Pilgrim Heart

Worship Interns

Just using my blog for some free advertising!

Our church is looking to recruit some part time music and worship interns for the coming academic year. I will be heading up the programme; if you're new to this site why not click on worship in the catagories sidebar to get a taster?

If you know anyone who might be interested point them this way! Full details are here.

Rock and/or Roll

I think this advances the debate on the use of music in worship...

The Spiritual Power of Music?

On Sunday afternoon I caught a Radio 4 programme about music and spiritual experience in the Christian, Jewish and Muslin traditions.

As a firm believer in the spiritual nature of music, as something created by God to better enable mankind to relate to and communicate with him, I found it very interesting!

You can listen to it here.

Chris Tomlin on Song Writing

Here's Chris Tomlin speaking on song-writing: note the number of times he uses the word "respond" - excellent! The heart of worship is a response to a revelation of God.

And I discovered how to embed too! - It's easy when you read the instructions!

["Instructions are for people who don't know what they are doing" - Bob the Builder. Er... that would be me then!]

New Worship Blog?

I'm thinking of starting an additional blog dedicated to helping the Church in worship.

What areas do you think it should cover?

Let Him Sing!

Do you feel great. Sing. (Jas 5:13b MSG)

Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. (Jas 5:13b ESV)

There's a lot of singing going on in our house at the moment - people are getting excited about Christmas. Yesterday Ruth and I spent 40 minutes in the check-out queue at Tesco and I whistled Christmas songs for a while before breaking into song - much to the embarrassment of my wife and the amusement of the check-out girl (not sure whether it was the singing or the embarrassment that she found amusing!).

For those for whom the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus means that by faith they have inherited the eternal resurrection life of God, our natural disposition is one of joy: whilst we may experience other states in the Christian walk, joy is the place to which our Father returns us again and again.

I get the sense that what we are experiencing in our house right now is what God intends for his children all through the year - that if you are happy, sing! The world would be a better place is the children of God stopped suppressing their natural inclination to praise and opened their mouths and let it out!

Summer School Nearly Over

With just 3 more hours of lectures to go (we finish Thursday lunchtime) I would like to introduce the School of Worship Summer School Class to you.

From left to right: Paul (Cardiff, Wales), Angela (Grand Rapids, USA), Paul (Coventry, England) Marilyn (Bergen, Norway), Justin (Nadiad, India), Debora (Narbourgh, England), Jon (Wakefield England), Chirag (Nadiad, India) and Me.

It has been an absolute joy to spend the past 5 days with these wonderful people, we have had some great times in the Word and in worship, and I feel less like I need a holiday than I have every felt just before going on holiday. I think I will still go though...

School Report

... just a quicky to say Summer School is going great. I will try to remember to take my camera tomorrow and get a pic of the delegates! Today we played, "Where's the altar?" (see Heb 9:3-4)

Summer School

I'm in the final stages of preparation for the School of Worship's Summer School which starts this Sunday afternoon. I will be teaching the Studies in Biblical Worship course that I thought over 4 weekends this past Winter, but all in the space of 5 days.

Now the course isn't for those who flunked first time around! In fact we have a small but very international list of delegates, with Norway, USA, India, England, Wales and Yorkshire all represented.

All that remains to be seen is if I can talk for 5 days without (a) losing my voice, (b) sending the delegates to sleep, (c) sending myself to sleep!

A New Song

A new song is a new creation – songs are produced by an impulse of creativity that is rooted in the fact that we are created in the image of the Creator, therefore we are creative.

No other creature on earth composes music or creates art: though birds may have the ability to make beautiful noises, and chimps the ability to splash paint on a page in a manner reminiscent of a human artist, they do not have the ability to “create” in the true spiritual sense of the word. Neither should we think that, as believers, our creative impulse finds its source within the human soul: our new song is sung in response to a merciful act of God.

The New Song in Scripture is a song sung out of experiencing redemption. It is the soundtrack of redemptive history, breaking into full voice in response to the miraculous intervention of our Saviour. If you are saved, then this is your song (and you can tell everybody, this is your song!): every song you sing to your Saviour will be a new song because it is sung out of your experience of his saving power in your life.