Amy Wood (art fart)
Amy is part of the ‘Art fart’ team at church. They design our powerpoint slides and videos as well as cover art for our daily reading notes and flyers. They make stuff look good and they help get rid of any bad design distractions that people may have as they come to church for the first time.
Amy has her own website with photos of work she has done on it.
You should check it out. She does really simplistic stuff thats effective. She uses lots of different mediums. Her husband Grant has designed the site and he’s currently working on one for church. He’s a humble guy with great gifts and he is a good friend to me.
Sweet Musical Action
My friend Simon has written and is starring in a musical that is on during the Salvo’s mission week. The musical is designed to ask big questions of people who may not have asked them before. Good opportunity for arty friends. It’s called 3:16. I’ts about a train crash. Showing in Redfern. I’m going. Here’s more details…
Sibelius
How good! Yesterday someone sent me a message offering me an old version of Sibelius 3. Awesome. They offered 4 and 5 too but couldn’t give me the seal of legality for those. Project Philippi is on it’s way!
Project Philippi update
Spent a bit of time on the weekend tightening up roles for Project Philippi. First job is to get all the charts and lead sheets done. Our church doesn’t own Sibelius so we need to source it or something like it from somewhere. Because we write songs all the time it may not be a bad idea to buy it.
The current song list is…
Count the Mercies
Glory to the Lamb
Crown him with many crowns
????? another one???????
If you are from our church or you have visited and liked one of the songs we wrote, let us know which one you’d like us to record.
"Great singing everyone."
We have all seen it happen. For many of us it is just second nature so we don’t even bat an eyelid. We have come together and sung a song that clearly expresses the joy we have in our hearts to God. The song reminds us of our sin and depravity and we are moved. It also reminds us of the hope we have in God’s grace and this lifts our hearts. The final verse is belted out in thanksgiving and joy and as the final chord is played the leader holds up the microphone and says…
“great singing everyone.”
No prayer of thanksgiving. No final reminder of the awesome stuff we have been singing about. Not even a moment or two of silence so that we can chew over what we sung and felt. Rather it is a banal, cheery, well done to all.
Good on you for singing. You are good at it. Now sit down.
I don’t know where this has come from – whether it is a reaction to emotionalism or whether the song leader is not trusted to say anything. Perhaps the song leader wasn’t really singing to God but rather just listening to hear if you were.
I think that this comment does more damage than silence. It teaches people that their singing is all about them and putting on a good sing. It ignores God and it ignores the real affections that singing can produce in people’s hearts. It rewards people as if it is a job well done rather than recognizing the spirits work in teaching people God’s word and showing fruit through joy and affection.
Please just take a moment or two before you say anything and don’t be so keen to save the music from being about God and delighting in him.
Worship.com and Riley Hapuka
I have been published a couple of times on an American site lately called Worship.com.
I recently posted something about the state of Evangelical music in Australia.
What I love most about putting up these posts is that my brother Tim who is trying to support me posts comments under different aliases to make me look popular. I wonder if anyone has worked out that my commenters all have the same email address?
Redemption Songs and Judgement Songs
I can already tell that this week will be a week of listening and reviewing. I’m doing an i-pod review on Sunday night at church so I’m churning through lots of music. I listened to lots of MarsHill music last night. My all time favorite song that they sing there is called ‘Destructor’. I blogged about it a while ago but I thought it may be apt to stick in what I wrote way back then…
Here are the words:”From the first time you flooded the earth; to the last time you burned up the curse; to the way that you hated your son when you hung all the sins of the world. Holy, Holy, Holy… heavens disappear with a roar, hosts of God will come to destroy, send his declaration of war, God will have his glory one way or another.”
The second verse is all about Jesus and that he is glorious. The lyrics are different to most contemporary songs being written. We don’t often sing about Judgement although we do sing about God’s holiness. I wonder if our hesitation comes from the way that we have been taught about evangelism. Growing up in church and youth group I always believed that the prime reason for telling others about Jesus is because we should not them to go to hell. The urgency we have for evangelism is the urgency you would have to prevent a friend from making a bad mistake. You don’t want them to get hurt. The focus is on the person. You don’t want them to go to hell. A sensible person wouldn’t want that on anyone. Therefore we shouldn’t sing songs about God’s judgement because that is the big bad thing that we are trying to get everyone away from. There are two big problems with this view. The first is that as a sinful human, I don’t care enough about others. I am self-centred and unless someone is very close to me, I don’t feel the need to save them from God’s wrath. The second is that this isn’t what the Bible holds as the primary goal of evangelism. The bible teaches that all things are being brought under the headship of Jesus (Eph1:10) and we as christians are part of this new world order (Eph1:11-12) and so when a new believer puts their trust in Jesus and is sealed with the Holy Spirit they are giving glory to Jesus (Eph1:13-14). We should be so captivated by all of God’s glory that we can’t help but tell others about him, to the praise of his glory. This is why David can cry out for God to come in Judgement on the wicked (Psalm 10:12-15). He cares about God’s glory being upheld more than anything else. This is why we can praise God for his holiness and the way that it is seen in his judgement upon the earth, because his holiness and it’s display in the final judgement is glorious.So songs like “Destructor” are helpful to give me a wake up call. Remember what matters most is God’s glory, and he will have it one way or another.
MARS HILL ALBUMS ONLINE
WOO HOO!
Check this out and download. Good music. Good times. These albums aregreat for rocking out to in your car or sitting and reflecting.
Go to music in the drop down menu and then click worship albums. The Red Letter album rocks. Lots of posting today…
Church Context – do I have one?
My previous post about EMU music and Hillsong started a bit of a discussion about church context. I thought it might be good to put a few of my thoughts up about what a church context is, particularly in regards to music, and how to go about trying to respond to it.
1. Geographical
Most churches meet in a geographical location. Perhaps the church in second life is the only exception, although second life still works for this argument. Some meet in a hundred year old stone building with an in-built organ, others meet in a school hall, still others meet in a multi-purpose auditorium with their own sound gear and matching lights. All of these factors will impact what sort of music will be best in your context. It is easy to say we all want to sound like the next big church that meets in the megaplex down the road, but that will never happen in an old stone building. Deal with it and learn to play to your strengths. Having a big band may not work in your geographical context but having a tght intimate sound may be spot on.
2. Cultural
All places have a culture. Some cultural contexts may be similar but there are always nuances. Different ages in congregation create culture too. What is the dominant culture at each of your church’s services? What does the leadership intend to be the dominant culture? These questions will influence who chooses your songs and what styles they are played in.
3. Textual
Whichever book of the Bible your chuch is looking at currently, different themes will be more prominent. If you are looking at Revelation you will be singing lots about Christ’s victory. You will sing songs about the Lamb of God and his sacrifice. You will sing about the hope we have. If you are looking at Philippians you may sing songs of Joy. If you are looking at Habbakuk you will sing of God’s faithfulness and so on. Too often we just sing what is on the song list and what gets a good response. We need to think more intentionally (particularly after the sermon) about what is sung.
Hope this helps with choosing songs. Maybe you should write up a contextual profile of your church and think about what sorts of music you sould be playing to meet the needs of that context.
Amy is part of the ‘Art fart’ team at church. They design our powerpoint slides and videos as well as cover art for our daily reading notes and flyers. They make stuff look good and they help get rid of any bad design distractions that people may have as they come to church for the first time.
Spent a bit of time on the weekend tightening up roles for Project Philippi. First job is to get all the charts and lead sheets done. Our church doesn’t own Sibelius so we need to source it or something like it from somewhere. Because we write songs all the time it may not be a bad idea to buy it.
