The Harp and the Bowl

If you missed my take on the latest United Pursuit project, “Found,” be sure to go back and check it out.

As I mentioned at the conclusion of that review, at my daughter’s encouragement I also got “Live at the Banks House” by Will Reagan and United Pursuit. I was equally blown away, but what struck me immediately was how this project was so distinct from Found in its sound. These guys will not be put in a musical box – one of the things I really love about them.

Whereas “Found” is full of lush pads and ethereal electric guitar arpeggios, Live at the Banks House is just raw and real. As you can see from this video clip, it is a sparse production with just a few guitars, an acoustic piano, a violin, some light percussion and a group of friends gathered to worship. Really worship.


YouTube Link

This project harkens back somewhat to the “Enter the Worship Circle” albums, the first of which came out in the late 90’s. While similar in concept, Banks House has an earthier feel and lacks the lavish and sometimes peculiar percussion mix of the Worship Circle projects (I recall one such sound being credited in the liner notes to “goat toes on cookie sheet”).

I love the genuineness of the worship that is captured on this album. And that is really the distinction here – it sounds as if the worship just happens to be incidentally captured rather than produced. Will Reagan is the worship leader for this intimate gathering of friends, which I suppose is why he gets separate billing on the album. But it really isn’t about Will or about the other band members or even the music. It is clearly about fostering the presence of God in the room and giving him the worship he is due, which is right in keeping with the band’s mission.

Band member Nathan Fray states their purpose clearly:

Our mission is to create a culture of worship and of hosting God’s presence, all centered around community living. It’s in this place of God’s life-giving presence that our songs are born and we pray will stir the heart of a generation to love Jesus and pursue Him with everything. This is our united pursuit.

I like it that the songs are unhurried - certainly more repetitive than what you’ll hear on major label worship projects (song length ranges from 5 to as long as 12 minutes, though some are across multiple tracks). Radio play is not the target here. Again, it’s a genuine worship environment, and this is the way this group experiences worship, including wandering off occasionally into spontaneous response. The way the worship of the other folks in the room is effectively captured and mixed in adds perfectly to the realistic feel.

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite track. “Help Me Find My Own Flame” (which actually spans tracks 4 and 5) strikes at the heart of the band’s mission. “I don’t want to ride on somebody else’s passion.” The chorus resounds “Help me find my own flame. Help me find my own fire. I want the real thing. I want your burning desire.” Despite the overused fire/desire rhyme scheme (which I have to admit penning in a song or two myself) the song is a cry for a life of genuine relationship and passion, out of which clearly flows the kind worship captured on this project.

I also love the message of the next track, “Nothing I Hold On To.” It’s a song of total surrender to God. “I lean not on my own understanding. My life is in the hands of the maker of heaven. I give it all to you God, trusting that you’ll make something beautiful out of me.” The track melds seamlessly into the next song, “Climb,” which furthers the statement of surrender, repeating the refrain “I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open.” Musically and dynamically the song takes an almost ten minute journey that “climbs” to a beautiful and powerful crescendo. And yet again the worship flows into “If I Give It All to You,” further extending the theme of surrender.

I could walk you through every track, but by now you get the notion that this is a wonderful and powerful worship project. It’s power is not in heavy guitar riffs, thumpy bass beats, or raucous tom fills. It’s power is in the presence of God that it fosters.

As I tweeted about “Found” I’ll simply say this: Get it. Now.

I was shown this video a few weeks ago and then came across it again on another worship blog.


YouTube link

Before you become offended, let me just say this was put out by a church.  In particular, Northpoint Church, a mega-church north of Atlanta (where I am from).  Is this a parody of their own hyper-produced Sunday mornings?  I don't really know. That's not really why I am sharing it. 

I think the video speaks to the lack of creativity and originality we can tend to fall into in planning our Sunday morning services.  How often do we try to put our church services into a neat little box?  I know I've been guilty of falling into familiar patterns when planning worship sets, despite my previous series on thoughtful song selection. 

As a worship leader, I long for the day when the power of the Holy Spirit is so tangibly present that we can't get through the worship set, a la 2 Chronicles 5:13-14, at the dedication of the temple:

Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.

I want to see spontaneous healing and radical repentance take place as we worship.  I want God to break us out of the little box we tend to put him in on Sunday mornings.  Can it happen?  I think so, if we let it.

Now, on the other end of the originality spectrum, also out of Northpoint Church, comes this:


YouTube link

So maybe they are able to break out of the box after all. But that isn't exactly what I meant.

How about you?  Which of these videos is closest to your own Sunday service in terms of it's conformance to a set, safe, predictable pattern?

Now that I'm back to worship blogging again, I spent some time checking out some other worship blogs yesterday.  As I find ones worth noting, I'll add them to my blog roll over there -->.

Today I'm adding The Worship Community.  They have a weekly feature that encourages leaders to share their Sunday set lets.  It's a great opportunity to see what's being sung out there.

Here's my set from this morning:

1.  Happy Day (Tim Hughes)
2. We Won't Be Quiet (David Crowder)
3. Deep Cries Out (William Matthews)
4. Your Love Never Fails (Jesus Culture)
5. Medley of choruses
1. Hallelujah (Hillsong United)
2. Praise the Name of Jesus
3. Beauty for Ashes (Anthony Skinner)
6. Holy Is Our King (Rita Springer)

To see more sets from this week click here. 

So, yeah, I’m back. Here’s why: We had snow here in Atlanta this week.

Did you make the connection? Let me explain.

Unprecedented snow and ice around here this week had me home from work four out of five days this week. In between dealing remotely with various work-related disasters, I decided it was time to spend the Itunes gift cards I received for Christmas. But on what?

I used to think of myself as slightly ahead of the curve when it came to new music, especially new worship music. I spent hours every week perusing the web, listening to new music, reading reviews, looking at webisodes and learning new songs.

Then I just got burned out on it all.

So much of what I was hearing sounded like regurgitation of countless songs that had come before. The worship music explosion, which I had heralded as an awesome trend ten years ago, suddenly seemed to become industrial. Copy the last "hot" project and put it out. Again and again. There was so little in the way of fresh sounds that I became discouraged.

I turned my attention wholeheartedly to marriage. Specifically to writing a book, a small group curriculum and a blog on marriage. That endeavor became pretty all-consuming for me. So I more or less left new worship music behind. Except for a few projects from my favorite artists, which truthfully I bought more out of support for the artists than for the music itself, I stopped buying music altogether.

So, back to my Itunes endeavor. Via Twitter, I saw a new project had been released by one of the few bands that I felt wasn’t falling into the status quo, United Pursuit. I also noticed that 100% of the sales (not profit) from “Found” was going to support Heidi Baker’s orphan ministry, Iris Ministries. Good cause to boot. I decided to give it a try and bought it on Itunes.

Wow!

Here’s a tiny teaser.



These guys have really expanded their soundscape with this project. I fell in love with it from the very first track. And it just kept getting better as I listened.

The band’s MySpace artist page explains, “United Pursuit defies today’s worship genre norms, always reaching for more.” Bingo. This project had exactly what I felt had been missing from so much of the new worship music in the past few years. It is a fresh sound, a different approach, yet it isn’t a new sound for the sake of the sound. It is totally worshipful and engaging.

Now if you are looking for a bunch of huge praise anthems to rock the house on Sunday morning this project will disappoint. Chris Tomlin this is NOT (nothing against Chris, mind you). Each track unwinds slowly, with tons of gorgeous pads punctuated by echo-laden electric guitar arpeggios. The lyrics are scant but so rich that every phrase grabs your heart. Then they leave lots of musical space for them to sink in. Very effective for a true worship experience.

A good example is the song “Call me,” one of my favorite tracks. (This is the song in the YouTube clip) In the first two minutes of the song, the only lyric is “Call me, call me out of where I been. Call me out of where I been,” sung twice. Then you are left to reflect on what that means. Not until two minutes in is another line added, ‘Take me, take me near to your heart. Take me near to your heart,” and then adds “Wake me to the river that flows, flows down from your throne. Flows down from your throne.” That’s it. Simple. Magnificent. Engaging. Worship.

So I tweeted my reaction to this project, "Get it now!"  Lisa, my daughter tweeted back, “You need to get their new live album too.” So I did.

Wow again.

Put that’s another post.

Lately I've been thinking about starting this blog back up again, but changing the format and content rather substantially.  The past year has been fairly all-consuming with my marriage blog (Journey to Surrender) but I feel it might be time to crack this thing back open again and give it a go. 

Maybe...

As the concluding way in which we'll examine our worship diet let's consider one final important topic.  It's what I call the "I" vs. "We" song, that is, whether the song is personal (I) or corporate (we) in its perspective. 

This is another area in which I think perhaps the pendulum has swung a bit too far toward the "I" song, which I think dilutes the sense of corporate gathering in worship.  When we gather for church on Sunday mornings (or whenever) we are more than just a bunch of individuals having a personal quiet time with the Lord.  We come together to celebrate together the greatness of our God.  Therefore it is important that we have at least some songs that are purposefully corporate, using words like "we," "us," and "our" instead of "me," "I," and "my." 

Again, as with song direction, the song category has an influence on my preference for personal or corporate perspective.   Songs of invitation and celebration lend themselves best to the corporate perspective.  Songs of majesty can work either way, and songs of intimacy more naturally tend toward the personal perspective. 

Do you agree that we've gone a little too "I" in our worship of late?  Do you agree that it is important to purposefully include corporate songs in our worship diet?

The third way in which we should consider our worhip diet is with respect to the direction (voice or person) of the songs.  This is sometime differentiated as horizontal vs. vertical songs.  That is, does the song talk about God (horizontal) or is it direct to God (vertical), as in having a conversation with God. 
This may seem a minor point to some, and so if this is just a pet peave of mine, feel free to disregard it.  But for me, there is a different dynamic to a song that speaks about God than a song that is directed to him.  For me this issue is inter-related with the general song category (part 2 of this series). 

1. Songs of Invitation (gathering songs) that are about God have a different effect than invitation songs sung to him.  A horizontal gathering song is helpful as a call to worship.  However, a song that invites God/Jesus/Holy Spirit into our gathering are naturally be sung directly to God - offered up as a kind of prayer.
2. For songs of Celebration I think either direction works, depending on where the song is in the worship set. It's just my preference, but celebration songs early in the set that are horizontal are effective in setting an atmosphere of corporate praise, especially if they are "we" songs instead of "I" - which we'll look at in the next and final post on this series.  Later in the set, once the focus has turned more vertical, it is possible to have songs of celebration directed to God instead of about him.
3. Majesty songs, as with invitation songs, result in two different effects depending on the direction.  Majesty songs sung about God create a sense of "otherness" within us as we sing.  Majesty songs sung to God give us a sense of connectedness to that "otherness," drawing us into his awesome presence, causing us to bow our hearts in reverence.
4. Almost always songs of Intimacy are vertical because that is the very nature of intimacy.  It should be a conversation and an experience not just a theological statement.

When I lead worship I pay attention to song direction when creating the set list.  I tend to move from the horizontal "about" songs early in the set and move more toward vertical "to" songs near the end of the set, though it's certainly not a hard and fast rule.  That's because worship is really about engagement, and if we never actually talk to God during worship, we end up with the sense that we've not really met with him.

As a final comment let me say that songs which change voice randomly inside the song, sometimes even from sentence to sentence, annoy me and can cause my heart to shift restlessly during worship. 

So what do you think?  Does it matter to you when you're worshiping whether a song is about or to God?  Do you even notice?

The second way I like to look at the worship diet is in regard to song focus.  Does the song principally talk about God and his nature and works, about me and my response to him (or about the world around us)?

To some extent I think the pendulum of our modern worship diet has swung a little too far toward focusing on us. This is perhaps in over-response to the nature of most pre-modern worship and hymns that were almost exclusively focused on God, with little mention of our response.  Don't get me wrong, some of the most powerful encounters I've had with the Lord have been when I was able to genuinely pour my heart out to God in response to the revelation of who he is. Our response in worship is critical to making connection with the Lord.

But as with song category, what's needed is balance.  If the songs in our worship diet are too much about me and do not adequately extol the virtues and wonders of our God, then worship becomes anemic and too dependent upon my emotional response.  There is just too little revelations and truth there to respond to. Alternatively, if we sing mostly about God without an adequate amount of response on our part (surrender, love, adoration, bowing humbly, etc.) then worship can devolve rather quickly into nothing more than singing songs, which isn't worship at all. 

As a songwriter I try to write songs that cover both focuses, sometimes even in the same song.  I once even set out to purposefully write an entire song that did not have a single use of the word I or me.  It is much harder than you'd imagine!

What do you think?  Has modern worship gone too far such that we now focus too much on us?

I’ve seen a few different models for the categorization of worship songs, from the simple “praise or worship” model, to elaborate topic-based systems, to the “outer courts, inner courts, holy of holies” model popularized by John Wimber.

I have settled on a basic four-category system that seems to be a reasonable compromise between simplicity and usefulness:

• Invocation (or Invitation) – these are songs that might also be referred to as “call to worship” songs or “songs of ascent.” These songs invite people to worship and/or invoke the presence of the Lord among His people. Examples: “Come Now is the Time,” “Holy Moment,” “Praise Awaits You,” and “Arise.”
• Celebration/Proclamation – these songs celebrate the goodness and faithfulness of God. They include often-jubilant songs of thanksgiving and high praise. Examples: “Forever,” “Happy Day,” and “The Lord Reigns.”
• Majesty – these songs extol the nature and virtues of our mighty and wondrous God, his power, his holiness, his vastness, and his altogether otherness. These songs are all about him. Examples: “King of Glory,” “Agnus Dei,” and “Holy is Our King,”
• Intimacy – these are songs of personal devotion and surrender in response to the deep and abiding love of God. They typically, though not necessarily, tend to be slower and more meditative in nature. Examples: “You Won’t Relent,” “How Deep the Father’s Love,” and “Amazing Love.”

Of course, any given song may touch on more than one of these aspects, and some songs may not fit neatly into one of these, but overall I think these categories are sufficient for the purposes of ensuring a balanced worship diet.

Now, consider what happens when our worship diet leans too heavily on one category to the neglect of the others:

• Invocation – too much of this kind of song is like continually issuing an invitation to meet someone but never actually meeting up.
• Proclamation – too much of this kind of song causes the worship to eventually feel over-hyped and plastic.
• Majesty – too much of this kind of song makes God seem distant, untouchable, even aloof.
• Intimacy – too much of this kind of song reduces God to being our “buddy” and can cause the worship to seem feeble.

I think it’s perfectly valid for there to be seasons in the life of a body where one category gets more emphasis than others. But overall, it’s important to have a well-rounded repertoire that includes a significant number of songs from all categories.

Do you agree with my categories? Do you have others that you think should be added? Is my balanced diet argument true? Chime in!

Don't be fooled by the title. This post isn't about some fad diet where you worship instead of eat. The term worship diet refers to the totality of the songs you sing as part of your worship experience. I use the phrase to make a case for the importance of a having a balanced worship diet. This is the first of a multi-part series on that all-important topic.

I recoil a bit against the common habit of simplifying worship into two catch-all categories: praise and worship. Well-meaning individuals often use this kind of shorthand to describe songs as either high-energy and exuberant (praise) or slow and intimate (worship). The problem with this overly simplified categorization is that worship is much more complex than this.

Perhaps I overdo it a bit in counter-reaction to this, but I think it is actually healthy, once in a while, to step back and look at our worship from several different perspectives. At my church I actually do this once in a while as I review our “core” song list. If it’s true about food, the old saying “You are what you eat,” then the true is same in worship, “You are what you sing.” At least it’s true in the context of worship songs anyway.

Over the course of the next few posts I’ll be opening up this topic in some detail. I’ll make my case for why it’s important to understand what you sing on whole as a church or group (and in your personal worship time). I’ll be looking to assess the worship diet from the following viewpoints:

• General Category – I use my own four category model
• Focus – Does the song focus on God or on our response to him?
• Voice – Is the song about God or to God?
• Singular or Corporate – Is it a “we” song or an “I” song?

Obviously there is interaction among these different areas of distinction, but for the sake of clarity and brevity I will consider them one at a time.

Stop by and check in regularly to stay up with the series. To make it easier, consider following this blog, or subscribe via your favorite RSS reader. And please be sure to join the discussion with your comments.