Worship Set Lists-Whaddya think?

If you are a worship leader and you read this blog, I want to know your thoughts on something.

There are different schools of thought on worship for local churches. Simply from a song selection standpoint, here are the models I know of:

1-The worship leader has total freedom to pick whatever songs he feels led to do.

2-The pastor picks all the songs, and the worship leader simply does them.

3-The pastor and the worship leader sit together each week and choose the songs.

Which one is the model you do right now, and what do you think about it? For example, our church is a #1, within reason.

Whaddya think?

New Album, Old Friend

Please don't be scared of the picture. :)

Every once in a while, I get the honor to write or co-write a song for someone's record. A few years back a few of my songs appeared on this guy's first album, and this week, my friend Chad Lister released his second album on iTunes, and one of my songs made it on the CD. Check out his record and support a young indie artist/worship leader from Raleigh.

-andrew

Summer 2008

Hey friends,

So a lot has been going on in my life. Good stuff too! I got engaged on June 7, I’m turning 30 in a couple weeks, and getting married 2 weeks after that. I moved out of my townhouse-found a renter for my place, which is amazing. Chrissy and I went to West Virginia for a week to spend time with my family, especially my grandparents who might not be able to make it to our wedding.

Last week I snuck away for 5 days with Pastor Clay and Joey to West Palm Beach-we took a songwriting retreat, and in 5 days we wrote 10 songs together for the next album for the church, which is pretty exciting! The majority of my songwriting has been for artists away from Calvary, so to write worship songs for my church is a great blessing to me. It’s hard to describe the emotions in my spirit when I see and hear our church singing a song that God birthed in my heart, but I know it’s not because of me-it’s something that only He can do. If you only knew some of the terrible junk that I’ve tried to make into a song, you’d understand! :)

I’ve tried to stay up on the writing, but the last month or so has been tough. For the readers out there, I read an incredible book recommended to me by the esteemed New Testament scholar Ben Witherington called “Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes” by Kenneth Bailey. I liked it so much that I’m using it as one of the textbooks for the class I’m teaching this fall at Ocean’s Edge School of Worship .

The school starts orientation next Saturday, and the first semester I’m teaching Biblical Foundations of Worship, which is a narrative overview of the story of scripture. We walk through the Bible chronologically, studying the historical and cultural context and how worship plays a major role throughout. Second semester after Christmas I teach Culture and Worship, which takes a specific approach to music, audience and context. I use “Whatever Happened to Worship” by A.W. Tozer in that class for discussion.

We also launched our worship website at church and I’ve done a few guitar instructional videos as a resource to people who want to develop that part of their gifting. I’m not sure how many are posted, but I recorded 3 this summer which should appear via Youtube and Ocean’s Edge Music soon.

And in the middle of all that mess, I did a kitchen remodel with the help of my parents, Chrissy’s uncle and David Dalholt. New cabinets, counters, sink, (kinda new) appliances, new tile floor…and then I moved out. :( That place looks good!

It’s been a crazy few months, but some great stuff has been happening. And I usually don’t post this stuff in a blog, but I feel bad-I haven’t posted in a couple months. I’m gonna try to post a couple more before I shut down my Myspace and move over to Blogger completely. Please please please keep Chrissy and I in your prayers over the next few weeks. It probably won’t get any less crazy until a month after the wedding, so we need strength and patience!

Also, please remember to lift up my grandpa if you can. He started chemo this week for his cancer-please pray for strength and healing for him. If you ever get to meet my grandparents, they would easily make the list of your favorite people in the world. They are so awesome! Also, please pray that my grandma would be encouraged and that she would have strength to help him during this time. I really appreciate all of you and the prayers that you have said for them already.

Andrew

What A Pastor Said About the New Style of Worship

Extract from an American Paper objecting to new trends in church music.

“There are several reasons for opposing it. One, it’s too new. Two, it’s often worldly, even blasphemous. The new Christian music is not as pleasant as the more established style. Because there are so many new songs, you can’t learn them all. It puts too much emphasis on instrumental music rather than godly lyrics. This new music creates disturbances making people act indecently and disorderly. The preceding generation got along without it. It’s a money making scam and some of these new music upstarts are lewd and loose.”

Who said this? A pastor attacking Isaac Watts, writer of ‘When I survey,’ in 1723!

Kudos to Tim Hughes' Blog for this quote......