Gangai Victor's Blog, page 13

37 Free Worship Songs for Lent and Easter

Looking for free worship songs for Lent or Easter?

 

Here are some that I've come across, hope they help your worship during this amazing season of grace, repentance and renewal:

 

"So Loved" - one of the songs from my new worship CD "The New Song":

 

Free Download page: https://soundcloud.com/gangaivictor/so-loved

Free Chord chart for "So Loved: http://goo.gl/DxxDz

 

20 Free Lenten Songs by New York Hymns, you can listen and download at NoiseTrade:

Free Chords are available here: http://goo.gl/oGyqc

 

6 Free songs by "Ashes to Embers":

 

10 Free Easter Songs - giveaway from Kingsway Worship:

1. Gethsemane Hymn by Stuart Townend & Keith Getty

2. See the Lamb of God by Lou & Nathan Fellingham and Gary Sadler

3. The Cross Speaks by Suzanne Hanna

4. Saviour of the World by Tim Hughes, Nick Herbert, Ben Cantelon, Matt Redman

5. The Cross Stands by Tim Hughes, Nick Herbert, Ben Cantelon, Matt Redman

6. Victor's Crown by Darlene Zschech, Israel Houghton, Kari Jobe

7. Resurrection Hymn by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend

8. For This Purpose by Graham Kendrick

9. See His Love by Tom Lockley

10. Christ is Risen by Matt Maher & Mia Fieldes

 

Have you seen other free songs for Lent or Easter? Please post a comment and let me know, thank you.

 

Wish you a blessed season of Lent!

Introducing THE NEW SONG

What is 'The New Song'?

It's the title of my new worship CD - a collection of 10 songs written over different seasons of my life in the past few years. The title track (available for free at NoiseTrade) especially is my life-song and it could easily be the song of every soul redeemed by the love and grace of Jesus.

 

For the Name of Jesus is the song of all songs that we can ever sing!

 

And there's more: I want to invite you to sing 'The New Song' to the needy, for what good is worship if it doesn't lead us to mission! So let me tell you about Shore Home.

 

About Shore Home:

SHORE HOME was started in June 2008 to give hope to the needy children in India - abandoned orphans, children of prisoners for life etc. in India. At present the home looks after eleven boys and nine girls, each of them with his/her own sad story.

 

Apart from providing the children with food, shelter, clothes etc., Shore Home also ensures education at a quality school/college to transform their future.

 

Needless to say, Shore's journey is full of challenges like lack of funds, inadequate place etc. so much so that its every day survival is a miracle!

 

But for Shore Home, these children would have been dumped on the streets and God knows what would have happened to them.

 

So how can you help?

Simple, just head over to gumroad and buy 'The New Song', it will cost you only $2.99 and a portion of every sale will be donated to Shore House. You can use the widget below to listen to and download the title track for free:

 

Now over to you. Will you join with me to sing 'The New Song' to the kids at Shore House? Buy the Album Now .

10 Things Every Worship Leader Should Never Forget

When we talk about unforgettables  for a worship leader, we usually refer to stuff like songs in the set list, transition plan, chords, song sequence and so on.

 

I am trying to go a little deeper than that here.

 

Sometimes it's easy to bank on experience and deliver a good enough worship session. Been there, done that, right?!

 

That's why regular time-outs to introspect is important. For  it's not about what I can do or how experienced I am. Heck, it's not even about me in the first place! This list is an outcome of one of my introspection times.

  10 Lifelong Unforgettables for Every Worship Leader:

1. Loving the Lord is most important. Loving neighbor is the very next best thing.

 

2. Neighbor includes family, never take them for granted.

 

3. Just knowing the Name of Jesus is an amazing privilege, let alone singing it out.

 

4. God is full of surprises and it’ll always be that way.

 

5. Worship leading and songwriting are two distinct ministries. It’s perfectly fine and absolutely normal if you’re not into both.

 

6. Regular repentance is a best practice for life.

 

7. Nothing good comes out of envying someone's else's gifts / skills / ministry.

 

8. The anointing of the Holy Spirit was, is and forever will be a mystery.

 

9. Practice & hard work cannot substitute for prayer.

 

10. Prayer cannot substitute for practice & hard work.

Now that you've read my list, here's your turn to share: What are your unforgettables?

How to Create a Free Online Presence for Your Church / Ministry

Not everyone has the resources to hire top-quality designers to create an online presence for your Church or Ministry. That doesn't mean you can't have a working website though.

 

LifeChurch runs a brilliant free service to enable smaller churches or ministries to reach people online.

 

The Church Online Platform is a free tool to help you launch an online ministry with the most essential features available for you to connect with those you wish to reach.

 

The platform comes with the following features:

 

- An embedded video area for your message and worship music

 

- A slide area for graphics

 

- The platform accommodates a variety of events each week. Different video streams, slides, and interaction can be assigned to each event. Events can also be accessed on mobile devices.

 

- A channel for people to request live prayer. Your team can touch base with them via anonymous email enabling you to respond quickly and confidentially.

 

- In-built social media sharing tools for you, your team and your visitors to reach out to others.  

 

- Intelligent chat facility to interact with guests (includes moderation and real-time translation into 50+ languages!)

 

- Visitor map, sermon notes and other text can be published.

 

If that's not enough, you can also design the look and feel of your online ministry apart from using the off-the-shelf templates.

 

Sounds awesome? It really is, check it out and let me know your experience: http://churchonlineplatform.com/

10 Lessons Worship Songwriters Can Learn From the 10 Commandments

Imagine a worship songwriting convention organized by God Himself.

Let's say a modern day Moses leads the program.

What if this Moses goes up the Mountain to obtain a modified version of God's commandments for songwriters in particular.

Chances are, it might read something like this:

1. I am the LORD your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me. Write worship songs to God, about God, around God, God, God, everything else is secondary.

2. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. Use 'God', 'Lord', 'Jesus' etc. meaningfully in your lyrics, they are not filler words.

3. Remember to keep holy the LORD'S Day. Sunday or otherwise, pray, plan and write skillfully with a focus on the sacred 'cos God and His Church are counting on you.

4. Honor your father and your mother. Serve your local community faithfully; honor your congregation with a preferential loyalty to them when writing songs or leading worship.

5. You shall not kill your Church's worship by introducing songs just because they are your songs. Write with purpose and have a vision when putting your songs into a set-list.

6. You shall not commit adultery by loving songs and songwriting more than God Himself.

7. You shall not steal lines/melodies from other songs. Yes, other songs inspire us, but there is a line between inspiration and plagiarism. Be original and explore the creative 'cos the Lord does not deserve copycats.

8. You shall not bear false witness by trying to write 'hits'. Write with authenticity so that the lyrics sit comfortably on your lips as well as the congregation's. Remember, Paul Baloche's No.1 tip is to 'sing your prayers.'

9. You shall not covet your neighbor's songs.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor's songwriting skills.

Your turn to share: What's the one thing that you'd want to express when writing worship songs?

94 Free Christmas Songs to Celebrate Advent 2012

Advent is here and as usual, the Internet is full of useful freebies!

If you’re planning Christmas services for your Church and looking for different versions of carols and other songs, NoiseTrade is featuring a wide variety of free music appropriate for this season. Here are some of them (from NoiseTrade and other sites) that I think you would enjoy and consider using:

 

12 free carols by LifeChurch

5 Free Songs from Kingsway

5 songs by All About Worship

11 Songs by Jeremy and Kimberly Sorensen

12 free songs by Sleeping At Last

11 songs by various artists (including Jars of Clay, Phil Keaggy etc.)

6 Songs by Branches

8 songs by Andrew Ripp

4 songs by Zerbin

12 songs by Riki Michele

8 songs from RareBird Records

 

Your turn to share: What is your favorite Christmas song?

5 Indispensable Tips to Write Your Finest Worship Songs

Can you say a prayer in your own words?

Yes?

Congratulations, you are a worship songwriter!

For at the heart of it all, worship songs are prayers set to melodies.

Having said that, writing songs for the Church at large is a ministry by itself requiring all the key qualities of any other ministry: the gift of the Holy Spirit, willingness to develop the skills to operate the gift and a passion to embrace the calling regardless of the cost.

If you believe you have a calling in this ministry, here are 5 quick tips to write your best songs: 1. Ideate

I am guilty of losing dozens of good song ideas partly due to personal laziness and partly because of not having a tool to note them down before forgetting. But that was before I got my hands on a Smartphone. Inspiration strikes at odd times and/or places and songwriters need to be ready. The Smartphone, with so many songwriter-friendly apps around, is an ideal device to ensure the conception of an idea and its capture for posterity happens almost simultaneously.

2. Fix the Intent

It’s worthwhile to decide the purpose of the song at the outset: will it be a congregational song for public usage or will it be a personal worship song? Will it be a joyful praise prayer or a lament? And so on. This helps to bring focus into the writing process.

3. Wait

Invariably, the songs that I am most happy with are those that took the longest to finish. Unless you have a record deal, you probably don’t have a pressing timeline to meet anyways. What I’ve found effective is to allow the song to come to me gradually instead of running after it and trying to force the outcome. Patience leads to better songs.

4. Re-write

Yes I know the Holy Spirit has a big hand in the creation of worship songs. But song ideas are only song ideas, not final versions to be introduced publicly just like that. Re-writing involves deciding song structure, lyric-crunching, paying attention to technique etc. I believe that while the Holy Spirit gives the gift and the idea, it’s the songwriter’s effort to shape it prayerfully into an actual song. There are of course exceptions to this, but generally as a rule, songwriting requires hard work.

5. Critique

Despite the best of efforts, your work of art can be torn apart when used in public. There are two things to do to manage this: 1 - Take the song to a person who you trust to provide candid feedback and make changes if required before going public. 2 - Develop a thick (really thick) skin to swallow negative feedback without taking it personally!

Also, it’s good practice to check the song for qualities like these:

- Does the song have a clear, consistent theme or is it all over the place?

- Are the lyrics in line with Biblical and Traditional teaching/theology?

- Is the melody singable by a general congregation?

- Is it a ‘me’ song or a ‘we’ song?

- Is it horizontal (about God) or vertical (to God)?

- Does it say something fresh or is it full of lyrics that have already been used in other songs?

“If I could give you one line about writing worship songs, it would be ‘sing your prayers.'” - Paul Baloche

Your turn to share: What are your best tips for songwriting?

How to Use WordPress to Build a Free Website for Your Music Ministry

WordPress is not just the Number 1 platform for blogging - it’s also a very popular tool for creating websites. Even Sylvester Stallone’s website is built on WordPress! So it was only a matter of time before someone came up with the idea to leverage WordPress to create niche websites like musicians for instance.

If you’re a worship leader/musician looking to create a website for your music ministry, here’s a cool tool that you would want to look at.

Introducing WordPress Music - a free wordpress.com service that specifically caters to the needs of musicians and consequently for worship ministers too.

It’s user-friendly and doesn’t consume too much time to go online as everything is templatized for fast installation and publishing. Here’s a quick look at what you can get out of WordPress Music:

1. A Multi-Track Music Player to feature a single track or preview of an entire album.

2. Tour Dates to publish lists of upcoming concerts, pulled from Songkick or Google Calendar.

3. Social Widgets to automatically share your posts with your connections on popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Yahoo! and LinkedIn.

4. Bandcamp & SoundCloud interaction to embed and share your music from Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Spotify and more!

5. Video Embeds from external sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

6. Mailing Lists to facilitate people to subscribe to your posts and regularly receive e-mail updates.

To begin with, there are 2 customizable themes called Soundcheck and Debut. If you want more personalization, there are 210 other templates to satisfy your designing taste buds.

Additional premium features are also available:

1. Custom Domain Name ($13/year)

2. Uploading audio files ($20/year)

3. Video uploads ($60/year)

4. Custom CSS ($30/year)

And it’s all WordPress, which means your site gets stable, solid and secure hosting.

Check it out and let me know your experience: http://en.wordpress.com/music/

Your turn to share: What is your favorite tool to build your ministry’s website?

The 7 Essential Qualities That You Need to Become World-Class Worship Musicians

A contemporary worship team only looks like a rock band.

In reality, it's far more than that.

Every member is a minister more than a musician and together the worship team plays a variety of roles in the modern Church. This also means not everyone would fit in, requiring  an attitude of discernment when we invite musicians to be part of a worship team.

What qualities to look for in musicians is an interesting question with many lists of answers. Here's what I believe are important to become must-have worship musicians:

 

The 7 Unmistakable Traits of Great Worship Musicians: 1. They make it look easy

I remember playing with an extremely talented guitarist who once showed me a different strumming pattern he had worked out for "My Redeemer Lives". It sounded cool and looked easy enough...until I tried playing it and ended up sounding like a dork. What looked like a breeze when he played it, was actually a pretty complex and challenging strumming pattern! Great musicians have this ability to make things looks easy even while playing difficult music.

 

2. They play on time and in key

Sounds basic right? But timing and key are probably the 2  most important concepts of playing an instrument. When practising, great musicians have the discipline of using a metronome or a click-track to maintain correct and consistent tempo throughout the song. They are careful to learn the chords in the right key, taking and storing notes to ensure mistakes related to timing and key are killed.

 

3. They give space for others in the team

Lousy musicians are obsessed with being heard the most. They play in a manner that overpowers and suffocates the overall sound. Whereas great musicians are team players - they support the song and the team, sharing musical space for everyone to play their part; they are concerned with what each instrument can contribute to the worship, not just their own cool musical chops.

 

4. They know when not to play

Lousy musicians start playing during the intro and won't stop till the song is done (some play on even after that!). They lack a sense of song or worship dynamics. Great musicians on the other hand play to serve the song and the worship. They know how to blend their instrument's sound into the song and stop playing at sections where their instrument is not needed.

 

5. They love to stay updated

Great worship musicians stay hungry...for more. If it's open chords today, it's inverted chords tomorrow, then different voicings, then a capo, maybe a cut-capo after that and so on. They love to pick up new concepts, improve technique and strive to stay relevant all the time.

 

6. They listen to the worship leader

Great musicians submit to the worship leader's authority - even when the worship leader is a lesser musician. They are willing to die to their own opinions to fulfill the worship leader's requirements. They make music out of a disposition of servanthood.

 

7. They worship

Being a musician in a worship team is actually less about music and more about Jesus. You could be a gifted musician with the highest levels of expertise, but it counts for nothing if you are not a worshipper first and foremost. Great worship musicians are grateful to be on the worship team and consider it a privilege to serve God with their music. They play worship music out of a love relationship with the Lord more than anything else.

Your turn to share: what makes a musician a great worship musician?

Free eBook: 112 Free Worship Ministry Resources

Not everyone leads worship in a mega church.

In fact, chances are you are like me, ministering mostly to small congregations.

But that doesn't mean our ministry needs are little. We still got to be buying CDs, DVDs, attending seminars, subscribing to magazines / webinars / podcasts, planning tools etc. all of which affect our budget.

While there are many online resources, most of them are US or UK based. So what is affordable in dollars and pounds can be terribly expensive in other countries!

However, that doesn't mean there are no genuinely affordable resources for worship ministry for us - in fact there are quite a lot of free ones, but sifting through the massive number of websites to find what we want can be time-consuming hard work!

About the Book

This is where I believe my eBook "112 Free Worship Ministry Resources" can help you. It's a collection of free resources for worship ministry that I have discovered and used, compiled in an easy-to-access manner. The book will point you to free resources for:

Bible Reading and Study Prayer / Devotional / Spiritual Growth Worship Training Musician Resources Songwriting Audio Recording & Editing Worship Projection Software Image and Video Backgrounds Worship Planning Worship Magazines

I believe and hope this eBook will save you lots of searching time & effort and facilitate you to steward your worship ministry budget efficiently!

Where Can You Get It

"112 Free Worship Leader Resources" is available at Amazon for $2.99. But then, it would be ironic for a collection of free resources to not have a free download option! So I am making it available for free. All you have to do is subscribe to Votive Praise by email. Whenever I publish a new blog post, you will receive an email, which would contain the following download links:

Download 112 Free Worship Ministry Resources - PDF Download 112 Free Worship Ministry Resources - EPUB

That's it, if you want the eBook, subscribe now!

Once You've Read the Book

I’d be grateful if you can post a review and rate it at Amazon, Lulu, Foboko or GoodReads. You can also help me by telling others about this book on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc.

Thank you for reading my blog, God bless you!