Tim's Request to Worship Leaders

Pretty hilarious stuff...bearing in mind that jest often contains kernels of truth:

Too Much Truth Sang in Jest

Thanks to my buddy Kent Ottot for pointing me to this:

Watts/Worship/Wow

You will be blessed if you invest six minutes to watch this...it's a sort of promo for a new album from Sojourn Music..."modernizing," if you will, hymns of Isaaac Watts...not only are the music samples good, but the commentary is outstanding:

Sojourn Music: "The Water And The Blood" album preview from Sojourn Community Church on Vimeo.

A Still-Timely Question

Keith Green died a bit over 28 years ago...not sure when he wrote the following, but surely still applies as a probing question for 2010:


"It seems to me that there are but few who really live with a passion for God, especially a passion just to be with Him. Today there is such a noise coming up before the throne of the Most High-the clamor of so-called praise, singing, and joyful shouting. But I wonder if the same people who love to sing and shout, loudly exclaiming the the praises of God, really have such an intense glory in their secret life with the Lord. When the meeting's over and there's no one there to listen except the only One who matters, do you still have that same passionate joy in your spirit, just to be alone with the Living God?"

Keith Green

Incredible - Why Sing So Many Cross-Centered Songs????

This is well-worth your time...if you've not read "The Cross-Centered Life" by C J Mahanney you have ripped yourself off...watch this as he answers the question, "Why Sing So Many Cross Centered Songs?"

Light the Fuel of Praise

“We gather as the church to proclaim the truth. We gather to declare—to ourselves, to each other, and to God—what we know to be eternal reality. There is one God, who is sovereign over the universe and every detail of our lives. We have rebelled against him. He sent his Son to die in our place for our sins. And through Jesus Christ we have forgiveness and peace with God.
There are many things we can proclaim during and after a time of corporate worship. God’s glory is unending, and his perfections are infinite. But the fuel of our praise will always be the gospel of Christ who has redeemed us and brought us to God.”
- Bob Kauflin, "Worship Matters"

Why Church?

“We gather as the church to proclaim the truth. We gather to declare—to ourselves, to each other, and to God—what we know to be eternal reality. There is one God, who is sovereign over the universe and every detail of our lives. We have rebelled against him. He sent his Son to die in our place for our sins. And through Jesus Christ we have forgiveness and peace with God.

There are many things we can proclaim during and after a time of corporate worship. God’s glory is unending, and his perfections are infinite. But the fuel of our praise will always be the gospel of Christ who has redeemed us and brought us to God.”

- Bob Kauflin

Wow. Worship. Wow.

Unless you are paranoid about hand-raising, this should be a tremendous blessing to your day:

We Will See Him from Pete Wilson on Vimeo.

The Boredom of Blending In

In the movie, "What A Girl Wants," teenage Daphne is trying to be someone she's not. At one point, her boyfriend asks, "Why are you trying so hard to fit in, when you were born to stand out?"

Blending in is not the forte of teens alone. Adults become part of the herd...even the "Christian" herd all too readily.

Live life for the Audience of One as a sacrificial service of worship to Him and Him alone...and don't shackle yourself with the shabby clothing of "normality."

"Worship" & "Evangelism" Defined

I really, really, really like the observations, books, and sermons by Mark Batterson. Here is his latest commentary off his blog:

"Can I share a couple of personal definitions? Worship is bragging about God to God. Evangelism is bragging about God to others. In other words, evangelism is a form of worship. We start bragging about who God is and what God has done as we worship Him. And we don't stop.

I know that a lot of Christians feel subconscious guilt about not sharing their faith enough. That really isn't the issue. It's a byproduct of a deeper issue and the issue is this: we don't love God and love others like we could or should. If you really love someone what you really want for them is a relationship with Christ. And the more you love them the more you want it."

Whine or Worship

Every moment, every trial, every testing gives followers of Christ a choice - whine or worship.

Peter Marshall reminds us,

"When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow
strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure."

Worship Junkies

An intriguing and, to some, irritating,quote from Skye Jethani's great book The Divine Commodity:

This philosophy of spiritual formation through the consumption of external experiences creates worship junkies -- Christians who leap from one mountaintop to another, one spiritual high to another, in search of a glory that does not fade. In response, churches and Christians conferences are driven to create ever-grander experiences and more elaborate productions to satisfy expectations. Ironically, these worship spectacles, according to Sally Morgenthaler, are failing to produce real worshipers. She writes:

We are not producing worshippers in this country. Rather we are producing a generation of spectators, religious onlookers lacking, in many cases, any memory of a true encounter with Gd, deprived of both the tangible sense of God's presence and the supernatural relationship their inmost spirits crave.


Ministries that focus on manufacturing spiritual experiences, despite their laudable intentions, may actually be retarding spiritual growth by making people experience-dependent.

How LOUD is Too Loud?

Some will hate, some will love, this article regarding the decibel levels often achieved in "worship": CLICK HERE

How Big is Your God?

"When God is not greatly praised, it's only because we don't think He's that great of a God. When our worship is small, it's because our concept of God is small. When we offer God little-bitty sacrifices, it's because we've somehow reduced Him in our hearts to a little-bitty God. Our vision has become clouded, our hearts distracted." - Louie Giglio

Whatever You Are Going Thru - Jesus is Stronger!

Wow! That's basically all I can say about this song, presented by Hillsong, and referred to in a post by James MacDonald:

Stuff I've Seen in 30 Years of Ministry

Three decades ago I was in Bible school. At the same time I began working with a large youth ministry. Thus for thirty years (what is such a young guy doing in such an old body?) I have been vocationally involved in ministry. God has opened doors for school assembly programs, prison and jail work, speaking to scores of civic agencies and service clubs, hundreds of churches, and a wide variety of other speaking venues.


As I reflect back over the marvelous things God has done, I wonder if I’ve really learned anything in those 10,950+ days. The following are observations made and/or confirmed. Since there is nothing new under the sun, I’m certain these things have been recorded before, but I offer them simply as “lessons learned” in the hope they may serve as encouragement, or provide an “uh-huh” moment:


*People are much, much more important than programs


*“New” rarely is synonymous with “better”


*Worship is a matter of the heart, not posture or posturing


*When someone says, “I don’t want to gossip; I just want you to pray about something,” insert something in your ears


*Most committees take minutes and waste hours


*When youth workers say the teens are bored with something, it usually means the youth workers are bored, not the kids


*If we don’t encourage people to think, we are not discipling, we’re merely creating more religious groupies


*Musical styles are not worth discussing, much less fighting over (lyrics may be)


*It is possible to have a Christian meeting without food (or an invitation)


*Non-Christians expect more of Christians than Christians do


*A walk talks, and a talk talks, but a walk talks louder than a talk talks


*Ministry happens


*It is easy to spend so much time “earning the right to be heard” that you never say anything


*Acts 1:15 records that Peter preached to “a gathering of about one hundred and twenty,” Acts 19:7 says Paul laid his hands on “about twelve men,” thus evidencing the Holy Spirit’s lack of concern with numbers - Whereas most evangelicals would say "a gathering of 123" and "eleven men"


*Most evangelicals will sign petitions to get the Ten Commandments back in school though most of them could not list the Ten


*Neither teens nor adults can spiritually live on periodic “big” events


*Only God can convince someone that their perceived “conviction” is, in fact, a personal preference


*The often-voiced arguments against rock music are nothing but the parroting of closet racism


*If you verbalize a strong view of anything you will be labeled narrow-minded and opinionated


*If it hurts you to confront, you are probably okay; if you eagerly anticipate it, forget it


*God’s Word is always relative


*Youth speakers are less than a dime a dozen; speaker that will hang out with the kids between pulpit times are a rarer breed


*Other than people, time is the only irreplaceable commodity


*Never preach above your experience


*Don’t let what you don’t know mess up what you do know


*It’s dangerous to use personal pronouns while referring to the ministry you serve


*A real danger for the disciple of Christ is making the Bible, witnessing, worship, or ministry an idol


*Aggressive listening is demanded from the speaker as well as from the audience


*Never tell counselee that they are saved. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit


*Never tell a teen that he or she is “the church of the future.” They are the church of today


*It is high time for the Body of Christ to quit messing with the scaffolding and spend more time strengthening the foundation.


Well, probably nothing drastic in the above, but they are some observations make not in a textbook but in the reality of life. Very often people ask me what my favorite verse is, and my primary response is Deuteronomy 29:29. Look it up, as it sums up rather handily my view on life.