“Arvo Pärt has opened a window into a world of spiritual ideals,” writes NPR Terrance McKnight in an announcement of Pärt’s newest CD, Cantique, to be released this month to coincide with the composer’s 75th birthday. You can preview Cantique on NPR, which is streaming the disc for free, in its entirety, till it releases on September 21, 2010.

SDG is joining the birthday celebration by co-sponsoring the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Wales, which is offering the most extensive celebration of Pärt in the UK.

Michael Card is among those recognizing the situation:

“Our theology tells us that if we complain to God, we’re being disrespectful. But at least 80 of the Psalms are actually Laments. It has become a lost language to our culture…. Every lament in the Bible, with the exception of Psalm 88, ends in praise. The answer to all our laments is seeing the face of God.”

But there is a resurgence of the use of lament in Christian worship and music.

Dave Trout @ UndertheRadar (www.radarradio.net) interviewed Card for his blog and has a great episode featuring new songs of lament.  Here’s the blurb:

Take a walk on the darker side of faith.  All of the music this week creatively expresses the theme of lament.  We’ll also talk about why this topic is important to our faith.  Includes music by Jon Foreman, Michael Card, Emmylou Harris, and an interview clip with Eric Peters.

Stream the episode here.

Contact Dave here and let him know I said hello.

From the press release:

(NASHVILLE, TENN.) January 28, 2010 – Yesterday at Belmont University’s Ocean Way Studios, multi-platinum, GRAMMY and Dove Award winning artist, Michael W. Smith gathered a who’s-who list from the music community to record “Come Together Now.” The song, penned by Smith, David Mullen and Cindy Morgan – and produced by Bryan Lenox – was written to remind people of the need to help those in Haiti.

“The crisis in Haiti has left us all trying to figure out how we can help,” shares Smith. “We wanted to create something that the community could support, for the greater good of those in Haiti. Everyone gave of their time: the studio was donated, the musicians donated their time and all proceeds from this song will go to designated charity/relief work through The American Red Cross and Samaritan’s Purse. It’s incredible to be part of something that is going to help so many people.”

Contributing artists included Toby Mac, Steven Curtis Chapman and a host of others.  View it below or here.

Other nominees for this year here and here.

Have a suggestion for a nominee?  Read the guidelines and let me know what it is.

Here singer Bart Millard explains the story behind the song by saying:  “It’s not just helping your neighbor, but (also) going the extra step:  If I truly love you well, then I can’t NOT tell you what’s changed my life.”

Here are the lyrics & song stream from YouTube:

Lyrics:

He wakes up every day the same
Believin’ he’s gonna make a change
Never wonders “if” but “when”
I guarantee he can find a way
To reach out and make somebody’s day
‘Cause someone took the time with him

He believes it’s the little things
That make a great big change

Hey, Mr. Lovewell, doin’ today
What you do every day
No matter how small
Believin’ that it’s all the same
Come on, Mr. Lovewell, oh we could use
A few more just like you
Who care enough to give this life away
‘Cause you’ve been changed
The generous Mr. Lovewell loves today!

It may be a simple “how do you do”
The kind of thing that could pull them through
A minute or two can mean so much
Or maybe it’s the one across the street
He’s asking if there’s anything they need
‘Cause they will know what’s by our love

It may not be that much to him
But it’s the world to them

We all need more Mr. Lovewell…

Resources:

• MercyMe homepage
• MercyMe MySpace

This new group started as guys jamming in a freshmen dorm at Belmont University in Nashville.

“The music isn’t the full extent of our purpose,” says band member Jesse Hale, “We are committing our time, effort and platform to helping those in need — making ourselves available to be the hands and feet of Jesus.” Read more about their commitment to “changing the world” here with “MikesTable.”

Lyrics below  – you can visit the band’s MySpace page here.

Something here is wrong
There are children without homes
But we just move along to take care of our own
There’s so much suffering just outside our door
A cry so deafening
We just can’t ignore

To all the people who are fighting for the broken
All the people who keep holding on to love
All the people who reaching for the lonely
Keep changing the world

Take a look around
Before the sun goes out
What’s lost can still be found
It’s not too late now
It only takes one spark to make the fire burn
So reach inside your heart and let this be the start

To all the people who are fighting for the broken
All the people who keep holding on to love
All the people who reaching for the lonely
Keep changing the world

I see you changing the world
Every boy
Every girl
Step up!

I see the sun coming up
It’s a brighter day
Let’s show the world that love is a better way
So lend a hand join the fight
‘Cause time is ticking away

To all the people who are fighting for the broken
All the people who keep holding on to love
All the people who reaching for the lonely
Keep changing the world

Download the lead sheet for free here.

His blog – Ancient Evangelical Future – is worth a visit.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Irish songwriter Keith Getty began his workshop Tuesday at the National Worship Leaders Conference by telling those who had come to learn how to write a great worship song to leave. “Because art is the expression of life, you cannot ‘how-to’ creativity.”

Getty collaborates with his wife Kristyn and friend Stuart Townend. “They’re the words and I’m the music,” he says, estimating that somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the words of any of their songs are his. “But we both get involved on both sides.”

Here are ten notable and worthwhile ideas edited and distilled from Getty’s workshop comments:

1. The primary form we use is the story form. The gospel is primarily story. How do you take people who want 4-line worship songs and get them to sing 32 lines? By structuring the song as a story.

2. It is important to look at things that are harrowing and that don’t necessarily make us feel happy. The central core of the Christian faith is not something that makes us happy. We need to acknowledge our need for a redeemer. The reason we worship is that we meet God through the central story of the cross.

3. We need lament. But if you want to write lament, remember that a successful lament resolves. Not into a happily-ever-after ending, but like the psalms of lament, by ultimately acknowledging that God is God.

4. To write strong melodies remember that folk melody has to be passed on orally (aurally). I try to write songs that can be sung with no written music. I imitate Irish folk melody, with a great deal of contour, of rise and fall.

5. Use pastors and theologians as resources for your writing. But keep company with them. Don’t just ask them to fix your text here or there when you’re done with it.

6. Trinitarian worship safeguards us from so many problems our worship can get into: either an overly stern view of god or a casual view of god. Both can lead to problems in our lives.

7. Martin Luther is one of ten people from history I would want to have coffee with. I have looked at a lot of Luther’s hymns and emulated him. First, Luther had a high view of redemption. He also believed we live our lives in the midst of spiritual warfare. Thirdly, he had a high view of the church and a high vision of the church.

8. The congregation is the choir and it is merely the privilege of those of us who are musically gifted to help them sing.

9. Lyrics and great writing are the same thing. Lyricism is poetry. If your write lyrics, read as much poetry as you can. Lyricists are people who love words and do crossword puzzles.

10. Growing up, I never listened to pop music as a child. I was steeped in church music. That could be a blessing because everything I write can be sung by a congregation.

• Repost courtesy of Ancient Evangelical Future

Do the children or young people have a separate worship gathering of their own apart from the main congregation?

Tullian Tchvidian of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church writes:

…Many churches offer a traditional service for the tribe who prefer older music and a contemporary service for the tribe who prefer newer music. The truth is, however, that if the only type of music you employ in a worship service is old, you inadvertently communicate that God was more active in the past than he is in the present. On the other hand, if the only type of music you employ in a worship service is new, you inadvertently communicate that God is more active in the present than he was in the past…

And this:

The only way to musically communicate God’s timeless activity in the life of the church is to blend the best of the past with the best of the present. In other words, we must remember in our worship that while “contemporary only” people operate with their heads fixed frontwards, never looking over their shoulder at the stock from which they have come, and “traditional only” people operate with their heads on backwards, romanticizing about the past and always wanting to go back, the Church, in contrast from both extremes, is called upon to be a people with swiveling heads: learning from the past, living in the present, and looking to the future. That’s the only way to avoid in worship what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.”

Here’s the clincher:

You see, when we separate people according to something as trivial as musical preferences, we evidence a fundamental failure to comprehend the heart of the gospel. We’re not only feeding toxic tribalism; we’re also saying the gospel can’t successfully bring these two different groups together. It’s a declaration of doubt about the unifying power of God’s gospel. Generational appeal in worship is an admission that the gospel is powerless to join together what man has separated.

Coral Ridge combined their services for the first time in many years this past Sunday, so the church is practicing what the preacher is saying.

What do you think?  Does he have a point?  Too strong?

Is Tullian majoring on minors or is he spot on?

In November 2004, Christmas founded The Bridge Ministry—named for its location under the Jefferson Bridge near the riverbank—after taking a pot of jambalaya to a group of homeless people on a visit with a local pastor.

The Bridge is now a thriving ministry which includes a weekly church service on Tuesday nights to feed and preach to up to 500 attendees. Other local churches and ministries (including the Salvation Army) also reach out to these homeless. Some of those organizations use the Bridge’s 20,000 square-foot warehouse—a resource hub for nonprofits—which is stocked with dry goods, toiletries, and coats to pass out for the winter.

Here’s where the revival part enters:

Their desire to give back to the community may be the most inspiring effect of The Bridge Ministry, convincing Christmas and many others of the revival they could lead. Their lack of resources is no hindrance.  That spirit was exemplified one night last year when Christmas shared about her other ministry—the Candy House, a school for orphans in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. She recalls, still in awe, how she told the Bridge crowd about her 2009 trip to Haiti, noting that it’s the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

“They started getting up, bringing their quarters and their dollars,” she says. Though Christmas tried to stop them—she simply wanted to raise awareness, not funds—they kept coming. “That night we took up $42.53. So now I’ve got homeless people that are trying to get their passports to go to Port-Au-Prince to build this orphanage.”

Christmas shares how serving the poor helped cure her of depression here.

I remember Smitty mentioned this ministry a while back, but did not know that Candy was the one primarily used to get it going & flourishing.

God apparently uses the things that our world considers weak and despised to show His glory (1 Cor 1).

Sovereign Grace is offering a four-part hymn chart and chord chart as free downloads.

HT:  Bob Kauflin @ WorshipMatters.com