Shift Worship

By christopherlyon

I like this Billy Graham quote: 

The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.

Romans 12 is pretty clear that using our spiritual gifts to serve each other is square one in a life of worship. 

If you are spending time, energy and creativity to lead and/or support others in worship this weekend, that in itself is an act of worship, right? That act of service may culminate in songs of praise, but your sacrifice of service before, during and after is an even more personal worship to God. 

Enjoy the work. Accept the gift of purpose that comes with serving others for God’s glory. We are created for this.

By christopherlyon

In some ways, those who seek to lead others in worshipping God face a similar challenge to those who seek to lead others to appreciate astronomy: The spaces and sizes and vastness involved can quickly overwhelm and deaden our response to the very things that should blow our minds. 

Our God is big, even bigger than the distance between the Sun and Pluto. How can we possibly begin to communicate the idea of that kind of bigness? One approach is to find a way to demonstrate scale.

That’s what Mishka Henner does with this 12-volume set of books that simply show pictures of our solar system but with the width of every page representing 1 million kilometers. The video below is long, but you’ll get the idea pretty quickly. It just shows a pair of hands leafing through the first (and likely most exciting) of the 12-part series, which includes the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt.

What could you do with scale to help lead others to appreciate God’s vast size, scope, love, grace, mercy or patience — and worship him for it?

ASTRONOMICAL - The Movie from Mishka Henner on Vimeo.

By christopherlyon

Need some color on your screen? This week, we’re liking red. Deep, passionate red with some texture, light and shadow. We think these new backgrounds - especially the motions - will be perfect for creating an intense mood during an evening service or in relation to Valentine’s Day (more on that next week) or even when calling for contemplation of the blood of Christ.

Hope they work for you, too. 

By christopherlyon

A study released this month by The Barna Group gets into what people experience and/or feel when going to church. I think it raises as many questions about the point of church as it reveals about our experiences there, but there’s grist for good conversation here. 

Should we expect to experience or “connect with” God as part of our weekly worship service?

Connecting with God is perhaps the most important outcome facilitated by churches. Most people (66%) feel they have had “a real and personal connection” with God while attending church. However, that means one-third of those who have attended a church in the past have never felt God’s presence while in a congregational setting. Also, when asked about frequency, most of those who have attended church describe these encounters as rare. One-third of all adults in the country report connecting with God at least monthly (35%) via a congregational setting. Among those who attend church every week, 44% said they experience God’s presence every week and 18% do so on a monthly basis.

You can read the rest of the results from the study over at barna.org.

By christopherlyon

Ouch.

“Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together

By christopherlyon

Bob Kauflin at the Worship Matters blog is talking today about a book called Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship by David Peterson. 

We liked this excerpt from the book, about worship and the book of Revelation, one we don’t always turn to for the content of our songs to God. 

The hymnic material in the book of the Revelation…should alert us to the importance of singing God’s praise in a way that is truly honoring to him and helpful to his people. Do our hymns and songs concentrate on praising God for his character and his mighty acts in history on our behalf? Do they focus sufficiently on the great truths of the gospel? There is always a temptation to focus too much on the expression of our own immediate needs.

By christopherlyon

Just a couple of big, warm new nature backgrounds … because they help us remember spring isn’t that far away. More like these soon …

By christopherlyon

This coming Sunday, January 22, is Sanctity of Life Sunday. And, no, the sonogram images and footage we used for our brand new starter mini, splash screen and background are not from a stock photo company. That little girl is the third of our co-owner Josh’s kids to make it into a ShiftWorship video. She’s not due out herself until April, but she was perfect for the part in this Psalm 139 set.

By christopherlyon

We know you don’t rely on this blog for music recommendations — and we hesitate to give them — but we realized today that we’re kind of digging a bunch of just-released music that is made for worshipping God. So we’re sharing. If you’re into something new and worship-oriented, feel free to mention it in the comments. 

(We’re including previews to each of the albums from Rdio, which we use and enjoy. If you don’t have Rdio, you can still listen to a clip of each of the songs. If you do and you’re logged in, you can listen to the whole thing.)

All Sons & Daughters
Reason to Sing
Just out today, but we’ve been camping out for it. It’s the follow-up to their first EP and two of our favorite worship albums — as a pair — of the last year. Great lyrics. Artful music and vocals. Quiet worship.

David Crowder*Band
Give Us Rest (etc.)
This one is everywhere since it dropped last week. Heralded as the DC*B’s “last album,” it is massive and multi-layered and deeply spiritual in the formal sense of the word — and kind of awesome. Wish we could have seen them live at Passion a week or two ago.

Homemade Worship By Handmade People
Rend Collective Experiment
Released two weeks ago, we’ve been enjoying several songs from this one. Lots of instruments and harmonies and some nice energy.

Come Sunday
Charlie Haden & Hank Jones
Seriously mellow church music played with serious jazz pedigree by two musical legends. Also just out a week, this is simply a piano and bass working through classic hymns and spirituals. Not for night driving, for sure. Better for the tail end of the day when you’re ready for some intentional drifting. 

By christopherlyon

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Here’s an interesting part 1 to a doc on photographer Charles Moore, who passed away in 2010. He took many of what have become iconic photos of Dr. King and the civil rights movement.

Raised in the South by a Baptist preacher father, Moore found himself at the right place and time to participate in telling the story of the civil rights movement. He was newspaper photographer whose office was located just a few blocks from Dr. King’s church. He eventually asked to be assigned to every story involving Dr. King. The images he took are not just part of history; they helped to change it. 

What story are you at the right place and time to tell? How are you using your tools to tell it? How are you distributing that story to the world around you?