Twitter Feed 
Email Subscribe
Uniformity In Worship
June 1, 2009
by Tom Kraeuter
My dad’s father passed away when I was still a baby. Consequently I have only ever known one grandpa. My mom’s father, my grandfather, was a farmer. For most of my growing up years he lived four states away, so visits were usually once a year. Looking back on those visits, it seems to me that each member of my family (Mom and Dad and five kids) greeted Grandpa differently.
Charles Spurgeon Says …
December 23, 2008
“I can admire the solemn and stately language of worship that recognizes the greatness of God, but it will not warm my heart or express my soul until it has also blended therewith the joyful nearness of that perfect love that casts out fear and ventures to speak with our Father in heaven as a child speaks with its father on earth. My brother, no veil remains”.
(from “The Power of the Cross of Christ” by Charles Spurgeon)
My friends, this quote expresses the tension that we often find our contemporary worship services. There is an aspect of God’s greatness that requires the highest regard, respect, and solemn posture; yet, this stately King of the Universe has also called us his friend, and has embraced us as His very own.
I invite you to click the “comments” area below and express your thoughts about this quote and how this tension plays out in your churches.
The Work Of The People: Liturgy For Non-liturgical Churches
December 11, 2008
“Liturgy. That’s a High Church thing, right?”
“It was an Old School way of having a lot of ceremonial stuff in worship services.”
“No, I think it’s just like a Greek Orthodox thing. Or Catholic? Something the priest does?”
In recent years elements of contemporary evangelical Christianity have begun to study the purpose of liturgy in corporate worship — often for the first time. Many others still don’t know what it means or how it would be relevant in modern worship, but are pretty sure that they serve in a non-liturgical church.
In the truest sense though, any church that has an order of presentation and a way for the congregation to participate can be said to have a liturgy. For instance, Church A might conduct services like this:
Sara Groves’ “O Holy Night” Review
December 5, 2008
Sara Groves’ Latest Release:
“O Holy Night” – Released 10/28/2008
Available now on iTunes
I always love a good Sara Groves album, so I was excited to hear that she had a new Christmas album releasing called, “Oh Holy Night”. As I expected, the album was full of great songs that I will definitely be giving some play time this Holiday season. Only one out of twelve merits hitting “skip” on your player when it starts. Not a bad ratio.
What’s A Worship Confessional?
November 24, 2008
While in the process of assembling my second “Worship Confessional” a friend at church prompted me to put into my own words what a worship confessional is. To some people, the term doesn’t really describe the intent, so I hope that I can clear that up a bit.
Developing A Songwriting Community Through Your Church, Concluded (pt. 4)
November 11, 2008
Writers Mingling Before A Sojourn Songwriting Seminar
In the previous three articles we looked at reasons for establishing a songwriting community, ways to do that, and how to establish the community through regular workshops and fellowship. But if your goal is to produce new worship music for your church fellowship, then your songwriting group hasn’t arrived until it’s doing that. And it’s not going to do that in the most efficient manner until you provide clear direction and lay out a vision.
This can be as simple as saying “We need more songs about the cross” or “we need some good ‘Call to Worship’ songs and some songs of assurance.” Then you need to communicate how writers should submit songs. If you have a small church and only a couple writers, this might be an informal process. Large churches will need to come up with specific procedure, which might look something like this:
Team Communication Part Three; I Seriously Need To Clean My Lens
November 3, 2008
Communication – activity by one organism that changes or has the potential to change the behavior of other organisms.
This is one of the definitions of Communication and how it looks in the world of biology. We all are organisms. The church often works very hard at being an organization, when in reality, it is truly and organism.
ReVue: Hillsong London’s “Hail To The King”
October 28, 2008
Welcome to ReVue – Product Reviews from multiple people, each with their own take away, exclusively here at TheWorshipCommunity.Com. Each reviewer submits their insights independently which reveals the diversity in how we interpret the recordings. We hope you’ll add your own review in the comments section as well!
Hillsong London’s Latest Release:
“Hail To The King” – Released 10/28/2008
Available Now on iTunes
Highlights: Read more
Team Communication Part Two; Relationship on Purpose
October 20, 2008
Communication – the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information
I love that. Do you see that word “interchange”. That’s huge. Because there is so much responsibility in leadership, it is easy to lose focus that a leader has to be purposeful in relationship. It’s easy to forget that our work is about people, when process takes over.
Developing A Songwriting Community Through Your Church, Part Three
October 6, 2008
Now we’re diving into the middle of how to start a songwriting group, so if you haven’t read part one and part two of this series, I’d encourage you to begin there. I’m going to begin this article by addressing pastors, elders — whoever is in charge of “shepherding the flock” of your church. If this doesn’t describe you, then you still have a role to play in this article: show it to your pastor. You’ll need to give him an idea of the kind of sub-group you’d like to launch within his church’s music ministry, and you’ll need his counsel.
