusted with to connect people with the Word of God.

Share your thoughts and practical ideas for safeguarding your system on his blog post.

As a pastor, you're probably focused on using scripture in your sermon, right? Have you ever focused on using scripture in worship?

If a working definition of worship is our response to God's revelation, then how is God revealed? One central way that we know God chooses to reveal himself to us is through His Word. In it, He defines his own existence, sets his own terms, and rules over his own creation. The words of scripture heal, encourage, correct, inspire, tell us the story of Jesus, and give us words to pray.

When you're planning worship this week, take time to think about unique ways that you can incorporate scripture into your service. For each title at LifeWayWorship.com, you can click on the "i" link in your search results and see related scriptures. Or, to an extent, you can go the other direction. Try searching for "Psalm 150" and you'll see what I mean.

Worship pastor Michael Smith from ClearView Baptist Church has a great post over on his blog that you can use as a jumping off point in your planning process. Post your questions in the comments and we'll answer them in upcoming posts!

Pastor's Worship Questions is a series of blog posts designed to help the small church pastor, non-musician or anyone else who's been asked to lead worship in their congregation. If you've got a question for us, post it in the comments, and we'll answer it in an upcoming blog post!

It happens a lot: your church has been functioning with few or no musicians, and suddenly... you're blessed with a guitar player. What do you need to equip him or her so that they can accompany your worship from Sunday to Sunday?

First questions

• Do you have an acoustic guitar, or an electric guitar? (or both?) - There are a couple of reasons to ask this question. First, you may have a preference for which one he would use to begin with, especially if it's the first appearance of a guitar in your church. The second reason to ask is so that you can inform the person who's running sound in your church (which, of course, might be you...) so that they can make the correct connection between the guitar and the sound system. While an "electric guitar" may conjure up thoughts of musical destruction, worship or otherwise, there are tasteful, unique ways to use it to play songs for worship.
• Have you ever played in a band, or just alone? - Usually, when someone's played in a band, they understand the difference between "performing" and "accompanying." A guitar player needs to be sensitive when playing in worship to the purpose of the playing: most of the time, it's an accompaniment to worship. From time to time, there may be opportunities to play the melody line or a unique improvised line ("solo,") but the majority of the time, it's to support and accompany.
• What kind of music do you like to use? - Depending on the guitarist, this answer could range from "whatever you have" to "none at all." The latter usually isn't preferred, especially when they're playing with other musicians. At LifeWayWorship.com, there are three main charts that we have for guitarists:
  1. The QuickChart:
     This is the minimum amount of information that we can put on a page and have a playable piece of music. It consists of all of the lyrics to the hymn or worship song, and chord symbols that tell the guitarist which chord to play. The advantage to the guitarist is there is a lot of room to make notes on the page, and usually, a whole song fits onto two pages, so there are no page turns... something kind of difficult when you're playing with both hands. In addition on hymns and songs where harmonies move quickly, the QuickChart leaves out "passing" chords so that the guitar player isn't having to change on every beat of the song. They were created by guitarists, for guitarists.
  2. The Lead Sheet:
     This is the next level of musical information added to the chart. It includes lyrics, chord symbols and the written out melody on a treble clef. This isn't Guitar Tablature, which tells the guitar player which string to play, it's just the melody line. Especially if your guitar player wants to sing along, or you want him to play the melody on a verse or chorus, this might be the chart to get.
  3. The SuperChart:
     A SuperChart is something that we came up with at LifeWayWorship.com. It includes everything you get on a Lead Sheet, plus additional harmony parts for vocalists, plus instructions for band members (including the guitarist) that helps everyone by having them be able to see the exact same page when they're leading worship with a song. It also has the advantage of coming in 12 keys, so that if your guitar player wants to play with a capo for a different sound, you can just print the key that he needs the song in. If a player's advanced enough to be using a capo, they should be able to tell you which key they need.

Pastor's Worship Questions is a series of blog posts designed to help the small church pastor, non-musician or anyone else who's been asked to lead worship in their congregation. If you've got a question for us, post it in the comments, and we'll answer it in an upcoming blog post!

When you're looking through all of the dozens of audio and print files you can download at LifeWayWorship.com, you may run across some terminology that is foreign. One of the terms we use sometimes on the site is "with BGVs." According to acronymfinder.com, a BGV could be a "below ground vault," a "blood glucose value," or even "Bundesverband für Gesundheitsinformation und Verbraucherschutz,"the German Federal Association of Health and Consumer Information.

At LifeWayWorship.com, BGV stands for "background vocals." When we create recordings, we can create several different "mixes." A "mix" is exactly what it sounds like... it's the way we mix up the different instrumentalists and vocalists to create the finished recording. When we "mix down" a recording, the engineer can change the volume levels, equalization, compression, and any other number of variables for each instrumentalist and, depending on how it was recorded, each vocalist, so that the final "mix" fits a need.

What we've done with the "BGV" track is given you everything... the whole band and the singers... except for the lead singer or melody line. This way, the track is ready to use as a solo accompaniment, or you can have your singers sing along with the background vocalists to help round out the sound.

Pastor's Worship Questions is a series of blog posts designed to help the small church pastor, non-musician or anyone else who's been asked to lead worship in their congregation. If you've got a question for us, post it in the comments, and we'll answer it in an upcoming blog post!

Especially if you're not musically inclined, this can be a rough thing to plan. We've all been in worship services where there just seemed to be interruptions to the worship time, and for some people, it can be a real distraction from the reason why they're there: to offer their sacrifice to God. Here are three ways that you can reduce or even eliminate the disturbances.

Choose songs in the same keys

This is one of the simplest ways to move from one song to the next. By choosing songs in the same key, you up the chances for a smooth transition. For instance, if you plan A New Hallelujah in your service, you can click on the "i" icon in your search results at LifeWayWorship.com and see that we offer the song in either E or F. You could follow that with a song like Freedom that comes in Eb and F. In this case, you'd choose to sing both in the key of F for a smooth transition from one to the next.

Choose songs that move the story forward

Say you're planning a worship set on evangelism. By pairing two songs like Send Me, Oh Lord, Send Me and I'll Tell the World that I'm a Christian you create a worship experience where the congregation member is singing their testimony through the songs. You can also experiment with a cause-and-result pairing or a "so what" kind of pairing like singing At the Cross with Stand and Shout.

Break, but do it on purpose

However you choose to get from song to song, don't stress over it. Allow the Lord to work through the transition so that your congregation will see Him instead of the mechanics of the service.

Pastor's Worship Questions is a series of blog posts designed to help the small church pastor, non-musician or anyone else who's been asked to lead worship in their congregation. If you've got a question for us, post it in the comments, and we'll answer it in an upcoming blog post!

Your first question actually might be, "what's a key, anyway?"

Very broadly speaking, a key is a letter assigned to a song that instructs musicians which notes to play. If you're playing in the key of "C," there are eight notes that fit within that key, no matter what instrument you're playing. The key of "A" has a different set of eight notes, some of which overlap with "C," but some of which don't.

If you're looking at printed music, the key is shown by the "key signature" at the beginning of the staff. For more music geekery about key signatures, visit wikipedia, otherwise read on.

When a song is written or recorded, it has a specific key that it was written or recorded in. However, depending on who the singer or writer is, that key may not be friendly for your church. It might be too high (most often the case) or too low to be comfortable for everyone to sing together. There are other reasons people don't sing, but this is a biggie - "it's just too high."

So how do you know? Try singing along with the recording of the song yourself. If you have to strain, you might have a song that's too high. The truth is, it's very subjective... what's high for someone may be comfortable for someone else depending on their voice.

At LifeWayWorship.com, we've tried to take the guesswork out of this process for you. For our LifeWay Worship Songs and Hymns, we've placed them in two keys, both

Pastor's Worship Questions is a series of blog posts designed to help the small church pastor, non-musician or anyone else who's been asked to lead worship in their congregation. If you've got a question for us, post it in the comments, and we'll answer it in an upcoming blog post!

If you're new to worship planning, some of the terminology that people use might seem foreign. Musicians sometimes talk about a "setlist," which is just the list of songs that they're going to play or sing. A "worship set" is more than a setlist.

One simple definition of a worship set could be a group of songs that work together for a common purpose within the service. A worship set might include breaks for scripture reading or prayer, but usually, it has some kind of musical accompaniment throughout. The common purpose might be several different things. All the songs might center on the same theme, helping the worshipper be focused on a certain topic. They might move in succession from a higher energy and faster speeds to slower, more gently music so that people can engage differently in worship. Or, you might have a worship set that begins with songs that are about God and moves to ones that are sung as a prayer to God.

If your church normally sings one song at a time, you might want to experiment just adding one more to create your first worship set. Try it and see if anyone notices!

Pastor's Worship Questions is a series of blog posts designed to help the small church pastor, non-musician or anyone else who's been asked to lead worship in their congregation. If you've got a question for us, post it in the comments, and we'll answer it in an upcoming blog post!

If you are having a mission emphasis at your church this December, this song is for you!

LifeWay Worship, in cooperation with the International Mission Board, is making available to you charts and tracks for the new mission song "Are We There Yet?" Rick Heil of SONICFLOOd was inspired to write this amazing song during trips to areas of the world where there are still unreached people for Christ. This song is our gift, Rick's the IMB's and LifeWay's, to help you inspire your congregation to connect, grow, serve and go to help spread the soul-saving message of the Gospel to make disciples of all nations.

This Thursday, Mike Harland and Ed Stetzer will return to discuss Transformational Worship in a Transformational Church in a special edition of The Choir Room. Hundreds have already pre-registered, have you?

Ed Stetzer talks about what to expect.
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Mike Harland shares what he'll be sharing.
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Pre-register today and get two free downloads at LifeWayWorship.com!

Watch this unrehearsed, extended edition of The Choir Room with Keith Getty and Eric Wyse talking about music that lets the Word of God "richly dwell" in your heart.

The Choir Room EXTRA: A Conversation with Keith Getty from LifeWay Worship on Vimeo.

Brenton Brown, songwriter and worship leader has an introspective post about the Catch-22 he faces:

We're people who promote our names and then go onto to say that Jesus' name is above every other name... hmmm.

Brenton Brown songs at LifeWayWorship.com.

Disclaimer: this blog entry is about the American Independence Day holiday. If you are reading this from one of our global neighbors... feel free to skip to the next entry!

According to WikiAnswers, July 4th has fallen on a Sunday in 1779, 1784, 1790, 1802, 1813, 1819, 1824, 1830, 1841, 1847, 1852, 1858, 1869, 1875, 1880, 1886, 1897, 1909, 1915, 1920, 1926, 1937, 1943, 1948, 1954, 1965, 1971, 1976, 1982, 1993, 1999 and 2004... and 2010! As worship planners, it presents us with some interesting challenges. Your church may be hauling out the red, white and blue bunting, you're busy googling "indoor fireworks," and you need the most patriotic program you can muster. Others will choose to leave the patriotic portion of the day to be outside of the worship service.

The good news is that no matter what you need, you'll find it at LifeWayWorship.com. Just search for the word "patriotic," and all of the songs, hymns and worship songs that we've tagged with the word will automagically appear! And, if you're looking for other themes or topics, head over to the home page, and type in whatever words you like. The site will search every theme and topic, along with every lyric of every verse of every song to help you mine through and find the perfect song for your worship moment!

David Manner gives an exhaustive explanation of why it's important to understand the principles behind why you worship the way you do at your church.

That leads me to the next question... how do you evaluate? Is it whenever you get around to it? Do you have a set time each week where "iron sharpens iron" in your church?

If you're in Orlando this week with the SBC Annual Meeting, come see us! We'll actually be in two different places in the LifeWay area. There's a LifeWay Worship area where we'll feature our whole product world... everything from anthems to Children's choir to events to the Worship Project, plus we'll be part of the LifeWay Digital Church booth, where you can see live demonstrations of LifeWayWorship.com all day. Look for the LifeWay Worship banners to find us.

The SBC Annual Meeting is a great time for us to connect with churches of every size and worship style to share how you can use LifeWayWorship.com in your ministry. Even if you're not "the music person," stop by either booth and we'll give you a code good for some free downloads at the site!

Oh my. Has it really come to this? Check out this spoof of a contemporary worship service from Whisper Productions and North Point Media..

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Questions: Is this funny? Does it sting?

Note to email subscribers: This entry is primarily a video, which does not automatically go to our email subscribers. To see the video, please visit LifeWayWorship.com/pleasestayontherock.