So while I consider myself a music and worship blogger, I apparently am also considered a Linux blogger. Those top 2 posts alone count for almost 28% of the total traffic on the blog this year. The top one accounted for almost 17% by itself, and was written in May! Every single one of the my top ten keyword phrases included the word "Ubuntu" and nine of the ten included the phrase "Ubuntu Studio." In fact, you have to get to keyword 11 to find a non-ubuntu term. Number 11 is, inexplicably, "Erasamus Mutanbira." (for those of you about to check Google, he wrote "Alpha and Omega."
Other odd keywords include "Brooke Ligertwood depressed" (I didn't know she was) and "Darlene Zschech leaves Hillsong" (maybe that's why Brooke is depressed.) The rest of the top 100 are mostly either album review searches or Linux-related, although "mikeymo" shows up at number 23. Someone still cares.
After a two-year reign, Fred McKinnon has been knocked off as king of referrals, probably due to the move of the setlist carnival to The Worship Community, which is now the top referrer. Fred is still a very healthy fourth place, though, so thanks again.
The U.S., the U.K. and Canada are again my top three countries. Australia is #4, proving nothing but that I write in English. Connecticut, California, Texas and Florida are still the top 4 states.
Finally, Chrome has at last passed Internet Explorer, proving my readers are smarter than last year. Most of you are reading this in Firefox, however, so there's still room for improvement. Especially considering over half of you are reading on a Windows computer. (I'll assume you're at work.) Linux is the #2 OS, and Mac #3. Mobiles are making big inroads, with Android, iPhone, Blackberry growing. And oddly enough, I have several visits from a Playstation 3, and one from a Wii.
My buddy Kyle at Our Rising Sound did this, and invited others to do it as well. I thought it was interesting, so I took a similar look at our worship sets over 2010. I didn't do this in 2009, so I have no comparisons, but there was some interesting things in here.
Top Ten Songs:
History Maker (Smith) 9 plays
Happy Day (Hughes/Cantelon) tie
All Because of Jesus (Fee) tie
God of Wonders (Byrd/Hindalong) 8 plays
Revelation Song (Riddle) 7 plays
Rescue (Anderson) tie
O Praise Him (All This for a King)(Crowder) tie
Healer (Guglielmucci) tie
Glory to God Forever (Beeching/Fee) tie
Freedom (Bushard) tie
Came to My Rescue (Davies/Sampson/Thomas) tie
Ok, that's eleven, but there were a lot of ties. I'm actually surprised, because I thought we did a lot of Hillsong, but there are only 2 in the top ten. (There are a bunch of Hillsong tunes at 6 plays, though, as well as a couple of Israel and New Breed songs.)
Altogether there were 89 different songs. All of these numbers only include regular Sunday services at Gospel Light. We play a lot of special services, and twice a month at Lighthouse Fellowship Church, so we've played a lot more songs than this, and some of these a lot more than these numbers indicate, but this is what you'd hear if you came into a Sunday morning service at GLCC.
New Songs:
All I Need is You (Sampson) (Jesus Culture arrangement)
Fix My Eyes (McKinnon)
Glory to God Forever (Beeching/Fee)
Happy Day (Cantelon/Hughes)
How He Loves (McMillan)
I Love the King (Hughes)
Joyful (The One Who Saves) (Brown/Ingram)
We Won't Be Quiet (Crowder)
Your Name High (Houston)
Some of these we did for special events (We Won't Be Quiet, Fix My Eyes) but most of them were regular Sunday songs and became pretty popular. I find it interesting that Life Connection dropped "All I Need is You" the same year we picked it up. But we do it more Jesus Culture than Hillsong, so it's pretty fresh. We also have done "How He Loves" for specials, but this year we started doing it as part of the regular worship sets.
Added for 2011:
Saved By Grace (Houghon/Lindsey/Johnson)
I Will Search (Houghton/Houghton)
Moving Forward (Houghton/Sanchez)
Christ is Risen (Maher)
In Christ Alone (Townend/Getty)
Great is Thy Faithfulness (Chisolm)
Levanto Mis Manos (Hernandez)
The Solid Rock (Mote)
These are some songs we are planning to have a go at the first quarter of 2011. Notice a couple of hymns; we want to add more to our active list.
I'd love to know what others are doing and have done. Drop a comment, or blog this yourself and drop a link at Kyle's post.
This was the last week of our Christmas series, and our final Christmas service. There was a blizzard threatening (which has descended on us as of this writing) but there was good turnout, and we had a great service. Here's the setlist:
Opening:
Joy to the World (Watts/Mason)(D)
Main Set:
Open the Eyes of My Heart (Baloche)(E) Again I Say Rejoice (Houghton)(E) Hungry (Falling on My Knees) (Scott)(C) Shout to the Lord (Zschech)(A)
Offering:
Joyful (The One Who Saves) (Brown/Ingram)(D)
We were a little thin today due to some folks feeling under the weather, so it was simple arrangements today, just acoustic guitar and drums. I enjoy doing it like that from time to time, but I much prefer having keys or another guitar to help carry the load.
"Hungry" and "Shout to the Lord" actually work well in a Christmas mindset, especially if you think about the Magi or the shepherds who came to worship Jesus.
We also led at Lighthouse Fellowship Church: Joy to the World, Open the Eyes of My Heart, Hungry and Shout to the Lord.
I don't know why, but that line from Three Kings cracked me up. But this isn't a movie review. This is a recap of a sermon I gave on December 5, 2010, entitled "The Biblical Magi - Spirit of Giving and Grace"
1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. 5 So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet:
6 ‘ But you, Bethlehem,inthe land of Judah,Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;For out of you shall come a RulerWho will shepherd My people Israel.’” 7 Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. 8And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have foundHim, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.” 9 When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. 11 And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way. Matthew 2: 1-12
So, who were these strange men from the East?
Truth is, we have no idea. We have built up an entire narrative about these visitors, but what we know is actually very little.
We don't know who they were. We don't know where they came from. We don't even know how many of them there are.
We often refer the these visitors as the Three Kings, but we have no proof that they were kings, or evn that there were three of them. In fact, almost everything we supposedly know about them was written after the biblical account. Did you know that they traditionally even had names? Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar.
We do know some things. The Gospel of Matthew is the only one to even talk about them, which makes some sense, as Matthew was written to the Jews to show that Christ fulfilled the OT prophecies, so Matthew focused more on the infancy of Jesus than the other writers.
Matthew used the word magos to describe these visitors. The word literally means wise man, or sorcerer or magician. It was often used to describe astrologer-priest of the Zoroastrian religion, which was based in Persia. Those magi were well-know to use astrology, in other words, telling about current or future events by watching the movement of the stars.
We also know that when the say we saw a star “in the east” it's actually a bad translation into English. In the Greek, it actually says the saw a star “rising.” It is also likely that they were very familiar with the prophecies of Daniel, who had been considered a very wise man in Persia. And so, when the saw the star appear at the time Daniel had prophecied for the coming of the Messiah, they knew they had to travel to Jerusalem to see this King.
It was natural that they would expect all of the Jews to have seen the signs as well, and to be waiting in anticipation for the birth of their Messiah. They didn't know that the Jews had really fallen away from God.
Three sects – Pharasees, Sadducees, Essenes.
Herod was not really Jewish.
So they innocently came to Herod to find this King. Of course, Herod wanted to kill this usurper immediately. So he sends the visitors out with instructions to let him know where the King is.
When they arrive in Bethlehem, they find the baby. It might have been as much as two years after Jesus' birth. Matthew tells us they gave gifts of gold, Frankincense and Myhrr, and then worshipped the child. Then, they had a dream, where an angel told them not to return to Herod.
So that's what we know. But what does it tell us?
We need to separate fiction from fact.
The entire Christmas narrative is filled with so much speculation, tradition and fokelore that it's hard to really figure out what happened and what didn't. We don't know what month Jesus was born in, but we do know where and when. We don't know how many wise men there were, or where they came from, but we do know that they came, and we do know that they brought gifts fit for a king, and that they worshiped Jesus as God.
We need to be diligent in seeking God's word. What does it tell us? How much of what we know is clutter, and how much is the true Word of God? Are we like the Thessolonicans, who just believe everything we are told, or are we like the Bereans who test what they are told against the Scripture?
We don't have a lock on God
We think we know who God uses and who knows Him. But the scripture is full of unexpected people who are obedient to God: Melchiezedek, Job, Jethro. Sometimes these outsiders display more faith and humility than we do.
These men weren't Jewish. They didn't know God. But yet, they were willing to come great distances and give give gifts of great value to Jesus based on nothing more than their faith. We know God. How far are we willing to come to worship Jesus? How much are we willing to give?
Sometimes those on the outside are more accepting of Christ than those on the inside.
When these magi came, they were expecting the religious rulers in Jerusalem to be seeking the Messiah. They had been told the prophecy and they believed in it wholeheartedly. You would think that the chief priests in Jerusalem would have been the first ones to Bethlehem, but it took strangers to go find Him. John 1:11 says “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.”
Is this a warning to us? Sometimes it seems that those outside of the church show more love than those inside the church. That those outside, though misguided, are willing to sacrifice more. (PETA, Greenpeace, etc...)
The magi had amazing spiritual diligence.
Think about what it cost them to come worship Jesus. The time. The money. The danger. Leaving everything behind. Yet they pressed on. They came at great cost to worship Christ. Some of us grudgingly give a couple of hours on Sunday, and we don't even show up on time. Some of us – myself included – find it difficult to spend time every day in God's Word. Some of us refuse to share Christ with others. And some of us are perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to those in need, to the unwashed masses.
The magi had great faith
They had no personal knowledge of God when they started their journey. All the religious leaders were unbelievers, but they pressed forth. And when the arrived, they found what? A small, poor child. There were no miracles, no healing, no deep teachings, no great wisdom. Yet they still fell down and worshiped Him! John 20: 29 says “Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have still believed.” God delights in this kind of faith. Do yo know why this story is in the Bible? Because God is honoring the faith of these men! (Similarly, God honored the faith of Jabez in 1 Chronicles.)
Just because we know things, doesn't mean we show grace.
One thing stands out in this story. It says that when Herod heard about the birth of the Messiah, he gathered all his priests and wise men together, and asked then where the Messiah was to be born, and they quoted Micah and said Bethelhem. But did any of them go? These strangers came in and told them that the messiah had been born, and not a single on of them sought out Jesus!!
Now, we know a lot here. We study, we pray, we seek God. We come to church on Sunday go to classes and sing songs and hear the word and KNOW GOD.
The maji fell down and worshiped God. And we need to as well. But what does that mean? How do we share the spirit of giving that these faithful men showed. Does Jesus want our gold? Does he want things?
No. I want you to think about this. Jesus told us very specifically how we get to heaven. He told us very cleary what to DO. He told us what to GIVE.
1 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy[c] angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You?39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ 41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ 44 “Then they also will answer Him,[d] saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” -Matthew 25:31-46
This is it, right here. It's about what we give, it's about what we do. It's about how we demonstrate our love to others. That's what worship is! It's not singing songs!
It's how we take the love that God showed us... that while we were sinners, He died for us... and how we turn that love around. That's what worship is.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. 26 If anyone among you[b] thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion isuseless. 27Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. -James 1: 22-27
That last verse has the word “religion” in it. Now, usually, the last thing we want is to be religious. But the word here is threskeia and it literally means “worshiping.”
So really, James was saying that the best kind of worship there is, worship that is completely free from any worldly influence, is when we take of those who are greatest need.
The following video was shown immediately following the sermon. Audio of this message can be found on the GLCC Sermon Audio Page. or on iTunes.
This will actually be a longer than usual recap, because it was a busier than usual weekend. We had our annual Christmas cantata Saturday night. The theme this year was "Love Came Down." Here's what the music looked like:
Worship Set:
Do You Hear What I Hear? (Regney/Baker)(E) Hark the Herald Angels Sing (Wesley/Cummings)(F) Offering (Baloche)(F) Here I Am to Worship/I Love the King (Hughes)(G)
Choir Set:
Silent Night (Judah Remix) (Young)(Ab) The First Noel (Sandys/Gilbert)(C#) The Power of One (Hougton/Sanchez)(Am)
Children's Drama
Love Came Down at Christmas (Rosetti)(G)
Solo
A Baby Changes Everything (Hill)
Finale
Joyful (The One Who Saves)(Brown/Ingram)(D) Feliz Navidad (Feliciano)(C#)
Silent Night is our own arrangement, combining traditional and urban gospel. Do You Hear What I Hear we based loosely on the Third Day arrangement. Love Came Down at Christmas was based on the Jars of Clay arrangement and The First Noel was based on the MusiqSoulchild arrangement. I'll be putting some videos up on my YouTube page.Joyful was awesome - we had the worship team, choir and the kids all do it together.
Sunday morning at Gospel Light looked like this:
Main Set:
O Come All Ye Faithful (Wade/Oakely)(G) O Praise Him (All This for a King)(Crowder)(Bb) Mighty to Save (Morgan)(A) How He Loves (McMillan)(C)
I also got a last-minute request to preach at our church plant in New York City. The pastor there had come down with the Sunday morning, and wasn't able to make it to their service, which they hold at 2:30pm. The Word says "be ready in season and out of season" so I grabbed my guitar and went.
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)(C) Nobody Greater (Mitchell)(E) Came to My Rescue (Davies/Sampson/Thomas)(C) Here I Am to Worship (Hughes)(E)
So, a big weekend of music! Check out some others at The Worship Community after you watch the "Joyful" video below.
Here is the worship recap from Gospel Light Community Church, as well as Lighthouse Fellowship Church in Bridgeport, Ct. Both are part of the The Worship Community's weekly recap community.
At GLCC, the set looked like this:
Opening
Joy to the World (Watts/Mason) (D)
Main Set:
Happy Day (Cantelon/Hughes)(C) Joyful (The One Who Saves) (Brown/Ingram) Revelation Song (Riddle)(D) Here I Am to Worship/I Love the King (Hughes)
Offering:
Tell the World (Houston)(G)
We tried to keep to the Advent season with every song pointing directly to Jesus. I've been waiting to do "Joyful" since I first heard it at the ForgeCon in October. It's a great song, and even though it is not expressly a Christmas song, almost every worship leader I know who's heard it immediately identified it as being perfect for Christmas. It certainly seemed fitting for Gaudette Sunday.
The end of the set was especially moving this week. There seemed to be a real releasing and brokenness running through the room, and we wound up just playing for quite a while. "Here I Am to Worship" is really poignant during the Christmas season, I think, especially being fresh from last week's message on the Magi and true worship.
We also led at Lighthouse Fellowship Church Sunday morning. Our set looked like this:
Happy Day (Cantelon/Hughes)(C) He Is Exalted (Paris)(G) Here I Am to Worship (Hughes)(G) Joy to the World (Watts/Mason)(D)
Couple things are happening this week which are interesting to the open-source computing folks. The first is the alpha release of Ubuntu 11.04, nicknamed Natty Narwhal. Natty has some major departures from previous versions of Ubuntu. The most obvious is the switch to the Unity desktop, which will support 3D as well as the Unity Launcher. Unity is only partially implemented so far, but looks pretty interesting. The Ubuntu Desktop is enabled by default, but requires 3D support. Ubuntu Classic is also available to support a wider range of hardware.
Natty also comes with some updated packages, including a beta of Firefox 4. Supposedly the new kernel is optimized for power management and speed. It certainly seems quick.
This is the first of several planned alphas before the April release date, so expect more updates.
Chrome App Store
Yesterday, Google held an event to announce updates on the forthcoming ChromeOS. There were some very interesting things that came out of that event. The ChromeOS notebooks will operate largely in the cloud, with their apps residing online. The idea is that this will make them blazingly fast and reliable, and that the user experience will be totally portable. More exciting: the initial notebooks will come with free - you read that right - free two-year 3G data plans from Verizon. The free plan will be 100Mb/month, and Verizon will tier higher plans starting at $9.99/month. This could be a serious iPad killer, with ATT's expensive data plans and notoriously poor service.
The netbooks will also have a built-in jailbreak mode, activated by a small switch under the battery. In this mode, the user can install any app they want - Google doesn't mind. Also, while the apps reside in Google's cloud, security is a foremost concern (so they say.) A Google ID is not required to use the OS, and the notebooks' "guest" mode operates in incognito mode, so no information is passed between the guest and host accounts.
TweetDeck App
While the ChromeOS is still months away, the Chrome App store also opened yesterday. Chrome apps are optimized for the Chrome browser, but will work in any modern browser that supports HTML5. Chrome is required to pay for the paid apps, however.
I "installed" the TweetDeck app, and I've gotta say, I might never launch the desktop app again. It took me a couple of minutes to log in with my TweetDeck ID and arrange my columns the way I wanted them. But after that, launching TweetDeck from a restart takes about two seconds until all the columns are updated, if that. TD runs as a tab in Chrome, and is lighting fast. The web app actually makes better use of space than the desktop app does, and gives you the same option of choosing from multiple accounts and services, adding media and adding locations. (although the "Add your location" button crashes Chrome in Ubuntu. It works fine in Windows. Hopefully they'll fix that soon)
The New York Time app is simply gorgeous, and there are other apps that range from very nice and useful to simply stupid. Kinda like the Apple App Store, I suppose. The apps show up as a tab in your Chrome "New Tab" page, along with your most visited and recently closed pages. This is really useful and easy.
I look forward to seeing what Google does with the app store and ChromeOS in their quest for world domination to make the user experience transparent and transportable.
Here we are, the second week of Advent already. Wow, time flies.
Anyway, here is the recap for this Sunday at Gospel Light Community Church:
Opening:
O Praise Him (All This for a King) (Crowder)(Bb)
Main Set:
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)(C) Hosanna (Fraser)(E) Came to My Rescue (Davies/Sampson/Thomas)(C) Higher/I Believe In You (Fields/Zschech)(C)
Offering:
Montana (Salinas)(Am)
This week didn't go as smoothly as the last couple did. We had some sound gremlins raise their hands as we kicked off, and we for some reason lost the audio feed from the electric guitar to FOH. It wasn't the end of the world, as I have my amp on the second channel out of my POD, so I was able to make it work, it just wasn't ideal.
"Blessed Be..." came out really nice, and is a congregation favorite. I've heard "Hosanna" sound better, but no one seemed to mind. We had a real nice time of worship in the "Came to My Rescue" into "Higher" moment, which lasted quite a while.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this; to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and keep oneself unspotted from the world. (NKJV)
The phrase "pure religion" is an interesting one. Normally, most evangelical Christians avoid the term religion like the plague. The world has a taste of hypocrisy about it, it's almost an insult. "Oh, he's so religious!" You might as well call someone a Pharisee.
But James was very specific in this. The Greek word threskeia means not a personal religious view, but a religious expression or demonstration; in other words worship. So a more literal translation might be "Real worship, the kind that is not considered a filthy rag by God, is when we reach out to those in need, and help relieve the burdens they carry. And to not let the world take us away from that mission."
In other words, be the church. We see in Acts that even the very early church was concerned with feeding the poor. Jesus never said "Blessed are those who sit behind walls on Sunday mornings and sing." And James tells us that if we don't do something with our faith, then our faith is dead. This isn't a salvation thing; it's a love thing.
I'm proud of my church this month. Last month, in a moment of inspiration, I challenged each of our cell groups to this: find something that you can do, as a group, by the end of the year, that impacts the community, and makes someone's life better. Many of the groups have taken up the gauntlet. We have a group of college-age women who will be volunteering at a local shelter, serving meals. Another group is working with the elderly. Our children's and youth groups are teaming up to collect items for a local rescue mission this Christmas. Last night we had a big discussion that went from missions to child sponsorship to community outreach. The Kingdom is on the move.
So please, don't just sit by this Christmas. Get out there and do something. And why not let us know what you're doing in the comments?
