SEASONING: Finding your Voice

Photo by Chris Moncus Photography

(Photo by Chris Moncus Photography)

I can sing. I can’t even remember a time when I couldn’t listen to a song on the radio & not grab onto each individual part & join in. My mother has a beautiful, operatic voice, & would often sing, “The wind they call Muriah“, belting it around the house in the early morning. My Father could naturally match any Beach Boy on the oldies station. It turns out that even my grandmother once played autoharp & sang in Friday night neighborhood bluegrass jamborees when she was young. Even though I’ve worked on it, singing has always come naturally to me.

I’m very close to someone, however, for whom it has not been so easy.  Imagine your biggest dream being to sing – sometimes your ONLY dream – yet the natural voice just wasn’t there, then being reminded of it at every turn?  Whenever you sing, those present afterward compliment everyone on stage but you.  Some aren’t even so kind, commenting that so-n-so “sings so much better than you do”, and you wonder if they even have a clue.  So you take every opportunity to improve yourself, but it comes in slow, small increments.  You take lessons, and you learn more about your inner life – your heart – than you do about how to command your voice to do what you hear inside your head.  Then one day, you give up – you pray: “God, teach me to sing.”  And not immediately, but almost immediately, something ‘cracks’ when you are worshiping – volume swells up, and faith rises up in you saying “SING!”  It’s a voice you only barely recognize, and though not yet polished, it’s the voice you’ve always heard in your heart – raw, and in need of ‘shaping’, but it’s the voice, none-the-less:  YOUR VOICE.

You don’t need to sound like the CCM star you hear on the radio. You need to sound like YOU. Some of the most compelling voices in music don’t have polished, trained voices, but their voices successfully convey emotion, & move people’s hearts – & ultimately, that’s not that matters.

It’s been a beautiful story for me to see beginning to unfold, but it goes one step further to convince me of something I’ve always known deep in my soul.  EVERYONE CAN SING.  God made us for it, and though your voice may not win on American Idol, you have one – it’s strong, it changes a room when you use it, it says things that were made only for your mouth, expressing ideas that can come only from your heart.  God gave you that voice – it is especially for you: IT IS YOURS.

Never give up – USE IT!  I’ve absolutely no doubt about it: that is what you must do!

SEASONING: Hosting an effective Worship Workshop

WorshipWorkshopI’ve always enjoyed conferences. I come away from them rested (even in spite of getting no sleep), encouraged, challenged, and excited, with a fresh of vision of what I can do and how things can be.

Wouldn’t it be nice to take your whole team to a conference? Sadly, that’s probably not feasible – the complexities of work & family schedules, not even account for church finances.

A few years back I began putting on Worship Workshops for my teams & those interest in one day joining – ‘mini-conferences’. We held several for our youth teams, & they not only gave our people a fresh vision & a renewed passion, but also served as an opportunity to invest in future talent which we could then integrate into the team. [Read more…]

REVIEW: Stephen Miller – “Liberating King”

LiberatingKingARTIST: Stephen Miller
RELEASE: Liberating King
LABEL: Independent

I admire Stephen Miller. Having reviewed his book (Worship Leaders we are not Rock Stars) just a few months back, I was looking forward to hearing this new CD. Stephen’s commitment to solid Biblical truth, balanced in equal measure with passion, & creativity shine bright on his latest release. [Read more…]

Worship Pastors pastor Worshipers

icecreamIt’s easy as worship leaders to clock-in on Sunday mornings, and pour all of our effort into the “performance”; pulling for an impassioned & expertly played set of epic corporate anthems & ballads, familiar to all in attendance, & sung at the top of our lungs. And there’s nothing – in & of itself – wrong with that: God deserves our best. [Read more…]

the New Liturgical: Sojourn share some in-house ‘classics’ on “New Again”

NewAgainContinuing along the theme of “the new liturgical” movement, it’s hard to deny the impact of Sojourn Community Church. It seems only right to look at this next…

 

 

Artist: Sojourn Music
CD: New Again
Label: Independent
Release Date: 2/17/2015

(Click here or the Image Above to Pre-Order)

NEW AGAIN is the 10th release from Louisville-based worship team, Sojourn Music, & in many ways is their most accessible & contains some of their most corporate songs since their 2007 release, BEFORE THE THRONE. And for good reason. Some of these songs have been around since then – standard, go-to originals, sung week-by-week at Sojourn Community Church, beloved by their people, & just hadn’t found a home yet on any of their previous releases. That’s to say, these songs have been tested, week in & week out, & found to serve their community well. And that says a LOT.
[Read more…]