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 [...]

Ten WEB Resources that I cannot do without as a Worship Leader

http://www.Biblegateway.com – I’m hooked on the searches by keyword and the access to multiple translations. Free lead sheets for Contemporary Christian music: http://www.leadworship.com http://www.worshiptogether.com http://www.greatworshipsongs.com Free sheet music for new hymns & new arrangements of traditional hymns: Truevine – http://truevinemusic.com/ Redmountain Music – http://www.redmountainmusic.com/alb/lyrics.html Tim Bode’s Music Page – http://home.comcast.net/~timbode07/musicdownload.html Indelible Grace – http://www.igracemusic.com/ http://lifewayworship.com [...]

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 [...]

CW Hymnal Scripture References

I have put together an EXCEL spreadsheet that lists the scripture references for the hymns in our “Christian Worship” hymnal.  Perhaps this data exists elsewhere but my collection has the data sorted in three ways: 1.         Sorted by hymn title 2.         Sorted by scripture reference 3.         Sorted by hymn number You can download the file [...]

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 [...]

Worship Evaluation Form

A new document has been added to my download box (grey colored box in the lower part of the right hand column of the BLOG website labeled “My Shared Files”).  This document is intended to be used as an evaluation tool to provide feedback to you as a Pastor or Worship Leader with regards to [...]

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 [...]