The following article was the quarterly letter from VMUSA VP and Chief Creative Officer, Casey Corum, that appears in Inside Worship magazine, Volume 62.

BACK TO THE BASICS
The Vineyard movement has been blessed with a rich, theological framework and experience of intimate worship over the last 30 years. We started from humble beginnings, with a group of hungry believers gathering in a Yorba Lina, California living room seeking to connect with God. Today, accessible and intimate worship music is present in most churches, on the radio and virtually everywhere you look. In one generation, we have witnessed a radical change in the way the Church at large approaches God in worship.

Our Vineyard worship values have been described in many ways through the years, and yet I believe these values can be quickly summarized in three simple words - Intimacy, Accessibility, and Authenticity (thanks to Brian Doerksen for his initial work in the description and application of these values).

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Vineyard Music USA recently released a new Club Vineyard CD titled “Brighter Day”. If you haven’t listened to the Club CD’s in the past few years, you really are missing out some great songs. The Clubs have been a mixture of great songs for corporate worship and great songs for listening as well.

Chris Lizotte and Tony Sanchez, worship leaders from our region, have both contributed songs to this project, and also shared their singing and playing talents to the CD. And what is also interesting is that Crystal Lewis sang with Chris on a couple of tracks.

You can get a listen to these at Chris Lizotte’s MySpace.com account here.

Click on the image below if you’d like to link to VMUSA’s online store and get more info about this project.

Donna Patrick at ExperiencingWorship.com has a great article about what guidelines the worship pastor/coordinator should use to evaluate worship team candidates.

She writes:

There are individuals who aspire to be part of the praise team because they sing well. If I had to choose between the habitual praiser and the great singer, I’ll take the habitual praiser. The great singer may prove more concerned about how he/she presents to the people, rather than how he/she presents to God. It is the principle of image vs. integrity. Image says “How did I sound to the people?” Integrity says “How did I sound to God?” The praise team should never function to bring attention to ourselves, but to God. I should point out here that music is not the chief function of the praise & worship portion of the service anyway. If we had no music, the worship of God ought to still be Job One. But since we do use music as a vehicle into God’s presence, we must be very careful that neither our music nor our team members are there merely for outward showings. While the Word of God offers several references to singing, John 4:24, our chief criterion for worship, makes no reference to it at all. All throughout the church of Jesus Christ at large, we have become so conditioned and so traditionalized to the extent we have come to believe music and worship are synonymous; they are not. Singing all the great songs by the most talented and well-known artists does not guarantee worship.

Read the rest of the article at ExperiencingWorship.com