Just Another Day at the Office…
Coram Deo Blog
Review: Sojourn Music “Over the Grave”
Our good friends over at Sojourn just put out a new album based on the hymnody of Isaac Watts. On first listen, I found it average. On second listen, it grew on me like a fine wine. I highly recommend that you get a copy.
Mike Cosper, the chief architect behind Sojourn Music, handed an old Isaac Watts hymnal to his cadre of talented musicians and songwriters and invited them to get to work. The resulting 11 tracks display both a beautiful diversity of style and a rich unity of substance. You’d be hard-pressed to find songs with more theological depth and biblical acuity – thanks mostly to Watts, but also to the love for Scripture that’s characteristic of Sojourn Church.
The down side of this album – as with all Sojourn music – is that it’s not very singable. You won’t find us reproducing many of these songs on a Sunday morning at Coram Deo, nor will you pick up your guitar and strum them in your living room. But strangely, that’s also the strength of this compilation. The musicianship, artistry, and production value on this record is top-notch. It will quickly gain your musical respect (contrary to a wide swath of “Christian” music these days). And not only will it fill your ears with sonic excellence, it will also fill your mind with deep, substantive lyrics.
Here’s a sample from the opening song “Warrior:” Your hand shall find out every foe // and as a fiery furnace glows // with raging heat and living coals // they will feel your wrath upon their souls // Oh, the Warrior will conquer // All the world will fall before his feet
Now those are lyrics with teeth. Kind of like the Bible. Not very much like the “Jesus is my girlfriend” songs you hear on K-Love.
The Over the Grave album will soon be available at iTunes and in stores, but for now you can purchase it at Sojourn Music.
Fasting from Social Networking
My church planting comrade Bill Streger down in Houston is taking 6 weeks off from Twitter, Facebook, and blogging. Read his reasons why and see what you think.
Evidences of Grace: Acts 29
Bob and former OU athlete Leonce Crump, now an A29 church planter in Atlanta
In 2006 we linked arms with a fledgling church-planting movement called Acts 29. The movement was made up (at that time) of less than 100 churches. We joined primarily because of the influence and invitation of our sister church Core Community, which was one of the first in the network.
I’ve always had the sense that God is up to something through A29. I am real skeptical and hesitant to use words like “renewal” or “revival” or “reformation” because they seem to require the judgment of history, not just the emotion of the present. But something God-sized is going on. Consider these evidences of God’s grace:
- 256 Acts 29 church plants in the US
- 339 current applicants (potential church planters who want to be assessed)
- 135 potential church planters assessed in the past year
- 2,450 people attended an Acts 29 boot camp in the past year
- 800 pastors trained internationally in the past year, in places like Uganda, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Czech Republic
- Missiologist Ed Stetzer says that A29 is now the leading church planting movement in the US, and that its influence is spurring traditional denominations to increase their own efforts in church planting
- New England is widely considered by missiologists as the hardest place in North America to plant a church. This historic region, once home to the Great Awakening, is now 90% unchurched. Five years ago there was one Acts 29 church in NE; now there are 25, with 12 more in the planning stages.
- TIME Magazine last year called “New Calvinism” the #3 most important idea shaping the world. Many influential Acts 29 pastors are at the forefront of this resurgence of Reformed theology within the American church.
- One of the most obvious evidences of grace to me is the cultural diversity within A29. A few years ago the joke was that we were a bunch of “angry young white men.” Not anymore. In Vail with me right now (at the A29 pastor’s retreat) are five African-American couples whom God has raised up to plant missional, Reformed churches. My bro Lorenzo pastors a Latino church in the heart of gang territory in south Dallas. We have a Russian dude planting among Russian immigrants in NYC and another guy reaching second-generation Asian immigrants in Philly. The strong sense of unity and brotherhood in the gospel among these men suggests to me that God is up to something that can’t be explained through natural means.
Sometimes we get so focused on our own context (Omaha) that we forget about the bigger picture of what God is doing. He is worthy of worship not just for what he’s doing among us, but for how he’s at work around the world. You are a part of all this through your prayers and giving, as Coram Deo contributes to the work of church planting around the world.
Please be praying for the pastors and leaders in Acts 29, that we would remain faithful to Jesus and zealous for the glory of God. Pray that God would graciously allow us to be part of His means to renew the church and advance His kingdom in our generation.
Announcing: The Gospel-Centered Life
We are excited to announce that The Gospel-Centered Life is now available for purchase worldwide! To go directly to the ordering/publicity website, click here. For the back-story on GCL, keep reading.
When we planted Coram Deo four years ago, we structured the entire church around missional communities. The ideal missional community consists of a small band of Christians living on mission together and inviting their non-Christian friends to join in conversation and interaction about the gospel of Jesus. This seemed like a really great idea. Until we started doing it. We quickly discovered two significant problems:
- Most traditional “church small group” material was written for a Christian audience, and therefore non-Christians relate to it about as well as a cattle rancher relates to vegetarians.
- Many Christians have a weak and anemic understanding of the gospel, so asking them to talk about how the gospel is transforming them is like asking a teenage boy band to talk about the finer elements of Mozart’s work.
So in order to shape “gospel DNA” in our church in a way that was accessible to both Christians and non-Christians, Will and I locked ourselves in a room for a couple weeks in the summer of 2007 and wrote a nine-week small-group study called The Gospel-Centered Life. Much of the content for GCL was adapted from older material published by World Harvest Mission which had been instrumental in our own gospel formation. WHM is a mission sending agency in the Reformed tradition that was started by a pastor and missional leader named Jack Miller, who influenced many of our own teachers and mentors (Tim Keller, John Frame, and Steve Childers, just to name a few).
God used GCL to bring about a mini-renewal in our church. New Christians, older Christians, and non-Christians all began to “get” the gospel in deep and powerful ways. People began asking if they could send copies to their parents, their family members, the pastor at the church they grew up in. Which put us in a dilemma, since many of the concepts we used for GCL were the intellectual property of WHM.
So I wrote a cold-turkey letter to WHM asking if they’d be willing to look over the material and consider working with us to publish it. In God’s providence, the folks at WHM were beginning to think about developing some new gospel renewal resources. So we began forging a partnership to edit and re-launch GCL for a wider audience. The crew at WHM has been great to work with, giving us tons of creative control in everything from writing to graphic design. Most importantly, they’ve been careful to preserve the missional ethos of GCL that makes it so accessible to non-Christians and new Christians.
WHM is selling the material as a digital download, which will shrink the overhead (no publishing or warehousing costs) and literally make GCL available worldwide. We’re excited about being part of God’s means to help spur gospel renewal in churches everywhere. Please do what you can to help us get the word out so that churches and Christians everywhere can experience the transforming power of the gospel. The direct link for ordering and publicity is www.whm.org/gcl.
Until July 31, you can receive a free sample of GCL via email! Just follow the directions at the WHM site.
World Refugee Day 2009
This Saturday at Benson High School, the Refugee Task Force of Omaha will be hosting World Refugee Day. This day is an international holiday that was initiated in 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly. It serves as reminder to educate ourselves about the plight of 31.5 million persons worldwide which UNHCR identifies as “persons of concern.” They include refugees, victims of human trafficking, asylum seekers, internally displaced and other stateless persons. This will be a time to learn about refugee issues and also to celebrate through international music and dance performances. The event will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Benson High School, 5120 Maple St. Also on hand will be educational panels, a job fair, health screening, fashion show, children’s carnival, and even some volleyball. This is a small step to begin to learn more about what is going on in and around Omaha and what it looks like for the Gospel to bring transformation and renewal to all parts of our city. You can click on the flyer below for more details surrounding the event…
Marcelle on Contextualization
One of my favorite pastors in Acts 29 is Ed Marcelle, planter and lead pastor of Terra Nova Church in Troy, NY. Ed is one of the brightest and most thoughtful guys I’ve ever been around. He is deeply grounded both theologically and culturally, and articulates his insights poignantly and intelligently. I have yet to find a book Ed hasn’t read, a band he’s not familiar with, or a poet or philosopher he can’t dialogue about.
He just wrote the first of a series of posts over on the Resurgence that will be worth reading and pondering. Check it out.
Wesley on Worship
One of the weaknesses of much modern church worship is that it replaces participation by the people with performance by professionals. Certainly church worship should be led by excellent and qualified people… but it’s a worship service, not a show.
Recently at a small Protestant chapel in the north Georgia woods, I opened the hymnal and ran across these “Directions for Singing” written by John Wesley in 1761 – before amplifiers, rock bands, and electricity. It couldn’t hurt for us to contextualize and apply some of his wise counsel to our own practice of corporate worship.
- Learn these tunes before you learn any others; afterwards learn as many as you please.
- Sing them exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all; and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.
- Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.
- Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
- Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.
- Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.
- Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.
Noise Trade Music
Tim Smith and his music cohorts at Mars Hill Church released their first full-length album this week. It’s called The Rain City Hymnal, and to distribute it they’re using a pretty cool website I’d never visited before called Noise Trade. You can pay what you want for the music they sell, or download it for free if you’ll agree to tell 5 friends about it.
I was pleased to see artists like Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, and Indelible Grace Music featured in addition to Rain City. All of these songwriters are seeking to worship God through music – not just by crafting lyrically meaningful worship songs, but by pursuing artistic excellence in their music (in contrast to much of “Christian radio” fare). Noise Trade also promotes a number of artists like Sleeping at Last and Jackopierce, who don’t approach their art from a distinctly Christian perspective.
If you enjoy our worship style at Coram Deo, you’ll enjoy Webb, McCracken, and Indelible Grace – all of whom we’ve borrowed songs from. The music on the Rain City recording reflects a little edgier, more indie-rock Seattle sound. Regardless of your musical taste, you’ll find something on Noise Trade worth listening to.
