Tel me about the Christmas tunes in YOUR worship sets...

ok, so Thanksgiving Day has officially expired and, especially for those of you who are like me, that means that Christmas tunes are now officially part of our worship sets for the next several weeks. Here's what I'm wondering:

Which Christmas tunes have provided particularly special moments at YOUR church?

a great new song...

so... have you ever run across a new song that you were amped about and you just had to tell the world? Worship leaders--you especially? Well, I ran into one such song the other day... it's called "You Gave Your Life Away" by Paul Baloche and Kathryn Scott. Wow.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I listen and write through a congregational filter of sorts. In other words, I'm constantly looking for--or trying to write--songs that will resonate in a congregational worship setting. So when I stumbled on this song, I was elated to hear each section of the song draw me further into a simple, beautiful moment of worship. We'll be worshiping with this new tune this weekend at MSC, so any of you reading this who will be there will get a chance to enter the throne room with Paul's and Kathryn's words on your lips in our services.

Funny, I was at Saddleback Church this past year at a conference, and I was teaching a session on corporate songwriting. I use Paul's song 'Offering' as an example in my class, because I believe that it's truly an amazing example of artistic worship writing. Anyway, Paul was teaching immediately after me across campus and I wanted to go check out his session--maybe say 'hello' if I could get a chance. He talked about this tune he had just been finishing with Kathryn Scott and sang a bit of the chorus. I loved the little bit that he shared, but had all but forgotten about it until I ran across it the other day.

Paul, if you read this, bro... I want to write with you sometime! You are truly anointed and I'd love to merge our minds and hearts and see if we could come up with a song together that blesses congregations around the world and pleases our Lord and Savior! For now, I thank you--and Kathryn--for coming up with this one!

it all started with 'intrinsic'

Ok, so it all started with the word 'intrinsic'... it's found in the song "All I Can Do is Surrender." Questions at church, in e-mails, even on myspace... what's that word 'intrinsic' mean?

Shortly after that came 'manifest'... then 'typify'... I started to get a reputation among some of the band members at Morning Star... if we were doing a new song and there was a 'fancy' word in the lyric, they'd ask me if I wrote it--they were onto me! :)

So a few months ago, I compiled this admittedly ridiculous 'survey' of all of the 'fancy' words from my debut CD Every Reason Why--and I quickly discovered that I'm not near as funny as I like to think I am--and even less so according to my wife! :) Then--and this is where it gets interesting-- I got an e-mail from a worship leader I'd just met down in Dallas at a Conference this July... he told me that after he looked up several of the words found on the CD, he actually started to enjoy it a bit more. I think he was just railing on me a bit, but he validated my bad sense of humor in this video just enough for me to upload it for you all! So here it is...

(push play, video will take a few minutes to buffer)