This blog is about crossing cultures, Christian ministry, music, Biblical studies, fatherhood, leading worship, books, movies, and stuff like that. It's generally NOT about electronic gadgets, politics, philosophy, sports, etc. Not that I necessarily have a problem with those things.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Why you should check out Ross King's worship music

Ross King is a worship pastor/recording artist/sonwriter in the Bryan/College Station area. He has been releasing singer-sonwriter type records for years, but in the past few years he has come out with a couple of outstanding records of music written for use in corporate worship. Specifically, I'm talking about To Make God Famous, vol. 1, To Make God Famous, vol. 2 and Soulspeak. On each of these three records you'll find several songs that will be immediately useful for worship leaders in corporate worship settings for at least the following reasons:
  • Ross writes from a profound understanding of the centrality of the gospel. In other words, the gospel is explicitly the theme of many of the songs, and we can never have too much of that. Indeed, there is an ironic and tragic shortage of such songs in contemporary corporate worship music.
  • The songs remind us that sin is basically idolatry--that is, the worship of other things in place of the God to Whom all worship is due.
  • Ross's writing demonstrates an excellent practical understanding of the doctrines of grace. I say "practical" because it's not necessarily expressed in the theological language we're used to using when we discuss Calvinism--but it's there nonetheless. This actually leads me to my next point...
  • Ross is good at taking familiar truths and stating them in new ways to make us see them from new angles. He actually wrote an article pertaining to this on his website a few years back that is brilliant and sure to offend (in a good way). The way he has his site set up I can't figure out how to link to it directly, but I strongly recommend that anyone interested in writing songs for corporate worship give it a read. If more worship songwriters would take him seriously the Church in the English-speaking world would benefit tremendously. Go to Ross's website, click on "Writings", and then find the article called "On worship songwriting".
  • The music is solid, but not necessarily anything groundbreaking (which Ross readily admits in the liner notes), but I say this works to your advantage, because that way you'll feel less tied to the album arrangement and more motivated to come up with something creative with your own group.
  • My friend, supporter, and object of my man-crush, Nathan Kawaller, plays bass on Soulspeak.
If you're only gonna get one of these, get To Make God famous, vol. 2--almost every track is great. If you can only get a few songs (the link above takes you to the eb+flo website, where you buy individual tracks), get 2, 4, 6, 9, or 10 from that same album.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

5 minute trip through the past



In 1999, the first year Melissa and I were married, we lived in an apartment on Stella Street in Denton, which is in an area that everyone used to call "Cement City". That was the apartment we brought Anna home to when she was born. I was driving a delivery truck for Suburban Propane and serving with the music team of DBC's college ministry, College Life. As part of that, I had a Bible study that met on Sunday afternoons--a bunch of guys who were music students at UNT. They were all much better musicians than me, and, what made the study so intimidating to me, they were all smarter than me. I remember getting into some really interesting discussions about the justice of hell, predestination, etc. We were going through a study written by Ben Laugelli called Structure (which, sadly, no longer exists).

I'm extremely proud of all the guys that were in that study. One is now in Austin working for a super-cool web design company. One is in medical school. One is, along with his wife, emulating the heart of our Heavenly Father through foster parenting and adoption. One is doing graduate work at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (and apparently continuing to jam while doing so). One is in a new Austin band that has a new CD out. Two of the dudes have been laboring faithfully to lead their local churches in the worship of the living God (and train others to do the same), one in Vancouver and one in Denton (who is also fixing to go to Argentina as a missionary). Four of the guys are in a band called Midlake, whose appearance on NPR started me on this trip down memory lane.

(Manny Rios, I didn't forget about you. I just don't know where you are. If you read this, give me a shout, bro.)

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Interesting things in my world 1



Carlos let me borrow a travel coffee mug last week when we left from his house to go check out a place for the baptism service. Later I noticed that it was no ordinary travel coffee mug--this one has an RCA jack. Obviously it's mono, and I don't know whether it's RCA in or out, but one thing's for sure: this is the most rockin' cup of coffee I've had in a long time.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Corporate worship forms

Bob Kauflin is on vacation, but his blog doesn't cease to be brilliant while he's away. Yesterday he posted this quote from Harold Best's book, Music Through the Eyes of Faith:
The Scriptures include or allude to just about every approach to worship there is: organized, spontaneous, public, private, simple, complex, ornate, or plain. Yet there is no comment anywhere about any one way being preferred over another. Rather, it is the spiritual condition of the worshiper that determines whether or not God is at work. This fact alone countermands the tendency to assume that if we could just find the correct or fashionably relevant system, all will be well and God will come down. This doesn’t imply that we have no responsibility to make intelligent and sensitive choices or to be creative. But whatever these choices eventually are, they are incapable all by themselves of establishing the superiority of one system over another.

I have alot to say on this matter, but I'll save that for a future post. For now, I'll just ask this question: If this is true (and I think it is), then why in most churches in America do we spend 95% of the time talking about forms and stylistic preferences instead of "the spiritual condition of the worshiper"?

Monday, September 04, 2006

Related article...

...in the latest issue of Lark News.