RussHutto.com

Most of you that know me, know that I am heavily involved with the behind the scenes stuff that happens over at The Worship Community. One of the reasons my blog tends to go quiet for weeks at a time is because I’m getting my “blogging” fix taken care of my writing and scheduling content for TWC. I love it!!

Today, we’ll be premiering Brian Doerksen’s Welcome to the Place of Level Ground from his live/dvd project called Level Ground, The Live Experience. Head on over to TWC and make sure you watch the video premier. It’s wonderful! You’ll love the atmosphere and environment Brian and his team created for this project.

If you’d like an EXTRA chance at winning a LEVEL GROUND WORSHIP LEADER KIT, I’m giving away 1 copy here as well! And so is Fred McKinnon. Be sure to stop by and register at his place!

The Worship Leader Kit includes the CD, CD Trax, Live DVD with 2 hours of footage, and Digital Songbook with transposable chord charts. (more…)

As part of challenging myself (and others) to continue to write. I’d like to issue a challenge to you!

Write a song!

For the month of February I’d like to encourage you to write a song based on Psalm 31. Feel free to use your translation of choice, but it’s a great idea to look at the passage you choose in several different translations to get different wording for the same concept!

Join the TWC SONGWRITERS GROUP if you want to participate!

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I know this might be odd to say, and I’m trying to be humble about it: but my favorite worship song of 2009 is actually one that I wrote myself.

Personally, I don’t listen to a lot of music unless someone highly recommends them to me. Oh, I listen to music for reviews and such, but I mean for my own personal preferences.

I wrote this song, Psalm 93 (The Lord Reigns), a while back and something about it just resonates with me. I mean I’ve written a lot of decent songs for worship over the years, but there’s something about this one that makes me want to sing it over and over and over. I don’t know what it is.

What’s your favorite worship song this year?

Join me and others as we share our best and worst of 2009 over at Fred McKinnon’s place.

This is a song from early in the year, but I have been wanting to “arrange” it.

Redeemer (link on twt.fm)

This would be a good song for a female to lead. It’s in the key of E. Originally wrote it in the key of D, but wanted to bring the verses up just a little bit for my range.

I love compound meter so I had fun with this one. It’s in 6/8.

Also wanted to do something opposite of modern musical common sense, which is to build to the chorus. In this case, I did, but as soon as the chorus hits, it goes to almost nothing featuring just vocals. What I ended up with made me happy.

Of course, if you choose to rock this one at your place, feel free to build big and loud to the chorus and carry it over into the chorus.

Redeemer - Russ Hutto Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Chart (PDF)

What does your church do to promote Family* Worship?

Do you see any problems with compartmentalizing every age group into a worship environment designed ONLY for them? Benefits?

Can children and teens “sit through” and participate in family oriented worship?

Are we asking too much of them to learn from and participate in generational worship?

Is Generational Worship something that we should pursue during our weekend gatherings or is it something we should promote and teach for people to pursue during the week with their OWN FAMILIES? Or is it something we should try and blend into both?

Please feel free to respond with answers, insight, and questions of your own. This post is not meant to be antagonistic, but I truly desire to learn more about WHY we have such segmented times of worship every weekend.

* By Family Worship I mean environments that creates opportunities for families to worship together. And in a larger more general sense environments that creates opportunities for worship to happen with more than one generation present. And I’m not only referring to musical worship.