Singing in Korean and Tagalog: Five reasons why I love singing multi-lingual worship

For the past few months, I’ve had the privilege to lead students and staff from around the country in worship songs from many different languages. They’ve included: English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, Mien, Malyalam, Hawaiian and others.

You can get a glimpse of my English, Korean and Tagalog here:

[youtube http://youtu.be/S-3UnbluLe4]

And as a worship leader its been incredibly stretching. My tongue has done movements and stretches that I didn’t know it could. I’ve been insecure about my inability to speak certain languages (most of of all my mother tongue, Korean). I’ve even found myself distracted as a worship leader trying to learn a new language.

But the benefits and blessings have far outweighed the costs. Here are just a few reflections from  my experiences leading multi-lingual worship:

SC11’s Hymn of the Week: To Dream the Hymn-Possible Dream!

We’ve prepared a cornucopia of worship music for Staff Conference 2011 from a wide spectrum of genres — Anthemic Rock, Contemporary Gospel, Latin, Disco, Power Ballads… and I know that they will all be fun, worshipful and I will hopefully sound pretty good too. But the genre of music I’m particularly excited about and frankly just interested in seeing how it will turn out is… HYMNS! And not just hymns done in the folk hipster genre or Gospel genre or Chris Tomlinized rock genre… all which are lovely. But what about the more “traditional” genre of hymns, with 4-part harmony and piano? Some people may think that’s corny, cheesey, old-fashioned, but that’s a genre too, right?

what some people imagine when they think of hymns

Well we’re going to try a hymn in that style at Staff Conference, and I don’t know about you, but I’m excited!

Full disclosure: I didn’t always enjoy hymns. I grew up in a Methodist church where, during youth group worship time, we’d first have our “real worship” (vineyard choruses, passion and eventually hillsong stuff with guitars, drums and such) and then in the middle of service our pastor would force of to sing a few Charles Wesley hymns — and suddenly the service descended into uncomfortable stuffiness or humor (what 7th grader wouldn’t have giggled after singing about asses and celestial balls?). To me, hymns represented moving backwards in worship, obligation, legalism and this weird style of music of my parents– I didn’t understand it, didn’t appreciate it, and simply had no desire to either.

But as an InterVarsity student and a regular attender of chapter camps at Cedar Campus, the camp for Great Lakes East and West in the Upper peninsula of Michigan, I grew to not just tolerate hymns, but to love them as well. There were these dusty old IVP Hymnals, “Hymns II,” that we’d sing out of a bunch of times that week. Slowly I learned about the history of hymns, the rich theology of hymns and the beauty of singing the music together in parts… and after a few years of doing this…  I became hooked!

I kind of equate it to my experience with Sauerkraut, there were times I was forced to eat it as a kid and I hated it and didn’t understand it, but something happened as I got older where something clicked, I loved it and now can’t live without it. Mmmmm… Sauerkraut.

Sing with Us: An Assortment of Staff Conference Worship Tuneage…

Its just about a week before we kick of National Staff Conference 2011 and I’m excited!

I really believe God will do great things through our week in St. Louis and I’m feeling more and more a sense of gratefulness and joy to just be a part of it. I was reading Luke 2 this evening and was captivated by the story of Simeon, the elderly prophet who longed for the Messiah. In God’s grace and mercy, He allowed Simeon to not only glimpse the Savior in the infant, just-named Jesus, but also to encourage the young couple, Mary and Joseph, that their baby was in fact who the Angel said He was. And then you never hear about Simeon again — He’s gone! I read that passage and  felt like that was our job as a worship team, to glimpse Christ ourselves, point Him out to others and then be gone, letting Him take center stage in the story.

Anyways, that passage super-encouraged me and got me even more excited about the week to come. But as usual, I digress. I originally just wanted to share some of the songs that we’ll be doing in St. Louis so you can worship along with us at home! And if you’re reading this and you are one of my staff colleagues who will be joining us in St. Louis, I hope this can get you excited about the week and also give you a chance to take a listen to some of the songs we’ll be doing! Its not a full list, but some of the ones you may not have heard before…

Obviously I’m biased, but even collecting the youtube clips of these songs blessed me so much, and hope you enjoy them as well!

Deeper, Israel Houghton

I can’t think of a better song that captures BOTH the idea of worship as entering into God’s presence but also being sent out in mission. This is a song that I pray for myself as well as our staff community, that we would go deeper into the waters of God’s presence, that we would be consumed, healed, restored and that would also receive God’s heart.

Worship Log: Christmas, where the music outside is frightful but also sometimes (SOMETIMES) delightful

Another year, another Christmas, another opportunity to be thoroughly conflicted about Christmas Carols.

There are some that I love and others that want me to stuff my ears with mistletoe. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a Starbucks having a great but intense conversation with a student. We were going to pretty deep places in our conversation and things were getting emotional, then all of a sudden this God-awful version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” played that was about 20 decibals higher than the previous yultide hipster crap (some of which I rather like I should confess, but it does not change its destination as Y.H.C.). My student didn’t notice the awful sounds emanating from ceiling, but I did, and it took every once of my focus and concentration, not to mention my my deep staffworkerly compassion to focus on the conversation taking place.

But anyways, that was another painful reminder that Christmas brings about some beautiful music for the soul, but also so heinous crap for the toilet. (I’ve touched on this subject before, but it’s worth revisting.)
One thing I am pretty sure of is that the bar for listening to music is certainly higher than the bar for singing along to music. This is a universal principle that has its roots in tribal dancing, gregorian chants and karaoke. For example, if somebody decides they want to cover “All I Want for Christmas Is You” at a club where you paid a $10 cover for, chances are it will be a cringe-worthy disaster even if they are good. The potential for sounding contrived and overly-sentimental is too great. But take that same music and that same singer and put them in a small Chinatown karaoke bar with a bunch of their close friends and some good food, beverage and glow-in-the-dark tambourines, you have a rick-rollicking good time, particularly if the music really bad!!! I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a version of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” that I enjoyed, but I can honestly say that it is one dang good hymn to sing in Church.

Anywoo, I led worship at church last Sunday the 26th and it was an opportunity to explore this idea of Christmas Carols…

The set:

• “O Come O Come Emmanuel” as performed by Sojourn
• “O Come All Ye Faithful” my arrangement
• “His Hame is Jesus” by Fred Hammond
• “O Holy Night” an arrangement with solos, maybe somewhat Mariah Carey-esque, or at least we tried!
• Offertory: “Light of the World” by Matt Redman with a poetry reading, “First Coming” by Madeleine L’Engel

Some of the things that came up:

Dispatches from Gospel Music Fest 2010

Overstimulated after a fantastic evening at the annual Chicago Gospel Music Fest with church peeps. Lugged my camera but was too immersed in the present to bother taking pictures, which I now regret. But here are some quick observations:

1. Even decked out with a cream suit and white and turquoise fedora, Richard Smallwood will always look like a down-to-earth high school teacher. He looks like an average joe who just happens to be a musical virtuoso. Even from far away you didn’t ever get the vibe that he was this slick artist. One of my friends Belena said he looked like Fried Chicken, which somehow made sense to me.
2. Smallwood used only 9 vocalists (3 per part) and yet the choir sound was overwhelming and mesmerizing.
3. In between Smallwood and Fred, they had a lengthy and often redundant announcement times. In between announcing sponsors, welcoming special guests, you had the sense, they were just totally doing everything on the fly. Everyone who gave an announcement spontaneously sang something.

The Church’s Anthem, or at least what it should be

I can’t believe this song is almost 5 years old and I only discovered it recently.

Let the Church Rise

by Israel Houghton and Jonathan Stockstill

Verse 1:
We are alive, filled with Your glorious light
Out of the dark into Your marvelous light
We are waiting with expectation
Spirit, raise us up with You

Chorus:
Let the church rise from the ashes
Let the church fall to her knees
Let us be light in the darkness
Let the church rise, let the church rise

Verse 2:
Moving with power, bringing Your name to the earth
Singing Your praises, lifting up glorious songs
We are moving with His compassion
Spirit, raise us up with You

Bridge:
Let Your wind blow, let Your wind blow, let Your wind blow, revive us again Lord
(4x)

Some background on the song:

Bethany World Prayer Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is a multi-cultural, evangelical, mission and worship minded church. The heartbeat of the church is passion for God, and compassion for people. Worship leader Jonathan Stockstill’s vision is to write and sing songs that will promote God’s Kingdom. “Let The Church Rise” was written right before Hurricane Katrina and became an anthem for what God did during that time. The Church sponsored over 1000 evacuees from the New Orleans area. During those months, over 800 of these precious people gave their hearts to the Lord.

The next hit worship song… prepare to have your socks blessed off

 

In light of the previous post on Chris Tomlin’s poetic laziness, I mustmention how appreciative I am that the author of this song was quite intentional about the rhyme scheme with pairings of “strawberry jam” and “country ham” as well as “Cinnamon O’s” and “Cherios.”

But in some form of seriousness, from my vantage point, this worship song seems to be sung with a good measure of conviction (or at least it appears so from the superficial perspective of watching this youtube clip). So the question is, even though this song is laughable, utterly ridiculous, could I meet God through this song in worship?

I guess I should point out that I do have some theological questions with the implication that either we will be raptured away b4 breakfast or that there will be no food in heaven (I don’t think I agree with either). But either way, this song perhaps gives an extreme example of the question:

Worship Log: The Yuletide Disco Hurdle and Congregational Thermometer

Led worship two weeks ago, fun times. I had a keyboard player, so I could focus on my voice and vocal leadership. Here’s was the set:

• O Come Let us Adore Him

• O Come All Ye Faithful (Traditional)

• My Life Belongs to You (Israel Houghton)

• Que Todos Los Pueblos Te Alaben (Marco Barrientos)

• Total Praise (Richard Smallwood, Fred Hammond arrangement)

• O Come Let us Adore Him

• Offertory: Light of the World (Matt Redman)

• Response: Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)

• Exit: His Name is Jesus (Fred Hammond)

O Come Let us Adore Him

We kinda did it like the link above, but I think this is one of those choruses that’s good for any season… and its one of those song speak for itself. I said a few things about how we are welcome into the presence of God, but in hindsight, I wonder if I should have just shut up and SANG. Its a beautiful, timeless melody and lyrics that just say one simple, profound thought, “O Come let us adore HIM.” Slam dunk.

O Come All Ye Faithful

The perilous Christmas carol. I’ve been at numerous places of business (I’m thinking Starbucks, Cheesecake factory where pop arrangements of well-known Christmas hymns made me want to puke in my armpit and then eat it.) So every advent, while I’m excited to sing my favorite Christmas carols and lead others in adoring Christ through them, I also feel a little nervous, I don’t want our church to be LIGHT FM 93.9!

Prob the best way I could describe my arrangement was a feel similar to that of Matt Redman’s “Knocking on the Door of Heaven,” but faster.

Worship Log

So one of the things I wanted to do on this blog is discuss worship. I love worship because it brings out some of the best in the human experience– art, creativity, music, technique, emotion, rhetoric– and employs it to worship God.

And as someone who regularly leads worship in numerous different context, I wanted to use some online real estate to catalog and discuss my experiences, how I’ve seen God work, how I’ve grown as a musician and a leader and some of the issues that inevitably come up.

This past Sunday I led worship at my home church for the opening Sunday for our new series “Revolutionary Love”… it was the first Sunday with our pastor back (from a one month sabbatical) and some measure excitement with lots of folks returning for school. We had a pretty full house.

I lead worship at my church just about once a month. And compared to when I used to lead in high school every single week non stop for two years, this is a refreshing arrangement because I invest heavily in each time I lead and feel like I grow enormously since I focus so much on that particular Sunday.

Here’s the set we did:

Opening set

This is The Day (Fred Hammond)

In the Sanctuary (Kurt Carr)

Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin)

Holy, Holy, Holy (Hymn)

Offering

Speak to My Heart (Donnie McClurkin)

Response

I Almost Let Go (Kurt Carr)

When I Think About the Lord

I think one of the main challenges of a worship leader, and one faced me this week, is song selection. Not only does the worship leader have to pick good worship songs, they have to be appropriate with the topic of that particular Sunday. Being at a church that strives for multiethnic worship, its always on my mind to draw from many different traditions (this Sunday we had 5 Gospel, 1 Contemporary Christian and 1 traditional hymn… we didn’t have any songs in a non-English language which I wanted).

Also the worship leader has to “sell” each worship song. It may sound like a crude term to use… like a salesman selling knives or something… I don’t mean that, but I think the worship leader has to allow the congregation to “own” the song both individually and corporately, so that they are offering it up the Lord with conviction and feeling. The most basic aspects of selling a song has to do with the worship leader liking the song and being able to execute it skillfully. A congregation or individual will have a hard time worshiping to even the most beautiful song if they can’t follow the tune or it sounds horrible (there are exceptions with the Holy Spirit, but obviously, they are the exception). So in most cases, provided that the song is performed decently, people will naturally be able to own the song.

But this isn’t always the case. It especially isn’t the case in multiethnic worship because even if a song is executed well, an individual in the congregation may not be able to own a particular worship song if its it is outside of her comfort zone or familiar worship culture. For example, it may be really hard for someone who grew up in a church that sang only hymns to own the Fred Hammond version of “This is the Day. In fact, that’s what I had a lot of this Sunday, when I opened with that rocking tour-de-fource. Right off the top, even tho I thot the band and choir were doing well, half the congregation was totally with me and the other the other half was just standing their mouth agape.. some not even clapping. And we definitely lost people when we went into the extended guitar solo into a call and response section….

Now I think one fault of mine was in starting off the set with such a raucous tune, but still, the main question remains…. how do you sell a worship song to a congregation where for many it is in a music or worship genre totally foreign? I think I probably executed the song to the best of my ability, but I think there’s more that can be done.

“In the Sanctuary” is another upbeat Gospel number that is a lot more congregational friendly than “This is the Day”.. it has a simple, singable melody and a really easy beat and very repetitive. I think for a Gospel song, it can sell relatively easily to non-Gospel folks. The challenge for me was how to lead it well. You have the choir singing the melody with gusto and intensity. That’s not a problem… but what can I bring vocally to the song as the WL? I ask myself W.W.K.C.D? What would Kurt Carr do?

There are a lot of times when KC just stays out of the way and lets the choir shine and would just interject in between melodies with “uh” and “yeah”… but other times he doubles the melody, other times he feeds the next lyric and other times he would just ad lib a counter melody. Its an art form that I’m just getting introduced to, but when done well it totally can inject a divine exuberance into a worship song…

(Here’s a great example from Marvin Sapp… he gives a clinic on doing this stuff)

After two upbeat Gospel songs, it was time for some good old fashioned Christian rock, courtesy of our boy Chris Tomlin. “Your Grace is Enough” is a classic driving anthemic rock worship… powerful beat, intense
lyrics and chorus that you could sing in your sleep. Immediately after starting that song there was new life in the congregation. There’s something about the quarter note-eighth note rock rhythm that’s so darned singable. Sometimes Gospel can be tricky because of all its syncopation and emphasis on the offbeats. I think for our mostly white and Asian congregation there was this corporate sense of hominess when we hit that song… I noticed hands go up, eyes getting shut and a different climate of worship arise. Interesting, huh?

One of my favorite arrangements for songs like “Your Grace is Enough” that have a pre-chorus is to at the end sing the pre-chorus three times with a gradual crescendo into the final chorus. I do that way too much, but I love it and it always works. I do it on “Blessed be your name,” “All who are thirsty”… and it has a way of really bringing the song to an appropriate climax. Maybe I should copyright some kind of term for it… maybe something like three-peat coda or something like that… haha… im a loser.

Anyways, all that to say that is just another reminder that in worship you can never underestimate the value of those mid-tempo power rock anthems. They are money in the bank!

We ended the set with the hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” This song was written in like the 1820s or something.. and I think there’s a reason why this song is still widely sung 200 years later. I mean seriously, how many people in two hundred years are gonna be singing “Marvelous Light” by Charlie Hall… I’d be surprised if any. There are some songs that endure and some songs that God uses just for a season or a generation. Holy x3 is one of them…. its stinking beautiful has rich, theological deep words and a melody that’s so incredibly simple, catchy and singable.

For the hymn, I was thinking, after three upbeat songs, to do something totally different and sing the whole thing a cappella. That would have been mad pretty, but I reconsidered because I thought it might put undue pressure on the choir, and even having the keys in the background would still garner a similar effect, but also be more inviting for congregational singing. We had Tia sing a solo in verse 1, she was amazing. She has this pure, strong soprano voice that is angelic.

And we ended with the the fourth verse a cappella… which is a device that cannot be employed too often in my mind… there is something beautiful about being a congregation and hearing them all sing… its really a great communal experience. Maybe hearing voices brings a new sense of solidary with the people of God.
But just doing that together was a really sweet experience.

I sang a solo on “Speak to My Heart” which was probably unimpressive vocally, but I hope that the lyrics of the song convicted people. They are just so powerful… and the song is beautiful… if it wasn’t for the profound christian lyrics, you’d think it was baby-makin music.

Speak to my Heart Lord
Give me your Holy Word
If I can hear from you,then I’ll know what to do
I won’t go alone, I’ll never go on my own
Just let your Spirit guide and let your word abide
Speak to my Heart

I think as we were vamping the chorus, the choir was singing the melody, i was trying to lead out, singing counter melodies, feeding lyrics, etc… it made me realize how I have to keep pushing my range and having command of my singing voice to lead a song like this well. The song was in F and Donnie definitely hangs around the high F-C range and sometimes even higher… but I realized that if I can only hang on high F and barely make A in full voice, I either have to work on my falsetto or expand my range. I think there’s something rather boring about just singing the root as opposed to being able to experiment with the third or fifth and some accidentals or chromatics in between.

Pastor preached a great sermon on the prodigal son and God’s love for us and how, contrary to popular understanding, it wasn’t just the younger brother who was lost, but BOTH the younger and older were lost, but for different reasons. He talked about how Christians can be lost if they focus on just rules and regulation (religion) as opposed to a relationship with God, we are just like the older brother who was just slaving away for his father instead of realizing how much he was loved as his son.

As the sermon was winding up, I was prayerfully thinking how to be transition into worship and into communion. Pastor Peter took care of the elements, but then left it at that… invited people to take communion. I made the decision to share something I was thinking about in light of the song we were going to sing, “I almost let go.” I shared how when I’ve sang this song in the past, I usually thought about singing this song from the perspective of the younger brother, imagining a sinful, debaucherous kid who God kept… not a judgmental arrogant religious older brother who God also kept. God kept me.. maybe not from drugs but from my own venomous legalism and judgmental attitudes. He loves me and gave me grace in spite of that… and I hoped that maybe if there were other older brother types in the congregation, this song would take on new meaning for them.

I hope that helped… i was also just debating on going into the song without saying a word because sometimes I like the words to speak for themselves. But I decided to go for it and try to pastor people into the song. I’m glad i did, because I think many people owned the song… and that made me happy.

So with that, I’ll close this first worship log with the lyrics of that great song by Kurt Carr:

I almost let go.
I felt like I just couldn’t take life anymore.
My problems had me bound
Depression weighed me down.
But God held me close, so I wouldn’t let go.
God’s mercy kept me, so I wouldn’t let go.

I almost gave up.
I was right at the edge of a breakthrough but couldn’t see it
The devil really had me;
but Jesus came and grabbed me,
And He held me close,
So I wouldn’t let go.
God’s mercy kept me,
so I wouldn’t let go.

So I’m here today because God kept me.
I’m alive today, only because of His grace.
Oh, He Kept me, God Kept me,
He kept me, So I wouldn’t let go.