Christian Worship

Twaddle-free Worship Music

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Our family has been richly blessed over the past years by being part of a worshiping community at Abundant Life Church in Mt. Juliet, TN led by a very gifted worship team. Most of the players (guys and gals) on the worship team are music professionals in Nashville. They do not need another gig on Sundays. They don’t come to perform, they come to worship with us and lead us into God’s presence with music.

The worship leader, Don Poythress, is the most gifted worship leader I have ever met. He’s an accomplished songwriter and musician, but best of all, he’s a thoughtful worshiper. It’s important to him that the lyrics be theologically correct in both tone and content. I don’t wish to be provocative, but I dislike that certain strain of contemporary worship songs which (consciously or unconsciously) takes a “Jesus is my boyfriend” approach.


You won’t find any of that on Don’s new CD, Wash Away. Officially released yesterday, it includes twelve new worship songs, written by Don and several of his songwriting partners. I highly recommend it to you.

Here’s a 3 minute video interview of Don, with excerpts from the CD:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYbCGjO4EWw

The final song on the CD, Joseph, took my breath away the first time I heard it. It still does.

Joseph I hope to sit with you one day
Hear you tell me about the choices you were called to make
‘Cause Joseph it was you and no one else
That God trusted to take care of Mary and Himself.

On The Faithful Love of Jesus, Don is joined by the incomparable Ricky Skaggs on mandolin & vocals. The lyrics and the quiet, reflective melody are moving:

There are arms that we can lean into
That always will receive us
A living well of endless truth
The faithful love of Jesus

I pray you’ll know the love of God
The love that never leaves us
The height the depth the width the breadth
The faithful love of Jesus

Cyndy and I had the great pleasure of being in the audience at Christ Church, Nashville when this was recorded. It was a very special evening.

You can order the CD, or an .mp3, or individual songs direct from Amazon.com

Buy one for yourself, and give one to the worship leader at your church, or your pastor, or both.

*Don is way too modest about his accomplishments. He has had songs recorded by Willie Nelson (“You Remain”), Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw (“Comfort Me”), Darryl Worley (“Shiloh”), Brian Littrell, the Marie Sisters, the Wikinsons, Leslie Satcher, Andrea Zonn, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, Niall Toner and Kieran Goss (both from Ireland), as well as the European artist Sir Cliff Richard. He co-wrote “The Promise” which was recorded by The Martins and won a Dove award in 2004.

Modern History

The Solution by Bertolt Brecht

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bpk 30.003.527

Today is the 56th anniversary of the 17th-of-June-Uprising in East Germany. The textbook version says that the workers were reacting to reductions in wages and increases in work quotas. Economic factors were at play, and the political leadership of East Germany had, indeed, proposed oppressive changes in the workplace. But the textbook version leaves out another conflict which was at the center of popular unrest – the attack of the East German authorities on the Lutheran churches, and specifically on the “Youth Assembly” movement (“Junge Gemeinde”). In early 1953, the JG was denounced as an illegal organization, and those students who publicly identified with it were often subject to expulsion from high schools and universities. Many were bureaucratically denied their high school diplomas. The retreat centers operated by the JG were seized by the government and turned over to the Free German Youth movement (Freie Deutsche Jugend). the FDJ were militantly atheistic and made it their business to seek out and torment young people with the temerity to identify themselves as Christians.

On the 17th of june, 1953 over 400,000 East Germans gathered in Berlin to protest the actions of the government. The East Germans eventually called in soviet troops for backup. The soviets and the East German Vopos eventually opened fire on the demonstrators. Exact numbers of those killed are still in dispute. The low estimate is about 150. The high estimate is over a thousand.

Government police firing on unarmed demonstrators was too much for Bertolt Brecht, who, up until that point had been a supporter of the East German Government. He later wrote the following poem:

Die Lösung

Bertolt Brecht

Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
Zurückerobern könne.  Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?

The Solution

Bertolt Brecht

After the Uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in Stalin Street
On them one could read that the People
Had lost the trust of the Government
And only through doubled efforts
Could they win it back. Wouldn’t it
Be simpler for the Government
To dissolve the People
And elect another?

(English translation by RGS)

Note: in German as in English, the title “Solution” makes a veiled allusion to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” (Endlösung des Judenfrage).

Tennessee politics

What’s good for the goose

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. . . is good for the gander?

BlueCollarMuse is reporting that a DEMOCRATIC staffer at the Tennessee State Legislature sent out an email with the subject line: Smiles for Monday that is, if anything, much more offensive than the email forwarded by the administrative assistant to Diane Black.

Head on over to his web site for the full details. He’s waiting to see if there will be the same firestorm of media coverage, calls for termination, denunciations, & disciplinary action against this DEMOCRATIC staffer as there was for Ms. Goforth.

This will be interesting to watch.

RedHatRob

Stand by me

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Very cool global collaboration on an old classic from the 1960s.

Great idea, great execution. Kudos to the recording engineers and to the software gurus who edited and blended both the video & audio tracks which were recorded months and thousands of miles apart.

Great example of how communication & collaboration tools are changing the world.

Crank up the volume, sit back, and enjoy.

Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

2010 Election, English History

It would be no surprise to wake up in the morning and finding he had become an archbishop

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Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Great Britain holds that office by succession to the head of his party when Tony Blair retired from politics. He has never led his party through an election and has no mandate of his own as Prime Minister. And it looks as though he never will have.

He’s also, increasingly had to juggle things to keep his cabinet under control.

Today, Tory MP William Hague (who will become the new Foreign Secretary when the Tories win the next election) mocked Prime Minister Brown’s actions in keeping one, LordMandelson in his cabinet:

“The unelected Prime Minister has managed to produce the most powerful unelected deputy since Henry VIII appointed Cardinal Wolsey, except Cardinal Wolsey was more sensitive in handling his colleagues that the noble Lord Mandelson…

“The Prime Minister, who lectures us all on democratic renewal, is appointing peers to positions of power on a scale unknown for decades. There are now more peers attending the Cabinet than at any time since the days of Harold Macmillan…

“And the Lord Mandelson, denied the opportunity to become the Foreign Secretary… has gone around instead collecting titles and even whole government departments to add to his name, now adding up to

The Right Honourable the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Privy Council and Secretary of State for Business and Secretary of State for Innovation and Skills.

It would be no surprise to wake up in the morning and finding he had become an archbishop…”

hat tip to the blog of Archbishop Cranmer, who blogs pseudonymously on British political and religious topics.

The video below is worth watching. The clever soundbite comes at about 1:50 into the clip. But stay for the end, and watch how a brilliant MP deftly deals with the questions from two Labor MPs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geWERiWP7aA

book reviews, children's books

An Update on Greenleaf Press projects

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It’s been a busy year! And it’s only June!

It occurred to me that I should take a minute and update friends & gentle readers on what’s been going on at Greenleaf Press. A lot, actually. I forget, in the day-to-day press of the urgent some of the significant things that we have accomplished. Here’s a quick review:


Last summer saw the re-launch of Valerie Bendt’s Reading Made Easy and the publication of Cyndy Shearer’s Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature.

This year, Greenleaf has released three new titles and we have several more exciting projects under development.

 In March we released Handwriting by George Volume 2.

In April we released Voices of the Renaissance and Reformation.

In May we released The Sayings of Mrs. Solomon.

Projects under development:
Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century – I am happy to report that there are now twelve chapters written, out of a projected 28. Here’s the current, working version of the Table of Contents:

Introduction

  1. Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589)
  2. Henry of Navarre (1553-1610)
  3. Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
  4. Sir Francis Drake (1540-1595)
  5. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)
  6. James I (1566-1625)
  7. Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)
  8. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
  9. John Smith (1580-1631)
  10. Wallenstein (1583-1634)
  11. Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632)
  12. Samuel de Champlain (1570-1635)

Galileo (1564-1642)

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642)

Charles I (1600-1649)

William Bradford (1590-1657)

John Winthrop (1588-1649) combine with Bradford?

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) may be too much overlap with Charles I?

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Rembrandt (1606-1669)

John Milton (1608-1674)

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)

Charles II (1630-1685)

Jan Sobieski (1629-1696)

William of Orange (1650-1702)

John Locke (1632-1704)

Johan Pachelbel (1653-1706)

Louis XIV (1638-1715)

When this project is finished, I plan to continue the series with the next volumes, Famous Men of the 18th Century, Famous Men of the 19th Century, and Famous Men of the 20th Century. I’m already looking forward to doing the chapters on Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II!

Handwriting by George, volumes 3 & 4 should be ready to go to the printer shortly. When all four volumes are out, we will have covered all 100 of George Washington’s maxims. Volumes 1 & 2 included the first 55.

Cyndy is working on editing the text of Alfred Church’s The Odyssey for Boys and Girls, which will join her wonderful edition of Church’s The Iliad for Boys and Girls (Greenleaf title: The Story of the Iliad) which we published in 2004. She is also working on the next volume in her high school inductive literature guides, The Greenleaf Guide to Early Modern Literature. We don’t have firm dates yet, but Cyndy’s high school guides are based on ten years teaching in local tutorial and co-op programs. The Ancient Lit and Medieval Lit guides are what she uses for her 9th grade and 10th grade classes. The Early Modern Guide and 20th Century Guide already exist and she’s been teaching these classes at the Schaeffer Study Center for the past six years. But she won’t let me publish them until she’s revised them to her satisfaction!

As always, we continue to scour the publisher’s catalogs to find the best children’s books published each year. The outstanding selection this year, so far, would have to be Pharaoh’s Boat. I can’t say enough good things about this book. Full review is still on the blog.

To get the latest reviews of new books and news about projects, got to the Greenleaf Press website and sign up for the Greenleaf newsletter by clicking on “Store” and logging yourself in (if you don’t have an account, you can create one). In the right-hand column, there is a green box titled “My Account.” It’s the third one from the top. Click on the My Account link in the box and you can subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the newsletter.

– Rob Shearer
(Publisher, Editor, sometime writer, husband & dad – not necessarily in that order!)

2010 Election, National Politics

The truth is written all over our faces

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What would the analysts at “Lie to Me” (tagline: “The truth is written all over our faces”) say about this photo:

michellecarla
The woman on the left is France’s First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. The woman on the right is First Lady Michelle Obama.

The picture was taken at the ceremony to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy at Colleville-sur-Mer cemetery, June 6, 2009

Modern History

Stunning win for the Conservatives in England

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England held local elections yesterday. England is divided up into counties and independent cities (so-called “unitary authorities,” meaning the cities are not part of the surrounding county, but are the sole local government authority). The local councils then, although smaller in population than US states, are the next level down from the national government and parliamentary representatives. Political pundits in the US track how well the national parties are doing at control of state legislatures in the US (currently 23 Democrat, 14 Republican, and 12 split control – Nebraska has a non-partisan state legislature!). In the UK, the analog is how many of the local council governments are controlled by each of the national parties.

Preliminary returns are showing that the liberal Labor Party is getting crushed. They are losing 2/3 of their seats. They were already in the minority, with less than 500 council seats, while the Conservatives had over 1,000. It looks as though Labor may have lost 200-300 of their seats and may wind up with less than 200 total. This is a stunning rebuke. Prior to the elections yesterday, The conservatives controlled 21 of the 34 local councils. Labor controlled 4. The Conservatives have upped their numbers to control 27 councils (with five still not counted yet). The Labor party has lost control of all four councils that they previously held, including some urban, traditionally liberal areas that they had controlled for almost thirty years.

BBC Council Election Results map
BBC Council Election Results map

Liberal Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s days appear numbered.

The Director's Blog – Rob Shearer, Francis Schaeffer Study Center, Mt. Juliet, TN