More real to me

One year ago my sister in law (most importantly.... my sister in Christ) went to be with Jesus in Paradise. I wrote a bit about that and what I had learned from the days that followed here... "The things I haven't said".

A lot has changed since then, her son... Dylan now lives in California with his dad, Rex, and we talk to him occasionally over the phone or the internet or through email. We have since formed a good (albeit long distance) relationship with Rex's family, and follow two of his sister's excellent blogs here and here.
Our family has also had a fairly big addition (just under 7 lbs)... click here.

I can not say that we have come to grips with losing Tonya. I still have a hard time talking about her, or even thinking about her without crying like a schoolgirl.

But as I think of Tonya now in the presence of Jesus... heaven is more real to me. There has not been a single instance over this past year that I have read or heard a passage of scripture concerning heaven that I have not thought about Tonya being there, not a single instance where I have sung a song about heaven and what is going on there now, that I have not pictured the reality of Tonya being there right then at that very moment participating in the very thick of the greatest praise she has ever known. Don't worry, I am not placing undo importance of Tonya being there, over and above the fact that Jesus is there, I am not saying heaven is a "better place"because she is there or anything like that... I am just saying that when the reality and hurt of Tonya not being here hits me sometimes... it does not compare to the reality and joy of knowing that she is presently experiencing no more pain, no more tears, no more heartache, no more struggle... just glorious praise in a chorus of angels and saints that have gone before.

Beth's post today... Peach Cobbler
Sarah's post today... One year later...

5 Things to Pray for Your Congregation As You Prepare to Lead Worship

by Kristen Gilles, mysonginthenight.com

Part of prayerfully preparing to lead music at your church gatherings each week includes praying for everyone who will gather. This will help and encourage you and others in your congregation to keep your focus on the Savior King who alone has the power to save, heal and deliver all who call upon His name.
Here are five prayer points to help you pray for your congregation as you prepare to lead worship each week. These are not at all exhaustive, nor do they need to be prayed verbatim. Think of these simply as starters to help you and your worship team pray:

1. Pray that Christ would be magnified in the eyes, ears and hearts of everyone in attendance at your gathering, including you. Ask God to illuminate and awaken the spirit of every person in attendance, including you. Petition our Father to help you and others who are leading and serving to make much of Christ, pointing others to Him.
2. Pray that everyone, including you, would more fully understand and prize God, our Savior, and His living Word as we sing, pray and listen in our gatherings.
3. Pray that all in attendance, including you, would be convicted of sin, that the idols in our hearts would be revealed, and that we’d all be captivated and encouraged by the boundless love and kindness of our Savior which leads to repentance. Pray that we would be filled with Godly sorrow, would repent and fall on the grace of Christ, and then rejoice in His forgiveness and love.
4. Pray that the gospel would go forth in power as it is declared through songs, prayers, the sermon, scripture readings and in our conversations. Pray that unbelievers would be saved and that believers would have their affections stirred for Christ.
5. Pray for God to silence the mouths of His enemies and bind them from doing any work in the gathering. Ask God to show the wonder of His love to all in attendance through healing the sick among you, delivering those oppressed by the enemy, freeing those enslaved to sinful habits and addictions, giving faith to those struggling to believe His Word, strengthening and encouraging the weary and downcast, and helping all of Christ’s people to walk worthy of his gospel calling.

is "shallow" always a bad way to describe a worship song?

Source

Read Bobby Gilles thoughts... and for the record... I agree...

“CCM” or the contemporary worship record labels get a lot of blame for writing and publishing “dumbed down” song lyrics and exclusively bright, cheery (and some would even say frivolous) melodies, arrangements and record production. We’ve written about some of these things before here at My Song In The Night:

• Can We Trust The Contemporary Worship Music Industry?


• The Danger In CCM and Family-Friendly Radio

But we need to keep two things in mind: first, that the church is receiving great worship songs from major labels (think John Mark McMillan, Kathryn Scott, Matt Redman, All Sons & Daughters, Keith & Kristyn Getty, Paul Baloche, just to name a few).

The second is that the roots of what Michael Gungor called the “Christian music sound” and vapory lyrics extend far beyond the creation of CCM and the modern praise & worship music movement. From Paul Westermeyer’s With Tongues of Fire: Profiles in 20th Century Hymn Writing:

Gospel hymnody challenged the church’s broader historic hymnic consciousness. The Dwight Moody-Ira Sankey campaigns in the last quarter of the 19th century produced a body of hymnody that … contained cheery compound triple and dotted rhythms, enticing mild chromaticism, the almost exclusive use of major keys rather than minor ones, and a lack of dissonance or musical argument to create tension. It developed into the even lighter, semi-sacred, and more commercial music of the Billy Sunday era after the turn of the century, such as … “Brighten The Corner Where You Are,” … It often took over Sunday schools altogether and made inroads into mainstream Protestant services as well. Sometimes songs in this style replaced an entire hymnic heritage …

Indelible Grace founder Kevin Twit has talked about this as well in lectures at our church Sojourn, and elsewhere, pointing out that a gospel hymn like “In The Garden” is as far removed, lyrically, from the hymns of Watts, Newton, Steel and Wesley as the vaguest praise chorus today.

So What Does It Matter If The Roots Didn’t Start In The 1970s, 80s or 90s?

It matters because we shouldn’t blame any recent development or “industry” on a problem, since we are all susceptible, as were our forebears. The roots are in our own hearts, not in one decade or century. We often forget our responsibility (as songwriters, worship leaders or pastors) to lead. We forget that worship is, in part, an act of spiritual formation. We want to give people what works (meaning, what seems to get a good response, as far as our eyes and ears can tell).

And this was true before there was a formal “industry.” An industry is just a group of people. This is always about people: you, me, us, them. We want to reach others, and part of this involves giving them what they want. It certainly involves giving them music to which they can sing along and relate. But somewhere along the way, we may try too hard to give them too much of what they want and not enough of what they need (and remember that “we” are “they,” too — it is the responsibility of the entire church to teach and admonish one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs as we give thanks to God).

Defenders of shallow songs would say that Psalms and other songs and hymn fragments in the Bible range in complexity, length and theological depth. So why should every worship song be a four verse cannonball like “In Christ Alone?”

And that is true. Of course songs can range in complexity. As Harold Best has written, there is nothing inherently wrong with “shallow,” despite the negative modern connotations of the word. Shallow is simply not deep. And of course one person’s shallow is another person’s deep, for many reasons that may have nothing to do with intelligence or holy living. Sometimes when we catch a glimpse of God’s glory, all we can say is “Holy, you are holy.” This is good and right.

The problem comes if we drift into an exclusive use of slight, bright praise songs, because then we disobey the Bible’s own description of what congregational worship songs are supposed to do (Colossians 3:16). Shallow songs in the catalog of an artist, a church or a publishing house are not bad. What’s bad is their overuse. It’s like eating apples. They’re good for you, but an apple a day won’t keep the doctor away because they don’t contain all the vitamins and minerals we need. An exclusive “apple” diet isn’t good for anyone. Except apple farms.

• How can churches continue to encourage and mentor worship songwriters?


• What about seminaries? Are any of them doing anything solid or innovative in this regard