mikeymo's place: September 2009

9/29/09

The Joint Review: Introducing Brenton Brown

The other day I mentioned this album. I've been listening to it for a while, and it's been in pretty heavy rotation on my mp3 player. (When I can stop listening to Fee's incredible new album)

Who's Brenton Brown? You may have heard of him, but you've probably heard his songs. Who wrote "Everlasting God?" Lincoln Brewster? NO! Chris Tomlin? NO! Thank you for playing!

Here's some of what The Joint says:

Joel

Bottom line doesn’t get more simple than this If you love Brenton you need this CD because there are two songs on it you don’t have. If you didn’t realize Brenton wrote all those songs you love you need this CD as well because his versions, to me, are brilliant!

Mike

Brown’s take on his own classics serves a reminder of why churches should be doing these songs. It’s great to see such a talented artist ”take back” his own songs.

Conner

Whether it’s the uncanny nature of how the new single Adoration makes you singalong on the first listen or the rebooted classics that’s one of my favorite of all time: All Who Are Thirsty, there really is some substance in this little EP.

Alastair

A greatest hits album from Brenton Brown. If you haven’t used these songs before in church this would be a great album to buy.

So check out the full Joint Review, and check out Introducing Brenton Brown.

Book Review - The Jesus Book

One cool thing about being a children's pastor is I get to check out all the cool stuff for kids, and call it "work" or "ministry." (C'mon, who doesn't like Hillsong Kids videos?)

The Jesus Book (Thomas Nelson)m written by Steven Elkins, tries to break down some of the basic teachings of Christ in a manner that is approachable and understandable for young children. It largely hits the mark in this regard; the book is a collection of many topics, all broken down into several sections: Who Jesus Is, What Jesus Did, What Jesus Taught, When It Happened, Where It Happened, Why It Happened, and How It Happened.

The stories all are tied into specific Scripture verses, and are beautifully illustrated. There is also a companion CD of songs that relate the the specific lessons. The story lengths are just right for small children, say 4-7. This book would be a great resource for a personal child's library, or even a Sunday school library. It is appropriate for smaller children who can spend ten minutes listening to a story, or slightly older children unfamilar with bible teachings.

Check out The Jesus Book at Amazon.

9/28/09

The Joint Review: Todd Agnew - Need

I wasn't really sure about this one. I had never heard Todd Agnew before, so I had no idea what to expect. Sounds like a perfect job for THE JOINT!

Joel

This is simple. If you like Todd then you will like this CD. If you don’t like Todd then you still might like this CD. I really think Todd is coming into a great fit style wise and maybe should start doing some revival stadium meetings with Carman. That last line isn’t a joke. I really think that rock style fits his voice best. I think if Todd keeps doing this style he may build a brand new audience.

Mike

I guess Todd Agnew fans will like this. There are some catchy songs here. I think if Todd had a better choir and the vocals were slighty back farther in the mix this would be a great album. I bet some of the songs are great live.

Alastair

There is two or three tracks on here that for me stand out above the rest. By the very nature of these songs and the stories they tell, some will mean more to people than others.

What is the really skinny on Todd's new album? How do these songs fit into a church setting? Check out The Joint Review and find out!

9/27/09

Sunday Setlist - September 27

Another weekly recap from Gospel Light Community Church, part of Fred McKinnon's setlist carnival.

This week's setlist:

Opening:

Trading My Sorrows (Evans)(G)

Main Set:

Freedom (Bushard)(B)
All Because of Jesus (Fee)(C)
We Cry Out (Johnson)(C#)
Healer (Guglielmucci)(B)
You Are My World (Sampson)(G)

Offerings:

Eres Todopoderoso (Salinas)(D)
Let It Rise (Davis)(E)

Yes, that's Holland Davis' "Let it Rise" at the end there. We haven't played that song in easily two years. We found that the congregation, especially the long-time members, appricate it when we toss on the of the "oldies-but-goodies" in.

I think "Healer" came out really good today, I don't know why. I still had my delay pedal on this fast multi-echo from doing the Fee song, and I just switched to a clean patch and added a little swell off my multi, and it made for a really nice sound. We generally switch it from the Hillsong version, and make the piano the lead instrument and the guitar the accent. I spend the verses just playing that haunting, repeating B note, and with all the delays it sounded really moody and cool.

I've been crediting "Freedom" to Eddie James (who performs it), but found out this week that Matt Bushard wrote it. (It's not a CCLI song.) So I wanted to give props out.

I promised last week to include some video from last week's amazing Kidz Revival weekend. Here are three short clips, the first from Saturday's kids event, and the next two from our main service on Sunday. So many people came up to me this week and asked if we were doing it again next year. Of course, the answer was YES!

9/26/09

The Joint Review: Jared Anderson - Live From My Church

Time for another Joint Review. This time, we tackle Jared Anderson's latest solo project, Live From My Church. What does The Joint say?

Joel:

I like this CD and think there are a few gems on it. Don’t go into this CD thinking it’s another desperation band Cut because Jared brings his own personal style to this one and it comes off great.

Mike:

A true “worship” album, one that will connect personally with listeners, and corporately with congregations.

Alastair

This is a very listenable album with every song great for your church.

Check out all the details and the full review on The Joint.

9/25/09

It's Friday, It Must Be Random

I have nothing to really fill up a whole blog post, but I have a lot of little thoughts floating around my head, so here goes. *Begin stream of consciousness.*

Taking Back the Songs

I've noticed that a couple of songwriter/performers are putting out albums this year. I'm talking about artists who might be better known as songwriters, or more accurately, who have had songs become very popular when done by other artists. Case in point: I just started listening to Benton Brown's new album Introducing Benton Brown. The title is apt: many more people know songs like "Everlasting God" (no, neither Chris Tomlin nor Lincoln Brewster wrote it) and "All Who Are Thirsty" (ditto Kutless) than know Benton. That's gonna change. Likewise, Tim Hughes (author of popular worship songs like "Beautiful One," "Consuming Fire" and "Here I Am to Worship") is releasing a new live CD/DVD in October, featuring some of his new music, and some of his classics. It's great to hear songwriters get their props, and perform the songs others have made famous.

Doin' a New Thing

A comment on The Joint yesterday gave me some pause to think. Brad commented on the DC*B Church Music review, and said "The last generation got stuck on the Organ, are we going to get stuck on the acoustic guitar?" Thats' a really good point. Church Music pushes the edge of the envelope out a bit, with the band's creative use of loops and effects. I recently had my first experience leading worship with a loop of my own creation at a conference, and I can tell you it was pretty cool. Look for churches to keep pushing back the "usual" and adding new ways to worship.

The Joint

...is really taking off. Thanks to everyone who's given it a look. We're getting contacted by labels regularly now, so expect lots of new reviews. Besides the two albums mentioned above, look for stuff by Todd Agnew, Christy Nockels, Matt Redman and more. If you haven't seen it, check it out.

Get thee behind me!

We ran into another little obstacle with the album last night. No big disasters like in the past, but we couldn't do our studio session last night: our engineer lost his keys, apparently. Although it's frustrating, I love when these little attacks come. It means that this record is going to accomplish something.

9/24/09

The Joint Review: Daniel Kirkley - As Tommorrow Comes

The Joint Review has released another review, this time Daniel Kirkley's EP As Tommorrow Comes. Here's some of what we had to say...

Joel: There are very few songs on this and while there is little variation we more than get to see the amazing vocal ability of Daniel. We also get to see real emotion in these songs. I have to say for me this CD was refreshing from all of the “wall of sound” stuff out there. The “Lead me to the cross” cover is 100% worth the admission.

Conner: Here’s the deal: I’ve had 1 year of actual “lessons” on an instrument and it was the piano. I then ditched it to learn the guitar. I’ve had 6 years of choir and formal singing training and ditched it to be in a band in college. By all accounts I should HATE this CD b/c it’s summarizes most of what I care little about That being said, my goodness it’s beautiful! No doubt about it!

Mike: Great voice, good piano, not a lot of variation. Perfect for quiet, contemplative moments.

Al: A nice gentle EP that will direct your thoughts and worship to God. Daniel’s voice is great. Some variation in the arrangements might have kept the songs fresher for longer. If you like Fernando Ortega, you’ll like what Daniel Kirkley has to offer.

Read the whole review here, including recommendations for use in churches!

9/22/09

The Joint Review : David Crowder* Band - Church Music

Today, the new, long-awaited album from the David Crowder* Band, Church Music, hits the streets. I can tell you, this is not your big brother's DC*B album.

The Joint brings you another multiple viewpoint review of this fantastic record. Check it out here.

9/21/09

Sunday Setlist - September 20 (Kidz Revival)

Imagine if you will, you walk into your church on a Sunday morning, the same way you do just about every Sunday of every year. So far so good, right?

But right away, you notice something different. For one, you are greeted by a crudely lettered sign just inside the door that says "Caushun: Kidz worshippin' here. Grown-ups welkome!"

What?

Then you look at the sanctuary. The word hardly applies. Instead of your normal, conservate altar/stage, you see a multicolored wall complete with lights, gizmos, doodads and a huge screen.

What's going on?

What's going on is Gospel Light's first annual Kidz Revival Weekend, that's what. After a whole day of kid fun and worship on Saturday, we turned the whole service over to the kids on Sunday, to be led by the Studio-Z children's team from Zion Bible College.

Imagine further that your normally somwhat conservative congregation was now doing "The Robot" during "One Way." Or that they were pretending to fly around the room during "Jesus You're My Superhero." (Yes, adults, too!!) Or that the senior pastor was scrambling to build a tower out of cardboard boxes to complete a scripture verse in time. (Only to discover someone had hidden on of the boxes on him!)

We had puppets and chemistry demonstrations from whacky scientists and skits and lots of dancing and rolling on the floor. We had youth pretending to be pigs and kids having fun for a change... Awesome stuff.

I'll get up some video this week, because this has got to be seen to be believed, but this Sunday, everyone saw Jesus "as a little child."

So, how was your boring, old service? Check out others at Fred McKinnon's Blog

9/18/09

The Joint Review is LIVE!!

What is The Joint? It's four guys, all involved in worship leadership at their respective churches, all musicians and all music fans.

So what?

One challenge of church musicians, especially part-time worship leaders, is finding new, quality music. The Joint was created just for that need.

All of us have different church settings, and all of us have (sometimes very) different tastes in music. So when we review an album, you get multiple viewpoints. But there's more!

Besides the listening experience, we also look at how these songs can translate to the church. In other words, can your worship team or small group use these songs? We identify the ones that could work, and we even demonstrate some of them done stripped down on acoustic guitar.

Joel, Alastair, Connor and myself hope you'll stop by The Joint, bookmark it, and come back often.

In the Studio - Take 17

Makin' sweet, sweet, music, that's what last night's session was about.

We decided to switch things up a bit and give our rhythm section a break. We had plenty of other things to do, and we wanted to get Justin going as well. So this week's session was all about piano and guitar.

"Say So" is fast becoming the best song on the record. But we needed to get some keys on there, so that was the first task. We wanted to be sure that we duplicated the keyboard sound of the first recording, but with all the settings lost in our lightning mishap, we had to listen to the keyboard patched to find the right one. However, the keyboard plugin, Xpand2, has literally hundreds of different voices. So it took awhile to teak the tone properly. (There will still be more tweaking, of course. We recorded keys as MIDI, so we can always change it around.)

Our recording engineer calls Justin the "One Take Kid," and for good reason. After a couple of test runs, he was ready to go. Maybe it wasn't one take, exactly, but the song was done in short order. The results are awesome, to say the least. The song is developing a great dynamic, from an uplifting gospel feel in the verses to some serious rock in the choruses. I can wait to get some vocals on it!

Next I wanted to record some new guitar parts for "Tell the World and "One Way." And Justin needed to add keys to those. We wanted just a straight piano sound on those, so the plugin of choice was Mini-Grand. "Tell the World" getting an additional electric guitar track and piano, and "One Way" was getting a replacement guitar track and piano.

When that was all done, we moved onto "Mighty to Save," which is the most complicated song on the record. It needed piano, a synth pad, and two different guitar tracks. Using both Mini-Grand and Xpand2, Justin quickly added his parts.

We heard some timing issues between the acoustic and the drums on the playback. We thought about a couple of approaches: retracking the acoustic or the drums was one. We did run a new acoustic track, but the original one sounded better. There was only one or two spots, but they jumped out when listening to just drums and acoustic. However, they're not anywhere where the acoustic is really "feeatured" in the song. We're going to hold onto the tracks for now, and see if we can fix it in mixdown. (I did a scratch mix when I got home; I think it's going to be fine)

Next was electric, two different parts: a light, Strat-style rhythm track with some chorus and wah in it, and then a crunchier, overdriven track for the later choruses.

All in all, it was a lot of work to get done in one session, but we made it, and got everything we wanted to accomplished. We even finished five minutes early, instead of the ten minutes late we've been!

Stay tuned for more info, and check here as well.

9/16/09

Song of the Week - Agnus Dei - Michael W. Smith

The last couple of days there has been a pretty good discussion going on over at The Worship Community Forums regarding this song, so it seemed a perfect time to add it to the Song of the Week list.

This now-classic worship anthem originally showed up on Smitty's 1990 album Go West, Young Man. (Sorry, but that album cover is Wham!alicious) But it went somewhat unnoticed at that point; it didn't show up on either of Smiths' 1993 anthologies, The Wonder Years or The First Decade.

Where it did show up was on Third Day's 2000 live album Offerings: A Worship Album. Infused with Third Day's gritty Southern-rock style, it got new life breathed into it. It reappeared in 2001 on Smitty's Worship, and in 2005 on Donnie McClurkin's Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs.

While the title, a Latin translation of the phrase "Lamb of God," is reminiscent of a classic liturgical invocation which has been in use since the late seventh century. This has no connection to the song, however, which is based on Revelation 5 (worthy is the Lamb) and 19 (for the Lord God Almighty reigns.) The lyrics are so simple:

Alleluia. Alleluia, for the Lord God Almighty reigns...
Holy, holy are you Lord God Almighty, worthy is the Lamb.

At Gospel Light, we generally do this song very simply, acoustic-led, in G. It's more Third Day than Michael W. Smith, but we don't rock it out.

This is recording of us doing it an an unplugged service - one guitar, one percussionist, and one singer. I like it.

video

9/13/09

Sunday Setlist - September 13

Here's the Sunday service recap and setlist for Gospel Light Community Church.

Opening:

Revelation Song (Riddle)(D)

Main Set:

O Praise Him (All This for a King) (Crowder)(Bb)

Your Grace is Enough (Maher)(G)

Once Again (Redman)(D)

Came to My Rescue (Sampson/Davies/Thomas)(C)

The Stand (Houston)(G)

We played with our "new" lineup today, with Chris playing drums full-time, and no bass player. Chris did a great job, especially on the last two songs.

I really love every song on this list, especially "The Stand." I love the song, and I love the way we play it. We actually reprised it at Pastor Pedro's request.

We've been rehearsing a new keyboard player, and Justin played bass today in rehearsal. He used to be one of the regular bass players, so it was good to be "in the backfield" with him today, even if it was rehearsal. Hopefully, in a few weeks we can go back to a full band.

Next week is going to be a special week, as we have the Studio-Z ministry from Zion Bible College coming in to lead worship as part of our Children's Revival Weekend.

Check out other setlists at Fred McKinnon's blog.

9/11/09

In the Studio - Take 16

Things are rolling along so well I can barely contain myself. We're actually ahead of where we wanted to be, and things just keep going.

Last night was another session with Danny, Elyano and myself. First thing to do was to finish doing "Say So." We had tracked a couple of takes last week, but weren't all that happy with them, especially the bassline. Fortunately, "Say So" is one of the few songs from the original sessions that I had saved as an audio file. So Danny was able to listen to the last recording and duplicate his great bassline.

The end result was a seriously nasty version of "Say So." It should mellow out a bit when keys are added, but it still rocks pretty good.

That done, it was time to move onto something else, and that something else was "You Said." This went down really well, also (once Danny figured out where that "C" went), and we're really happy with the results. There's a little acoustic intro to it, then everything kicks in and it really has a nice feel to it. I recorded the intro standing a little farther away from the mic than the rest of the song, so it's got kind of a far-away, coming-over-the-horizon feel to it, and makes for (I think) a nice dynamic. (I just gotta remember to take my watch off before recording acoustic!!)

Next week we will (hopefully) wrap up the basics of the last three songs, and then be able to record keys and some overdubs. So we are still on track to hand it over to the vocalists by the beginning of October, which would be sweet.

Check out the album's Facebook page, (you may just hear a clip or two soon) and stay tuned for more updates.

9/10/09

Influences

This week I've been working on a little project with some good buds: Joel Klampert, Conner Byrd and Alastair Vance. I can't divulge the details yet, but it's gonna be cool.

Part of the prep work for this project had me looking at some of my musical influences. I wanted to explore just a little bit of that.

One question I was asked was about Christian albums that have influenced me. Here are a couple of thoughts:

Greatest Hits: Steven Curtis Chapman.

When I first started going to church again about nine years ago, one of the things that I struggled with was a change in my music. Music had always been very important to me, obviously, and I had this impression that "church" music had to be boring and stuffy. (Probably because I grew up Catholic)

Someone gave me this record (or I stole it from my wife - but either way) and I started to listen. This was the first "Christian" CD I ever listened to, and it was pretty good. Beyond good, there were some songs on here that really spoke to me. "Not Home Yet", "That's Paradise", "The Walk." In fact, when my wife and I renewed our wedding vows, "I Will Be Here" was our song.

As for a strictly "worship" album (though that line is somewhat subjective):

Alive in South Africa: Israel and New Breed

This is just an amazing body of work. I've had some church listening to these CDs. I got this as a Christmas gift several years back, and it's been playing ever since. I love the way the entire recording flows, especially the whole "Your Latter Will be Greater/You Are Good/Again I Say Rejoice/Friend of God" medley. The addition of some African-penned tunes like "Alpha and Omega" and "Come and Let Us Sing" really show how universal worship is.

As for secular albums, I'm going to tackle two:

Hell Freezes Over : The Eagles

This record really taught me something as a musician, and here's what: the Power of the Arrangement.

Aside from the first four tracks, this is basically a collection of Eagles cover tunes, done by the Eagles. But... and this is a big but... most of the arrangements are completely different from the original album versions, and with incredible results. The noted top-dog here is "Hotel California," which is done all acoustic and hand-percussion. Don Felder's Flaminco-style intro is perfectly bookended by the Felder/Walsh/Frey instrumental at the end. To me, this demonstrates that it is very possible to put your own style and flavor on someone else's (or your own) composition - which is important for a guy who basically plays cover tunes every week.

Songs in the Attic : Billy Joel

Another "collection of cover tunes," right? Absolutely. But this collection from Mr. William Martin Joel demonstrates the Power of the Live Performance.

Get this plan: take a bunch of mediocre songs that didn't cut it as singles, and play them with the right band in the right venues and watch the magic happen. And along the way realize that the audience is part of the band.

One thing I tell young musicians who are trying to learn an instrument is this: practice, yes, all the time; take lessons when you can, but play with people, in front of people. Joel's mid-Eighties line up of Richie Canetta, Doug Stegmeyer, Dave Brown, Russell Javers and the incomparable Liberty DeVitto is perhaps the best bar-band in history.

They turned the quirky "Miami: 2017" into one of the most rocked out songs you ever want to hear (largely due to DeVitto) and the previously ignored "She's Got a Way" into a tender radio hit.

Stay tuned for more...

9/8/09

Sunday Setlists - September 6 and 7

I wasn't at Sunday's service this week, as we were driving to Rhode Island to take our oldest daughter to college. We did have a service on Monday, though, and I was able to participate in that. More on that later. First, Sunday's list:

Opening:

Because He Lives (Gaither/Gaither) (G)

Main Set:

How Great is Our God (Tomlin/Reeves/Cash)(C)

He is Exalted (Paris)(E)

Finding Who We Are (Sampson)(B)

Blessed Be Your Name (Redman/Redman)(C)

The Heart of Worship (Redman)(G)

On Monday, we held our twice-a-year Outreach in the Park at Seaside Park here in Bridgeport. At these events, we do a church picnic, a short worship service, an evangelistic preaching and a baptism, right in the middle of one of the biggest and busiest beaches in the county.

We've been plagued with power issues since we started doing this. Last year, though, the Parks Department allowed us to plug right into their building, which solved some of it. We still found that having both the piano and guitar was clipping the portable PA, but solved that by using my small Behringer mixer to pre-mix the instruments, then running that as a single input into the portable.

While waiting to go, I was just noodling around on a park bench, playing "How He Loves." I though no one was listening to me, but then Justin started singing, and we had a little improptu jam thing going. Sweet.

Our set was short:

We Cry Out (Johnson)(D#m)

God of Wonders (Byrd/Hindalong)(G)

Invitation:

Revelation Song (Riddle)(D)

Agnes Dei (Smith)(G)

and our choir, Send Judah First:

Come Thou Almighty King (Wright)

We're Blessed (Hammond)

We had four baptisms in Long Island Sound. It's great walking down the beach and doing the baptisms in full sight of everyone. We also had several people come up and accept Christ as part of the invitation by Evangelist Hector Muniz. All in all, a great weekend.

How was your Memorial Day weekend. Check other services at Fred McKinnon's blog.

9/5/09

Saturday Silliness - Back in the Day

Not sure why I'm posting this, but hey, it's a Saturday.

We did this clip as part of a longer video for one of our worship nights. It was a mock-umentary "Behind the Music" style thing called "Behind the Worship. The whole three-parter (about 15 minutes) can be seen on my YouTube Channel.

The idea behind this clip was that the "guys" from the worship team were branching off and doing a retro 60s act. Using worship music, of course.

What really amazed me about it is that even though it was a total goof, it didn't sound too bad. Even my singing! (Just ignore Josh's guitar "playing.")

9/4/09

In the Studio - Take 15

Things are continuing to march forward at great clip as we record our worship album. We had our third session of "version 2" last night. Just Danny, Elyano and I. Our goal was to get some drum and bass done, and get closer to "finishing out" some music recording.

We spent a little time setting up and getting things ready. We were all set to go when Danny arrived. The first thing we recorded was "From the Inside Out." I had tracked a preliminary acoustic track to it, but it turned out to be easier to just start from scratch. There a quite a few different sections to that song, so it turned out better that way.

Once that was done, we moved onto "Tell the World." This was a pretty easy track to record, and same as last time, we just did it live, all three of us, all the way through. A couple of takes and we had something we were happy with. I might still retrack guitar on it, but that one is well on it's way to being done.

Next up was "Mighty to Save." We had a good, tight acoustic track to it already, so it was just a matter of putting drums and bass over that. First thing we did was adjust the tempo a bit. I had recorded it a little slower than we wanted, but Pro Tools was able to handle the job easily enough. Adding 5bpm did the trick. Elyano did a great job on the drums. The song sound really great. We had to clean up and re-do one little part, but basically he and Danny flew through that one.

We ended the night working on "Say So." We got one take done, but decided it needed some things changed up. It was about halfway through when we ended the session for the night. Still, we were all pretty happy with the amount of work we got accomplished in one session.

Next week, we'll finish up "Say So." Chris is planned to be playing drums for the remaining four songs, so we'll have him there as well. Hopefully next week, we can finish up all the bass and drum parts, and most of the guitar. After that, we should have one, maybe two sessions to finish up and then hand things over to the vocalists by the end of September.

If you use Facebook, consider joining Gospel Light Worship's page there. We'll be posting some clips in the upcoming weeks.

I couldn't resist... this morning I pulled the session files into Audacity to give it a listen. (this is a dangerous thing, I know, because I hear everything!) I was listening to Mighty to Save especially - it sounds a lot better than the first time around!

9/3/09

Song of the Week - How He Loves - John Mark McMillan

Every once in a while, you come across a song that has been hanging around the periphery of your awareness, that suddenly comes into sharp focus. It's kind of like "Oh, I've heard that song before." but all of a sudden you hear it for the first time.

Such is the case (for me, anyway) with "How He Loves" by John Mark McMillan. I knew the song was out there, somewhere, but didn't pay a lot of attention to it. Then, last week, I was at a youth service as part of a larger event I was participating in. The worship team did this song as the finale of their set, and it was a tremendous moment - they must have played the song for ten or twelve minutes as youth flooded the altar.

The song has an odd structure to it, I'll grant. It's done in 6/8 time, which is not "natural" for many people to sing in our 4/4 world. The cadence of the verses make it a song one needs to concentrate on a bit, and the phrasing of some of the lyrics is not something one might find in a typical worship song.

Part of the power of the song comes from its backstory: McMillan wrote it out of grief for a friend, a youth leader and John Mark's best friend, who was killed in a car accident. The song was written the day after. It really tells the story of Steve meeting Jesus, and coming to a deeper understanding of His love.

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,I am unaware
of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

The song paints some rather descriptive, poetical images of the love of God: Glory eclipsing afflictions, God's love as a "sloppy wet kiss" and His Grace as "an ocean" that "we're all sinking" in.

The real moment of the song is the chorus:

He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

Like most great worship songs, "How He Loves" is very simple; written originally in the key of C, it's progression is repeated throughout the whole song: C-Am7-G-F. There are a lot of dynamics in the song, from the almost a capella verses to the thunderous chorus.

The song was first released on John Mark's 2005 sophomore album The Song Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down. (This is one of the most incredible titles I've ever heard, by the way) It was covered by Jesus Culture on their We Cry Out CD/DVD, graced by Kim Walker's amazing vocals.

Two upcoming CD's (ironically released on the same date, Sept 22) will feature the song as well: Jared Anderson's Live from My Church and David Crowder* Band's Church Music. (In fact, it's the first single off of Church Music.) I've heard both: Anderson's version might become the go-to example for church worship teams to emulate, and the Crowder version is by far my favorite of all.

9/1/09

A Generation Free to Worship

As I mentioned last month, I had been asked to be a speaker at a large children's and youth event here in Connecticut. Put on by the House of Restoration Church in Hartford, this event drew children and youth from all over the northeast.

One Friday evening, we loaded up the church bus with thirteen of our kids and headed off to Hartford. It was a cold and rainy night, but the kids were excited - this was the first time they had gone to an event like this as a group. We found the church easily, and went inside, not really knowing what to expect.

That first service was amazing. We entered as worship was going on. There was a group consisting of about ten youth and thirty or so children (plus an excellent band) singing "We Cry Out," which is one of my favorite worship songs. The church was beautiful. We were welcomed warmly and taken to our seats. One really touching moment was when they played a video clip of John Mark McMillan telling the story behind his song "How He Loves." The worship team then led out in that beautiful song.

The preaching that night was great. They did a four-preacher tag team message based around the story of Lazarus, complete with musical and lighting cues and silent drama woven into the message. After the message, the altar was packed.

Saturday was awesome as well. The theme of the entire weekend was "A Generation Free to Worship." There were breakouts for the children and the youth, all centered around this theme, after an opening worship session. Our children and youth who attended were really blessed by the event. There were dancers, and flag teams and everything else you could imagine.

My session was loosly titled "Don't Be Too Quiet." I talked about being bold in worship, and the importance of worshippers in spiritual battles, using Judah as an example. To open the session, Justin and I sang "We Won't Be Quiet" by David Crowder* Band, playing guitar and keys live and using a drum loop I created. (We had also prepared to do "Foreverandeveretc..." but wound up not using it.)

In the end, it was a great weekend, and I hope we've forged some new bonds of friendship with this church.

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