What is Worship?

When I started All About Worship, I knew that worship isn’t just the songs we sing about God or to God. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we Christians have labeled church music as “worship”. Not sure who started using that term to describe church music, but I’d love to sit with him/her and pick their brain.

It’s very interesting to me how we Christians label everything with the word “worship”. Here are some examples: Worship Leader Magazine, Worship Pastor, Worship Leading, Worship Conference, Worship Album, Worship Artist, etc.

I would also love to find out…how do YOU define worship? If an unchurched person came to your church this weekend and asked you after “worship” what “worship” is, how would you explain it to them?

Please leave a comment!

-Wisdom Moon

Parachute Band “Love Without Measure” – CD Review

Love Without Measure is the third album release since the new iteration of Parachute Band formed in 2006.  The New Zealand-based worship band has somewhat of a heritage of writing songs with meaningful lyrics, combined with excellent production and musicianship.  This newest album certainly meets the high standard that the group has set for itself.

This album mixes a wide range of modern rock songs and straightforward ballads, all infused with synthesized electronic textures. Each track on the album is truly unique from the others, showing this band’s diversity of style.

Almost all of the songs, with their solid and expressive lyrics, have a consistent theme of worship directly to the Lord.  The album opens with the catchy and upbeat “Gave It All,” probably the most pop-influenced track of them all.  ”Saviour Of The Broken Heart” shines as an anthem of hope for the brokenhearted, and of inspiration to reach the lost.  One of the ballads, “It’s You,” features Martin Smith of Delirious?.  The album finishes with a purely instrumental track, “Soar,” which almost serves as a perfect soundtrack for reflecting upon the lyrics and the worshipful experience of the previous 11 tracks.

Love Without Measure continues The Parachute Band’s tradition of relevant, accessible, and well-produced songs, many of which could be equally suited for both Christian radio and for church worship services.

-Review by Michael Fash

Download the free chord chart of “You Remain”.

Choosing Worship Songs: Horizontal or Vertical?

A friend of mine asked me to consider blogging on how I go about selecting worship music. So I’ve assembled some thoughts on the topic and will be sharing them periodically.

Well, let me start off by saying I am NO expert on this subject by any means.  But I love to read experts and use their ideas enhancing them for the use of the Grace Church worship services.

Often I have folks suggest songs for our worship services here at Grace.  Sometimes they make the list and other times they don’t.  My hestiation in sharing this info is that people might make the assumption that the worship song idea they have won’t make the cut based on the criteria.  I LOVE having people recommend songs!  I like to hear when people get excited about a song that caused them to take pause in their busy life and reflect on God. So don’t judge your recommendations, don’t hold them back…please!

Horizontal or Vertical?

Does the song cause the singer to sing about God or to God?  There are many inspiring songs that speak of the wonderful works, nature or truth of God, however they aren’t being directly sung to God.  These songs are horizontal in nature.

Some great worship song examples that I consider horizontal are: Amazing Grace, Standing on the Promises, In Christ Alone and How Great is Our God. If you read the lyrics of these songs you will find that there are no phrases that indicate it’s being sung to God but about God.  They all tell great truths that teach us aspects about the nature of our great God.

Some great worship song examples that I consider vertical are: Here I am to Worship, You Are My King, How Great Thou Art and Heart of Worship. Even in the titles you can see the direction these songs might take a singer.

When you listen to worship music, see if you can classify it as vertical or horizontal.  Think of it in terms of “in Spirit and in Truth”.  Is the song proclaiming truth?  Or is the song directly sung to the Lord in Spirit?

Now that these two types of songs have been identified, the next step is figuring out what to use on Sunday!  And that depends greatly upon the needs of the church, the direction of the pastor/teacher and the particular message that Sunday.  I’ll get into that on another post.

What would you add to this topic?

Originally posted on July 20, 2005 on Ben’s blog at BabuLife.blogs.com