Promote Worship

Sunday, January 29, 2012

4 Qualities of a Circumcised Worshiper

circumcised worshiper

Circumcision?

Wasn’t that dealt with once and for all by the early Church?

Yup it was.

But the subject didn’t end there.

It evolved.

In St. Paul’s writings, it subsequently took on a profound spiritual angle that I believe every worshiper and worship leader should look at closely…very closely.

The ‘spiritual’ circumcision or ‘circumcision of the heart’ leads to the practice of the following 4 sound qualities (Phil 3:3-16  and Colossians 2:10-12):

1. Worship by the Spirit of God

The first quality of a circumcised worshiper is his/her worship itself: it will be in and by the Spirit of God. The verses above deeply challenged me to make more room for the Spirit of God to have His say in the way I worship or lead worship. For that is the type of worshipers that God is looking for (John 4:23).

Is my worship really Spiritual? Or have I allowed it to become mindless routine, a matter of technique etc?

 

2. Boast in Christ Jesus

One unmistakable hallmark of St. Paul was that he was sold out for Jesus…I mean, we are talking about an absolutely Christ-consumed, Christ-saturated and Christ-centered individual!

It’s an incredible challenge today: Is Christ really my most valuable treasure, goal, boast and passion?

 

3. No confidence in the flesh

The circumcised worshiper’s security is in the Lord and not in this world. St. Paul further says the whole self formerly ruled by the flesh is replaced with a heart fixed on eternity. St. Paul lost a whole lot materially and yet considered it all as rubbish.

Again, it’s a great point to reflect upon: Is my confidence in Christ 100% and rock solid? Or do I still have one leg resting upon experience, ability, talent, money etc?

 

4. Desire for more of Jesus

St. Paul pressed on.

He was focused.

He knew his destination, the path to get there and stayed right on it…unswervingly.

Can I say something similar about myself? Do I still have the hunger to go further in my walk with God or am I content with the little I have? Thank God for His Word that keeps calling me to focus and refocus on Christ all the time.

 

How can we follow St. Paul’s example in our journey as a worshiper or worship leader?

Friday, January 20, 2012

6 More Handy Android Apps to Support Your Songwriting

best android music applications

It’s been a while since I blogged about songwriting or Android, so in this post, I’ll cover some of the Android apps I’ve recently discovered that would be useful for songwriters in particular. If you haven’t checked out the previous posts on this topic, you can do so now by clicking here and here.

 

Dictionary - Merriam-Webster

Dictionary - Merriam-WebsterGreat app to get word ideas when searching for alternative words to use in your lyrics. The app provides synonyms, antonyms, example sentences, audio pronunciations and more to help refine your lyrics.

 

Thounds

ThoundsThis is the app for the Thounds community – a cool service to record your musical ideas, share them with others and collaborate together to create songs and music. You can also export your creations to soundcloud by connecting your Soundcloud account with Thounds.

 

Soundcloud

SoundCloudSoundcloud itself has a neat android app to access your Soundcloud account on the go. By setting your account to “private”, you can use it as your personal cloud drive for your song ideas. If you’re the social type, you can always use the app to share your creations on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare too.

 

Catch Notes

Catch NotesA feature-rich app to jot down lyrics and record melody ideas with automatic cloud syncing for anywhere access to your songs. You can use private and public streams to keep your ideas personal or share them when co-writing with someone else.

 

RhymeBrain

RhymeBrainRhymeBrain has a database of 2.6 million words to find out rhymes for words that you input. Nice to have an app like this when looking for rhyming ideas.

 

Bible.is

BibleWhile YouVersion is probably what you’re using as your mobile Bible, there’s no harm in looking around for alternatives. The Android app from Bible.is facilitates reading, listening and check this out, seeing the Bible too by integrating videos from the Jesus Film project! Great tool to kick-start song ideas from the scriptures.

 

 

Monday, January 16, 2012

How About Jimi Hendrix in Your Worship Team?

jimi-hendrix

You’d have read recently that Jimi Hendrix was named the best guitar player in history by Rolling Stone magazine in a top-10 list put together by guitar players and music experts. The list has some expected names like Eddie Van Halen, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton etc. though the sequencing didn’t seem so right to me. You see, I have an awfully subjective mind and it’s unable to understand why Brian May, Django Reinhardt or Joe Satriani didn’t make it to the top-10 either!

Some of the reasons for giving the No. 1 spot to Jimi Hendrix were innovation in rock music, use of the whammy bar, playing the guitar with his teeth, popularizing the wah wah pedal and so on.

 

Got me wondering.

 

What if we looked out for the best guitarist or best any kind of instrumentalist for that matter in worship music? What would be the reasons to pick someone as the ‘best worship musician’? Would we consider only:

Musical skills?

Musical knowledge?

Creativity?

Ability to play different musical styles?

 

Or would we look for more...

 

You know, stuff like…

Disciplined prayer life?

Love for scripture?

Humility?

Servant heart?

Team player?

 

If you were putting together a worship team, what would you look for?

Would someone like Jimi make it?

 

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Worship Freebies (Rend Collective, Graham Kendrick, Matt Papa, Hillsong…)

freesign

This list of freebies has MP3 download of songs by Kristian Stanfill, Rend Collective Experiment, Aaron Keys, Jared Anderson etc. Also get an entire album of 13 songs by All About Worship, 2 video tutorials (Hillsong, MattRedman) and more. Check it out!

Album:

Other Songs:

Backgrounds:

Worship Song Tutorial:

  • The Wonderful Cross (Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman) by Brian Wahl.

 

 

  • Forever Reign (HillSong). Piano tutorial by Matt McCoy.

 

 

Hope you like these…to stay updated when the next list of freebies is posted, take a few moments and subscribe using THIS LINK, it’s free!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

A Music Player for Musicians to Help Learn and Practice Songs

slowmp3

Musician who have challenges identifying the chords/notes of a song should check out this neat application. It’s a java based music player that packs some unconventional features to help you go beyond simply listening to a song. It’s lightweight, doesn’t even require an installation as it’s an executable JAR file – so all you have to do is simply double-click the JAR file to get going. Sounds good? Read on!

This app for musicians is called SlowMP3, but it also plays WAV files. Once opened, it presents a simple single window interface with basic music player controls at the top and transcribing functions at the bottom. The wave spectrum of the MP3/WAV file fills the rest of the screen in between.

Use the File-Open menu to open a song and you’re on your way. Hit the ‘play’ button on top to listen to the song. Now let’s cover the musician specific features:

1. Use the “Speed” controller placed at the top right hand side to slow down the playback speed – useful to figure out the notes of a solo.

2. Use the “Transpose” controller next to the “Speed” controller to transpose the file up to 6 steps lower or 5 steps higher.

3. You can use the mouse to drag and select portions of the song and SlowMP3 will play the selection as a continuous loop, so you listen to complex parts of a song repeatedly.

4. Once the “Transcribe” button is switched on, the virtual piano keyboard will highlight the notes being played, which will help figure out the chords. This works best when combined with feature no. (1).

SlowMP3 is also cross-platform, working on Windows, Linux and Mac. Here’s the free download link: http://www.rinki.net/pekka/slowmp3/

 

Do you know any other free app that has similar or better features for musicians?