A Spring Sunday @ Cornerstone – Worship/Audrey Assad

From time to time I want to post some of the music that we’re doing at Cornerstone. I know, for me, since Jarrett Stevens canned 7:22 @ North Point (only kidding jarrett), I’ve been hard pressed to find music online that we (as a team) can go and get creative ideas from week to week. Anyways, yesterday was a special day here at Cornerstone. A really good friend of mine from Nashville name Audrey Assad was here and helped lead music in our gatherings all day. These are a few of the videos from yesterday.

This first video is a new tune Audrey wrote called ‘Love is Moving’. WOW! If you don’t watch anything else on this post…watch and listen to Audrey’s song. Hopefully some of these videos will serve as a resource to inspire and encourage your ministry or life.

WORSHIP LEADERS – Input, Ideas….

If you’re a Worship Leader or Worship type person I have a question for you. I really could use your input.

I’m in the process of dreaming alongside some people about a potential worship conference. It’s in the works and let me just say, IF THIS HAPPENS YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS IT! Here’s the deal though, I desperately want your input on what would make a conference worth your time and what areas you would like to hear more about from Worship Leaders that you respect?

The questions to answer are the following:

1. What are subject matters and topics that would help you in your quest to be a better leader, pastor, songwriter, musician, etc…

2. Are there certain things that you feel like aren’t addressed at ‘other’ conferences that you wish some conference would speak too?

3. What would be a MAJOR reason that you would do ‘whatever it took’ to make sure you got to be at a conference as it relates to worship?

4. What’s the max you would pay for a 3-4 day conference?

5. How many people from your staff or team would you bring with you if it had the components you were looking to grow in?

Help me out…we really want your input and there are some REALLY great things in the talks right now. More later as things develop. Don’t forget to answer the questions. If you want just copy and paste the questions into a ‘comment’ box and answer right underneath each question. Thanks in advance for your input!

Alternate Arrangements…

While sitting in ‘Sweet Tomatoes’ with Ryan, Jason, Matt Maher and Kenny Butler, earlier this week, the dialogue was started about songs we think could work acousticly. We then talked about songs that really maybe couldn’t be changed from their original format. We all had a few thoughts and then the legendary Matt Maher (if you don’t know who Matt is…he wrote the song ‘Your Grace is Enough’…no Chris Tomlin didn’t write that…the genius Matt Maher did…give him credit!) just mentioned that the Hillsong United tune ‘Break Free’ was one of those songs.

Well, later in the week we just could not refuse the chance to prove Matt Maher wrong. So we did and here’s what we came up with for it. Also, don’t forget to watch the bonus video of the acoustic version of ‘Your Grace is Enough’. I’ll just say in advance, you won’t be able to ‘get enough’ of this goodness. Let me know what you thought…leave a comment! 🙂

FOR ONE OF MATT’S BRIGHTER MOMENTS:

ConversantLife.com – I’m blogging for them!

EXPERT BLOGGING – How in the world did I get invited to do that!? Well, my friend Chris Kottre (ht – he told me that means ‘hat-tip’ in the blog world, so there you go chris) actually shared my blog with a guy named CJ over at conversantlife.com. We met last month and now I’m blogging, as an EXPERT blogger, for them. 

ConversantLife.com is a really cool concept. It’s kind of a myspace/facebook of the blog world with focused writers on various subject matter and it’s a lot of it is written through a faith lens. Very cool stuff and I highly recommend that you go get a username over there and check out what they have going on.

I’ll be blogging for them once a week and I’m really looking forward to it. I just submitted my first blog entry, ‘introductions’, last night. ConversantLife is a publishing company. They publish some guys you might have heard of and some guys I deeply respect and that I’ve actually had the chance to work alongside. Guys like Mike Erre, Teaching Pastor at Rock Harbor in Newport Beach, Ca, and Richard Dahlstrom, a prolific leader, author and pastor from the Seattle area.

Anyways, this a bit of the new journey that i find myself on and it is really fun! Be sure to go give ConversantLife.com a look (you can use your facebook login if you have one) and leave me a comment over there just for giggles! Happy clicking!

Top 12 Worship Picks – Month of September 2008

my friend johnny messaged me the following today:

Hey Bri-

I need some new music, baby. Give me your top 10 or 12 new faves. Do it because you love me.

Johnny

all that to say it inspired a blog post. i actually get asked that question a good bit and so i asked my guys here and we put together, in no particular order, the top 12 songs we really like, are working well and that we’re singing in our rotation at Cornerstone. hope this stuff can be a resource and maybe i’ll try and do this more often for the worship types and connoisseurs. here are ours – what are yours?! comment here and check back to see what other people are doing too!  

Here’s what we’re singing right now at Cornerstone:

1. beautiful jesus -kristian stanfill

2. i adore you – phil wickham

3. cannons -phil wickham

4. filled with your glory – starfield

5. all because of jesus – fee

6. the highest and greatest – tim hughes

7. i lay it down – matt maher

8. canticles of zechariah (declare victory) – matt maher (every worship leader must own his album overflow)

9. how he loves – john mark mcmillan (you need to buy this album!)

10. none but jesus – hillsong

11. hosanna – hillsong united

12. rain down – delirious

Phil Wickham – Singalong

if you haven’t partaken in Phil Wickham’s newest record ‘Singalong’, well, you most certainly should.

i just got done listening to it for the first time and it’s a very fun worship record. i think you’ll really like it. he’s a power house of creativity both instrumentally and, especially, vocally. if you don’t know of Phil Wickham, well, let me me introduce you. 

Phil has become a friend over the years. We’ve been able to share our lives with each other a bit and it’s fun to see his ministry and songwriting continue to excel and move forward. Phil will be on his first HEADLINING tour, he tells me, this fall and it looks like FEE (steve fee for all the old school folks) will also be on his tour. should be cool. check out his myspace for dates and if he’s coming near your city you need to go spend a night with Phil and the tour. 

in the meantime, you can download, for FREE, his new SINGALONG record by just submitting to be on his mailing list. the album cover is the link to his blog so you can get his FREE record. let me know what you think, if you get it.

PLANNING CENTER for the Worship Types

I want to make sure that I’m a resource on some things as it relates to Worship Arts from time to time. If you’re a Worship Leader or maybe you serve in a worship ministry somewhere you and your community MUST look into this powerful resource called Planning Center.

Honestly, in the almost 7 years i’ve worked in full-time ministry i’ve not found a more resourceful tool. it has virtually revolutionized our ministry and effectiveness. It’s an online software that literally maximizes scheduling, songs (MP3’s downloadable and/or Streaming), chart hosting, multiple arrangement hosting (for the same song), program cue building, contact database, special event planning and MUCH more that i’m not probably thinking of right now. all the legal stuff for the printed material is covered under your CCLI license and the database works in conjunction with your CCLI account and works especially well if you use CCLI’s SongSelect feature. the software itself is very reasonably price and for the benefit you’ll never think twice about the price.

the biggest deal for the Leader and the Team Member is that it takes away the perpetual week to week uploading/downloading of things that you’re doing repetitively, it empowers your team to take responsibility for their schedule and the learning of their parts in the music and it can be used in multiple forums of the church/ministry.

i’d REALLY encourage you Worship Types, if you don’t know about it yet, to go look at their website and watch some of their videos. if you are using it i’d love to hear about how it’s effected your ministry. if this stirs you to begin using it shoot me a comment here and let me know.

if it’s helpful for anyone i can share with you how we’re using it at cornerstone. i’m not gonna go crazy on the details if it’s not a huge resource to people, but, if you’d like some more 411 on how we’re using it in our context comment and let me know. if you’re a user/team member and your ministry team is using planning center or maybe you’re serving with us at Cornerstone – how do you like it? do you find it to be a resourceful tool for you as a team member?

in the meantime, check out their website!