A couple of weeks ago we took our youth group up to Asheville for a couple of days.

We stayed at a camp ground with no electricity, which meant no amplifiers or flashy lights, just guitars and voices worshipping the King.

Check it out:

Got this in my inbox today.

I heard this on the radio a couple of days ago and I was like, “That sounds like Chris Tomlin… but I don’t know this song.”

It made me happy :0)

You can download the song on iTunes or Amazon.com.

Did you hear it yet? What did you think?

Jeremy and I went to hang out at Mike D’s house last night. We broke out the guitars and had some fun.

Watch Mike and tell me he’s not the fastest guitar player you’ve ever seen :0)

PS – Go visit Jeremy’s new blog and show him some love!

As promised a week ago, I have an mp3 file of the teaching on ‘worship’ I did last Sunday. Please give it a listen and let me know what you think! I’m sure there are some things you would have done differently, so let me know what they are!

Right-click here and choose ’save as’

Yesterday, I was driving to work, and something marvelous happened: I made a turn, and somehow, some loose wires snugged up to where they needed to be, and BOTH of the rear speakers in my car started working. This is like the equivalent of upgrading from a $10 walmart computer speaker to a… $50 walmart computer speaker :0)

So this morning, on the way to work, I had the music cranking, and I have to tell you, “At The Cross” by Daniel Renstrom is constant repeat right now.

The whole song is pretty upbeat with a really joyful spirit about it that would make it a great corporate worship song, and the words are fantastic. The chorus says,

At the cross – wrath was taken away
Christ was in our place
Oh what marvelous grace!

At the cross – justice was supplied
By the blood of Christ
Forever we will praise

If you haven’t picked up Daniel’s new CD, “Adore and Tremble”, you can get it on iTunes here. It’s the best 5 bucks you’ll spend this month. You can even preview some of the songs on his myspace page.

And Brody has apparently got Daniel blogging these days, so go check out his blog. He even chimed in on the worship conversation that I mentioned earlier this week.

Do you have “Adore and Tremble”?

I had the great privilege of teaching our main service this Sunday at church, and it didn’t take me two seconds to know that I wanted to teach on the topic of worship.

As luck (or providence) would have it, the mic battery went out half way through, so the sound guys or going to see if they can get me one mp3 file so I can share it with all you wonderful people.

But in the meantime, Flowerdust and Ragamuffin Soul have some fantastic dialog going on about the topic of worship.

In particular, Carlos is asking:

Question One: What do you see the purpose of a church weekend gathering is? (I emailed him and asked him to ask this question on the blog MONTHS ago :0)
Question Two: Do you believe God can engage a persons heart in a weekend service where there is a goal to help manifest this through musical worship, production, creative video elements??

This should be interesting and could be very beneficial!

I’m sure you’ve seen all the blog uproar about the song “Shout To The Lord” being used on the show American Idol. I honestly didn’t think too much of it when I first heard it. My knee jerk reaction was to be even more disillusioned with Hollywood that they took the word ‘Jesus’ out of the song. And more than anything, I was shocked that Hillsong (the people who own the song) would allow it. But this blog post by Joshua Harris changed my perspective on the matter, and really challenged me about what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to represent Him on this earth.

(and it turns out that Hillsong gave permission to use the song, but not to change it)

What do you think?

This should be a very interesting week…

I get the opportunity to teach on worship this week.

Steph will be in what our book says is the hardest week of the first 6 months of pregnancy.

…and she’s teaching on women in missions somewhere in podunk Va this morning.

…and she woke up with a nasty cold…

I foresee potential for high highs and low lows.

Please keep us up in prayer, and hopefully I’ll have some great things to share next week!

Also, if you have any recommendations or thoughts or suggestions or resources related to the topic of ‘worship’, please share!

Just about a year ago, Steph and I went to the last major Passion Conference: Passion ‘07.

For weeks afterwards, they promised that some of the new music would be coming out via iTunes in the near future, but then they went and decided to do a world tour, so a full year later, it’s here:

Passion: God of This City

Here’s the track listing:

Let God Arise – Chris Tomlin
You Are God – Charlie hall
God Of This City – Chris Tomlin
O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing – David Crowder*Band
Hosanna – Christy Nockels
Sing Sing Sing – Chris Tomlin
Beautiful Jesus – Kristian Stanfill
Walk This World – Charlie Hall
We Shine – Steve Fee
God Of Our Yesterdays – Matt Redman
Glory Of It All – David Crowder*Band
Shine – Matt Redman
Dancing Generation – Matt Redman
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Chris Tomlin

At a glance, I’m most looking forward to live versions of ‘We Shine’ by Steve Fee and ‘Beautiful Jesus‘ by Kristian Stanfill, and finally having a high-quality recording of ‘Walk This World’ by Charlie Hall (I ripped the live video feed from the conference, but it’s pretty poor quality :0)

How ’bout you?