Contemporary Music for the Advent Season

Finding good contemporary Advent music is not easy.  For some reason it is not a popular topic for today’s song writers.  These are a few songs that I have found and used in the past. Contemporary Advent Songs Song Title Writer A Baby Will Come Bill Wolf All to Us Chris Tomlin Behold the Lamb [...]

Song Choices to Accompany Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is documented in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5:1-47. It begins with the beautiful Beatitudes in verses 1-12. This section of scripture comes up in our Lectionary during the season of Epiphany on 1/30/11 (Mt 5:1-12), 2/6/11 (Mt 5:13-20) and 2/13 (Mt 5:21-37). The following are my favorite songs to [...]

Who’s Driving?

As a musician in a church band, you need to know who’s taking the lead in each song so that you musically don’t step on each others toes.  In general, songs can be classified as being either guitar-driven or piano-driven. Guitar driven songs are usually in the “sharp key signatures” such as E, D, A [...]

A Worship Service based on the Lord’s Prayer

In the past couple of decades (which is young in term of church music), there has been some really nice music written on the Lord’s Prayer.  I was thinking that it would make a very nice themed service to dwell on the Lord’s Prayer.  Listed below are a few song suggestions and a couple of [...]

For Your Glory

For Your Glory   One of the most well known passages in scripture is from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.  In many respects it is about the passage of time and the rhythm of this wonderful planet Earth.  Matt Maher, on his new CD entitled “Empty & Beautiful” has encompassed the beauty and passion of this text and [...]