-working really hard on a concept and songs for our Christmas CD.  Be on the look-out in April or May for the website.

-listening to The Beatles greatest hits CD and realizing how many other artists have ripped off their ideas.

-reading three really good books …Manhunt: the 12 day chase for Lincol’s killer, Confessions by Augustine, Culture Making by Andy Crouch.

-packing my bags to go on a three day trip with my girls and some good friends.

-thinking about Bobby Jindal rejecting all that money, and wondering what I would do with it.

My friend Patrick (who i’ve talked about before) is in a band called Silver.

Silver Released their CD on Saturday night.

Mike, Ben and I went and had lots of fun.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again….Patrick is a stud. Amazing musician, and puts on a great concert.

Here is Silver’s website.  

Here is some video from the show.

Here’s what I checked out.

Manhunt- Because I hear it’s a great read

The Starbucks Experience- Because I love their coffee, and I hear that they treat their employees really well.

Confessions by Augustine- Because my friend Nick is reading City of God, and Confessions is beginner level Augustine….i’ll make it to City of God soon.

If I was to give a critique of myself and other modern music leaders it would be that most of us do not fully understand the active role of Christ in musical and non-musical worship.  I see the desire to magnify the past work of Christ on the cross, or to magnify the present activity of the Holy Spirit in worship.  But the understanding of the active role of Christ in worship is fuzzy for most worship leaders….myself included.

A few months ago I spent some time studying the book of Hebrews, and was so stumped by some of the quotations attributed to Jesus in the second chapter.  So I spent some time digging for resources and found this amazing article by Michael Glodo (Assistant Professor of Old Testament, RTS/Orlando) called “Singing with the Savior.”  The article is about the quotation of Psalm 22:22 in Hebrews 2:12 and about what implications there are coming from these verses.

I’m not over exaggerating when I say that this article has been one of the most helpful things I’ve ever read on musical worship.
Here is one of my favorite paragraphs from the article:

“The most profound lesson Hebrews 2 teaches us about worship is that, because Jesus sang the first verses of Psalm 22, we don’t have to sing them. Instead, we sing the verses of praise with Him. Because he cried out “Abandoned!” we can sing out “Found!” Under the weight of our sin He declared Himself “a worm and not a man” (Ps. 22:6) so that each of us is “no longer a slave but a son” (Gal. 4:7). The frown of God was upon His beloved Son so that divine justice satisfied smiles at us.”

If you have any involvement with musical worship (or even if you’re just a participant!), I would highly recommend that you read this article.  It’s pretty short, so it shouldn’t take much time…but I promise it will help you understand more fully the particular ways that Christ is active in our musical worship.

You can find the rest of the article is here.

Happy Wednesday to you all.

I am pretty excited about today’s activities. I’m heading out for some meetings and to study at UNC Chapel Hill today. Although we live pretty close (45 minutes) to the Hill, I don’t get out there as much as I would like. So it’s fun when I have a reason to get out there. UNC has one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever seen…and some pretty amazing coffee shops as well.

In other news, I opened my email this morning and there were opened items that I know I did not open. So I’m a little freaked out. I tried to figure out some way that it could happen on it’s own….but I’m thinking that that’s probably not the case. So I’m going to do my best matlock today and get to the bottom of it.

One last item of information. The super cool people at revelife were kind enough to make me their artist of the week a while back, and I totally forgot to write anything about it. So, if you have a free moment today go read the post here, and comment away.

Hope you’ve all had a great weekend.

I and the band (Mike Passaro, James Childs, Brentice Bush, Patrick Downing) all had a wonderful time at the 20/20 conference. We were able to get a live stream up for most of the conference, but we had to turn the sound off…for some reasons that I’m sure none of you would care to know.

I just shaved my beard, and while I was shaving I remembered a video that David Horner (the Pastor of our church Providence Baptist Church) told me was very funny. So I looked it up. And it is indeed very, very funny. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

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A Good Night

Two things to look out for:

1-The “S” added to wool.
2-The dramatic ending.