Christ’s Strength Perfected in My Weakness

Happy 2014 everyone! I hope that this year will be your best year yet! For my first post of the year, I want to talk about weakness. This is not a popular subject in contemporary Christian circles. We are taught to work on our weaknesses and play to our strengths. We are seldom told to […]

The Lord Gives and the Lord Takes: Approaching Worship With Sincerity

When many worship songs written these days verge on being lyrically flakey, Matt Redman continues to buck the trend in writing singable melodies paired with rich theological meaning. I love Redman’s song “Blessed Be Your Name” for those reasons. It is poetic, using contrasting imagery in each couplet, and yet forcefully reiterating a truth that […]

Making Room for the Presence of God

As worship ministers, it’s so easy, isn’t it, to play wonderful music, sing beautiful songs, move a big crowd, all the while thinking that God was in it all? I’m not saying He isn’t, by the way. But I wonder how much of it can sometimes be viewed as a substitute for God’s presence, even […]

Should I Be Enjoying the Worship?

Last night, I held our first mentoring group meeting: a cosy group of guys in the worship ministry hungry to grow together and learn from each other. We had really interesting discussions, sharing our journeys, our dreams and our understanding of worship as we began to work our way together through Bob Kauflin’s book, Worship Matters. […]

Shadow to Reality: Worship from the Tabernacle to the Heavenly Throne Room

The author of Hebrews tells us that “the law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves”.[1] A principal theme that can be traced through the Bible is the loss and recovery of God’s presence, beginning with unbroken fellowship in the Garden of Eden, through to the […]

Worship: The Centre of Existence

It’s been a while since I last posted. Life has just gotten really busy. But I recently had to do some assignments for Metro Worship Academy. I haven’t written assignments in years! My friend Kelwin says that they should call them “adventures”, rather than “assignments”. We will see… In an interview with the Canberra Times[1], […]

Taking our Place at the Love Feast: Good Friday Reflections

Today is Good Friday. On this day, Christians around the world celebrate one of the greatest events that changed the course of history: the death of Jesus on the cross. My wife and I usually like to go to a well-programed, evocative, sensory church service on Good Friday. If we can, we try to fit […]

Book Review: Future Worship by Lamar Boschman

One of the assignments I have to complete as part of the Metro Worship Academy is a book review. Students were given a select list of texts on worship to read and review. I chose Lamar Boschman’s Future Worship because it is one of the key texts which have shaped my own views on worship […]

Lift Up Those Hands

I’m in Bali at the moment and one of the things I really hate is the traffic. The roads are narrow, the sidewalk is uneven and there are cars and motorbikes everywhere. Crossing the road is quite an undertaking. What my friend does is that he steps onto the road with his hand outstretched, palm […]

Hungry!!!

When I get hungry, I’m no fun to be around. I get cranky. Real cranky. Just ask my wife. When you are hungry, you are longing for something which is yours to have, but which you may not yet have taken hold of. I’m reading Bill Johnson’s Hosting the Presence at the moment. Johnson observes […]