Gangai Victor's Blog, page 14

Imitating - the Key to Authenticity in Worship

"Inauthentic worship" should be an oxymoron.

I mean if worship is not authentic, can it be called ‘worship’? Hmmm.

That is if we understand ‘authenticity’ as explained by an English dictionary: genuine, accurate, reliable, original, honest and so on.

Then, is it practicing what we preach? Singing what we mean? Is it something to do with the content of the worship service? Life outside the church matching our lyrics? Or lifting hands only when we feel 'led'? Maybe.

I think there’s more and this is what I believe:

Authentic worship does not stop with me remaining me.

Authentic worship is me reflecting who I am called to be.

St. Paul nailed it when He wrote "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." (1 Cor 11:1). This for me is Christian authenticity: knowing I am called to be like Christ and striving to get there without giving up.

An authentic worshipper loves Jesus and strives to be like Him. Pressing on. Persevering. Hanging on. Holding nothing back. Hungering for God. Resisting temptation. Running the race. Ready to pay the cost. Giving it all.

An authentic worship leader attracts people to Jesus. The goal and agenda are always Jesus. Stuff like church strength, number of blog comments, Twitter followers, Facebook likes etc. are not the priorities, Jesus is.

Authenticity is realizing without a shadow of doubt who we are in Christ:

Chosen - Romans 1:6 Redeemed - Galatians 3:14 Saved - 2 Timothy 1:9 Forgiven - Ephesians 1:7 Set free - Romans 8:2 Justified - Romans 5:1 Righteous - Romans 3:22 Holy - Ephesians 1:4 A pleasing aroma - 2 Corinthians 2:15 Citizens of heaven - Philippians 3:20 God’s temple - 1 Corinthians 3:16 Royal - 1 Peter 2:9 Spirit-filled - Titus 3:6 God’s children - John 1:12 Friends of God - John 15:15

The list can go on and on…all we can say in response is: wow!

Imitating Jesus is our only way to authenticity because He alone is our authenticity! In the words of St. Patrick, "Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down..."

When Christ is everything for us, we will take hold of our calling and gratefully overflow with passionate praise and intimate worship transforming our lives and our worship to be

open.

free.

inspired.

excited.

unashamed.

fearless.

amazed.

overawed.

Christ-like.

authentic.

Remember, you and I are the only Christ many people will ever meet, let's imitate Him well.

Your turn to share: How can we practice authenticity in worship?

How to Play Guitar With a Cut Capo

A Simple Song Arrangement Principle

While arranging songs, a common principle that works almost every time is:

2 instruments should not be playing the same thing at the same time.

For instance, if there are 2 acoustic guitars playing E-C#m-A-B, one guitarist can play the usual open chord shapes, while the other can clip on a capo at the 2nd fret and play the same chords in the D shape (D-Bm-G-A). Another alternative is to put the capo at the 7th fret and play in the A shape (A-F#m-D-E). Though the chords played by both the guitars are the same, the difference in voicing creates a better overall sound without stepping into each other's musical space.

Drop-D Tuning

Yet another creative method to get a different chord voicing is to use what is called a cut capo or partial capo or Foote capo (in honor of Billy Jean Foote who is credited to have used it first). A regular capo covers all the 6 strings while a cut capo covers only 3 strings i.e. the 5th, 4th, and 3rd strings (A, D, G) on the guitar.

To understand the cut capo, you need to understand how the drop-D alternative tuning works. Typically, each string of the guitar is tuned to 6 notes. Starting from the 6th string, the notes for the standard tuning are E-A-D-G-B-E. In drop-D, the strings are tuned to D-A-D-G-A-D instead.

Yes it means you have to relearn chords shapes, but the resultant voicing variations are worth the effort, trust me! A classic worship song example is Casey Corum's "Dwell", which is played on DADGAD tuning with a capo on the 5th fret. The whole song runs on a repetitive G-Dm7-C progression using the following chord shapes:

Take some time out to practise "Dwell" to get a feel of DADGAD tuning.

 

Basic Chord Shapes in D-A-D-G-A-D Tuning

Now let's get to learning some common chords used in contemporary worship songs in DADGAD tuning. If you strum all 6 strings without holding down any fret, you get a Dsus4 chord. Then you can try out these shapes:

Now Bring Out Your Cut-Capo!

If you've got the hang of the above shapes, you are ready to use a cut capo. Re-tune your guitar back to the standard E-A-D-G-B-E tuning and place the cut capo on the 2nd fret. This causes the strings to sound these notes: E-B-E-A-B-E, which is DADGAD modulated to the key of E. Refer this picture for better understanding:

Now if you play all the shapes in the above chart, you will be playing the same chords, but in the key of E. So D=E, Em=F#m, D/F#=E/G# and so on.

To play chords in the key of F using the same shapes, move the cut capo to the 3rd fret and place a standard capo on the 1st fret like this:

You can keep moving both capos up the fret board to play in other keys, just keep in mind the distance between the regular capo and the cut capo should always be 2 frets.

To learn more chord shapes, simply search for drop-D chord charts, there are many available all over the Internet!

Your turn to share: What are your favorite songs that you like to play with a cut capo?

Free eBook: 112 Free Worship Leader 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 Leader 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, Lulu and Foboko 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!

The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Mediocre Worship Leaders

You could be a beginner worship leader and grow into a skilled music minister.

You could be an awesome worship leader and still find room to improve (that's one of the reasons that makes you awesome in the first place!).

In either case, it's a pleasure to worship with you.

Then there are the mediocre ones - I'm sure you've met them, 'cos they seem to be almost everywhere. They are the ones who kill our expectations of an engaging worship session, display almost next-to-nothing levels of creativity and tightly embrace 'ordinary' like their closest friend without letting go...ever!

You see, mediocrity is the result when the worship leader desires to be excellent, but is unwilling to put in the required hard work to get there.

More often than not, they display these 7 traits - so here's what you should be avoiding:

 

The 7 Characteristics of Mediocre Worship Leaders: 1. Mediocre Worship Leaders Pray

irregularly. They do not build or maintain a consistent daily personal prayer life. It's 15 minutes today, 7 minutes tomorrow, zero for the next 2 days, start again next week and so on. Their knowledge of scripture comprises mostly stuff they heard from others. They don't invest much in personal study of the Word.

 

2. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Worshippers

mostly in public and rarely in private. They only perceive worship as an on-stage activity or ministry and not as a way of life. They are unwilling to pay a price for their calling and generally lack vision. They don't have a long-term Kingdom perspective too.

 

3. Mediocre Worship Leaders Strive to be Like Jesus

by remaining the same yesterday, today and forever - I mean musically. They know 6 chords and 2 strumming patterns when they begin to lead worship. 10 years later, their knowledge contains the same 6 chords and 2 strumming patterns. Consistency is their motto and goal.

 

4. Mediocre Worship Leaders Love

staying mediocre by somehow believing they are expert worship leaders. In fact they think they are so good that they learn only from themselves! They never recognize a need for training and avoid taking constructive feedback.

 

5. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Spontaneous

which is why they change or create set-lists while on stage (They have trouble hearing the Holy Spirit outside the stage) - 'planning' and 'rehearsing' are absent in their vocabulary. If by some miracle they actually plan beforehand, it happens only at the last minute. They've also applied for a patent on their 'work ethic' calling it ATSL (As The Spirit Leads).

 

6. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Highly skilled

in being predictable. They start the 1st song and you can prophesy the rest of the set-list immediately. Such is their over-use of songs and beating them to death. They are poor in staying updated and remain obsolete in the eyes of everyone but themselves.

 

7. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Creators

of more mediocrity. They enjoy mediocre songs that lack richness or lyrical depth. They sing what people want to sing, not what people need to be singing. Some of them also get into leadership roles and influence genuinely good worship leaders to become like them, thereby ensuring their legacy of the ordinary continues.

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself" - Arthur Conan Doyle

Your turn to share: What are your best tips to infuse excellence in Worship?

Mercy Project - New Life for Children in Slavery

There’s an estimated 7,000 children who work in the Ghana fishing industry. Some of
these children are as young as 5 and 6 years old. All of these children are slaves.

– Mercy Project

Genuine worship must lead us to mission, which includes justice for all. It's a lofty goal to pursue in a world full of injustice - but that doesn't mean we should give up. In this blog post, I wish to specifically highlight the horrible injustice of slavery, especially the many child slaves around the world who are unprotected and the organizations, like Mercy Project, who are working to free them.

As a father, it’s difficult for me to imagine my son working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. I’m unable to wrap my brain around the thought of my children engaged in long, hard days of physical labor, eating one meal a day, and then falling asleep at night on a dirt floor filled with other slave children.

Yet this is the daily reality for kids who have been trafficked into the fishing industry in Ghana, Africa. As with much of Africa, there is a great deal of poverty in Ghana. Unfortunately, this leaves many mothers in an unimaginable position: sell their children to someone who can take better care of them or watch them starve to death. Most of the mothers are told their children will be given food, housing, and an education. Instead, the kids are often taken to Lake Volta where they become child slaves and their mothers never see them again.

Thankfully, Mercy Project is working to break the cycles of trafficking around Lake Volta by providing alternate, more efficient, sustainable, fishing methods for villagers – ultimately eliminating the need for child slaves. Because of the work Mercy Project is doing in Ghana, the first group of children will be freed this month from Lake Volta.

I invite you to watch this moving, 10 minute documentary about the issues surrounding child labor and trafficking in Ghana and most importantly the hope Mercy Project is bringing to children and entire communities in Africa. Mercy Project is the only NGO working on Lake Volta addressing the injustice of child labor and child trafficking at its root - by strengthening the Ghanaian economy and eliminating the structures that cause the demand for trafficked children.

Whether these ideas of child labor, child trafficking, and modern-day slavery are new to you or you’re aware of these injustices, but need to hear some good news every once in awhile, we invite you to become a part of what Mercy Project is doing in Ghana. When Mercy Project frees their first group of children this month, we can all celebrate together.

Learn more and get involved by:

• Watching Mercy Project’s short documentary given above.

• Following Mercy Project on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mercyproject

• Connecting with Mercy Project via Twitter: https://twitter.com/mercyproject

• Spending some time on Mercy Project’s website: http://mercyproject.net/

• Sharing about Mercy Project’s work in Ghana with your friends: http://youtu.be/b4Dwv5KbMYI

Although child trafficking, child labor, and the unstable economies that result in these injustices are a tragedy, let's be grateful for what Mercy Project is doing to protect the vulnerable and for allowing us to be a part of this story. I invite you to follow along on this journey with Mercy Project to protect and free children in Ghana.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. - Abraham Lincoln

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Worship Leaders

You could be a beginner worship leader and grow into a skilled music minister.

You could be an awesome worship leader and still find room to improve (that's one of the reasons that makes you awesome in the first place!).

In either case, it's a pleasure to worship with you.

Then there are the mediocre ones - I'm sure you've met them, 'cos they seem to be almost everywhere. They are the ones who kill our expectations of an engaging worship session, display almost next-to-nothing levels of creativity and tightly embrace 'ordinary' like their closest friend without letting go...ever!

You see, mediocrity is the result when the worship leader desires to be excellent, but is unwilling to put in the required hard work to get there.

More often than not, they display these 7 traits - so here's what you should be avoiding:

 

The 7 Characteristics of Mediocre Worship Leaders: 1. Mediocre Worship Leaders Pray

irregularly. They do not build or maintain a consistent daily personal prayer life. It's 15 minutes today, 7 minutes tomorrow, zero for the next 2 days, start again next week and so on. Their knowledge of scripture comprises mostly stuff they heard from others. They don't invest much in personal study of the Word.

 

2. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Worshippers

mostly in public and rarely in private. They only perceive worship as an on-stage activity or ministry and not as a way of life. They are unwilling to pay a price for their calling and generally lack vision. They don't have a long-term Kingdom perspective too.

 

3. Mediocre Worship Leaders Strive to be Like Jesus

by remaining the same yesterday, today and forever - I mean musically. They know 6 chords and 2 strumming patterns when they begin to lead worship. 10 years later, their knowledge contains the same 6 chords and 2 strumming patterns. Consistency is their motto and goal.

 

4. Mediocre Worship Leaders Love

staying mediocre by somehow believing they are expert worship leaders. In fact they think they are so good that they learn only from themselves! They never recognize a need for training and avoid taking constructive feedback.

 

5. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Spontaneous

which is why they change or create set-lists while on stage (They have trouble hearing the Holy Spirit outside the stage) - 'planning' and 'rehearsing' are absent in their vocabulary. If by some miracle they actually plan beforehand, it happens only at the last minute. They've also applied for a patent on their 'work ethic' calling it ATSL (As The Spirit Leads).

 

6. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Highly skilled

in being predictable. They start the 1st song and you can prophesy the rest of the set-list immediately. Such is their over-use of songs and beating them to death. They are poor in staying updated and remain obsolete in the eyes of everyone but themselves.

 

7. Mediocre Worship Leaders are Creators

of more mediocrity. They enjoy mediocre songs that lack richness or lyrical depth. They sing what people want to sing, not what people need to be singing. Some of them also get into leadership roles and influence genuinely good worship leaders to become like them, thereby ensuring their legacy of the ordinary continues.

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself" - Arthur Conan Doyle

Your turn to share: What are your best tips to infuse excellence in Worship?

Learn How To Play the Guitar Online for Free

Most worship leaders are often guitarists or keyboardists or both...and with good reason! Knowing an instrument is useful to communicate with other musicians, understand musical concepts and incorporate them into the worship session. So I always recommend worship leaders to learn the basics of at least one musical instrument.

If you're looking for free guitar lessons for yourself or to recommend to someone else, then this post is for you. Here's an online resource offering free video lessons accompanied by instructional documents with illustrations that teach the fundamentals of playing the guitar.

The website is called Strum School. Available lessons include:

The Anatomy of the Guitar Types of Guitars The Acoustic Guitar The Nylon String Guitar The Electric Guitar Buying a Guitar Stringing Your Guitar Tuning Your Guitar Preparing to Play Guitar (posture, hand positions, holding the pick etc.) Reading the Guitar (tabs, chord diagrams) Learning Basic Chords (transitioning chords, open chords & keys) Other Types of Chords (minor chords, barre chords, power chords etc.)

The teaching content is neatly ordered in a logical flow that is easy to grasp and learn. Apart from lessons, there's also a 'vocab' section that's kind of like a dictionary defining terminology related to the guitar.

Here's StrumSchool's intro video:

 

The instructor, Brian Moran is an accomplished musician and graduate from Berklee College of Music in 1998 (B.M., magna cum laude, Professional Music).

Check it out if you want to learn the fundamentals of the guitar at your own pace. And did I mention it's all FREE?

Here's the link: http://www.strumschool.com

Your turn to share: Have you used Strum School or any other online resource to learn a musical instrument?

How to Pray in Silence IV–Praying When God is Not Showing Up

“Truly you are a God who hides himself” - Isaiah 45:15

Many of us would agree with this verse. Sometimes prayer can become a hide and seek experience with us feeling lost, dry and meaningless. Our initial walk with the Lord is like the honeymoon phase of a marriage when everything is exciting and joyous.

Then God leads us to a dry phase, in which God seems far away. This is to teach us that prayer is about seeking to be with Him and not simply about positive feelings. This willingness to be disciplined even when we don’t feel like it is a must-learn lesson in God’s school of prayer. We need to understand and accept that God inculcates such discipline.

When prayer is a struggle, it’s important to identify possible reasons for it. So here are a 3 personal examinations that can help:

1. Is there unconfessed sin or unforgiveness within us?

Isaiah 59:2 says “your sins have hidden his face from you.” When we struggle with prayer we need to examine our conscience and identify if there is any obvious area of sin, which we need to bring before the Lord in repentance.

Usually, identifying the area of sin is not too difficult because the Lord goes silent primarily only when there is willful disobedience and not “mistakes” committed in ignorance. But at times we can rationalize our sins so well that it may not appear sinful to us. This is where the guidance of a spiritual director / elder comes in handy.

The same is true about unforgiveness - remember Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant - Matthew 18:23-34.

2. Have we have moved away from the revealed will of God?

When we have either disobeyed or refused to obey what God has clearly revealed to us – some of these may not appear sinful. When Abraham moved away from the plan of God by having a son by his slave woman Hagar instead of waiting for God’s timing, he could not clearly hear from God for many years.

3. Are we finding it hard to accept God’s revealed will for us?

We can try to play the victim thinking that being confused may either cause God to change His mind or act as an excuse for disobedience. “I was confused, I could not understand what God wanted me to do so I did what I thought was best” is a common cliché in self deception.

Then there are also times when we can get angry when God delays answering our requests. It may simply be that He wants us to wait on Him for His timing.

The dark night of the soul

If none of the above are true and prayer is still a struggle, then most likely you are going through what St. John of the Cross calls “the dark night of the soul” or otherwise known as the  desert experience.

This is a period of time which the Holy Spirit leads the believer through a time of spiritual loneliness when prayer becomes meaningless, God seems absent and faith becomes difficult to exercise. The believer feels abandoned by God and does not know what to do.

If you’re going through the dark night: Believe that this has been planned by God to increase your faith. Know that God is waiting to reveal Himself to you more intimately. Hang in there trusting God to see you through. Take help from a spiritual director/elder, but don’t get too dependent on any human person - God is leading you to Himself directly!

 

I began with a verse from Isaiah and to close this post, let me quote Isaiah again: “For a brief moment I forsook you but with great compassion I will gather you” (Isaiah 54:7). When prayer is a struggle let us assure ourselves that God is more concerned than us in taking our relationship with Him to a deeper and stronger level.

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This final article in the “How to Pray” series is a guest post by Dr. Joseph Francis Dominic, an expert in Medical Oncology and Bone Marrow transplantation who has been awarded gold medals in Nephrology, Medicine & Surgery. Personally, Dominic is a generous friend and a gifted teacher of the Word.

Your turn to share: How do you persevere in prayer when God seems far away and you’re tempted to give up?

8 More Top Free Android Apps for Worship Leaders / Musicians

The Android platform has come a long way since its inception. In almost every market, it's fast becoming the dominant mobile OS and keeps getting better with every version. While iOS still looks like the platform of choice for worship leaders, it doesn't mean Android is useless in this space - far from it! Here's another list of Android apps (the earlier articles are here) helpful especially for those in worship ministry:

 

Bible Reading and Study: Logos

The Logos Android app is one of the most feature-rich Android Bible app around. If you already have a Logos account, you can sync your usage across multiple devices. The app comes with 60 free books, study tools, reading plans text comparison, devotionals, passage guides and more. The search features (including citation search) are especially great to find and read specific verses.

 

Metronome: Mobile Metronome

Mobile Metronome comes with all necessary features - set time signature, tempo, type of click sound and that’s about it! The free app is ad-supported. If you can live with that, this is a great app to practise songs.

 

Tuner: gStrings

gStrings is more or less the best free android guitar tuning app. Apart from guitar, it can be used to tune any stringed instrument like violin, banjo, ukulele etc. It uses the phone's microphone to analyze the note that is played and displays the identified note for easy tuning. It can also playback a reference tone if you prefer to tune your instrument by ear.

 

Songwriting: Gnotes

[image error]This is primarily a note-taking app that can be used as a songwriting workstation. It has a unique feature of syncing with Gmail - you can set the notes to be stored and synced with Gmail ensuring a cloud backup of all your precious song ideas. You can type in lyrics and use the voice-clip feature to record melody ideas. The sync feature ensure you can access your songs on any device with this app or Gmail. You can organize notes into folders/notebooks, pin notes to the home-screen, save files locally to SD card, open the saved files on a PC through the browser etc.

 

Composing: My Piano

This app has a long list of features and is of great help while composing melodies. It boasts studio quality sound, multiple sound effects, built-in sampler & recorder, 11 instruments, tablet support and a lot more.

 

Music Player: Jet Audio Basic

For the amount of music people in worship ministry listen to, it's a no brainer to have a better-than-good music player. If you can live with the ads, Jet Audio Basic is a fantastic app to have. Packed with Wide/Reverb/X-Bass SFX and 10/20 bands EQ, playback speed control, cross-fading and more, it also plays almost any music file format.

 

Contact Management & Socializing: EverNote Hello

The iOS app that did a great job of helping us to remember the people we meet has made its way to the Android universe. EverNote Hello assists us to record our introductions and track our subsequent interactions with people, sync info with notes made in Evernote and more. Churchm.ag covered this aspect in greater detail if you want to check it out.

 

File Management: AirDroid

If you hate wires and cables like me, AirDroid is a must-have! Simply connect your android device and PC to the same wi-fi network. Then open web.airdroid.com in the PC browser and input the pin generated by AirDroid on your android device - that's it! You can use AirDroid to send/receive SMS, install/uninstall apps, transfer files between Android device & PC/tablet, manage contacts, photos, music, videos, take screenshots and even record screen-casts etc., all from the PC's browser!

How do you use your Android device in your Ministry? What are your favorite Android apps?

Book Review: A Case for the Church to go 'Viral'

This is an interesting book, informative as well as educative. The introduction itself firmly establishes the author's wish to be identified as a Christian before getting into the subject of the book: how revival is being affected by today's internet technology particularly Twitter, Google, iPhone, Facebook - what Leonard prefers to call TGIF.

While I'm not sure I entirely agree with Leonard's notion that people before the internet were not receptive to the concept of relationships with others as much as today's 'googlers', his premise that today's googling people "pursue connection with a tenacity not seen since Elizabeth Taylor's 6th wedding" does hold water.

On the other hand, whether you agree with Leonard or not, the writing throughout the book is compelling, insightful and mostly convincing too, if you can read past the sometimes over-generalizing viewpoints that is.

The best aspect of "Viral" is the mature understanding of Christianity and the Internet. The book is full of accessible tips on merging both positively and living a witnessing life online.

The book does a neat job of identifying opportunities as well as the challenges posed by developments like TGIF in sharing our faith online. It's also an invitation to those who are reluctant to dive into TGIF (Leonard calls them Gutenbergers) to shed their inhibitions and instead meet people where they increasingly are: online!

Contrasting how success belonged to those who controlled content before Google and how since Google, success belongs more to those who provide content, Leonard aptly concludes, "The only institutions that can look forward to a future are those that transition from regulation to resource." A thought-provoking challenge for the Church to transition itself from a teaching role to more of a participatory/interactive role.

Overall, a useful read for most people - I have to say that there's something in it for everyone.

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the 'Blogging for Books' review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.