Hey guys, i’m trying out a different theme. whaddya think? keeper or dumper? i think its nice and subtle. kinda hip but not pretentious. BUT the catch is that there seems to be an advertisement at the bottom of each post if you click on an individual post. is that intolerable? i’m not getting any royalties, thats for sure. its probably going to the theme designer.
vote. if the people cry out in disgust, then this servant will happily surrender this theme.
Sorry for the nearly 2 month hiatus. I had to graduate from seminary, then handle all the holiday ministry events, and then settle into 2012. I’ve missed blogging…actuallykindanotreally. I’ve heard of people being addicted to their blogs, but I haven’t done it nearly enough to feel anything of the sort. But a couple of house keeping things.
#1: November CD Giveaway winners! Mad props to: Kevin Lee, Parkpatrol, Esther Oh-Park, CiCi Chang, and Lesley Cheng. I thought more people would buy a Christian album and get a rockin’ mix from me…but i guess the readers of this blog are just in it for the TOTALLY free stuff. I’m gonna mix the cd and get it to you guys this weekend. Thanks for participating.
What have we been singing…click on the link to go straight to Spotify for a free play!! If you don’t have spotify…then hopefully you’ll get on it. I was originally gonna link everything to itunes…but i think this is even better.
Hello y’all! Its been a while and i’ve been trying to promote the music matching contest this november! We had an amazing time of worship this past weekend! Here’s the worship set:
// First Set: Jesus Draw me Close, Holy is the Lord (Tomlin), Glory (Hillsong), Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle), I Love You Lord
// Responsive Set: Your Grace is Sufficient, I Exalt Thee
Here’s a link to the new song that we sang this past week by Jeremy Riddle. I guess Vineyard is makin’ a comeback!
Hello faithful worship blog readers! I’ve got a new contest for the month. The goal of these contests is not to promote music piracy, but to promote the purchasing, enjoying, and spreading of great worship music! So i’m gonna do a little “scholarship matching” action this month and make you a deal.
*If you buy a worship CD this month, keyword: buy, then i’ll make you a custom worship CD of your choice. you can pick an artist, genre, ministry, of your choice!
Here’s a cool link on some CD’s you might be interested in! Worship leader magazine made a list of the best albums of the year (in their humble opinion!)
http://worshipleadermedia.com/top-15-albums-5-indie-releases/
Limit 12 winners. also, you’ve got to buy it first. no IOU’s just to save your spot in the winner’s circle. i want proof of purchase….haha.
If you’ve been worshipping with us at GNC for a while, you should notice that we do a lot of instrumentals. By this, I mean that often, after a chorus or two, we rip off a couple bars of music without lyrics before resuming our singing again. Some people love em’, some people judge em’, and a lot of people don’t know what to do with em’. lemme try and convince you to be part of group #1.
first, people tend to judge instrumentals because they are interpreted as showy and all about the “music”. During these times, some of our instruments, especially electric guitar and keyboard play some solos and melodies that when done well, are awesome…and when done poorly…are just that.
However, I don’t play instrumentals just to give our talented players a chance to show off or shred. if that’s the case…then we definitely shouldn’t be incorporating them into worship. Rather, I believe that instrumentals can enhance our worship experience by allowing us to reflect, express, and enjoy worship that much more. Let me unpack these ideas.
Reflect: Worship songs are loaded. Loaded with rich theology, powerful words, prayers, and deep expressions that describe the greatness of God, his work, and our responses to Him. A song like “in Christ alone” is a great example of this. Following a Hymnal structure, it has 4 verses and no chorus. it has over 200 words! The song takes us on a journey from availing ourselves to Christ to boasting in His finished work and His glorious return. Thats a lot to take in just a couple of minutes! So, by inserting an instrumental after the second and fourth verses, it allows our worshippers a chance to just soak it in and reflect upon everything that we’re singing together in worship. Instrumentals can give us the chance to simply say “YES Lord!” and stand in awe of our God.
Express: Paul baloche once said that he wants to lead people to pray their songs and sing their prayers in worship. that’s a nice little phrase, and i think that as cool as it is to have everyone singing the same words together during worship, there’s a personal and subjective aspect of worship that sometimes needs an avenue for its own expression. We are all coming from our own places and experiencing the Gospel in deeply personal ways. An instrumental gives you a chance to speak and sing your own song to God.
We don’t do this much at GNC, but i remember growing up, there were a lot of people who loved to “ad lib” their own songs to the Lord. Pastor Ronnie is all about this…haha. I’d be sitting next to some people in worship and they’d just start going off with their own melodies and lyrics…I totally judged them and thought…what the heck are you doing? that’s straight nasty! But you know, i don’t think its such a terrible thing. An instrumental gives you a chance to pray or sing your own response to the Lord. Something that is sparked by the content of the song and the Spirit, and comes straight from you. I bet God really loves that.
One song that is great for this is the song “how great is our God”. After the chorus and bridge, many bands love just breaking off a rich instrumental and when the Spirit is moving, people just explode into prayer and personal expression of how Great God is to them. We can cry out in praise, thanksgiving, joy, and amazement…and instrumentals give you a chance to do this.
Enjoy: Lastly, I love instrumentals because it allows us to sit back and just soak it in. During these times, I don’t have to sing or follow the words on a screen. I can just allow sacred music wash over me and free me to enjoy the gift of worship. Also, God has blessed His church with musicians who are using their gifts for worship. Great melodies, rhythms, and songs are God’s idea and its a rich blessing to be able to enjoy freely from time to time.
What NOT to do during instrumentals. Don’t: check your phones, look around waiting for the singing to resume, be enamored or annoyed with the band, or tune out. There’s a purpose to them and something going on that can enhance your worship experience! We’ll have a couple good ones ready for you this sunday…hope you stay dialed in during that time! Hope to see and hear you this sunday!
We had a new song. I love it and I hope our church falls in love with it as an expression of worship to God. here’s what we sang last week:
// First set: Here for You (Tomlin), You Love Never Fails (Jesus Culture), Till I See You (Hillsong), The Love of God (Hymn)
// Response: God of the City (Tomlin)
Here’s a link to the song, Here for You. its a nice little story about the song and an acoustic session with Matt Redman and Matt Maher. I guess they were the original writers of the song. they also teach you how to play it!
Hello everyone. Here’s our worship set from this past Sunday!
// First Set: Glory (Hillsong), You Are (Todd Fields), I Stand in Awe (Altrogge), You are my King (Vineyard)
// Response: Lord Most High (Don Harris)
We went a little old school this Sunday again. I hope people don’t mind…i’m sure our 30 and 40 somethings enjoy it. I don’t think i’ve led “You are my king” in at least 4 years at GNC. Its pretty funny to think of songs being laid out to pasture for such a long period of time. I guess sometimes we just forget about them and they get buried deep in our song databases. The pre chorus on this song is great:
kneeling before you know, all of my life, I gladly give to you placing my hopes and dreams, in your hands, I give my life to you
Hmm…are there any songs that we used to sing at GNC that you would like to see “resurrected?”
Sorry guys, I’ve been busy and didn’t update our last two worship sets. Here we go:
10.2.11
Better is One Day (Redman), Everything (Tomlin), Glory (Hillsong), I Stand Amazed (Nockels), Glory Revealed
9.25.11
Famous One (Tomlin), Knocking on the Door of Heaven (Redman), I adore You (Hillsong), Be Thou My Vision, Great is the Lord
We’re always down to play the songs that the people love to offer our Lord…so if you have any requests, we’d love to hear them! God Bless and see you this weekend!
Q: Man Mike, the band seemed so insync this past Sunday how was that? A: In-ear Monitors, a Metronome, and the Grace of God.
So if you’ve noticed that some people on the praise band have ear phones on, and wondered what’s going on with that…its because we’ve been using something called in-ear monitors (for the past year). This means that we’ve got a band mix of our instruments going directly into our ear phones as a reference point. Singers can hear themselves better, instrumentalists can isolate their own instruments, and we can do something cool like route special sounds that only go into our ear phones! Our rear sound tech can even talk to us during the worship set secretly…(i did this once and scared the bejeezus out of alex!)
So this past sunday, to help with our tempo (praise bands are always struggling with playing in time…) we routed a metronome signal into our head phones. This is called a “click track” and though it can be a little distracting to have a ping, click, click, click…going into your ears throughout each song, it really did wonders to keep our band together in tempo. We used it on “famous one” and “knocking on the door of heaven” and I was really happy to see that we started and ended each song at the same tempo. Admittedly, its difficult and unnatural at first, but with practice…at least our tempo can be perfect! I would recommend it to everyone! There are still people on the praise team that don’t like it…but i’ll force my will upon them!!
message me if you want to know what gear we use and any other questions about in ear monitors. i’m not expert but i’d love to help!
Not too much to say about last sunday’s set. but here’s the set list and at the very end…there will be another opportunity to win a CD!!!
// First set: Jesus Lord of Heaven (Wickham), Filled with Your Glory (Starfield), Forever Reign (Hillsong), When I look into Your Holiness*
*this song was a spontaneous song that I transitioned into at the end of Forever Reign. I love singing new songs such as forever reign, and if you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you’ll notice that we sang that last week too…simply put, I try to repeat new songs 2x in a row to try and reinforce the song learning process. but I just felt that after all the noise and everything…that we needed to sing something intimate, familiar, and corporate. And honestly, I thought it worked out nicely. the band pulled out, since they didn’t have the chords, and it was sweet to sing with just a guitar and a host of voices. sorry i missed a handful of chords…i figured them out by the end of the song…hahaha!
// Offering and Response Songs: For a Thousand Tongues to Sing, You are Still Holy (Springer: Rita not Jerry)
So here’s the contest. I’ve been singing a handful of OLDIES lately, either spontaneously or planned in worship. Songs like: You are still holy, when I look into your holiness, faithful father, etc. Post your favorite OLDIE praise song with a personal anecdote about the song, and the first 7 people who post will get a worship oldies CD. Here’s the one rule: all songs must be pre Passion 98 and Hillsong United.
The funny thing is that this contest pretty much disqualifies my college freshmen because many of them were born in 1994!!!
I look forward to your nostalgia. the oldies CD will bring back some sweet memories. Sorry GNC members only cause otherwise, i’m probably never gonna get you the CD.
