Subvergent

Finally...The New Album!

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:25:00 +0000

After more months than I'd care to share with all of you, I am pleased to finally unveil the new album from one of my worship bands, Waving Not Drowning. The record, called Responding, is WND's debut and is the very first studio effort from a Journey band. To buy the record, simply click on the artwork or go here. It should also be available within the next few days on iTunes and a few other digital retailers.

Please buy it and/or link to it on your blog, and I'd welcome any reviews, especially from folks who aren't Journey-ites. Take a listen and share your thoughts. I'll post more about the album, the recording process, the great friendship I've made with my co-producer and mixer, Jacob Detering at Redpill Studio, and other such interesting info in the days to come.

I've disappointed Essie once again

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:20:00 +0000

Not surprisingly, I have disappointed the most influential woman in my life over the age of 32. Her name is Essie. She is my grandmother.

I say "not surprisingly" because, let's face it, I've disappointed her thousands of times over the course of my life, including, but certainly not limited to:

Kicking my sisters
Making under-arm fart noises when company came over
Making under-knee fart noises after being told not to make under-arm fart noises when company came over
The now infamous "I hate that umpire" meltdown I had during a little league game
Stealing that road sign and putting it in the back seat of my car...ripping the roof liner, then "hiding" it in my closet and trying to ignore the flashing orange light emitting underneath the doorway. Those signs are much bigger than they look at 60mph, by the way.
Choosing to go to New Jersey for grad school
Moving to St. Louis instead of back to Adel after seminary

You get the idea. Believe me there are others I could list. And it's not like she's hostile toward some of the ideas, like moving to St. Louis or going to seminary. It's just that she's not hidden the fact that her clear preference in those scenarios is for me and mine to be closer to her. She's been disappointed.

Like I said, it's not surprising that I've disappointed her. What is surprising this time though is that she is disappointed regarding one of her very own great-grand children...the newest one, no less. And it's not simply a matter of her just wanting to "see the little booger" more often that's caused the disappointment. Since she lives about a 1000 miles away, that's to be understood.

It's the name. She's very vocal that she doesn't like the name "Beckett."

"Where'd that come from?" she asks.

And asks.

And the truth is, we really don't have a compelling answer. We don't have a "It was Melissa's grandfather's name," or "It's the name of my mentor and life coach," or "In Hebrew it means...". It actually doesn't mean anything particularly poignant in English. Best we can tell, it is probably related to "Bee keeper," and is sort of an occupational name, not unlike Smith or Fisher or something like that. No, the truth is, we just like the name Beckett...a lot, and that seems like it ought to count for something since we'll be using it...a lot.

But Essie, the woman who raised me like a mother since 6-years-old, the woman who despite all those previous disappointments still loves me with the kind of love only a mother can have, isn't keen on the name. And that actually means a lot to me, coming from a woman named "Essie." She seems to be saying, "Take it from me. Don't stick the kid with a name he'll never like."

But what she hasn't considered yet is that my whole life, from the time I was able to talk, I've called her "Essie." Not "Granny" or "Gramma" or "MeMa" or whatever other nicknames might be expected. I have called her, from pretty much day one, "Essie." And while it may not be the most popular name to name a kid, I've always loved it, and I call her that because that is SO who she is that no other name could ever possibly do. She is Essie. There is no other name worth considering.

I suspect when she sees this little booger, she'll feel similarly about Beckett.

He's here!!

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:14:00 +0000

Well, folks. I'm a little late in posting, but I am very pleased to introduce you to the newest addition to the Lindsey family:

Dylan Beckett Lindsey arrived at 1:31 pm, Wednesday, November 21, 2007, weighing in at 8 lbs. 7 0z. and 21 inches long.

We call him Beckett.

As yo can tell from the pic, everyone, including Eli (now 27 months) is pretty happy to have this latest gift from our loving Father.

BTW, this means Mel and I win the contest, which means we get to keep the $1 Million cash prize and the home version of "Life."

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:26:00 +0000

Well there is plenty to write about during this season of life. As a pastor to a large (and growing) congregation here in the STL, I'm used to taking the jackhammer to our most concrete plans about every 3 months. It can cause a lot of confusion and chaos, but for the most part this kind of growth and organizational shift means life is never boring, the Spirit is always moving, and we are continuing to be a living, breathing Gospel-centered church, not a museum.

So with that, I'm announcing here, officially, that I am taking on a new role at The Journey, and I'm pretty darn stoked about it. It breaks down like this:

I am now the Campus Pastor of our Tower Grove location. What does this mean? Well a lot of things, but I'll give you the basics. The Journey is a multi-site church, meaning it is one church with many locations. Right now we have three locations: Hanley Road, West County and Tower Grove. In the next year, there will probably be 4-5 sites. What we (elders) realized recently, was that our idea of being multi-site is the right idea. It fits the St. Louis area really well, it increases the odds that Journeyers will be able to invite their unchurched (or even anti-church)friends to services near where they live without being swallowed up in a ginormous room.

But what we started to notice is that doing multi-site wasn't what it could be for us. We weren't really making the impact we'd anticipated in the neighborhoods where we "live" as a church. I mean we were continuing to grow attendence-wise, but something wasn't adding up. We realized that what we were doing is simply replicating worship services all over town, and while that's certainly a part of what we will always do, and while our services are a huge front door for people encountering the Gospel, we are called to do and be much more than worship services.

So we're taking multi-site up about 10 notches, we're tossing all our chips in, and we're going to start putting roots down in the neighborhoods we serve. The first step for doing this is getting a new leadership structure in place for each campus, and then changing the way we do everything (from classes to forums to serving the poor to you name it) so that we consider everything through the multi-site lens.

So, I'm now the Campus Pastor at Tower Grove, which means I basically become a pastor to an 1,100-person congregation and find myself in charge of the use of our four buildings, and overseeing all the ministries housed there. Within the next 6-months, basically everything that we do as a church now will be done specifically at most or all of the campuses, but tailored to each specific campus and led by peeps dedicated to serving that campus and that neighborhood.

Make sense?

Anyway, that means I will no longer function as the Worship Pastor at The Journey. That job has been split into two jobs: worship director and production director. The worship director will handle all things music, including training new musicians and worship leaders for all campuses. The production director will basically handle production on the global scale (meaning across campuses) and will train and resource staff and volunteers at each campus. He will also manage all the equipment and purchasing and such for all campuses.

The cool part is, I'll still get to lead worship at my campus and will still have my hand/brain in what happens in our services, but I will also get to teach more, as well as being more focused in the living out of my call to be a pastor to people. In a word, I'm excited about it. In two words, I'm damn excited about it!

Don't tease me like that!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:44:00 +0000

Oh, if only it were true!

Interesting thoughts about The Journey...

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:09:00 +0000

Here's a blog by a guy who visited The Journey for the first time this past Sunday. He's not a Christian, but enjoys visiting different churches from time to time and doing "anthropological observation." While I obviously disagree with the theological take home of his post, I find his thoughts fascinating. I also find it interesting that he picked up on something being very different about the community of folks he experienced Sunday.

BTW, the "Mike" who was leading the music was actually me. And BJ was the accordion player.

Thank God! Keller wrote a book!

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:24:00 +0000

Here it is, folks. Tim Keller finally wrote a book, and it looks to be a good one. If you don't know who Keller is, please get to know him. Go here and/or here, and for good measure check out practically any sermon preached at a Gospel-centered missional church in the last five years and you're probably hearing 90% Keller...regardless of who's preaching.

Eli's Favorite Video

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:15:00 +0000

OK, so I haven't mentioned my family a lot on the blog so far, but I felt compelled to give the world a glimpse into our lives, particularly into the life of my awesome and incredibly handsome 2-year-old, Eli. He's the best kid a parent could ever want, and Melissa (Mel for short) and I agree that he has such a quirky, fun, sweet personality already.

The Lindseys don't really watch a lot of TV, and never have since Eli's been on the scene. Some of it is by our choice to do other things with him and not let the TV be a babysitter (although I paid enough for the thing that it ought to do something else besides televate!). But I really think Eli's just one of those kids that prefers people and certain toys over TVs or videos. Except one video. One very specific video found, as far as I know, only on youtube. So I'm posting Eli's favorite video, which he must watch at least 3 times a day, below. BUT...

I have to offer a brief explanation before you call my parenting skills completely into question. First, let me say that I love my son and want the best for him. Now that that's out of the way...the deal with this video is that Eli LOVES Bobcats. Not the animal, mind you, but the semi-heavy machinery (known technically as either a skid steer or front end loader) kind of Bobcat. He loves to look at them, watch them, pretend he's driving one, talk about them, sing about them...whatever. Get the picture? OK, so since we unfortunately live in a world where not everyone owns and operates a Bobcat on a daily basis, the Bobcat sighting has become a huge deal around our house. But, according to Eli, the sightings are uncomfortably too few and far between. So what's a dad to do? Youtube of course.

So I searched for bobcat on youtube. It came back with a bunch of wildlife videos and a couple instructional videos on how to operate Bobcats that in Eli's opinion did not capture the real essence of this multi-purpose dynamo (read: terribly boring videos). So I searched for "bobcat driving". And that opened up a treasure chest of video happiness for me and the boy.

Apparently, Bobcats are very versatile machines that, when used totally inappropriately, can result in lots of driving fun. Thanks to youtube, I've seen Bobcats doing all sorts of tricks that are probably illegal in most states. Since this discovery, I've done all kinds of searches on Bobcats: "bobcat fun", "bobcat spins", "bobcat spinning", even "bobcat mishap" (which is a close second in our book). But the best search of all, according to Eli, was "bobcat freestyle" which led to this gem, which is of course, his favorite. He calls it "Bobcat music," and what intersting music it is. Enjoy, and watch out for the F-bomb about 3 minutes in.

Best Worship Disc I've Heard In A Long Time

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:24:00 +0000

Obviously, I love worship music. It's makes up a decent chunk of what I call my job. But I don't listen to a whole lot of what the music industry tells me is worship music. Not knocking any artists in particular or getting into all that, but I just don't listen to a lot of "worship" music because 1) it generally all sounds the same and 2) it's generally not connected to the church in any way.

So it is with some shock and great delight that I get to hopefully turn you on to the best project of church music I've heard in a long time. The album is called Before the Throne of God Above, and is produced by my friend Mike Cosper. Mike is the worship/arts pastor at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, and many of the artists there are highlighted on this project.

I'm not going to do the whole review thing here because frankly I don't have the time to. But I will spend a little time telling what I like about this record.

It's like a breath of fresh air in the world of Nashville pseudo-alt pop that you hear on Christian radio (and therefore at most churches "daring" to do anything new or relevant).
It's just got great songwriting and execution from the players and singers.
It's very well produced without being too gimmicky.
The songs are tastefully done and for the most part can easily be translated into many congregational contexts.
The instrumentation is more rootsy and eclectic, but without that defining the album as a niche or overly stylized production.

My favorite tracks (right now) are the amazing "All I Have is Yours" (sung with subtle power by Rebecca Bales and with excellent guitar work by Cosper) and "Lead Us Back" (on which vocalist Brooks Ritter's offers one of the most intense and purposeful vocal performances I've heard in a long time). "Lead Us Back" is a new hymn written by Ritter and another Sojourn member, and it captures the lure of idols in our lives and the reality that our hearts are really idol-making factories, and shows a deep theological perspective rooted in the thinking of Jack Miller and Dick Keyes.

I wholeheartedly recommend this album to any and all who want to hear some great theology and excellent musicianship. Sojourn is making in-roads with artists in Louisville in ways that few churches are willing to even try. Mike and his crew are doing great things there and this album just highlights that.

Driscoll's New Book Out Soon

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 02:30:00 +0000

Mark Driscoll has a new book coming out in Feb 2008. Co-authored with Gerry Breshears, whom I met briefly at the Continuous Worship Conference earlier this month, Mark promises it is bettter than anything else he's published. Here's more on it from his blog:

It will be titled Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions. I am really excited about this book since it is my first hard-bound book and is by far better than anything else I have published to date. Additionally, my friends at Crossway have been great to work with. They are aiming for 50,000 sales the first year, which is a big deal and would put the book on the New York Times Bestseller list but, alas, nowhere near the level of all the books on flying people and the end times. This book is also the first in an entire line of books called Re:Lit (Resurgence Literature). To help get the books sales started, we’ve done two things for you and anyone else you can help me get the word out to.

One, we have created a new website where you will find more details about the
book: http://www.vintagejesus.net/

Second, we have a special pre-release special going that you’ll want to take advantage of. The first 1,000 people to pre-order Vintage Jesus via the link to Crossway at http://www.vintagejesus.net/ will receive the following:

a 35% discount
a free PDF copy of the book via email months before the book is published for your reading and blogging
a signed copy of the book by Dr. Breshears and me; we are flying to Chicago in January to spend a whole day with pen in hand

Live from St. Louis! Part 2 - Shaun Groves

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:06:00 +0000

All I can say about Shaun's talk is...wow! This guy brought it, seriously. I confess that I don't know a whole lot about his music. I've only gotten to know the little that I do know about him over the last couple months as Abandoned approached.

But dude, this guy is a teacher and passionate about apparently everything in his life, from music to changing diapers. For a more comprehensive live blog capture go here. Here are some of my thoughts inspired by Shaun's talk.

Isaiah 6:4,5 for an idea of the awesomeness of worshiping God, knowing our place, like the seraphim who covered their eyes, unworthy to look upon God's glory; covered their feet because their feet were unclean ( a confession of uncleanliness).

The hot coals of forgiveness (thus the pic above) that only Jesus offers, the forgiveness that can obliterate everything, a forgiveness so comprehensive that it is, in a sense, dangerous. We tend to play around with our forgiveness, to take it for granted, or ignore it. And when we do that, we forget God's greatness and God's holiness. And of course we tend to minimize our own failures and sin and depravity.

Shaun walked through many of the Greek and Hebrew words for biblical worship. The basic idea is that worship is not just music, that it is being a slave to Christ, being a slave and a son at the same time. Good stuff.

Here's my concern, though, and it's similar to my concern with Sally's talk: it's easy to for people to knock the church because it's really "knockable." Everybody is saying that church sucks and it's all our fault and it's definitely not all about music. But it just sounds like it's too easy to knock it, and much harder to be in it and to know it like family and change it from the inside. Is church growth wrong? Isn't there a possibility that church growth can be a symptom of a healthy church? Is spending money on technology bad? Is singing every week bad?

At least Shaun acknowledges, in his own words, that "mixing ministry and income can be a tricky thing." I guess I'm in that dilemma a bit. It's easy to critique it from the outside and expose all the flaws of the church and then high-tail it out of there...I just don't want that to be the final word.

Live from St. Louis!

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:06:00 +0000

So a couple weeks ago I was blogging from a worship conference in Seattle, with keynote addresses by Harold Best.

This week I'm back home in St. Louis. Just spoke earlier this morning and it went well. Brad Andrews followed and now Sally Morgenthaler's up.

Sally's asking "What is real in the church? What box do we have worship in?" Generally, in all our worship thinking and tweaking, we are simply rearranging the furniture or the color of the carpet, not changing the location.

She says we are co-creators of reality with God, and we have to start being really creative and think outside the box in terms of how we're doing worship. She takes Labberton's idea and says that biblical worship that finds God will also find our neighbor.

Sally's journey over the last few years has involved an awareness that in some unintended ways she contributed to the disconnect between church and culture in her book Worship Evangelism that she decided to "disappear" from the church subculture. Actually, she said it sort of happened when she saw Worship Evangelism at a garage sale. She began to respond, negatively, to her own book. While she was critiquing seeker sensitive services in that book, somehow the general response by worship leaders was simply to shift around the style of music or the look of the sanctuary. It went from being seeker sensitive to flat out self-centered.

Worship is about realigning use with God so that we can join Him in what He is doing. It is not about us; it's about God. Can worship be saved (from the trappings of worship)?

She goes through lots of stats and numbers that paint the dim picture of the "State of the Church." It doesn't look good, let me tell you, but then that's really no surprise. She seems to be emphasizing not just missional churches, but almost saying missional can't really happen in the "old" models of church. I'm not sure I buy it comprehensively, but I definitely agree with her about our tendencies to develop (perfect them really) ruts.

My questions: So what does this mean for the biblical model of church, with elders/pastors, deacons? The call for house churches (exclusively) seems to swap one system for a different one. And as for missional strategy, aren't house churches just going to freak people who are far from God? Won't the tendency be to go even more inward? And get less diverse? I'm not saying small churches are bad, but not all large churches are either.

And so it goes...

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 00:04:00 +0000

I'm polishing up my talk for tomorrows Abandoned: Worship as Life seminar at Missouri Baptist. It's free, so if you're just checking this out now and you're in the St. Louis area, please come on by. Sally Morgenthaler (of Worship Evangelism fame) is the keynote. The multi-talented Shaun Groves will also be speaking and doing a concert to close it all out tomorrow night. Captain Relevintage, Brad Andrews will also be sharing a talk. I'm looking forward to it.

In my talk, I'll basically be spending some time defining the somewhat nebulous term "missional" and I'll apply that to the church at large, and then specifically to the corporate worship times of a church (based on 1 Corinthians 14). We'll cover what it means to practice missional worship and why that seems to be important to God. Ya'll come!

The Fame, The Fortune, The Journey ; )

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:05:00 +0000

I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to my fellow co-laborers in the Gospel, Darrin Patrick and Jonathan McIntosh. Not only are they excellent leaders and teachers of the Word here at The Journey, they are also men of integrity and dear friends.

So, I had to post this mention of in Christianity Today's recent feature on Pastor Provocateur, none other than Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

While the story Jonathan gives is a great, and more prominent story, Darrin is quick to remind everyone that Jonathan's name is misspelled and Darrin got the last word! Stay tuned for other articles about famous Christian leaders who happen to mention The Journey!

Introducing New Songs

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:08:00 +0000

So, I was browsing the worship blogosphere some time ago and came across Mandy Thompson's blog. I've dropped in a few times over the last couple months and left a few replies here and there.

Last week I came across this interesting post on her blog as well as the replies. I posted kind of late (isn't it strange how "2-3 days" is really old news in blogging terms??), so no one has replied further on that subject, but I wanted to see if anyone else out there has any thoughts on the matter. Read the post linked above, then read my reply, which is pasted below:

I guess I differ a little from the dominant theme I’m reading in these replies. No personal offense intended to those who’ve stated they do nothing but play the song, but I think you are missing an excellent opportunity to teach something if you don’t introduce a new song. Why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to explain why the congregation should be singing this lyric at that particular time for that particular series or sermon or whatever? One of the big surprises for me as a worship pastor has been how infrequently people (even the brightest people in the room) will connect the dots or put the puzzle pieces together.

Now I guess if a song is so simple and the lyric is so obvious, maybe, MAYBE you don’t have to introduce it. But you should at least acknowledge that it is new and sort of take the pressure off of people to know it already. Now, as far as a tip on how to introduce new songs, I confess up front that I have probably missed more than I’ve hit the target. But what I’ve landed on is Scripture. Your new song, whatever it is, should be carrying some message attested to in Scripture, and if it isn’t you shouldn’t be singing it, imho. So let Scripture introduce your song. I think this helps because I think bamboosong’s reply was accurate. Worship leaders tend to talk too much, which really means we’re not really saying anything at all. But reading Scripture to introduce your song does at least a couple important things:

1) It shows where our authority is, in song selection, song writing, worship leading and otherwise.
2) It grounds our singing in biblical truth.
3) It helps expose people to Scripture and shows in a very basic sense the important of exegesis and study. Now the key here is to make sure you are faithfully exegeting and studying, but I’m assuming here that it will happen that way. To just plow ahead into the song without some acknowledgment of its newness and some explanation regarding its purpose/intent is akin to dodging our call to lead people in some direction. We have to be careful not let our music do our leading for us.
Any other thoughts out there?

Live From Seattle! pt. 2

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:28:00 +0000

This session is the Best. Thanks of course to the helpful thoughts and humble delivery of Dr. Harold Best, who is the primary speaker here at the Continuous Worship Conference. Man, did he just bring it!

Lots of thoughts here. Best is a very humble and thoughtful man who has studied, and continues to study, worship in concept and practice. Pretty much everything he said blew me away. Below are a few things to chew on.

Best gives an appropriate warning to us, especially younger emerging types, who think we can figure out all this church stuff through either over-absorption in/with doctrine or who think they can ignore doctrine and solid theology. Here's what he says:

Numb Orthodoxy is being so loose and sloppy with the faith that you run the risk of forgetting Jesus and not even know it. This is a scary thought and it requires a scary question and answer session with the Lord. “Lord help me see you and know you and believe you.”

Best then hit on this great question: To what kind of life are blood-washed people called? Here are my notes on what Best said.

To what kind of life are blood-washed people called?

To a life of holiness. We don’t make ourselves holy, but we set ourselves apart, we dedicate ourselves to Him and allow Him to cleanse us and transform us. We are free to use the things of the world without the intent of the world. This is not being set apart. This is how music becomes a mediator instead of a “thing” at our disposal in the worship of God. We act with things, but are not helped by things, in worship.
To a life of unceasing prayer. We tend to pray about secondary and tertiary things. Primary prayers should be adoration and intercession. Adoration is praise. Pretty straight forward. Intercession is about taking seriously the brokenness of the world and people and begging God to make things right.
To a life of proclamation. As Paul said, we are ambassadors, as if God himself were making his appeal through us. Witnessing can be compartmentalized, but really what Jesus wants from us is to “say something about him” wherever you are and whatever you are doing.
To glorify God and glorying in His glory. To live deeply, in joys and in sorrows, in everything.

Live From Seattle!

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:55:00 +0000

Well here I am at the Continuous Worship Conference hosted by The Resurgence at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. As I type, Pastor Mark Driscoll is doing an excellent job of making sure we understand that worship is really the heart of everything. All our problems stem from our idolatry. Quite interesting stuff. Here are the basics:

A definition of worship must include Glory, Dedication, and Sacrifice. The idea is that glory, which means "weighty" in Hebrew, is the thing around which your values and life are centered. Dedication is the way we publicly declare ourselves as a worshiper. Sacrifice is the functional ways we offer ourselves to that center piece.

Other highlights:
"Worship is for God's Glory, our joy, and the common good."

The opposite of worship is idolatry, which is the default mode of the human heart. We tend to make good things the "best" things, and thereby replace God's place with something or someone else. For example, we don't need "child-centered" homes or "spouse-centered" homes. We need Christ-centered, child-friendly homes.

Calls Pagitt out for comments in "Listening to the Beliefs" where Pagitt says basically that the necessary distinction between matter and spirit and between creator and created is being reconsidered. But Romans 1 (and other places) clearly says that kind of thinking is garbage because God is God and we are idolators and there are no two ways around it.

Cool Driscollisms to throw atcha:

Most people define what is good and bad worship based on their feelings. and will say "I didn't cry, so that wasn't good worship." Well, I can punch you, and you'll cry; will that make it better?
I'm a charismatic with a seatbelt.
Speaking on the danger of making family an idol: "It may be a sin to Focus on the Family.
Children are a blessing from the Lord, but they are a bad God!
Jay-Z used to sing songs about how bad it is in the hood. Then he went to Africa, and he saw there's a whole different kind of hood.

I'll post more later...

Abandoned 2007 Just Around the Corner

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:41:00 +0000

Check out the vid Brad Andrews and his crew at Missouri Baptist put together for the Abandoned 2007 worship conference I'm speaking at later this month. Nice work, Brad!

Service Considerations Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:02:00 +0000

Installment two of the Service Considerations series. In this post I am walking through a typical Journey service flow, and dealing specifically with song selection. With our new staggered worship format made necessary by the multi-site approach, the descriptions below don’t apply exactly for every service, but the heart behind the song selection remains the same. Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions about how the different sites/services impact song selection, or about how we stagger our service order to account for the multi-site complexity.

Focus

I like to give a lot of freedom to my band leaders. We don't intentionally do the same songs from campus to campus. Especially with the multi-site deal, since I can't be in all places at once, I trust that my band leaders know the people that come to their campus better than I, they know the dynamic in the room, they know their musicians, and I trust them to meditate on the Scripture passage for the week with a listening heart and humble, teachable spirit. That said, I think it's important to keep a certain focus up front. What I mean is, we need to make sure in our selection that we are encouraging people to begin by focusing on God.

Here we sing songs that are primarily about his attributes and character. It's OK for songs to talk about "us" too, but the dominant theme, especially the first songs we sing on a Sunday, needs to be God-centered. Songs like “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “Praise to the Lord,” “Your Love Oh Lord,” “All Creatures,” “Father's World” give you an idea. These songs are mostly about him, highlighting his attributes, some aspect of his character. Another way to say this is to say that we want to start with a wide-focus lens on, so songs that promote an expansion of our thinking about how big God is can help here.

There is always freedom to shift this if we need to. For example I really felt the Lord telling me to play “A Prayer of Faith” as an opener recently because we needed to hear the message that God has some to teach us, and that we need to listen for his voice above all the other competing voices and pray that prayer of faith and so I "broke" my own rule. But by and large we'll stick to that idea. As always, all I ask from the band leaders is that if they move away from this kind of opener, just have a good reason for it, and then be willing to articulate that pretty clearly.

1st song - The rule of thumb is to start with something familiar (and God-ward).
2nd song - This is where we intro new material if we have something new. Or if a song is less known than the others, do it in the second slot. I say to my guys, "Don't feel the need to do a new song every week. In fact, you shouldn't do that, as we have plenty of songs we currently know and can improve on--songs which deserve both rehearsal and congregational time." Also, if one band is the only one doing a particularly new song, that band needs to keep playing that new song in the second slot for a few services before it becomes a "regular" song. This puts the emphasis on the worship leader's ability to--lo and behold--lead people through instruction and practice.
3rd song - This one, like the opening song, should be pretty familiar and this can also be a spot for preparing people for the sermon/scripture topic or theme of the day.

Important Note: For all the focus songs, avoid songs that have long instrumental passages or that use more “free” or “spirit” singing. Two main points here:

1) First, our job up front is to engage the average person in the pew, not just the hyper-charismaniac who free-sings every song, or the live music nut who goes to see five shows a week at the Pageant. We are targeting the average person, and my experience tells me the average person in the pew feels left behind when there is a long instrumental section or introduction or a section where we are doing more "free" or "spirit" singing, especially at 9AM in the morning! These kind of songs tend to fit better during the response time anyway.

2) Transitions, while always important, are probably more important up front than anywhere else in the service. This is because the beginning of the service is when people feel most tentative and when awkward pauses stand out the most. Make sure your transitions lend to the flow of the service as opposed to bringing it to a screeching halt.

In the next post, we'll hit "Response" songs.

Get Your Worship On

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:38:00 +0000

One of my dear friends and encouragers in this joyous yet often crazy church planting worship experience has been Tim Smith over at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He has taken many hours answering questions, giving advice, listening, pondering theological issues, as well as talking geeky guitar and band speak with me. Tim is a genuine, godly man. He is a dear brother who loves God, loves his family, and loves the flock under his care.

So I'm obviously looking forward to taking a crew to Seattle in a few weeks to hang with Tim and Joel Brown and the gang at MH for what I'm sure will be an inspiring, educational and downright fun worship conference. Visit MH Worship's blog Doxologist for upcoming info. In the meantime, below is the Doxologist post about the conference.

Continuous Worship Conference
by Pastor Tim Smith
A couple of years ago I came across an extraordinary book called Unceasing Worship by Harold M. Best. Over the last couple of years this has become my one of my favorite works on theology of worship. Here are a few reasons why I like it…

First, most people these days, particularly when in comes to theology/philosophy of corporate worship and the arts, dig into the ministry for a few years, have some measure of success and then write a book expressing the formula for replicating that success. With Best, he spent over fifteen years as the dean of the conservatory of music at Wheaton college. He spent years honing his ideas in both the academic world and the local church and then wrote his book. His depth of experience and perspective are clear throughout his writing.

Secondly, the first chapter is titled, “Nobody does not worship.” He begins with the understanding that worship ceaselessly pours out of humans for better or worse; for God glorifying worship or self glorifying idolatry. Best reveals just how much we have reduced worship to music sung at particular places and times and created an idol out of these experiences. He emphasizes that we have only one mediator between ourselves and God and that is Jesus Christ, not any kind of music, art, gathering or experience.

Lastly, through a very interesting turn of events Harold has become a personal friend and theological mentor to me. His son Gareth plays guitar in one of our bands (“The Brothers of the Empty Tomb”) and I have had the privilege to spend a number of afternoons with him wrestling through the finer points of the biblical theology and practice of worship. I have found him to be extremely helpful, thoughtful and on top of all that he has a delightfully dry sense of humor. I am very excited to announce that Harold will be joining me and Pastor Mark Driscoll this fall for the “Continuous Worship Conference”. This conference will be brought to you by Resurgence and will take place at the Ballard campus of Mars Hill Church, September 17th and 18th. The cost will be $35.

We will begin the conference Monday afternoon with a “pre-conference” track dealing with pragmatic issues of corporate worship with breakouts taught by a number of Mars Hill staff dealing with how to build a corporate worship band that you actually want to listen to, live and post production technology, songwriting and various other topics. Then, Monday night we will start to dig to some meaty theology together with Pastor Mark. We will spend Tuesday with Harold Best and then I will wrap it up Tuesday evening. Each main session will be followed by a Q & A panel discussion where your questions will be fielded by a carefully chosen group of folks who are working out these ideas in various stations in life.

It is absolutely essential that we first engage with a deep, rich, biblical understanding of worship before we discuss the pragmatic issues of corporate worship. If we fail to do this we run the risk of making an idol out of the very thing we are intending to bring glory to God. This is not simply an issue for “worship leaders”. Everyone is a worshipper and a right understanding in this area has huge implication for all areas of life and ministry. Please join me in September for this important discussion.

More details including conference schedule, discussion panel participants and many more surprises will be coming soon. For more information and to register click here.

The Official Subvergent "Name Our Son" Contest!

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:53:00 +0000

Here's your chance to radically impact the grade school years of a child you'll probably never meet! And the best part, it doesn't require the hard work of actually parenting the child!

That's right, you can submit your entry to Subvergent's "Name Our Son" contest! Here are the groundrules for all submissions:

1. The name must not suck.
2. The name must sound good with our last name (Lindsey).
3. The name must sound good when listed along with Eli.
4. You must explain why you are making your suggestion.

Submit as many entries as you like. He's not due till November so you have time. Let the games begin!!!

Abandoned schedule

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:37:00 +0000

Here is Brad Andrews' post from his blog relevintage about the worship deally at Mobap in September.

As promised, below is the abandoned: worship as life seminar schedule on Saturday, September 29 at Missouri Baptist University. But before I unveil that…

One HUGE thing I forgot to mention in the blog entry yesterday was that the entire seminar is FREE! Yes FREE!

And if you pre-register for the all-day seminar, you get complimentary lunch and a FREE TICKET to Shaun Grove’s concert Saturday evening benefiting Compassion International. Tickets are $5 for general admission.

That’s right, lunch on us and a day with Sally Morgenthaler, Shaun Groves - speaking and performing, Joel Lindsey, and myself for FREE!

If you are interested in taking part in this, let me know at your earliest convenience by emailing me at:

andrews.bradleyd@gmail.com

Seating is limited, so it’s first come first serve. If you are coming from out of town and need a place to stay, let me know.

Here is the current schedule for abandoned:

event schedule

9:00 am – 9:15 am
worship
recital hall
brad andrews & band

9:15 am – 10:15 am
“bootlegs & b-sides: the call for missional worship pastors”
recital hall
joel lindsey
worship pastor, the journey
st. louis, mo

10:15 am – 10:30 am
q & a w/joel
recital hall
brad moderating

10:30 am – 10:45 am
break

10:45 am – 11:45 pm
“keeping the sacred space sacred: caring about the right things as worship leaders and worshippers”
recital hall
brad andrews
worship arts coordinator, mbu
st. louis, mo

11:45 am – 12:00 am
q & a w/brad
recital hall

12:00 pm – 12:50 pm
lunch
mabee great hall
sponsored by mbu admissions

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
“out of the subculture: worship when the church puts mission first” part 1
recital hall
sally morgenthaler

2:00 pm – 2:15 pm
q & a w/sally
recital hall
brad moderating

2:15 pm – 2:30 pm
break

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
shaun groves
recital hall

3:30 pm – 3:45
q & a w/shaun
recital hall
brad moderating

3:45 pm – 4:00 pm
break

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
“out of the subculture: worship when the church puts mission first” part 2
recital hall
sally morgenthaler

5:00 pm – 5:15 pm
q & a w/sally
recital hall
brad moderating

5:15 pm – 6:30 pm
networking dinner*
the perk

7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
shaun groves in concert
fine arts center main auditorium

*-box dinners will be available for $5 at the perk

Shameless plug...

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 03:15:00 +0000

I'll pick up the rest of the "Service Considerations" series later, but for now...a shameless plug.

My good friend Brad Andrews has recently taken the helm of the new Worship Arts major at Missouri Baptist University here in St. Louis. He is kicking off the program in style with a worship conference in late September. I'm tickled to death that he invited me to come speak at the event. Brad is a good dude and I am very excited about his leadership of and investment in many young folks wrestling with God's call to become pastors and theologians on top of their primary call to be a worshipper of Jesus.

Anyway, the conference is called "Abandoned: Worship as Life" and the cool part is that along with Brad and singer/songwriter/worship leader Shaun Groves, I get to be on the undercard for none other than Sally Morgenthaler! Her book Worship Evangelism was ahead of its time in my opinion and is required reading for emerging worship folk everywhere. In a word, she's a rockstar.

Anyway, I'm excited to take part, to hear and learn from these folks as well as those who attend. Should be a good time. Go to Brad's page to check out more info on Abandoned 2007.

Worship Service Considerations pt. 1

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:41:00 +0000

There is an intended flow to Journey worship services (and most Christian services for that matter) that we need to adopt in our song selection structure.

Briefly, that flow is:

Focus on God by acknowledging his goodness and his presence with us (1 Tim. 6:12)

which moves us to…

Introduce his truth in the teaching/preaching of his word (Colossians 4:15-16; 1 Timothy 4:13; 2 Timothy 3:15-16)

which moves us to…

Respond to who he is and what he’s doing in us (1 Corinthians 14:16)

which moves us to…

Encourage/Challenge one another in the mission (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:15)

By the way, this is a biblical model for how worship looked in the NT. Though we don’t have a prescribed template for exactly how to do a worship service (God is much more creative and complex than a formula allows for), we do have a thematic idea of what a service should include based on the early church as presented in Acts and the epistles. There are specific elements (like giving of offerings, prayers, preaching, communion, proclaiming the Gospel, etc) that are always present in the corporate worship gathering, and of course, they fit into one of the four basic categories above. (For more on this, see D. A. Carson's intro to Worship by the Book ).

Our role, then, is to really lead people to participate in all these things, mostly, though not always, in the order above. This is why we start with a meaningful Call to Worship[1] (whether spoken or musical), incorporate Scripture readings, sing songs that acknowledge him and his sacrifice for us, songs that lead us to respond to him in our hearts, and songs that encourage us to respond to him and others with our actions. That brings us to song selection.

Setlist Creation

Most of us have our songs that we like doing with our particular musicians, so I don’t want to talk so much about the strengths and weaknesses of this particular song versus that particular song. My purpose here is to talk about the types of songs we do at the beginning of the service and the types of songs we do on the “back half,” and how this helps us achieve the atmosphere and flow objectives mentioned above.

In the next post, I will walk through a typical Journey service. With the new staggered worship format made necessary by the multi-site approach, the descriptions below won’t fit exactly for every service, but the heart behind the song selection will stay the same.

[1] A good Call to Worship or opening prayer should acknowledge the presence of God among us by his own choosing. In other words, avoid the common, and theologically inaccurate, mistake of suggesting that we have the power to invoke or conjure up God’s presence by our words. This means, we have to avoid phrases like: “Lord we ask you to come and meet with us…” or “God we invite your presence among us…”. I’ve made this mistake before and it was pointed out to me that this is just bad theology. Instead, let’s acknowledge that God is with us, and urge the Holy Spirit to help us see him more clearly.

Worship Service Considerations

noreply@blogger.com (Joel Lindsey) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:26:00 +0000

I am a pastor. Specifically, I am a pastor at The Journey, a Gospel-centered missional church in St. Louis. We are what many call an "emerging" church. More specifically, I am the pastor charged with upholding the worship value of our church. So this means that I guard and guide the look, sound, feel, taste and smell of our worship services.

God has blessed me ridiculously with this job. It is a dream job, with an unbelievable group of hard-working, God-fearing, family-loving guys. I also get to use a lot of my best gifts in this capacity, meaning I get to teach and shepherd and play music with some very gifted musicians.

I also get to think and write about a lot of things that both interest me and impact my ministry work. So I'm starting a series of posts that share some of my basic thoughts on how to think through the song selection process. More of this kind of stuff to come. Look forward to hearing from some of you.