Best Worship Song You’ve Learned Recently?
My worship leader friend Brian is constantly writing and talking about how this is a special time in the life of the church because of a resurgence in creative musical worship. Brian’s right. Worship music has moved lyrically and musically beyond [insert bland song here].
Music written and used for worship has always been contextualized and is constantly changing. For Westerners, if you worshiped back in the day you would listen to Bach or Beethoven and never be asked to sing. If you worshiped way, way, way back in the day you might have some sort of chant. If you worshiped in the 70s-80s, Jesus music + praise choruses. I’m generalizing here but you get the point.
For worship music, the key (no pun intended) is asking three questions: who is Jesus, where do we live, and what time is it. Maybe I’ll write more on that later.
I’ve said all of that to say that there are some incredible things happening with music written for worship these days: ancient hymns finding new arrangements, modern hymns being rewritten, words of the psalms freshly spoken, the words of the biblical prophets are being rediscovered, the story of redemption being rearticulated…
This week I’m going to feature some songs that have profoundly encouraged me to worship. But before I start I’d love to hear from you:
- what is the best worship song you’ve learned recently?
Share them in the comments!
Great post Hoss. Here are some songs that are rocking my worship world right now:
1. “How He Loves” – John Mark McMillan; I really like the new recording by Eddie Kirkland on “Orthodoxy”
2. “As It Is In Heaven” – Matt Maher (from Empty & Beautiful”)
3. “Grace Has Called My Name” – Kathryn Scott (from “I Belong”)
4. “I Will Rise” – Chris Tomlin (from “Hello Love”)
5. “The More I Seek You” – Gateway (from “Living For You”)
These are songs that I am really loving right now. “How He Loves” takes some amazingly poetic lyrics and just jams with a message that we don’t get very often in worship music. There are all kinds of videos on the internet of the composer doing this song – they are very emotional for him – but I really prefer this studio recording. We are doing this song this coming weekend.
“River” by Bluetree
“God You Reign” by Lincoln Brewster–particularly the chorus.
“How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townsend
Along with several of those listed here, I would like to add:
1. Counting On God (Ross Parsley, New Life Worship)
2. Let The Praises Ring (Lincoln Brewster)
3. Today Is The Day (Lincoln Brewster)
4. From The Inside Out (Hillsong)
5. Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)
6. The Lord Reigns (Klaus)
7. My Savior Lives (Ross Parsley, New Life Worship)
There are always more….
Troy, I’d like to share a couple of thoughts:
My belief is that God does not care about the style (Country/Rock/Traditional/Contemporary etc..) in which we worship – He sees our hearts and what we put into it. Too many churches are hung up on personal preferences and “style.” As we think about our worship, the reason we worship is to ascribe worth to God. While worship can be inviting, life changing and boost our spirits – even for the unbeliever – I struggle with it becoming a primary outreach tool of a church. I believe this has decreased in the last couple of years, but I still hear philosophies tied into this concept.
I’m also cautious of the “venue” boom that is currently occurring. I think it can be a dangerous and divisive movement to the church. GREAT CARE needs to be taken in setting up multi-site churches. Creating unity among various worship sites is not an easy road to navigate. I have heard an “expert” state that we should have worship venues for every age group and combine 1/month for service together. This is an interesting concept, but I wonder how realistic this is…. I have no firm conclusions – just some real concerns.
I was part of a large church with multiple-identical services. It was hard enough in this church to create unity among the services – if the services are different, it seams logical that this would add to this difficulty.
One final thought on this – we learn a great deal from those older and younger than ourselves and I think hurting those relationships by separating them are extremely harmful for the health of a church.
OK – your turn – what do you think???
Thanks for your words Greig. I was hinting at thoughts such as these when I said the worshiping community needs to ask ‘who is Jesus, where do we live and what time is it?’
I think that someday I’ll write more on this just to organize my thoughts. In short, I think worship is best when it is contextualized. The worship style should be ‘true’ to the local worshiping community. Authentic like how John Lee Hooker is for Memphis, or Nirvana is for Seattle, or Brooklyn Tab is for Brooklyn.
This isn’t purely to “reach” or “attract” folks into the worshiping community (but I’m sure that Hooker resonated with folks who lived in Memphis…) it’s to honestlyworship God.
That’s the way I think and talk about it, too, Troy. Our worship “style” isn’t so much an attempt to reach people as it is an attempt to authentically worship in the language spoken on our mission field. We want people to worship authentically, in their “heart language,” as missionaries would put it.
Good stuff!
the best worship CD i have ever listened to was Enter the Worship Circle by 100 Portraits and Water Deep. AMAZING! Everything else listed here is just good
i just ran across a worship band called Urban Rescue. Some kids from San Diego but they are putting out some really really good tunes! GO BUY there stuff! They could use the support!
“King of Wonders” by Matt Redman
Sojourn’s new cd is amazing. I especially like warrior.
http://myspace.com/sojournrecords
Anything by Jason Upton.