Post of email

I figure my first post should a posting of the email that I sent out. This blog thing is new for me, so hopefully this will evolve and get better as time goes on.
This is such an important mission that we are on, because hopefully this service will allow people to enter into a relationship with God or will deepen people's relationship with God. At the same time, I believe worship can spark something in the community, as we go out of the church to toward and for God's Kin-dom. The caveat with this process is that it is going to be challenging. We are going to be asking a lot of questions about worship, theology, God, Christ, and many other
things. This could be confusing and frustrating at times, but that's an important part of the faith journey. I don't know of any scripture that claims that living like Christ would be an easy task. To help you with this process, I had mentioned a number of web pages, blogs, and other internet sources that can help us in asking the questions we need to ask of ourselves and to begin answering those questions. So, below you'll find a few web pages and people that I find useful when thinking about alt-worship.

Let's start with Jonny Baker. He runs a blog that has "worship tricks", and has books with them compiled in them. He does some really interesting things. In my opinion, his theology is fairly conservative and neo-orthodox (one of those people that wants to do things just like the early Christians). Some of it I agree with and some of it I don't. But what are some of your thoughts as you review his web page and
worship tricks? What has he done in worship that you could see in a worship service at Holy Trinity? What has he done that we shouldn't do? And why? http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/

One of the emergent people that I tend to like a lot, but is very challenging in the way he looks at things. He is pretty critical of mainline denominations, and seeks to transform church in a very radical way. I can almost guarantee that he will say something that will stir you to the core. There are a couple of ways he spreads his message. One is through books. I haven't actually had the time to dive too deep into
any of his books, but we may want to consider reading one of his books together. For now, view some of his videos. You can either go to his web
page http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/multimedia/podcasts/ Or, just do a search on youtube for his videos. In fact here is an interesting
video on worship that everyone should watch that wants authentic worship
http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/index.php?ct=store.details&pid=V00246
There are a lot of other amazing videos on this web page that can be
used in worship services.

Melissa had asked me for a list of people that our doing Praise &
Worship music today. My favorites are Matt Redman (whose song "Heart of
Worship" is another resource that we should center our journey around),
Tim Hughes, Chris Tomlin, & David Crowder Band. Even though he's
starting to get dated I should mention Michael W. Smith as well. For
those that are interested in leading the music in worship service
www.worshiptogether.com has many resources to help this process. They
even have instructional videos on how to play the song, as well as song
stories on what inspired them to write the song, which I love. Although
you all laughed when I mentioned techno worship music, I would argue
that Andy Hunter has produced some worship music (although he does
mainstream stuff too). The song Amazing off his Exodus album especially,
I find has helped me in a meditative and worshipful way.