03/07/10: Logan's Worship Blog

Each week, this blog includes:

I. Songs for the 1050 service at the heights

II. Stories behind those songs

III. Scriptures for those songs

I. Set List

You are Here (Logan Walter)

Changed (Logan Walter)

Call to Action (Logan Walter)

You are Good (Logan Walter)

Bread of Life (Logan Walter - never been played! wrote it this week! yikes.)

II. Song Stories

1. You are Here - I'll write about the theology of this song in a later post. For now, all you need to know is that this song has been played in space, thanks to our good friend, astronaut Shane Kimbrough, and his lovely wife, Robbie, who chose the music for Day 9 on the international space station. It is probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to us. You can hear Shane give us a shout out from space at 1:02 on this YouTube clip: Dutton in Space

2. Changed - Before we step onto stage for a time of worship, I often pray that we will simply encounter God's presence, because I know that if we truly encounter the Living God, our lives will be changed. It seems elementary, but how many times do we leave church with changed hearts and minds,? How many times do we allow the face of God to burn a new imprint of Holiness upon our souls? Most of the time we leave the same way that we came: thinking about lunch, craving a nap, dreading Monday morning. We find out in Isaiah 6 that a true encounter with God demands better of us: Isaiah 6:1-8

3. Call to Action - Part of being on staff at "The Heights" is having accountability, which we have with John Wills (executive pastor) and Dave Rogers (too many job titles to list). We respond to questions about our lives as we read through books, such as "Jim & Casper Go to Church." In this book, Jim Henderson (a pastor) visits several American churches with a guy named Matt Casper, who is an atheist.

Throughout the book, Casper keeps asking Jim (and this is a paraphrase): "Jim, this Jesus I've heard about and read about...He doesn't just believe in something, he does something about His beliefs. He heals the sick, feeds the hungry...Jim, where's the "call to action" ** in the church?" Last year, our church focussed on "Serve," reaching out the the communities around us. So the song was inspired both by the book and what was happening in our church community.

**Jim visited our church this summer and we had the honor of playing this song for him. He loved it! And he said, "Casper's a total music buff; he will be so stoked to find out that he helped inspire a rock song."

4. You are Good - We played this one for the first time last week, and nobody filed a complaint, so we are playing it again. Do you want to know a little worship leading secret? There's a formula to introducing a song. It goes like this:

a. week one: introduce the song

b. week two: if the song goes well, play it again to familiarize the congregation with the lyrics and melody

c. week three: give it a rest. nobody wants to hear the same stuff three weeks in a row

d. week four: play it again, in hopes that the church will be able to internalize the song.

Ok, ok. There's not really a formula, and if there is, I don't follow it very well. Worship is not meant to be formulaic, but that doesn't mean that worship leaders can't use reason. Common sense is of God, and as people of God, we are called to use Common Sense well! Dave Rogers, Heights staff member and accountability partner, once told me that people need to hear something three times before they remember it. This is another unofficial statistic, but I usually adhere to it. That's why we don't introduce a song at a church camp, unless we can play it at least three times throughout the week.

Great. Now that I've told you the secret formula, I don't want to use it anymore. "You are Good" next week. Three times in a row. Deal with it.

5. Bread of Life - I've never done this before, but I am going to have the congregation be seated and introduce this song to them, just me and the acoustic guitar. The band hasn't even heard it!

It's inspired by the 19th century hymn, "Break Thou The Bread of Life"** and chapter two of Wayne Grudem's "Systematic Theology," which my small group discussed this week. Some songs, such as "You are Good," are simply meant to be songs of praise. Other worship songs have a function (ex: "You are Here" and "Welcome Here" function as a Call to Worship). "Break the Bread" has a specific function in a worship set. It's meant to be played before the sermon, as we ask God to speak to us through His Word. In the spirit of the hymns, the music is simple and singable. Very simple. In fact, don't get your hopes up. It's the most simple song I've ever written.

But the words are True:

Break the bread of life, o Lord

break the bread to me

as you broke the bread, o Lord

that day beside the sea

throughout your word i seek you Lord

my spirit longs for thee

so break the bread of life, o Lord

break the bread to me

bless your holy word, o Lord

bless your word to me

as you blessed the bread, o Lord

that day by galilee

then all my chains shall fall away

and i shall find my peace

so bless your holy word o Lord

bless your word to me

Bread of life

You are the bread of life

you became flesh, my righteousness

Jesus you are

Bread of life

You are the bread of life

you became flesh, my righteousness

Jesus you are

throughout your word i seek you Lord

my spirit longs for thee

so break the bread of life, o Lord

break the bread to me

Break the bread to me

Break the bread to me

**I've actually never heard "Break Thou the Bread of Life." The lyrics were written at the end of the second chapter in Grudem's book, so I wrote some words and music, using the lyrical themes from the hymn.

III. Song Scriptures

1. You are Here - I

Psalm 99:3

Let them praise your great and awesome name—
he is holy (set apart).

Isaiah 7:14

14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (God with us).

2. Changed -

Isaiah 6:5

5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

3. Call to Action -

Matthew 25:40

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

4. You are Good -

Psalm 25:8

8 Good and upright is the LORD;
therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.

5. Bread of Life -

John 6:35

35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

02/28/10: Logan's Worship Blog

Each week, this blog includes:

I. Songs for the 1050 service at the heights

II. Stories behind those songs

III. Scriptures for those songs

I. Set List

Welcome Here (Logan Walter)

O For a Thousand Tongues (Charles Wesley)

You are Good (Logan Walter)

Doxology (Thomas Ken)

This is My Father's World (Maltbie Davenport Babcock)

II. Song Stories

1. Welcome Here - I wrote this song as a call to worship. The original title was actually "Call to Worship" until we realized that 57 other worship bands had stolen that title before we had a chance to use it. Can you believe they would do that? I guess it's not a sin, but i mean... Anyway, my original musical vision for this song involved shakers, hammer dulcimers and all-acoustic instruments. That's why there's all this mountain imagery: "Let the Spirit descend like rain, washing over the thirsty plains. Let it fall down the mountain side, pouring out from the source of Life, yodelay yodelay yodelay" Sounds like a mountain song doesn't it? But the guys in the band had other plans for the production, and I'm glad they did. We all decided to go for a more epic, rocking sound...like the Mew song "Snow Brigade"!!!! It's always good when all five guys in the band agree that a particular song by a particular band is...ROCKING. "Welcome Here" doesn't sound exactly like "Snow Brigade," that would be cheating. Some of you may not even be able to hear the similarities, but as we were working up "Welcome Here," we definitely listened to this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4yXqVFw3Vo

2. O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing - My parents raised me in the Baptist church. Yes, I am a Baptist. Most of you know that by now. What you may not know is that my mom and dad grew up Methodist and met at a Methodist university in Abilene called "McMurry." My mom was even a youth minister at a Methodist church for a while! My my mom's mom (grandmommy), who is one of my spiritual heroes, still attends a methodist church. And while she admits that the Methodist church is not perfect (what denomination is?), she has always spoken very highly of Charles Wesley. This is one of the many reasons that I am fascinated by Wesleyan hymns. Check out this backstory that I found on the world wide web:

Charles Wesley was suffering a bout of pleurisy in May, 1738, while he and his brother were studying under the Moravian scholar Peter Bohler in London. At the time, Wesley was plagued by extreme doubts about his faith. Taken to bed with the sickness on May 21 Wesley was attended by a group of Christians who offered him testimony and basic care, and he was deeply affected by this. He read from his Bible and found himself deeply affected by the words, and at peace with God. Shortly his strength began to return. He wrote of this experience in his journal and counted it as a renewal of his faith; when his brother John had a similar experience on the 24th, the two men met and sang a hymn Wesley had written in praise of his renewal.

One year from the experience, Wesley was taken with the urge to write another hymn, this one in commemoration of his renewal of faith. This hymn took the form of an 18-stanza poem, beginning with the opening lines 'Glory to God, and praise, and love,/Be ever, ever given' and was published in 1740 and entitled 'For the anniversary day of one's conversion'. The seventh verse, which begins, 'O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing', and which now is invariably the first verse of a shorter hymn recalls the words of Peter Bohler who said, 'Had I a thousand tongues I would praise Him with them all.' The hymn was placed first in John Wesley's A Collection of Hymns for the People Called Methodists published in 1780. It appeared first in every (Wesleyan) Methodist hymnal from that time until the publication of Hymns and Psalms in 1983.

3. You are Good - This will be our first time to play this song at The Heights, and I am very excited about it, as I have indicated by adding five exclamation points to the end of this sentence!!!!! It's a song that is inspired by the psalms. Yes, yes most worship songs should be inspired by the psalms, but here's what i mean: 2/3 of the psalms are songs of praise, 1/3 of the psalms are songs of lament. The catalogue of worship songs in the world today does not reflect this ratio. A worship song of lament is about one in fifty (according to...a survey i just did in my head), and most of those songs of lament are downright depressing. That's not the point of the psalms. In the Bible, even the psalms of lament end with a note of trust. Take Psalm 44 for example: In verse 24, the psalmist says "you hide your face and forget our misery," yet only two verses later that same songwriter is singing about God's "unfailing love" (v. 26). So, in the spirit of the psalms, "You are Good" is both a song of lament and a song of trust. As in - I trust that you will like it, if not, I will lament. Kidding!

I am kidding.

4. Doxology - This is right up there with "Jesus Paid it All" as one of my favorite worship songs of all time. Why? It creates a confident choir of believers anywhere we play it. It's simple, it's scriptural, it's beautiful, and... that's pretty much it. those three things. Here's another tidbit from the world wide web (also known as wikipedia...don't hate):

This hymn was written in 1674 by Thomas Ken, a priest in the Church of England. This hymn was originally the final verse of two longer hymns entitled "Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun", and "Glory to thee, my God, this night", written by Ken for morning and evening worship, respectively. It is usually sung to the tune "Old 100th", but also to "Duke Street" by John Hatton, "Lasst uns erfreuen", and "The Eighth Tune" by Thomas Tallis, among others. Many Mennonite churches, especially those composed primarily of ethnic Mennonites, sing a longer and more highly embellished version of this doxology to the tune "Dedication Anthem" by Samuel Stanley. This version more fully utilizes the a cappella harmonizing for which Mennonite services are known.

Ken wrote this hymn at a time when the established church believed only Scripture should be sung as hymns, with an emphasis on the Psalms. Some considered it sinful and blasphemous to write new lyrics for church music, akin to adding to the Scriptures. In that atmosphere, Ken wrote this and several other hymns for the boys at Winchester College, with strict instructions that they use them only in their rooms, for private devotions. Ironically, the last stanza has come into widespread use as the Doxology, perhaps the most frequently used piece of music in public worship. At Ken’s request, the hymn was sung at his funeral, fittingly held at sunrise.

5. This is My Father's World - There's a disciple now happening at our church this weekend and Neil McClendon has been preaching the Word to our beloved youth. He will be sharing with us on Sunday morning and has requested that we close the service with this hymn, which I have never played before but must have heard at some point as a child, because I can mysteriously sing the melody and many of the words by heart; this is officially the longest sentence in blog history. Apparently, the writer's wife found these lyrics in a book of poems after her husband had died. This I know, because the internet tells me so:

When Babcock lived in Lockport, he took frequent walks along the Niagra Escarpment to enjoy the overlook's panoramic vista of upstate New York scenery and Lake Ontario, telling his wife he was "going out to see the Father's world". She published a poem by Babcock shortly after his death, entitled This is My Father's World. Now sung as a well-known hymn, its verses are:

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; his hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world, the birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white, declare their maker's praise.

This is my Father's world, he shines in all that's fair; in the rustling grass I hear him pass; he speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world. O let me ne'er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

This is my Father's world: why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad

III. Scriptures for the songs

1. Welcome Here -

"Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him." (Luke 8:40)

2. O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing -

“I heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands.” (Revelation 5:11)

3. You are Good -

"great and abundant is Your stability and faithfulness." -lamentations 3:23b

4. Doxology -

I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. (Psalm 34:1)

5. This is My Father's World -

Psalm 33: 5 "He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love." and Psalm 50:12b "For the world is mine, and all that is it."