On Friday, October 30th 12 pm CST, Nancy Beach and Eric Bramlett will interview Efrem Smith about reclaiming the arts for God and how we create art from the viewpoint of God’s beloved.

Senior Pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church, Efrem Smith spreads the vision to be an urban, multi-ethnic, relevant, holistic, and Christ-centered community. He is an internationally recognized speaker and the author of numerous articles and books, including The Hip Hop Church.

Register for the free conference call.

We’re looking for songs that can potentially become “theme songs” for various Covenant wide events. Each year we have a theme for our denominational events that flows out of our core values and theology. Send us any of your original songs that might support these themes. If your song is selected by the committee, it will be featured at the event, and a recording of the song will be distributed to all the participants so that they can take them back to their churches to the song can be sung in the local church.

The 2010 Midwinter the theme is “The Necessity of the New Birth.” Send us your original songs that flow out of that theme. We would love to hear them and pass the best songs on! Pass the word around! There’s a lot of “untapped” songwriting talent in the Covenant. We’re hoping this is a first step of many in helping to uncover some of that talent.

Rooting for you,

Andrew Thompson

of the Event Song Selection Committee

(A sub-committee of the Worship Commission)

Check out this article on worship and justice, recommended by our Covenant Resource Center.

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in my heart the love of your Name; increase in me true religion; nourish me with all goodness; and bring forth in me the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.†

From the Book of Common Prayer and used by Phyllis Tickle in The Divine Hours

A powerful reminder that the words we sing matter. As worship leaders we can either promote justice and a multidimensional view of God or myopic materialism - or often something somewhere in between. So much of it is in the words we sing.

http://www.urbanfaith.com/2009/08/singing-and-praying-justice.html

Thanks to Millie Lundgren for the link.

Rooting for you,

Andrew

Here’s a nice article by Nancy Beach on the topic of leading artistic people. 

Leading Artists: Five principles for overseeing right-brained team members

This is the second post in the L3 (Leadership Lessons Learned) series.

I’m struck by our drive to pass the buck. Have any of these things happened to you?

• The bass player comes late to set up, thus your run through the music is weak and thus the music is… weak.
• The computer and projector have a bad relationship with the volunteer who projects (no pun), thus everyone suffers. (that’s code for: their are lots of projection problems during worship.)
• Someone who has a microphone says something they shouldn’t have said—into the microphone during the worship service. Thus the people share an embarrassing moment.
• The senior pastor doesn’t talk with you much during the week, nor before worship on Sunday, so worship is a bit disconnected and lacks dynamics.
• Your sound volunteer works for Microsoft or HP or some similar tech-oriented company. She knows more about computers and electronics than mixing instruments to make music, so the sound mix at your church is bad. Read the rest of this entry »
  

A great article from Roger Sheck, Worship pastor of Eastridge Covenant Church in Clackamas OR.

http://www.eastridgechurch.org/pastor-rogers-blog/what-about-pride/

A good reminder that true humility is not a matter of “hiding” or “denying” your God-given gifts, but rather offering them up in humble service. Romans 12:3 reminds us of the need to look on ourselves with “sober judgement, in accordance with the faith that God has distributed to each of you.”

Enjoy!

Rooting for you,

Andrew

I’m feeling my middle age—still young enough to be foolish and certainly old enough to be out of step. So I thought I’d blog about the stuff I think I know—particularly things I learned about leading the arts and worship in the local church. Don’t worry. The series won’t be long; I don’t know much.

I’ve thought of 12 topics, and the working titles are thus:

1. When the cat’s away
2.  Everything is your fault
3. The devil is in the details
4. You can’t get blood out of a turnip
5. A prayer for mutual help
6. Garbage in, garbage out
7. You get what you pay for
8. People are down on what they’re not up on
9. Never ask for volunteers
10. Grace plus time
11. Ideas are cheap
12. Not by Might

 So… here we go. Number 1. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s keep the conversation going! Please take time to read the various responses that have been coming in - and add your voice to it. There’s a number of people thinking about similar themes.

Rooting for you,

Andrew