Worship Together Blog

Where in the world are you?

Let us know the city, country, and church where you are serving.

What if the church couldn't pay you?

If your church could not or would not pay you for leading worship, would you do it anyway? Would there be a noticeable difference in the quality of the worship?

Every 7 seconds...

a child dies of starvation.

There may be a temptation to brush pass this blog post, but I pray you will stay with me. A couple of us from WorshipTogether attended an emergency meeting today held by World Vision addressing the global food crisis that is impacting the poorest of the poor around the world.

We learned that several factors from rising fuel costs to extreme weather are all converging to drive the cost of basic food commodities such as rice, wheat and corn to unprecedented heights. Most of us just absorb these increases with little notice, but to those on the edge of survival it has created a global food tsunami.

What can you do to leverage your influence to raise funds to meet this need? For a little more than a dollar a day, you can provide food and basic necessities to a child. Jesus said "whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me." 

For more information and resources, visit www.worldvision.org and please forward this post to as many people as possible.

Kristian Stanfill Live!

We caught up with Kristian Stanfill and band last night at Thompson Station Church just south of Nashville, TN. They were a part of a student outreach night at the church.

Kristian's song "Beautiful Jesus" was huge. Here's some more of his set list:

-We Shine (Fee)
-Jesus Paid It All (Stanfill)
-Faithful (Fee)
-All Because of Jesus (Fee)
-Salvation Is Here (Hillsong)

David Crowder*Band LIVE in Theaters on August 18th!

Re:Create 2009 Conference

We met with Randy Elrod about the 2009 Re:Create Conference yesterday. If you are not aware of this conference, it's a select group of worship leaders and worship directors from influential churches in the US and abroad.

WorshipTogether will be sponsoring a night of the conference with dinner and a surprise worship leader. We've done this the last 2 years and it is always a wonderful time of worship and encouragement.

If you want to be stretched as a leader and be on the cutting edge of the technology that can impact your ministry, you should check it out at http://seekersolutions.typepad.com/recreate/.

They cap the conference at around 125 so if you are interested, sign up soon.

So then, how do we live?

One of the pastors at my church gave a message called "When Doing Church Won't Do" based on the message to the church at Ephesus in Revelation Chapter 2. It really rocked my world.

I was already wrestling with questions about how we should live as Christians. If you are the typical Christian in America, you attend a worship service once a week (a couple of times if you are super-spiritual!), you give some money to the church and other ministry causes, you try and live a Godly life by being a good friend, spouse, and parent, and ever so often you do something to help someone in need.

These are all good things that God expects from us. However, it's hard to match this idea of the Christian life with the words of Jesus in the Gospels: "Take up your cross and follow me", "Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, then follow me", "No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields--and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life."

There seems to me to be a disconnect between the American Christian life and the Bible. To live the life that Jesus describes would mean radical decisions. And it seems there are so few people willing to take this road.

Every time I make peace with my posh Christian life, I go on a mission trip or encounter a serious need and it all blows up again. If anyone has reconciled this, please share your thoughts for the rest of us!

Steven Curtis Chapman on Good Morning America & Larry King

An interview with Steven Curtis Chapman and wife Mary Beth aired this morning on Good Morning America http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=5524419.

The Chapman's spoke openly about the tragic accident that took the life of their 5 yr old daughter, Maria Sue. The interview was very emotional as they shared about their faith, unanswered questions, and hope in God. The interview ends with a clip from the song Cinderella, which Steven Curtis wrote for all his daughters.

Steven has recorded an additional verse to the song Yours, dealing with the hurt their family has experienced. All proceeds from the sale of this version of the song are being donated to a special fund set up called Maria's Miracle Fund, which aids families who wish to adopt internationally.

The Chapman family is scheduled to be interviewed live on Larry King at 9:00 PM EST this Thursday on CNN.