HERE IS LOVE is the new project from Bethel Church featuring music from worship leaders Brian and Jenn Johnson as well as  Jesus Culture worship leaders Leah Valenzuela, Kim Walker-Smith, Chris Quilala, and Kristene Mueller.  I love this CD.  My favorite songs are “King of Wonders”, “I Need You More”, and “Here is Love”.

ABOVE THE SKY is a new project by Evan Wickham.  To be very honest, I had never heard of Wickham until I saw this album in the recent Worship Leader Magazine.  So I had to go to his web site to learn a little bit about him.  Come to find out, this is Wickham’s second project.  All I can say is it’s good.  I love the song “Everywhere”.  It is a great lyric based on Psalm 139.  I also really like “He’s Alive”.  Evan has taken the hymn “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” and added a new chorus to it.  There’s a lot of good stuff on this project.

MORE THAN NOISE is the new project from Pocket Full of Rocks.  I’m a fan of this band’s music.   I love the passion and authenticity that comes through their lyrics.  This project is powerful.  I personally love the songs “Come as You Are”, “Wonderful”, and “Let it Rain” which was originally made popular by Michael W. Smith, but written by Pocket Full of Rocks lead vocalist Michael Farren. This is their third project. If you liked “Song to the King” and “Manifesto” You will like this one as well.

I have a few other projects I am worshiping with. I will tell you about them in a later post.

I felt like there was a real nice mix of new music with some older worship tunes as well.  We started with “EVERYONE” as the link-up tune (all 4 campuses sing the first song together).  This is a simple song that is very easy to sing.  The congregation seems to connect with it every time we sing it.  We did the song in the key of G.

After the welcome/greeting time, we launched into a Christ Fellowship original song “SET FREE” in the key of B.  This song will be released on the new live worship project from our City Place Ascent service in May.  From here I transitioned with a short exhortation/prayer into another Christ Fellowship original song, “YOU WILL REIGN” in the key of D.  This was the second week that we sang this song at the Gardens campus.  It seems like the congregation is beginning to catch on to it.  I love this song!  It will be released on the new CD in May as well.  At the end of this song, we went into a stripped down version of “THE HEART OF WORSHIP” in the key of D.  Finally, after the offering set-up we sang “ALL I NEED MEDLEY” in the key of D.  This is a combination of the old song, “I Need The Every Hour” and Hillsong’s “All I Need is You”.  We recorded this arrangement on our worship project “In Your Love”.  This is always a home run and a great way to mix the old with the new.

So, there it is for this weekend.  hope you enjoyed.  Check out theWorshipCommunity site and the Sunday Set List blog to see what other leaders are doing around the globe.

Throughout the scriptures there are many forms of physical response.  For this post I want to focus on one of those expressions encouraged in our worship leaders, as they influence the congregation in their leadership/worship.

The raising of hands

There are numerous passages in scripture that encourage lifting up hands to the Lord.  Psalm 134:2 says, “Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.”  Psalm 64:3 says, “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.”

I personally believe there is never a wrong time to lift your hands to God.  I do however, think that there are different reasons why and how we are to lift our hands in worship.  So the following is a list of four teaching points that I use with our worship team to give Biblical context for the purposes of lifting hands.

1.  Signifies a receptive heart

We raise our hands expecting God to respond to us. This is a posture of faith and a posture of prayer. God will respond to those who call out for mercy and help. Psalm 28:2 says, “Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place.”

2.  Signifies complete surrender

As we hold up our hands, we are in a physical way saying “God, I surrender to you”.  Just like soldiers putting up the white flag of surrender and walking out with their hands held high, we are in the same way throwing up the white flag of our lives and surrendering to God’s will and His way. 1 Timothy 2:8 says, “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.”  Romans 12:1-2, the classic worship scripture, tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.  When we lift our hands it can represent the attitude of surrender.

3.  Signifies praise to God

Psalm 63:4 declares. “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.”
In Nehemiah 8:6, Ezra led the people in praise to God. “Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, ‘Amen! Amen!’ Then they bowed down and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.”  This is probably the most common purpose that people raise their hands in worship.

4.  Signifies the extending of a blessing

The raised hand of a spiritual leader before the congregation is often used to signify a prayer of blessing upon his flock or congregation.  It can bless other people (Lk. 24:50-51) and bless the Lord (Ps. 134:2).  I will often times raise my hands over the congregation during times of prayer while praying for the needs of the people.  We encourage our worship team to extend their hand over people we pray for them (i.e. the sick, baby dedications, commissioning, etc.).

I know these points are not rocket science, but I hope they may help you in your personal worship, or if you are a worship leader, in how you lead your people.

The second app that I thought I would give props to is the Guitar Toolkit.  This is an AMAZING app.  If you are a guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin or a ukulele player, you need this app.  The Guitar Toolkit has saved  my hide a few times when I need to tune a badly out of tune guitar and all I had with me was my phone.  Pretty cool to tune your guitar in those setting with your phone.  Not only can you tune all the instruments mentioned about, but it offers alternate tunings as well.  This app also has a built in metronome and a massive chord library.  It also has a fret board section that allows the ability to see and hear almost any scale in any key. All you have to do is set the key and choose the scale and use the positions to learn the scales. This is great as a reference or instructional tool.  This app is a must have!

The last app that I thought I would give a shout to is the Song Suggest app.  I am fairly new to this app, but it is pretty cool.  Basically it is a huge database of worship songs that you can do thematic, key and tempo searches in.  So say you are looking for a communion song in the key of A in a slow tempo, you simply put those parameters in and hit the song ideas bottom and a list of songs with those criteria pop up. It also gives the ability to watch/listen to the songs through YouTube and/or Itunes.  You can find out more information about this app at worshipapps

I would love to hear if there are some apps that you know of that are really beneficial to leading worship.