March: In Christ Alone

"Here in the death of Christ I live"

There is no doubt, "In Christ Alone" is perhaps the best hymn written in the last few decades. No other modern song comes close to the clarity and imagery in telling of the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ while at the same time masterfully weaving the impact and implications of what God has done for us. The beautiful tune fits the lyrics like a glove. It's simple and soaring.

Because of the deep resonating truth contained in the lyrics one can sing this song in any season of life. The main reason is because nearly every line is a giant arrow pointing away from ourselves and towards Jesus.

Find more information about "In Christ Alone" and the hymnwriters at:

Gettymusic | Stuart Townend | Wikipedia | Crosswalk

Listen
In Christ Alone by Rich Tuttle

In Christ Alone

In Christ alone my hope is found;

He is my light, my strength, my song;

This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev'ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow'r of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow'r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand.

"In Christ Alone"
Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music

For 10 months in 2012 our church will be memorizing hymns together. For more information about this click here.

February: Praise to The Lord, The Almighty

“O let all that is in me adore Him!” 

"This hymn was written by Joachim Neander, born in 1650, whose father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather--all Joachim Neanders--had been preachers of the gospel. But as a student, Joachim was wild and rebellious. At 20, he joined a group of students who descended on St. Martin's Church in Bremen to ridicule and scoff the worshipers. But the sermon that day by Rev. Theodore Under-Eyck arrested him and led to his conversion. A few years later, he was the assistant preacher at that very church.

Joachim often took long walks near his home in Hochdal, Germany. They were worship walks, and he frequently composed hymns as he strolled, singing them to the Lord. He was the first hymnwriter from the Calvinist branch of Protestantism. When he was 30—the year he died—he wrote this while battling tuberculosis:

Praise Ye The Lord, The Almighty, the King of Creation.
O my soul praise Him, for He is Thy health and Salvation.

One of Joachim's favorite walking spots was a beautiful gorge a few miles from Dusseldorf. The Dussel River flowed through the valley, and Joachim Neander so loved this spot that it eventually was named for him—Neander Valley. The Old German word for 'valley' was 'tal' or 'thal' with a silent 'h'.

Two hundred years later Herr von Beckersdorf owned the valley, which was a source for limestone, used to manufacture cement. In 1856, miners discovered caves which contained human bones. Beckersdorf took the bones to a local science teacher who speculated they belonged to one who died in the Flood.

But when William King, an Irish professor of anatomy, saw the bones, he claimed they were proof of evolution's famous 'missing link.' Other Neanderthal fossils were found, and for many years they were used to 'prove' Darwin's theory of evolution. Today we know the Neanderthal was fully human, an extinct people group of great strength.

But, as one expert [Marvin L. Lubenow] put it, 'when Joachim Neander walked in his beautiful valley so many years ago, he could not know that hundreds of years later his name would become world famous, not for his hymns celebrating creation, but for a concept that he would have totally rejected: human evolution.'"

The above passage was taken from the book "Then Sings My Soul" by Robert J. Morgan, (page 27)

How often do we consider singing to ourselves for encouragement? This hymn not only drips with Biblical substance it also replicates the Biblical style of the Book of Psalms. In fact it is a paraphrase of Psalm 103:1-6. The Psalms are bursting with songs aimed at reminding the soul to praise and bless the Lord. Our souls need constant reminders to turn our attention to God, to praise Him, to find our joy and satisfaction in Him.

Find more information about "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty" at:
Cyberhymnal | Cyberhymnal (German) | Wikipedia | Hymnsheet from Covenant Life Church


Listen
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty by Rich Tuttle

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

Praise to the Lord,
The Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise Him,
For He is thy health and salvation!
All ye who hear,

Joachim Neander

Now to His temple draw near;

Praise Him in glad adoration.

Praise to the Lord,

Who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth,

Shelters thee under His wings,

Yea, so gently sustaineth!

Hast thou not seen

How thy desires e’er have been
Granted in what He ordaineth?

Praise to the Lord,
Who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;
Surely His goodness
And mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew
What the Almighty can do,
If with His love He befriend thee.

Praise to the Lord,
O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath,
Come now with praises before Him.
Let the Amen
Sound from His people again,
Gladly for aye we adore Him.

Text: Joachim Neander, 1680. Based on Psalm 103
Translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1863
Tune: LOBE DEN HERREN, Stralsund Gesangbuch, 1665

For 10 months in 2012 our church will be memorizing hymns together. For more information about this click here.

January: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

"Tune my heart to sing Thy grace"

During the month of January we will be singing the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” which was written in 1758 by Robert Robinson.

One of the great things about this hymn is that it causes us to say true things about ourselves that we would rather not say. It calls us to tune our hearts to sing the grace of God. It calls us to remember the gospel from which pours streams of mercy, never ceasing. How easily it is for us to just check out and drift from the presence of God without intention. Our minds become full of ourselves or the things around us. We rarely slow down to evaluate our hearts. And when we do we find that our hearts deceive us into believing everything is fine and we just continue to float, unaffected by grace and truth. But then when we sing those words that our hearts wouldn’t sing on their own, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it! Prone to leave the God I love,” our hearts are struck to the core as we see our sinful nature exposed. And now our hearts long for and rejoice over those streams of never ceasing mercy, and we understand the author’s meaning when he prays that he might be bound to Christ with the shackles of grace.

Find more information about "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" at:

Cyberhymnal | Wikipedia | Christian History Institute | RUF Online Hymnbook

Listen

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing by Rich Tuttle

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise

Robert Robinson

Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount—O fix me on it,
Mount of God's unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I'm come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Text: Robert Robinson (1735-1790)
Tune: American Folk Tune attributed to John Wyeth

For 10 months in 2012 our church will be memorizing hymns together. For more information about this click here.

My Heart is Black and Wicked

October 31st is Reformation Day and usually the Sunday before many churches will celebrate Reformation Sunday. At our church we mainly celebrate this day through song. After all, it was because of the Reformation that we have such a rich history of congregational singing.

If we don't sing a song that was sung during the Reformation, such as "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" or "All People that on Earth Do Dwell", we will sing songs that reflect the spirit of the Reformation, such as "How Firm a Foundation".

Another song we will be singing this Sunday is a song I wrote a few years ago that I always thought appropriate for Reformation Sunday, but until now I have never really been happy with any melody I've put to it. Over the last week or so I've been able to work with this song again and am happy to be able to sing it with the church as we gather together this Sunday. I'm also happy to be able to share it with you as well! Hope you are blessed by it and have a great Reformation Sunday!

My Heart is Black and Wicked by Rich Tuttle

My Heart is Black and Wicked

My heart is black and wicked Lord, it never will obey
Your Holy wrath for me is stored, eternal - day by day
Against Infinite Perfectness we offer perfect sin
Our punishment, eternally, is death and death again

Upon the tree of sin and death, a curse for all to see
"Tis finished!" is His dying breath; His blood has ransomed me
Atonement made for those He chose; God's wrath is satisfied
His punishment becomes our peace and we are justified

By grace alone through faith alone, His gospel we believe
This faith which rests in Christ alone, He gives and we receive
And by the Word of God alone this gospel we proclaim
All glory be to God alone! O praise His Holy Name!

Help Bifrost Arts Give Beautiful Music to the Church

Bifrost Arts is making a new record and you can help!

Find out all the info and how you can help at their Kickstarter page.

In light of my previous post, this is a great opportunity to support a group of church musicians that understand sound theology and beautiful music.

Wanted: Hymn Writers

The church is always in need of more hymns. Good hymns. Hymns that last the test of time. Hymns busting at the seams with biblical truth matched with mind blowing beauty. Hymns full of sound doxology. A robust collection of hymns that give voice to every occasion.

One thing the church does not need more of is bad hymns. Shallow hymns. Ugly hymns. Meaningless hymns. Unfortunately it is much easier to write wretchedly than it is to write wonderfully.

So what the church needs (and always needs) is an army of hymn writers. Hymn writers who value truth and beauty. Hymn writers that venture into the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God and come back with treasures and tales of their adventures in that marvelous, perilous realm. What a noble task it is for the church to equip their poet-warriors with the necessary tools and training for such a calling.

Unfortunately, the church in America has done a pretty pitiful job at raising up hymn writers. I mean, if the church struggles to raise up pastors, how on earth will they be able to raise up hymn writers? I'm not talking about training and equipping musicians, though I believe that is a worthy goal I also believe that the church has more musicians than she knows what to do with. Heaven knows we could certainly deal with one less rock star wannabe. Then again, Heaven knows we could certainly benefit from fresh new melodies packed with submissive beauty.

But hymn writers need to be more than musicians. I would even say it is possible that one does not necessarily even need to be musically talented to be a good hymn writer. Though musicality is beneficial, I would argue that hymn writers need to be poetical rather than musical (though some would argue they are one in the same to some degree). But the point is that a hymn writer doesn't need to play piano or guitar or even sing well to write a good hymn.

Not only does one need to be poetical, but also vastly knowledgeable about God. This means that an understanding of sound theology and doctrine is crucial for the hymn writer. It is no surprise to me to see that almost every master hymn writer in the past was a pastor. Wesley, Watts, Newton, Doddridge, etc. Their main business was mining the depths of the gospel each week. To do so they had to be intimate with the Scriptures. As a result, not only were these men pastors worthy of emulation, they became the greatest hymn writers of the English language. Where are our pastor-hymn writers of today? There are exceptions to this however, in that there are many great hymn writers who were laymen. Anne Steele and William Cowper, for example. But only skim through their hymns and you will find that they are dripping with theology like honey from the comb.

The key is that a hymn writer needs to strive to become masterful in joining together truth with beauty. (A love for the people of God, I believe is quite necessary as well.) I like how Kevin Twit describes this melding of truth and beauty in hymns: "theology on fire". And it's in the church's best intrest to invest time, energy, and resources into developing and assisting her hymn writers.

Most of these thoughts were fueled by the following three articles. I happened to read them all within about a day of each other and I became greatly encouraged how each one seeks to support the hymn writer.

• First, Fernado Ortega recently wrote an excellent piece for the Rabbit Room called Avoiding Convenience: A Word to Hymn Writers.

Here’s a portion of what he says:

"Let this be an encouragement to modern hymn writers—a cause for inspiration to those who are suffering from writer’s block. There are so many Biblical scenes to choose from that would make for beautiful songs: the transfiguration of Christ, the feeding of the five thousand, the woman at the well, the stoning of Stephen, water baptism, washing of the disciple’s feet, the betrayal of Judas. If just a few good modern hymn writers tackled some of these subjects, the anguish that untold thousands of music ministers suffer weekly could be greatly diminished.

It’s easy to write a chorus that says:

God, you are a Holy God
I need your grace to see me through
I need your mercy to make me new
Let me live each day for you.

I just made that up in two minutes and there’s nothing wrong with it. It might fit easily and competitively among the hundreds of worship songs that are available to choose from. But compare those lines to the third stanza from the above hymn:

Let holy charity mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

It took some real thought to craft those lines. They’re timeless. They set a standard for all of us who write music for the church. I didn’t set out to write a didactic piece. I’m reminding myself, too. Be specific when you write songs about God. Avoid cliché. Avoid convenience. Avoid an obsession with the consumer. Avoid the temptation to make commercial success your central goal. Write with intelligence, employing all the craft, skill, and experience with which God has endowed you."

I absolutely love what he has to say. Though this kind of thing has been said before, it can never be said enough. Encouragement and advice like this needs to become as strong and steady as a pounding drum.

• The second article that caught my eye is over at Cardiphonia. Bruce Benedict has been kind enough to share what he's been learning in his "Songwriting and Theology" class at Duke. I hope he takes good notes because I'm stealing them...

Songwriting and Theology
Songwriting and Theology Week 2 Paradoxes 

These posts are great in and of themselves and Bruce links to some great thought provoking articles, but what really grabbed my attention was something his teacher said:

"The Church has no theological expectations of her musicians."

This such a sad statement that at first I had a hard time agreeing with it. But after thinking about it and pondering the putrid wasteland of music that has been produced (and peddled, and packaged, and sold)  by the American Church, I have to agree for the most part. It is certainly true that this is an accurate reflection of the status quo.

I would also take that expression and turn it on it's head a bit and say that, "The Church has no poetical or musical expectations of her pastors and theologians."

• Third, I came across this new blog by Sojourn Music songwriters Bobby and Kristen Gilles called My Song in the Night. It looks as if this entire blog will be highly beneficial the hymn writer.

The 'mission statement' of the blog says this:

"Helping you express words of worship and testimony through songs and stories."

The article I specifically want to direct your attention to is one in their Songwriting section called Modern Hymns. They do an excellent job at laying out a very basic outline of the ins and outs of hymn writing. Just reading through this made me want to stop and find a pen and paper.

• Lastly, though I didn't just run across this, I do want to direct your attention to a post I put up a few years back called Towards a Better Hymnody. I link to a pamphlet that I think will continue to help us think soundly about our hymnody and our hymn writers. Also, as it was written more than 50 years ago, it lends to the idea that the church is always looking for better hymns and hymn writers.

I hope that these articles have motivated you like they have me. Let's keep the drum pounding. Let's keep spreading the word that the church is in great need of hymn writers.

Linktastic!

Normally I don't often dedicate a post to links, but it's been over a month since my last post and it's time for me to play a bit of catch-up. So today's post is plumb full of links directing you, dear reader, to some things I've really been enjoying recently and wanted to share with you.

Doctrine and Doxology: Why we must fire boring teachers and preachers - Carl Trueman is always saying something awesome. He's always seeing and saying things from a different perspective that washes over a subject like a fresh breeze. This article from Reformation 21 is fantastic. The reason I call my blog Sound Doxology is exactly what he explains in this article; namely that doctrine and doxology are linked, and you can't have one without the other. But as great as this article is, I recommend everything Carl Trueman writes.

Seeds Family Worship - These guys do an incredible job at putting Scripture to music. A couple years ago I wrote about how most songs written for children in the church are either putrid or just stupid and we are in major need of children's songs that have good quality in both music and content. Well the Seeds guys are doing it extremely well.

John Stott Has Died - I was saddened to hear this news. God used John Stott to greatly increase my understanding of worship. Stott was really the first person I read who clearly conveyed that the more we know God the more we will worship God. I've had this quote of his on my blog since I started it a few years back:

"All true worship is a response to the self-revelation of God in Christ and Scripture, and arises from our reflection on who He is and what He has done….The worship of God is evoked, informed, and inspired by the vision of God….The true knowledge of God will always lead us to worship."

Worship Leaders – Prepare Like a Preacher - Good things are always happening at Cardiphonia. I found this article to be wonderful, and as always there are fantastic resources that go along with it.

Speaking of Cardiphonia, as I was linking to the site I ran across the latest post The Rise of Digital Hymnals. (See, I told you good things are always happening there...) I am a huge, mega fan of Digital Hymnals. I've been telling you about Indelible Grace and Red Mountain Music for a while now, but Bruce has collected and linked to a few more!

Reflections on the Psalms - I'm half-way through this book by CS Lewis and I already want to recommend it. Reading this book has caused me to fall more in love with the book of Psalms. After a chapter or two I can't help but close the book and start reading the Psalms.

The Wingfeather Saga - Andrew Peterson, in my opinion, is a master wordsmith. His lyrics in his songs pierce my heart in ways no other songwriter has done before. So it's no surprise that his books do the same thing. He's written three books so far, with a fourth on the way. I just finished the third book and the story rejuvenated my soul. This really doesn't have much to do with congregational worship, but after reading his last book, I was driven to worship in light of the beauty and truth of God.

Gospel Focused Leadership with Dr. Richard Blackaby - This one-day event will be taking place at Wornall Road Baptist Church (my church) on Saturday Aug 20 from 10AM to 3PM. Includes worship and prayer as well as leadership from Dr. Blackaby on "getting our hearts, minds and God's people onto God's Agenda." The cost is free and lunch is provided. If you live in (or are nearby) the Kansas City area this would be a great opportunity for you and/or your church leaders to rest and reorient around the gospel.

Around the Table - This is my new blog that both my wife and I contribute to. (It's also likely the reason why I haven't posted here lately...) Essentially it is a blog about food and fellowship and life around the dinner table. We share recipes and stories and hopefully it will inspire you or make you laugh.

Finally, I thought I'd link to what's become my most viewed post (by far): The Effeminate Worship Leader. I knew this would strike a nerve when I first posted it (both positive and negative) but I didn't really expect the amount of traffic it has generated, and what it continues to generate. I've thought about re-posting it and updating it a bit, but after re-reading it I don't know if I have much else to say about it in this format. I am always open to having a dialogue about these kinds of things though.

So that's it for now! Hopefully some of these links have interested you as much as they have interested me.