I was privileged on Sunday to perform a concert to benefit the Lumberton Christian Care Center in Lumberton, NC as they began to realize their dream of building a facility that will provide shelter and much-needed support services to homeless families in one of the poorest counties in North Carolina, including mothers with children, a growing population where most shelters are able to take only men. Once this facility opens, their next goal will be to provide counseling and job preparedness/placement…Read more
What's Behind Be Here Now
The Word never changes. But the “words” certainly do. The words we use to describe the word, to sing about it, to relate it to others, change with every generation.
In 1873, the words included “visions of rapture,” “angels descending,” and being “washed in blood,” but even though people still sing “Blessed Assurance” from time to time, I don’t know a single Christian, however devout, who expresses their spirituality in those terms today. The folks with whom I live and share ministry are no less…
This Changes Everything #1: Resolving to Hope
This month, we're starting to roll out the tracks from my musical "This Changes Everything," a series of vignettes from the gospels set to music for your vocal ensemble to perform. Normally, we'll release one song per month, but the two pieces that set the table at the beginning need to be heard together.
They present two prevailing notions about the hoped-for Jewish messiah before Jesus came. One was that anyone holding out for change after centuries of destruction and oppression were kidding…Read more
They present two prevailing notions about the hoped-for Jewish messiah before Jesus came. One was that anyone holding out for change after centuries of destruction and oppression were kidding…Read more
The Christmas Journey
Most songs grab our attention and then fade away just as quickly. So, it's been interesting to me that one song people seem to appreciate more with time, is The Christmas Journey, about the inward journey to Christ. It was inspired by this insight: the sentimentalism of the Christmas story can wear thin, especially for people struggling this time of year, but the purpose of Advent is make a personal and spiritual journey. What is my deepest longing? Where do I find hope? What is my faith struggle?…Read more
Inconvenient Christmas
I'll be the first to acknowledge that the world doesn't need more Christmas songs competing for attention. I wrote some, though, because so few traditional Christmas songs relate to real life. They tend to be a celebration of the kind of perfect-- or perfectly cute-- Christmas that exists only in a Norman Rockwell painting. As a husband and father, I know how much work goes into Christmas and how rarely the thing goes off as planned!
I can't find a perfect Christmas in the Bible. The first…Read more
I can't find a perfect Christmas in the Bible. The first…Read more