Songwriting, Free Song, Book & Tech Reviews

Welcome to Digital Worship News, Edition 37. This issue includes six encouraging resources for you. Be sure to scroll to the bottom to download the new free Advent song (MP3 & PDF sheet music)!

blessings,
Kim Gentes

This excellent article on songwriting is from friend and veteran music industry voice, Steve Rice.

My focus for the most recent 10 years, has been working with writers of today’s most popular church songs … those sung by congregations around the world on a weekly basis. And as unfortunate as it is, I’ve come to realize that too many Christians today learn or develop their theology from the songs they sing...Christian Songwriter, did you hear what I said?! That puts a HUGE responsibility on you to write Biblically sound lyrics!

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In the last 150 years, since Darwin, science has advanced significantly in every field and discipline. On every level of natural science, the continued discoveries and study have led to a waterfall of on going re-interpretations of principles and exposure of new ones. Whether Christians like it or not, science has become the leading voice of truth in the modern age. The Church, once the global bastion of truth to the world, bequeathed its preeminence as a guardian of moral, philosophical and practical understanding by arrogance and oppressive posture towards society in general. While the Church was busy disconnecting itself from the humanity it once served, science was forwarding its framework of modernity and filling out its broad structure of the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution has ...

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The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.

Thus launches a compact and insightful book on the Christian church for the postmodern age. The book is "How (Not) To Speak of God" and is written by Peter Rollins. This book is a philosophical building block for what is considered a new brand of Christianity- one that places itself beyond Catholic or Protestant confines as a re-invention of the foundational core Christian tenants of faith on a new trajectory than previous "Christian" classes of belief. As with all belief centered in logic, foundational comprehension and exploration of such belief begins with language.

Read on here for a complete review by Kim Gentes.

Pensées is a collection of thoughts, from French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. In many ways Pascal was an early post-modernist thinker, perceiving and challenging (successfully) not only principles in mathematics and physical sciences, but in the philosophical and religious realms as well. The Pensées (which literally means "thoughts") is not a completed book, but a point-style outline of important thoughts, that read more like proverbs than treatise. The work was published posthumously and is missing a readable flow from thought to thought. However, the concepts presented in Pensées are quite clear- they are a philosophical apologetic for the Christian faith.

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In a recent blog post, I wrote about my approval of the new Kindle Fire. I like it a lot! But immediately, I had people asking about the comparitive features of the iPad and how would I rate them. To be clear, the two devices are both tablets, and both aimed at consumers. But both have different focuses, and are clearly best applied to their given strengths. To explore this closer, I put together a short feature table below. Each of these items are just my feedback on each of the devices and their strengths. I own one of each, and am happy with both devices, but would use them differently, according to their strengths.

If you are looking at purchasing a device, consider what you are interested in using the device for and see which device leans towards the features you are most excited about.

Read on here for a complete review (including a side-by-side feature comparison) by Kim Gentes.

Review (by Kim Gentes)...

...As Advent Season is upon us, I had the opportunity to hear a beautiful song that so perfectly punctuates the clarity of this season it instantly captured my heart in worship. Through the song, I was drawn up in waiting, in desire and returned powerfully to the coming kingship of the Christ as the song became my declaration of preparation for Emmanuel. Because the song is so poignant and timely, I asked the writer, Darrell Harris, if I could share it with others. He graciously consented, and so I am delighted to present his song "As We Wait" below for you..

Download the new song for free here.