How to Modernize a Hymn – Part one of a two part series

I don’t think there are many Christians, even those who use nothing but Contemporary music, that doubt or question the depth and the beauty of the lyrics contained in our wealth of hymns. But sometimes, they are difficult to comprehend or are just too musically foreign to those that we are Called to reach. There [...]

The Psalm of the Day

Our traditional liturgy has a chanted responsive singing of a Psalm each Sunday.  To me, this is a powerful and enjoyable part of our traditional worship services that I did not want to dispense of in our blended worship services but the format just did not fit.  We tried several different approaches of including a [...]

Strong Worship Songs

There is a new BLOG whose objective is to identify music in the Contemporary Christian genre that are filled with biblical truths and are fit for use in today’s churches that recognize the inerrancy and importance of scripture. Further, the BLOG writer categorizes the songs by the church calendar to make it easier to find [...]

CW Hymnal Resources – A Ministry of Tim Bode

 Tim Bode is the Minister of Music at Christ The King (CTK) Lutheran Church located in Southgate MI.  CTK Lutheran appears to have four Praise Bands named North, South, East and West Bands.  Wow!  Tim has created a website of musical resources for Lutheran hymns and for some liturgical pieces as well.  Included at his website are some of [...]

A Pastoral Use for Youtube

The following is an excerpt from a Pastor’s electronic newsletter to his congregation: This Sunday our musicians will be introducing a new song by Chris Tomlin called “All the Way My Savior Leads Me.”  This song is rich in content as well as musicality. Please preview and enjoy this song before Sunday by clicking here to [...]

CW Hymns and CCM Cousins

Several months ago, one of our fine Pastors from the state of Florida asked me if I had a cross-reference table that compares hymns to contemporary equivalents.  I did not have such a resource at the time, so I directed him to http://blendedworshipresource.wordpress.com where the blogger has commented on a few hymn vs CCM “cousins”.   Where [...]

Blended Worship Planning 101

In our church, we have one blended worship service per month where we follow our traditional liturgy to some extent, but we use contemporary music in place of hymns.  I assist with the defining of the music for these blended services so over the years, we have come up with a format that works for [...]

A Scoring System to Determine if a New Song is Congregational-Friendly

How does a worship leader evaluate a piece of sheet music in terms of congregational singability once the lyrics have been approved by the Pastor? After evaluating music for a number of years, I have come to the conclusion that there are about eight different criteria that need to be considered.  Just considering these criteria [...]

Praise Band Ministry Tool

At our church our band members have been using a WEB 2.0 tool called “Grooveshark.”  Grooveshark is a free online database of songs.  We use it to share the set list for each month’s blended service so that we can all listen to the songs before we get together for practices.  Their database won’t have [...]

Files for Download

I have added a new feature to my BLOG.  At the bottom of the right column is a box where you can download files that I have posted for general use and distribution.  There are two files right now.  One is the revised lectionary from our Synod that goes with the Hymnal Supplement and the [...]