Life after Christmas

Screen Shot 2017-12-28 at 12.12.36 AMWe’ve spent the past few weeks eating sweets, visiting with family, shopping, wrapping & exchanging gifts, on top of planning & executing what are likely the most complex services of the year. Now the hustle & bustle has come to a close of the year: what’s next? Well, the birth of Jesus changed everything, so we should expect our celebration of the holidays to change us, as well.

Life after Christmas is a life lived near to God. I remember as a teenager feeling utterly hopeless & alone, as though no one knew me or could want to know me. But Jesus was God-with-skin-On, born to the lowliest & most common. He didn’t see it as belittling to spend his first days in a feeding trough in a backwoods town which would’ve remained unknown if he hadn’t been born there. Emmanuel – literally “God with Us” – is not ashamed to live among us. God has come near, & it changed EVERYTHING! [Read more…]

I am not THE Worship Leader

In the most important sense of the phrase, I am not THE “worship leader”.

Yes, I lead people in corporate song, and on my best days (hopefully, MOST days) I encourage them to sing to God, but that’s not necessarily ‘worship’, and at best that makes me a ‘lead worshiper’ or a (oh, I do hate the name) ‘song-leader’, not a worship leader.

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Worthy

How often do you just ponder beauty? What is it about the moon passing between us and the sun that makes us stand outside, special glasses on our heads, awestruck? [Read more…]

A Christmas Gift Guide for the Worship Pastor

NO PARKING(2)Some people are just harder to buy for than others. As a Creative & a Worship Leader I will admit that I’m one of those people. Folks like myself love gifts that help us more effectively be who we are. I’ve compiled a collection of unique, fun, & helpful “dream gifts” for the worship leader from a wide variety of price points. If someone you love serves a local church with his or her musical gifts, this list if for you. [Read more…]

KINGDOM: the Gospel of the Kingdom – it’s not about Heaven

JustWrite copyI talk about the Kingdom of God a lot. I’m there so often because I’m still unpacking it for myself, but also because it is often a missing – and central – component to Jesus’ message of Good News. When we forget that the Gospel is also the Gospel of the Kingdom, what we’re left with is what we’ve all heard a thousand times: you’re a sinner; Jesus died on the cross for your sins, & rose again from the dead, & if you only pray to receive Him into your heart – voila – you’ll go to Heaven when you die! Sounds almost trite, once you hear it often enough – “pie in the sky, by & by”. Is that the whole Good News? Simply that someday, when you die, you won’t go to Hell? What about till then? What about NOW? [Read more…]