Jenny and I are out on the East Coast this Sunday visiting her family. Tim Plaster joyfully took over responsibilities for music this week, and wrote a guest-post for the blog for all of ya'll! Here he is.
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I always look forward to dusting off my Christmas MP3s and teaching some great Christmas hymns to my guitar students. The 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures, the reminder of what God has done for us by sending His Son, and the lyrics that teach us something new each year, really get me going.
For the last three years, Kate and I have seen a band called Future of Forestry play at Cornerstone church. They're a Christian band, and they have two Christmas CDs that they've released. An old friend of mine, Sarah Rollins, posted on her Facebook a few years back that she was going to see Future of Forestry, so we thought we'd give it a shot.
We ended up really enjoying the show, and bought a few of their Christmas MP3s that we love. They take the good old Christmas songs, and what they tell us at the show is that they slow down the songs. Not too much, just enough to help us realize what we're singing. I remember thinking that that's one of the things we are supposed to do when we sing songs to and about God, simply learn from them.
So each year I spend some time playing some of their songs on my guitar. When Josh asked me to play this week, he told me that I can do a Christmas song if I wanted to, even though Christmas has passed.
I didn't hesitate to choose the song What Child is This, a great song about Jesus as a baby from a different perspective.
Another song that I've been wanting to do lead for a long time is How Great Thou Art. I heard this version by Charlie Hall a few years ago I really top my attention. It's upbeat, and maintains the melody of the song. The third verse will sing, I love:
And when I think that God his son not sparing
Send him to die I scarce can take it in
That on the cross my burden gladly bearing
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Each time I've lead worship in the main service over the past few months, we've sung 10,000 Reasons, by Matt Redman. What an amazing melody and some strong words that we can sing to our God to start our worship time on Sunday morning. There's a great pause in the rhythm in the middle of each verse, that makes you stop and think about the words that you're singing. Rich and Johnny do a great job with this pause on the percussion in the middle of each verse.
One thing that I love about teaching guitar is that I get to learn new songs that my students bring me. I use songs to teach corns and different techniques. The student showed me a song for a few weeks ago by Hillsong, song by Brooke Fraser, called His Glory Appears. Another name for this song is Age to Age. It only has one person one chorus, but it's very powerful and nice and slow... so you can take it all in.
I look forward to my time this week worshiping God with all of you. I give thanks to God for the opportunity to lead when I can. Have a great rest of the week, I'll see you on Sunday.
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