Today’s post is written by Geoff Twigg, Adjunct Professor at North Park University in Chicago. Geoff is a pastor, singer/songwriter, worship leader and ministry consultant, and serves the ECC as a member of the denomination’s Commission on Worship.

I received a song request this week that caught me by surprise. On reflection, I viewed it with very mixed feelings. As a songwriter it is always nice to know that people remember and appreciate your songs; I went through a particularly rich vein of writing while leading the worship ministry in the Pennsylvania church where we spent fourteen very happy years from the mid-nineties onwards. Frequently people will remember a worship song that expressed their sentiments, or special music that was written for a friend’s wedding that now seems perfect for their daughter’s ceremony.

However, this particular request I received with mixed emotions. I wrote the song for a little boy named Kyle who had been diagnosed with cancer even before he was born. Nobody expected him to survive very long, but as he got older and still fought the disease, he became beloved to everybody in the congregation.

After a few months it was decided that he would be dedicated and the ceremony was planned for a Sunday morning service. Sadly Kyle passed earlier during the week that the service was held and the song that I had written for his joyful dedication was instead sung in his memory.

The request that I got this week that led to such mixed feelings was for those lyrics to be sent to another set of grieving parents. It’s always terribly sad when a child passes away and yet it’s part of my calling as a songwriter is to express the inexpressible; to create the words that need to be said and give that vocabulary to the people who need it most.

Sometimes such a task can be seen to bring a blessing. You see, years before Kyle died, we ourselves had a child who passed away of sudden infant death syndrome and – until that time – I had never been able to express my grief at his passing. In writing the song for Kyle I was able not only to express my own grief but also to empathize with what those parents were suffering.

As you read these words, perhaps you can join me in prayer for the parents who mourn this week for their son Colin.

It’s a lifetime of pain in a moment,
A burden adding years to your soul.
It’s the sacrifice of all he had to live for,
A fascinating story left untold.
It’s the end of all we struggled for in hopeful prayer
As we sensed the awful imminence of night;
And though we are standing, staring at the sunset,
He will watch the sky of Heaven as it fills with glorious light…

There’s a lifetime of memories to treasure
And the life remembered far outweighs the pain.
It’s the privilege of loving someone beautiful
And the promise that we all will meet again.
There’s the ever-present echoing of laughter
And the glimpse of shadows running through the trees,
But the joy for him continues ever after
In a life of untold happiness, eternal love and peace.

“And a sword will pierce your own heart,” Mary was told
As she dedicated Jesus to the Lord.
Through the years she watched God’s mysterious purpose unfold
And the offering of love outpoured…

It was a lifetime of pain in a moment.
Drops of blood in an ocean of tears;
And the sacrifice of all he had to live for
Brought a moment of truth for all the years.
In that crisis of pain Christ bought eternity
For us all, for the weight of all wrong;
And the darkened silence looming over Calvary
Was the hush before the glorious song…

“Welcome home, my beloved! You are here at last!
All the waiting is over, all the suffering is past!
Welcome home, my beloved! You’re a child of the King!
Come and join the congregation! Hear the angels sing,
Welcome home!”

Today’s post is written by Matt Nightingale, Director of Worship Ministries at Redeemer Covenant Church in Tulsa, OK.

I’ve been thinking a lot about vacation lately. In just a few weeks, I’ll be traveling to Irvine, CA, where I’ll be commissioned at the Annual Meeting. My wife and I have decided to turn the trip into a two-week vacation for our family. We’ll visit close friends in the San Francisco Bay area, go to Disneyland and spend precious time with her parents and extended family in Southern California. We will eat at In-N-Out Burger. We will swim in the ocean. I can’t wait.

One of my best friends is starting a three-month sabbatical today. He has worked as a young adults/community outreach/preaching pastor for over a decade, and this is the first time he’s ever had a sabbatical. I texted him this morning, saying “It’s the first day of a well-deserved and much-needed sabbatical! Enjoy! Rest and refresh! Love your family well! Eat healthy and work out often! Read a lot and sleep a lot! And most of all, dive with abandon into the endless expanse of God’s ocean of love!”

Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? (I have to admit, I was a little jealous as I typed it…)

I remember once, on a spiritual retreat in Colorado, being led in a lectio divina exercise. The passage I focused on was Matthew 11:28-30. I was profoundly moved as I heard the gentle words of Jesus reach across time and space and invade my heart: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Who doesn’t need to find that kind of rest?

A while back, in our Better Together Facebook group, we were talking about recovering. From Christmas. From Easter. From whatever challenges or difficult seasons of ministry we face. Discussion turned to health and how we as pastors and leaders take care of ourselves. How do we stay sharp? How do we stay healthy? We talked about food choices and exercise, about rest, about having people to share our joys and struggles with, about time with God, about family time…

So what about you? Are you a healthy leader? How do you stay healthy? How do you need to get healthy? 

Today’s post is written by Geoff Twigg, Adjunct Professor at North Park University in Chicago. Geoff is a pastor, singer/songwriter, worship leader and ministry consultant, and serves the ECC as a member of the denomination’s Commission on Worship.

It’s feeling like spring here in Chicago; and that’s not just because we put the clocks forward this weekend… one or two days this week, the temperatures have been up in the 60s!

A little more sinister, however, is the severe lack of winter weather we’ve had over the last four or five months. My wife and I are new residents in Chicago, having moved here in the Fall, but we’ve been here in winter months before; notably for Midwinter 2011, when we witnessed around 19″ of snow in one particular storm, and only left the O’Hare Hilton once in the whole week. Furthermore, whenever anyone heard that we were moving here, we were sternly warned about the severity of the weather. Oddly enough, most of these ‘prophets of doom’ lived around our previous domicile in New Hampshire, yet they considered our move to Illinois to be a backward step into a frosty clime. Continue Reading »

Today’s post was written by Chris Logan, Pastor of Worship Arts at Community Covenant Church in Lenexa, KS.

What is it?

Is it old or is it new, ancient or modern? Is it temporal or atemporal or subtemporal or transtemporal? Is it something in which we can participate or is it something that we view, something done for us?  Is it done in a building, a field, a workplace, a home, a coffeeshop, a pub, a laundromat, a city, a town, a village, an office, a subway, a car, a tractor, a wagon, or on foot?  Is it done with friends or acquaintances or enemies?

Is it loud or is it soft? Is it fast or slow? Is it happy or sad?

Is it defined by what is available to us or is it defined as something we have to obtain? Can we obtain it at all, or is it given? Is it done at all or is it simply the way of things?

Is it silent?

Is it deafening?

Is it individual or communal? Is it cultural, acultural, transcultural, supracultural, or intercultural? Is it of the people, by the people, for the people, to the people, from the people, or around the people?

Is it active or passive?

Is it for gathering, for comfort, for challenge, for engagement, for lament, for celebration, or for sending? Is it for us or from us or with us or within us? Is it about us at all or is it about denying ourselves, transient?

Is it exhausting or refreshing?

Is it a good at all, something with form, or is it something intangible, some sort of orientation that guides us? Is it a rule or a principle? Is it proactive or reactive? Does it build us up or tear us apart? Does it kill us or make us new? Is it observational, participational, sacrificial, theological, eschatological, experiential, relational, formational, or transformational?

Is it planned or spontaneous?

Is it beyond us?

What

is

worship?

… Yes.

Simply, yes.

Today’s post is written by Geoff Twigg, Adjunct Professor at North Park University in Chicago. Geoff is a pastor, singer/songwriter, worship leader and ministry consultant, and serves the ECC as a member of the denomination’s Commission on Worship.

I have to admit it. I love Midwinter. Of course, I mean the Midwinter conference that just finished, the annual training event for Covenant personnel.

This year’s event was the fourth I’ve attended, and it’s been enjoyable each time. There are various reasons…

First, there is the Covenant’s collegiality. Prior to this I was a pastor in a sister denomination that had several churches within the state, and many within a few hours driving time. However, in fourteen years I got to know very few pastors and even fewer musicians and worship colleagues. Since 2008 I have spent time in the ECC’s East Coast Conference and recently moved into the Central Conference, and yet, when Midwinter comes around I’m among hundreds of friends. This is where the truth of our Facebook group‘s title is proven again; we really are Better Together.

Second, there’s an atmosphere of celebration, study and the pursuit of best practice that is simply inspiring. I thrive on that sense of edification, enthusiasm and encouragement – it feeds my soul.

Third and finally, I love the shared stories. These embody the richness that comes home with me every year. In anecdotes, testimonies and Words of Witness the far-off names and faces become familiar, three-dimensional and memorable.

From its earliest expressions, this movement of Mission Friends seems to have been about stories; I read them in the books by Karl A. Olsson, J. Irving Erickson, Glen V. Wiberg and many others. Midwinter participants continue this tradition – inviting me deeper into the narrative – by sharing what God is doing and how we are joining in the effort. In hearing those testimonies we draw closer to one another and to God’s story, in which we all have a part to play.

I love it.

Today’s post was written by Chris Logan, Pastor of Worship Arts at Community Covenant Church in Lenexa, KS.

A few weeks ago I had this killer rehearsal. I don’t mean that in the colloquial sense, I mean that it was really awful and I had images of being run out of the church after about our third note. Come Sunday, people came up to me afterwards very complimentary, people who had worshipped and wanted to thank me for our team’s hard work. I wanted to ask them if we’d really been in the same room together, but instead I politely thanked them and silently wondered if I needed to get my ears checked.

Things, evidently, are not always as they seem.

A week later we had another rough rehearsal, and come Sunday it again was feeling like it would be another one of those days where I try to explain to somebody through gritted teeth how much we appreciate their compliment. But I remember a moment in the middle of our worship set, very distinctly, when all of a sudden words came to me unbidden: “Am I really present?”

It dawned on me that I had somehow detached myself, from the team and from the music … and in doing so, from the Spirit at work in the room. And on confession of this in my head (I’m still singing during this whole inner dialogue), something about the gathering shifted. It became beautiful.

The music hadn’t changed; but I had.

I have this tendency to get so caught up in the minute details that I lose sight of the bigger picture, of why I’m there. After listening to the mp3 both weeks, I can say that the team did a great job; yes, the rehearsals were rough, but after they rehearsed they went home and practiced and really did pull off the music well. The difference seems to be all in my head, how much I was paying attention to God in the room. I spent a full Sunday and part of the next effectively absent because I let myself get psyched out.

One of the other pastors at my church likes to tell us to ‘move slowly through the room.’ It means that we need  to take the time with people who are in front of us, see them as people and not as an audience or as tools. It is the same on stage; we need to let ourselves, even as we stand in front of a mic, move slowly through the room, to practice the discipline of presence. As leaders of a spiritual flavor, we have to remember that things are not always as they seem.  We have to look deeper, see the things floating just under the surface of our own minds and of the people in front of us. The question is always, are we paying attention?

Are we really present?

Today’s post is written by Jo Anne Taylor, Director of Music and Worship at Bethlehem Covenant Church in Minneapolis, MN.

Several Christmases ago, my boss gave me a small box of chocolates. But this wasn’t just candy. “When the chocolates are gone,” she said, “keep the box on your desk. It won’t be empty. It holds a pause, that you can use whenever you need it. It will always be right there, in the box on your desk.”

This week, a worship leader in the Better Together group asked, “How many of you include intentional silence in your worship time?” and I remembered the first time I tried this, in a Lenten Wednesday prayer service.  After about 10 seconds, people started shuffling papers, squirming and coughing. Those ten seconds seemed like an eternity. Week after week, however, as we came to the time for silence, it began to grow and deepen. People welcomed the opportunity to rest in the quietness, to hold the pause that was offered.

In just over a week, many of us will meet in Chicago for the Midwinter Conference. There will be great teaching, plenty of learning opportunities, wonderful worship, and time to connect with others who serve in the Evangelical Covenant Church. May there also be an empty box waiting for each of you, if only a figurative one. Even if you are not planning to attend Midwinter in person, I hope you will connect to the webcasts and contribute your comments throughout the week. Wherever you are, may you know what it means to spend some time in stillness before the Lord, to observe the beauty and joy of a simple pause.

Today’s post is written by Geoff Twigg, Adjunct Professor at North Park University in Chicago. Geoff is a pastor, singer/songwriter, worship leader and ministry consultant, and serves the ECC as a member of the denomination’s Commission on Worship.

Eighteen years ago, I was looking for a break. I had a reasonable career in music, but it meant being away from home and family more than half of the time. The children were nine, seven and four, and my wife was carrying an unfair share of the load of parenting.

The break came when a church offered us a house and enough money to live on for a year. In exchange, we had to move to Pennsylvania and I would become ‘player/coach’ to the church’s worship team. I would lead by example, and share my enthusiasm with those around me. So, we went through the process of obtaining visas; as we were moving from England in a pre-9/11 world the process was exacting but not as tough as it would be today.

By the way, the sporting analogy they used for my job description was a decisive element. Not only did it appeal to my imagination as a sports fan, but it was the same analogy God used to confirm that I should stay in the US permanently.

Another great sporting analogy played itself out this week, and I’m trying to learn its lesson. Five years after we left England, Thierry Henry, a young French soccer player joined Arsenal FC, the team I support in London. After some minor changes to his positional play, he quickly became a star player and, eventually a legend. I loved to watch him play, and his team-mates loved playing alongside him.
After eight years at the club, he moved on, having scored 227 goals and broken many records for sporting achievements. These days he plays for the New York Red Bull in the MLS.

Last month they unveiled a statue outside the new Arsenal Stadium in Thierry’s honor. He attended the ceremony and shed a tear as he explained how much the club had come to mean to him. He had become a fan, he said, upon leaving the Arsenal, and looked back fondly upon his time there.

This week, they signed him again – just for a brief period, before he returns to play in New York – as during the African Cup they need some extra help. He played on Monday and scored the winning goal, a bright and charming moment in a slow and difficult game.
Thierry was positively glowing as they interviewed him after the match. Goal #228 was the first he had scored ‘as a fan’, and it meant more than almost any other. His enthusiasm was positively contagious, and you could tell he was humbled by the renewed success.

I’m still leading worship in the local church, and my calling can still be described in the same terms. What I learn from Thierry Henry, however, is that while my skills may enable me to be successful, it’s my attitude that’s truly contagious. Lord, let me ever be an enthusiastic, passionate follower of Christ.

Today’s post is written by Matt Nightingale, Director of Worship Ministries at Redeemer Covenant Church in Tulsa, OK.

Funny how a simple action can have such a profound impact. It was just about a year ago, in preparation for a workshop I was leading at Midwinter, that I created a Facebook group called “Better Together: ECC Worship Community.” It was just sort of an afterthought… I hoped that the workshop would help Covenant worship-types connect with each other; learn from each other; and share resources, ideas and encouragement with each other. I thought maybe a Facebook group would help us keep in touch with one another throughout the year when we couldn’t be together face-to-face.

Wow. This little group has blown up to over 200 people. We’ve laughed together, cried together, prayed together, celebrated together, complained together (not too often) and shared life together… as well as we can via a keyboard and a computer screen.

I’m a highly relational, sentimental kind of guy. As much as I look forward to what God will do in 2012, what I really love is a good look back. So I have a question for the Better Together crew… What are some of your favorite memories of the past year? Memorable conversations? Profound questions? Funny exchanges? Let’s hear a few stories and celebrate how God has worked among us.

And let’s look forward to Tuesday, January 31, when we will be together again, this time actually in the same room. Please make plans to join us for our first annual Better Together Lunch.

OK, it’s your turn.