Our Toughest Set Yet

For the worship team, Christmas is both a time of celebration and dread. Celebration, because of the wonderful theme of Christ’s incarnation and the manifestation of God’s salvation plan for all mankind; and roast turkey and festive carol-singing. Because everyone loves to sing carols. But dread, because whilst everyone loves to sing carols, the worship […]

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 […]

The Transformative Power of a God-Idea

I delivered this message for my Metroworship Academy Creative Showcase on Monday 25 November 2013. Since I was in the company of people who could really sing or play music, I decided it was safest if I did neither. Instead, I wanted to inspire the students to apply God-birthed creative thinking in way that could […]

From the Archives: Are you an AV Projectionist or a Visual Worship Leader?

Last night, I was chatting to one of our AV people at church and I was trying to challenge her about how the AV ministry must go beyond just one of projecting songs on a screen. In fact, there is so much potential to use visual elements in a service to inspire worship in the […]

From the Archives: Worship’s Dirtiest Word

Last night at Metroworship Academy, we completed our last module which was on “Stage Presence”. How we as worship ministers communicate on stage is an important part of our task in leading the congregation. It brought to mind the issue of worship vs performance, so I thought it would be apt to re-hash this blog […]

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 […]

Set List: Faith Community Church (17 November 2013)

I’m really excited as Fantastic Team 3 prepares to lead worship this Sunday at Faith Community Church. Every time our team is on, there is a real sense of excitement, as if it were all playing together for the first time. And I think that’s the way it should be! So often, our service to […]

Weekend Ministry with Ray Badham

I had the honour last weekend of serving with Ps Ray Badham as he led worship at Faith Community Church. Ray is a music director and songwriter at Hillsongs and currently serves as principal of Hillsong College. One of Ray’s songs, “Magnificent” has gone around the world and was most recently re-recorded on Darlene Zschech’s […]

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. […]

Young People are the Present

Last night at the Festival of Light conference, Shirley Brownhill (director of YWAM Perth) was speaking about the role of youth in God’s restoration plan. She shared this amazing thought: that our young people are not just our future, they are both our present and our future! Indeed, God has always used young people for His […]