Deconstruction and Music

Like many of us who have been followers of Christ for a while, it makes me sad to see so many deconstructions stories, especially from people who produced such good music when we were in our formative years of Christ-followers. Isn’t it interesting that many deconstruction stories surrounded men and women in worship ministry? Is…

Minor keys in Heaven

As a worship leader, I also fancy myself a musician, a bit. It is so hard to say that when music is such a beautiful thing. To put myself in that place seems so wrong. The only thing I pride myself on is, being able to use the art to a degree, to borrow it….

Unhostile Takeover

There are some people who have a bit of a problem with the idea of Christmas. Why? Because, yes, some of the traditions do have some pagan origins. Some of the symbolism comes from a pagan festival with a pagan god. Some have taken this to mean that we are deceived and our Christian holiday…

The problem with slogans

By nature slogans are reductive. They are succinct so that they are memorable. If they are memorable perhaps we will internalize them and bring them to the surface when needed. This is the same with logos, we see them and with enough prior education, immediately know what they communicate. The golden archers without speaking a…

Worship, as positive as a YouTube comment

You will probably notice that this title is a bit of a misnomer. A lot of the time comment sections are just bad, and especially on YouTube. There, it is up to self-editing for the most part because of a lack of moderators, and since this is the case, you will see what is truly…

Feinting with Damnable Praise

As a worship leader for many years, I tend to bang around this question from time to time. As I have stood and as I led I have seen what is going on. Some are engaging, but some are not. Their faces tell of their boredom, their faces tell of their disinterest. Their faces are telling, that…

Peace like a river

Music captured me very young. It speaks and the emotions it can generate are very real. It can share hope, it conjures love, it can bring joy, it can even anger, it can speak to all walks of life and not just speak but emote it in us. When peace like a river attendeth’ my…

Songs that Teach

With my new job as a worship leader and after thinking about the last blog I thought that perhaps I would expound on the whole good writing and bad writing thing. We had a discussion about the lyrics and quite frankly this is great practice to do from time to time. I had another experience similar…

Am I pleasing to God?

I had a discussion, during a worship practice, over some song lyrics, which is always a good thing to do. The question of our state of being pleasing before the Lord came up. Now the preface was, where does the Bible say “I am pleased with you” You know, chapter and verse? Well, it doesn’t…

Yes, Brother, I Do Lift

Since we are moving and I have been busy I will post a bit of shorter one this week. This is something I wrote a while back but I was thinking about it again because of us moving across the country and as I have been busy all week packing and lifting all our belongings…