Archive for the ‘ Values ’ Category
“Does God intend us to merely listen to music—or to sing ourselves?”
“I don’t sing very well, so isn’t it better for me to just listen to the music during worship?”
Well, whether you sing well or not, check out the latest Breakpoint commentary from Chuck Colson about this topic, and let’s lift up our voices together and sing praises to God Most High!
Here’s something I recently learned about Matt Redman’s song “Heart of Worship”. It’s a very moving and powerful song but the story behind it is even more amazing. You can read more about in an article here.
To summarize, the pastor of Matt Redman’s church decided the praise and worship time’s were losing their meaning and decided to remove the instruments and sounds system. They spent a period of time where the praise was purely voices, no band, no sound, just acapella. Though different and uncomfortable at first, it actually became a much more worshipful experience as the congregation no longer became distracted by the music, instruments, and sound but focused purely on the words.
This has been something I’ve always tried to do when I sing praise and one of the main things I preached to my band in Acts2fellowship Gold. What makes our worship times on Fridays and Sundays different from any other “rock” band out there are the words that we sing. Our words have meaning, they define who we are, who our God is and that should be our goal during times of praise. It’s not to sing nice rockin’ songs but the focus should be the words and letting that be tied to our desire to praise and worship God.
Dont’ get me wrong now, I’m not saying we lose our band because I love having praise! My prayer is that as a praise leader I’m able to help lead the congregation in a time of worship where the words we sing can connect with our hearts.
I’ll just end this post with some lyrics from the song…
When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come
Longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless your heart…
I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, Jesus
You can listen to the song here:
[audio http://music.berkmedia.org/mp3s/HeartOfWorship.mp3]
Ander Chen – Acts2fellowship Gold Worship Leader
One of our goals as the Worship Team at Gracepoint Fellowship Church is to use the arts to engage people’s hearts with God during our services. Through the arts, we can help people come to an emotional understanding of who God is, what he is like, who we are, what we were created for and how he wants us to live. The arts are a wonderful way to communicate truths about God, the Bible, life and the gospel in a way that touches people’s hearts in a way different from simply using words alone.
This video was one of the elements at the 2006 Easter service at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL. It’s a beautifully creative way to demonstrate God’s hand in creation and salvation…
I attended the Willow Creek Arts Conference for the first time in 2002 with Pastor Ed and Kelly Kang and other Gracepoint Fellowship Church arts people — Daniel Kim (Dis-Gracepoint), Peter Choi (Waypoint Community Church), and Paul Chen, among others), which played a big part in transforming our services to what we experience these days. They are the best that I’ve seen to engage people’s hearts using the arts.
People come to church with all sorts of barriers and hang-ups about God and about life, whether they’re Christ-followers or not. We sometimes bring that to a worship service with some shields in place, areas of our hearts that we want to guard, to “protect” us from being spoken to. The arts can communicate to us through ways that we did not think to have guarded. It helps us to lower our defenses, to open us up to hear what messages God has for us, to get real and personal with our Creator.