Rob Rash offers Easter planning ideas:

There are many reasons why I love Easter. It’s a time of great joy, family get togethers, and celebration.

Of course, it’s really all about Jesus!

But it’s also about the church and about those who may come to hear this good news we celebrate. Easter will be here before we know it. Crazy I know. It seems like we just made it through the Christmas season and here we are talking about Easter.

However, we are only a few weeks out and as much as I love Christmas, Easter is kind of a big deal. One a quick theological side note, without a risen savior who defeated death and sin, the apostle Paul says that we are of all people most to be pitied. Indeed, Christ had to come as a baby, yet if he didn’t fulfill the scriptures, live the perfect life, die the most gruesome death AND rise again to life, then he was just a good man who died.

The resurrection is everything!

It’s the crux of all humanity.

And in light of this hope, we should not treat easter as just another Sunday nor revert back to what we’ve always done. Easter Sunday needs to be a glorious time of celebrating the risen Christ. And if you’re not planning and preparing and praying through this season, you might miss an incredible opportunity.

Unfortunately, many times, my ‘great’ ideas happen after the fact. Elements like videos, song selection and the like. Or, I just didn’t do a great job of planning and preparing my church for our Easter services.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer a few suggestions to help you make the most of your Easter services and the days leading up to them.

Here are a few ways you can be strategic in the weeks leading up to Easter in order to make it the very best.

1) Dream With Your Pastor/Team

Take a couple of hours and do a little dreaming with your team. Imagine what your Easter Sunday could be like if time, resources, and people were not an obstacle. What is the sermon going to look like? What are we expecting? Get everyone on the same page here with big ideas.

2) Plan Out Your Worship Service

It’s never too early to have your songs, video’s, and people planned and scheduled. After your team meeting, sit down and pray through the overall worship flow. What songs will work best? Are there any new songs? How can you start introducing these songs before Easter? Can you lock down your video now or do you need to start shooting? Will you need to schedule any extra rehearsals?

3) Prepare Your People

If you are planning on doing a new song, Easter morning isn’t the time to introduce it. Start working the song into your weekly gatherings in the weeks leading up to Easter. Put together a playlist of Easter songs and start using it before and after every service. Make a playlist available online for streaming (i.e. Spotify) and encourage your church to start listening to the songs in preparation for Easter.

4) Start Promoting Your Services

To some this may seem strange, that we would promote our church and services, however, I believe it is important for not only our church people but also their friends to know what is available to them. The fact is, that many people will come to church on Easter, and while we’re not trying to wow them with our performance we are trying to point them to Jesus. And Easter is a great opportunity to at least start the conversation.

Share your graphics, logo’s, and service times on your website, church Facebook page, personal Facebook page, Twitter accounts, Spotify and anything else you can think of.

I can’t reiterate this enough… you cannot put this off any longer. The time to start planning for Easter is now! It’s such an incredible opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus and people will be coming to your church.

And there’s no better time to share the good news than right now.

Gary Miller: According to the Bible, there is a certain type of music God hates. But what is it?

Can you picture God covering His ears because He hates what He hears? According to the Bible, there is a certain type of music God hates. But what is it?

It has to be rock & roll, right? After all, it is the devil’s music. Nope. Is it country or bluegrass? No, not them either. How about rap, hip-hop or jazz? Uh uh. Maybe it’s classical, pop, heavy metal, soul R & B, reggae or the blues? Wrong again; it’s none of those. You see, God does not hate a particular genre.

Maybe it’s a certain song, like:”The Lion Sleeps Tonight” or “Who Let the Dogs Out?” But God does not hate a particular song.

Maybe God hates the sound of a specific instrument. After all, man has invented some instruments that can be very irritating. Bagpipes, for instance, always strike me as dissonant and out of tune. The Bible mentions many musical instruments (lyre, harp, flute, horn, trumpet, tambourine and cymbals), yet it doesn’t seem to give any indication which ones (if any) God prefers or detests. But again, God does not seem to hate a specific instrument.

The music God hates has nothing to do with its genre, melody or instrumentation. In fact, it has nothing to do with music at all. The type of music God hates is music (designed to glorify Him) that flows from a hypocritical heart. That is one thing He cannot stand!

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America’s youth are leaving churches in droves. One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a 2012 Public Religion Research Institute poll, and 55 percent of those unaffiliated youth once had a religious identification when they were younger. Yet amidst this exodus, some church leaders have identified another movement as cause for hope: rather than abandoning Christianity, some young people are joining more traditional, liturgical denominations—notably the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox branches of the faith. This trend is deeper than denominational waffling: it’s a search for meaning that goes to the heart of our postmodern age.

For Bart Gingerich, a fellow with the Institute on Religion and Democracy and a student at Reformed Episcopal Seminary, becoming Anglican was an intellectual journey steeped in the thought of ancient church fathers. He spent the first 15 years of his life in the United Methodist Church, where he felt he was taught a “Precious Moments” version of Christianity: watered down, polite, and unreal. His family joined a nondenominational evangelical church when Gingerich was 16. Some of the youth he met were serious about their faith, but others were apathetic, and many ended up leaving the church later on.

While attending Patrick Henry College in Virginia, Gingerich joined a reformed Baptist church in the nearby town of Guilford. Gingerich read St. Augustine and connected strongly with his thought—in class from Monday to Friday, Gingerich found himself arguing for ideas that clashed with his method of worship on Sunday. Protestantism began troubling him on a philosophical level. Could he really believe that the church “didn’t start getting it right” till the Reformation?

The final straw came when a chapel speaker at the college explained the beauty of the Eucharist in the Anglican service. Gingerich knew this was what he was looking for. Soon after, he joined the Anglican Church.

Continue reading.

Bob Kauflin: if this is a trend in congregational song, the word “Whoa!” does come to mind.

I’ve been thinking about the use of generic syllables in congregational singing for a while now.

It’s not a new phenomenon. I remember singing, “Lai lai lai lai lai, lai lai lai lai lai lai,” as the last verse of the song in the 70s that was called “Then shall the virgin break forth into dance.” I think it was supposed to be the dance section. We sing, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la la la” and don’t think twice about it. And the Beatles did just fine with “ob-la-di, ob-la-da” and the epic ending to Hey Jude (Na Na Na Na na na Naaaaaaa).

But recently an increasing number of modern worship songs feature syllables like “oh, ooh, and whoa.” Generic syllables can be enjoyable to sing and can provide a musical segue that involves the congregation. They also can carry meaning as they give expression to a burst of emotion that either respond or lead in to lyrics that actually say something. My good friend Matt Boswell reminded me that Paul begins his doxology in Romans 11:33-36 with “Oh,” the depth of the riches… There are times when an emotional “oh!” is the most appropriate lead in to a life-transforming truth.

But something more has been happening. Crowds are singing lengthy portions of songs using vowel sounds rather than actually singing words. Is this a good thing? Does it matter?

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Thom Rainer: Unhealthy churches have numbers of leaders who don’t practice 1 Corinthians 13.

These persons tend to seek their picture of an ideal church rather than loving their current church, her leaders, and her members. They are thus constantly comparing some aspect of the church with some other church or members or leaders. As a result, six unhealthy consequences unfold when these comparisons take place.

Comparison creates dissatisfaction among members with the pastors and staff. “The current pastor does not preach like the pastor at some other church.” “Our student pastor is not as dynamic as the other guy at the other church.” “If only our pastor would keep his sermons as brief as my former pastor.” “I know that the pastor at the other church visits the members more than our pastor.”

Pastors and church staff can have the “green grass” syndrome when they compare their churches and its members with some other church. I once asked a friend to name his favorite church of the several he had served as pastor. His response was both amusing and sad: “The next one.” He would move from one church to another seeking that perfect congregation. Of course, that place does not exist.

Comparisons create unhealthy expectations. Being a church member is somewhat akin to being married. How many of us have thought our marriage could be so much better if our spouse could become something he or she is not? No church is perfect. All struggle in some way or another. When we compare our church to some other congregation, we may be creating an expectation that is neither realistic nor healthy.

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Chris Huff addresses common mix complaints.

One sentence. One sentence should drive music mixing.

Close your eyes and listen.

What you SEE affects what you THINK you should HEAR.

“I can’t hear the keyboard.”
“I can’t hear the bass.”
“I can’t hear my wife.”

Ah, words spoken by the seeing.

“I can’t hear the keyboard,” the intern said to me. She trusted her eyes. She was subconsciously saying, “I can’t hear the keyboard as loud as the other instruments.”

For some reason, the eyes convey the idea, “If I see it then I should clearly hear it.” But the ears have been listening to music for years. Whether it’s songs on the radio, iPhone, or 8-track player (remember those?), the ears have been listening to PRODUCED MUSIC. This is music produced, in a studio, with mix nuances in EQ and volume. The ears hear the music. The eyes see the individual musicians.

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