WORSHIP. PERIOD.

Being a Canadian (and even more so as a Maritimer) I’m familiar with inferiority complexes. From my experience in the worship realm, we tend to be suspicious or dismissive about things that are homegrown. We tend to look to the U.S. or U.K. (or “out west” for us Maritimers) for our music, teaching and resources. No knock on the stuff that’s going on elsewhere, there’s certainly no shortage of great things for the church here to adopt and use. That being said, part of the reason I started blogging in this vein was because of the lack of contextualization we end up with as a result of looking elsewhere so much. Many of us have probably been to a big conference and got lots of great teaching about leading worship (or whatever other context). Sometimes what happens next is a struggle to connect everything we experienced to our specific context, which is likely very different than that of the folks doing the presenting. Or maybe it’s just me…

Regardless, that whole phenomenon is part of the reason I wanted to point out a cool new project/movement going on here in the True North Strong and Free. It’s called “Worship Rises”. The idea came about when some worship folks in Ontario were discussing the need for more homegrown Canadian corporate worship offerings – some songs for the Canadian church born out of the Canadian church and her worship leaders. A group of worship folks got together for a “writing day” to see what would happen if they just got in a room and wrote together as a starting point. Fast forward about a year, and we arrive at the release of the first “Worship Rises EP” – 4 songs birthed out of that initial and subsequent writing days. It has taken on a broader scope across the country as things have grown (which was always the plan) and this EP truly is a uniquely Canadian collaboration.

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I recently read a great article I wanted to pass along written by Paul Baloche. It appeared in Integrity’s “Digital Update” magazine that arrives in my inbox from time to time. After reading the article I went and sought out permission to share it with readers here at Worship Period because I thought it was right down the pipe for a lot of the discussions here.

So, check the article out here, and enjoy!

- Jeff

P.S. Thanks to Matt at Integrity for allowing us to share this.

Hey iPhone users!

Now you can follow worshipperiod.com on your phone with the handy-dandy new W.P. iPhone app! You can access the latest updates to the site via your Apple cellular telephone device with the tap of a finger – and it’s all free!

(Just don’t use it while driving, we don’t want Oprah coming after us.)

W.P. on iTunes Canada – click here

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(Or search on your phone’s app store for “W.P.”)

If you’re a guy worship leader, especially of the tenor variety, you’ve likely been complained to about the key of songs and how unreasonable they are for the ladies in the room. If I had my way, I’d do everything in the Tomlin-esque range – the higher end suits my voice. However, as leaders we’re servants first and there has to be some kind of balance struck, right?

I try to keep things as reasonable as I can, key-wise. I try. I also try to defer some songs to one of our strong female singers and give them the melody for a particular song on occasion. There are some great tools out there for helping you transpose chord charts if that’s not your strong suit. I’ll be talking about some of those resources as part of an upcoming post on planning tools.

In the meantime, I thought I’d use this topic to point you toward a resource that speaks directly to it. Worship artist Vicky Beeching has started an online community called The Women in Worship Network, geared towards…well, women in worship. (Well said, Jeff) The site features interviews with other prominent female worship leaders and other pertinent resources.

As an example, check out this post where Vicky talks about options for transposing songs into female-friendly keys. Hope it’s helpful.

- Jeff

Here’s an interesting Podcast/Sermon/Talk/Whatever I recently listened to by Rob Bell and Troy Hatfield.  They’re discussing something specific about worship – that being the question of “why we sing?”.

Ever thought about that?  Why music, God?  I have.

It’s definitely an interesting and thought-provoking listen with some profound “aha” moments.  I feel like there was an element (or maybe an entire side of a coin) that was left out of the discussion, but I guess you can’t do it all in one talk.  I’ll let you listen and see if you notice the same thing.  Feel free to hit up the comments here and discuss your thoughts about it.

Here’s the link.

- Jeff

There might be no more common link among music and worship folks in churches than a shared frustration and struggle with audio and all things technical. It seems like a pretty common refrain for a lot of us. Whether it’s a shortage of manpower, a shortage of proper gear or a shortage of technical ability and talent, many churches walk with a limp when it comes to sound issues.

Our lead tech is an professional front of house tech with a local production company vocationally, and we’re very fortunate to have him volunteer his time and expertise to the church. That being said, we still face plenty of challenges trying to mix a band in a building that was never designed for it while using whatever gear that a modest church budget can afford (I hope to have Evan, our tech, share some tips and suggestions with Worship Period very soon). Sometimes the sound desk can attract frustrated musicians with a chip on their shoulder, or technically-minded folks with little to no ear for music side of things. Well, at least that’s what the musicians always say…

Sound issues tend to be a bit touchy, and are often misunderstood and even trivialized by those not directly involved. It might seem like a contextually trivial thing. Sure, it may be a tough pill to swallow, the idea of spending a significant chunk of dough on something like sound gear, for a small church budget. But when you consider that part of the role of the worship leader is to manage distraction and minimize it, sound becomes an important piece of that puzzle. I don’t need to natter on in detail about all that, I just thought I’d share some context behind this post to get us started.

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My colleague, bandmate, golfing buddy and all-around tall guy, Jay Muir, has landed in the blogosphere.

He’s a worship pastor in Moncton, NB. You may remember him from this post, or from his Local Leader Profile.

He’s a ninja of the written word, so get in on the ground floor of his new blog and thank me later.