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"Come Thou Fount, Come Thou King"
This arrangement is by Thomas Miller, Worship Pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas. I had the opportunity to visit with Thomas during my sabbatical, he said the added chorus came to him on a Saturday morning watching college football. He was singing through the order for that evenings service and wanted to have some kind of transition to the next song and the following simple chorus came to him."Come Thou fount, come Thou King, Come Thou precious Prince of Peace; Hear Your bride, to you we sing, come Thou fount of our blessing."
The original hymn was composed by the 18th century Methodist pastor and hymnist Robert Robinson. The hymn is set to an American folk tune known as Nettleton, by attribution to the evangelist Asahel Nettleton who composed it early in the nineteenth century. Robinson penned the words at age the of 22 in the year 1757.
Click here to watch and sing along with the Gateway church version
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BFNvhbuNg4&mode=related&search
If you like more of a traditional arrangement check out this choir arrangement here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUhU0HgTq94&mode=related&search=
"Lord, You're Holy"
This song is by Karen Wheaton. Born Karen Harris, she grew up in a Pentecostal family, the younger of two daughters, in Hamilton, Alabama where she was active in church music from an early age. In the late 1970s Karen toured with Thurlow Spurr's Festival of Praise, a pioneering Christian touring choir and band. In the early 1980s Karen traveled with her own band, which included her first husband and former Nashville keyboard player, DeWayne Wheaton. Karen and DeWayne later joined Jimmy Swaggart Ministries with Karen as one of the ministry's featured soloists and DeWayne sharing in keyboard responsibilities. Several of Karen's early gospel albums identify her as either "Karen Harris" or "Karen Harris Wheaton".Wheaton, though involved in ministry in a variety of ways including her youth group, Chosen, is probably most noted outside of the Pentecostal Church for efforts to record and promote a vanishing form of gospel music, namely the Mississippi Delta sound that is fused with blues, urban contemporary gospel, and bluegrass gospel influences. She is also known for including the type of dramatic, gospel songs of the genre made popular by Sandy Rios, Kathy Sullivan, the Rev. Sharon Daughtery, and others prior to the advent of Contemporary Christian music in the late 1970s.Wheaton's album Remembering (1993) was an effort to bring together negelected Pentecostal songs such as ''I'm Feelin' Mighty Fine with new songs in the same spirit. Her 1998 album, My Alabaster Box'' also features a number of old standards alongside dramatic new songs such as the title cut. Wheaton has never written music of her own though she often arranges the vocals of her songs and is very involved in the engineering and production of her recordings. Wheaton's voice is a strong, dramatic alto.Wheaton is considered an interesting and important fixture on the contemporary theological scene in the American south as she represents the long-standing Pentecostal tradition of women having strong roles within the clergy and also as she continues the convention of "singing preachers" who incorporate aspects of sermonizing into actual songs. In many ways, Wheaton a rare breed to continue traditions of conventional southern revival-style preaching in her music. Wheaton's live version of "For Every Mountain", from her album Church is a prime example of this genre.Wheaton currently lives in Hamilton, Alabama with her daughters and aside from touring and recording her music, runs The Ramp and its associated youth outreach programs.
Click here to listen an arrangement of the song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5n6vggADw
Go here to listen to the choir arrangement, scroll down to new worship songs:
www.firsthurst.com/HURST_worship_resources.php
"O How I love Jesus"
Frederick Whitfield was an Anglican clergyman who lived from 1829-1904. The hymn he wrote, "Oh, How I Love Jesus", became a favorite in the evangelistic crusades of Moody and Sankey. It originally had 8 stanzas but only 4 are found in most hymn books. It was first written in tract form in 1855. The entire hymn revolves around the name of Jesus. What a powerful name! The name of Jesus promises us great things from the Father. It promises to be with us in every circumstance. How we should love Jesus for all the great things He has done and is doing for us.
There is a name I love to hear, I love to sing its worth;
It sounds like music in mine ear, the sweetest name on earth.
It tells me of a Savior's love, who died to set me free;
It tells me of His precious blood, the sinner's perfect plea.
It tells me what my Father hath in store for eve'ry day,
And tho' I tread a darksome path, yields sunshine all the way.
It tells of One whose loving heart can feel my deepest woe,
Who in each sorrow bears a part, that none can bear below.
Oh, how I love Jesus, Oh how I love Jesus,
Oh, how I love Jesus, Because He first loved me!
Click here to worship along on the song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTv2Eg4lxBM
Click here to hear Elvis sing the song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2z5IacR_3A
Click here to worship along with Melinda Watts:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY0fI4FXJOM
“Breathe”
A friend's suicide had left her reeling, but out of Marie Barnett's desperate need for God came a worship classic sung around the world.Marie Barnett didn't consider herself a worship songwriter, although she had led worship with her husband John for years and wrote her own compositions during her personal worship time. John was the writer, penning what Barnett terms "tons" of worship music through the years (including "Holy and Anointed One"). "He's the worship writer," she explains, adding "I never sat down and wrote thinking, This could be sung in a congregation. It was more between me and the Lord in my bedroom with the door locked."
But that all changed during a Sunday evening service at the Mission Viejo Vineyard in Southern California. The Barnetts were leading worship as they had done hundreds of times before, and words to what would become the worship song "Breathe" just spontaneously came out.
" We had been singing 'Isn't He' by John Wimber," Barnett recalls, "and my husband continued to play. I was so enthralled with Jesus at that moment, thinking I could never live, I could never even take a breath if I didn't have a word from Him every day. And so I heard those words-'this is the air I breathe, this is my daily bread'-and I started singing them."
Before she knew it, the congregation had joined her. Still, it wasn't as if Barnett left that night convinced she has a worship hit on her hands. There had been other spontaneous songs, but she soon realized "Breathe" was different. "People would come up to me at the grocery store and say, 'You know what we were singing on Sunday night? I've been singing it all week.'"
So they began to sing the song regularly in church and it continued to elicit a strong response, bringing many to tears. Barnett says even now she can hardly get through it. "I think the word 'desperate' digs deep into me," she says by way of explanation. "The longer I'm a Christian, the more desperate I am for God." Not to mention Barnett was feeling particularly desperate around the time the words for "Breathe" came to her. A dance teacher by day, Barnett's boss of 10 years had recently taken his own life, leaving behind a note asking her to take over the dance studio. "He was very depressed and had just gone through a divorce and was on all kinds of weird medications and into New Age thinking," she recalls of the tragic incident. "He even came to church with me once right before he took his life and I was like, Well, what good did that do? In the end, the event left Barnett with questions for which there were no answers. And that desperation came out in her songwriting."
Shortly after being written, "Breathe" wound up on Vineyard's Touching the Father's Heart #25 and seemed to be on its way to finding a broader audience. But if there's one thing Barnett learned from watching her husband's songwriting career, it's that the timing isn't up to us.
"We recorded the song for Vineyard and then nothing happened," Barnett says. "Not that I thought anything about it because to me it was just a neat thing the Lord gave to our church." Five years later, worship leader Brian Doerksen was putting together Vineyard's Hungry and contacted Barnett about including "Breathe." Then came Michael W. Smith's version on his 2001 release, Worship.
Barnett was driving in her car when she first heard the track playing on the radio. "I just started bawling. I love that version because at the end when he's saying 'Cry out to Him' it's like 'Oh! People are worshipping Jesus! Yea!'"
Since writing "Breathe" Barnett regularly contributes songs to the worship time at Vineyard Community Church of Laguna Niguel, the California church plant where she and her husband lead worship today. And she continues to run the dance studio as her late boss wished. With more than 600 students and 20 classes to teach each week, Barnett says the business venture provides with her plenty of material for her songwriting. And to round out her schedule, she also teaches at worship conferences, going "wherever people invite me."
Click here to worship along with Michael W. Smith:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oad8ov10AjY
Click here for a moving video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwLgyMzzh0M
"The More I seek You"
click here to read more about Zach Neese who wrote this powerful worship song
www.gatewaypeople.com/churchinfo/index.php?action=staffbiodetails&sid=180
Click here to worship along with Kari Jobe (LD Bell High school graduate)www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3GijrnfStk
"Great is Thy Faithfulness"
Thomas Chisholm was born in 1866 in the state of Kentucky. He wrote over 1200 hymns, such as: "Living For Jesus," and "O, to be Like Thee." But the hymn we remember the most is "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." Chisholm did not write this hymn because something great and miraculous had taken place in his life. No, he wrote this because over his entire life he had learned to see the greatness of God. At the age of 75, he wrote:
"My income has not been large at any time due to impaired health in the earlier years which has followed me on until now. Although I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God and that He has given me many wonderful displays of His providing care, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness."
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father, There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not; As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, Sun, moon and stars in their courses above, Join with all nature in manifold witness, To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide; Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, Blessing all mine, with ten thousand beside!
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided - Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!
Click here to worship along with Selah:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRCClg8pEY
Click here for a stirring arrangement:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kabwrNk3JAQ&feature=related
Click here for another arrangement:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydrfj7eNUtQ&feature=related
This arrangement is by Thomas Miller, Worship Pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas. I had the opportunity to visit with Thomas during my sabbatical, he said the added chorus came to him on a Saturday morning watching college football. He was singing through the order for that evenings service and wanted to have some kind of transition to the next song and the following simple chorus came to him."Come Thou fount, come Thou King, Come Thou precious Prince of Peace; Hear Your bride, to you we sing, come Thou fount of our blessing."
The original hymn was composed by the 18th century Methodist pastor and hymnist Robert Robinson. The hymn is set to an American folk tune known as Nettleton, by attribution to the evangelist Asahel Nettleton who composed it early in the nineteenth century. Robinson penned the words at age the of 22 in the year 1757.
Click here to watch and sing along with the Gateway church version
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BFNvhbuNg4&mode=related&search
If you like more of a traditional arrangement check out this choir arrangement here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUhU0HgTq94&mode=related&search=
"Lord, You're Holy"
This song is by Karen Wheaton. Born Karen Harris, she grew up in a Pentecostal family, the younger of two daughters, in Hamilton, Alabama where she was active in church music from an early age. In the late 1970s Karen toured with Thurlow Spurr's Festival of Praise, a pioneering Christian touring choir and band. In the early 1980s Karen traveled with her own band, which included her first husband and former Nashville keyboard player, DeWayne Wheaton. Karen and DeWayne later joined Jimmy Swaggart Ministries with Karen as one of the ministry's featured soloists and DeWayne sharing in keyboard responsibilities. Several of Karen's early gospel albums identify her as either "Karen Harris" or "Karen Harris Wheaton".Wheaton, though involved in ministry in a variety of ways including her youth group, Chosen, is probably most noted outside of the Pentecostal Church for efforts to record and promote a vanishing form of gospel music, namely the Mississippi Delta sound that is fused with blues, urban contemporary gospel, and bluegrass gospel influences. She is also known for including the type of dramatic, gospel songs of the genre made popular by Sandy Rios, Kathy Sullivan, the Rev. Sharon Daughtery, and others prior to the advent of Contemporary Christian music in the late 1970s.Wheaton's album Remembering (1993) was an effort to bring together negelected Pentecostal songs such as ''I'm Feelin' Mighty Fine with new songs in the same spirit. Her 1998 album, My Alabaster Box'' also features a number of old standards alongside dramatic new songs such as the title cut. Wheaton has never written music of her own though she often arranges the vocals of her songs and is very involved in the engineering and production of her recordings. Wheaton's voice is a strong, dramatic alto.Wheaton is considered an interesting and important fixture on the contemporary theological scene in the American south as she represents the long-standing Pentecostal tradition of women having strong roles within the clergy and also as she continues the convention of "singing preachers" who incorporate aspects of sermonizing into actual songs. In many ways, Wheaton a rare breed to continue traditions of conventional southern revival-style preaching in her music. Wheaton's live version of "For Every Mountain", from her album Church is a prime example of this genre.Wheaton currently lives in Hamilton, Alabama with her daughters and aside from touring and recording her music, runs The Ramp and its associated youth outreach programs.
Click here to listen an arrangement of the song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5n6vggADw
Go here to listen to the choir arrangement, scroll down to new worship songs:
www.firsthurst.com/HURST_worship_resources.php
"O How I love Jesus"
Frederick Whitfield was an Anglican clergyman who lived from 1829-1904. The hymn he wrote, "Oh, How I Love Jesus", became a favorite in the evangelistic crusades of Moody and Sankey. It originally had 8 stanzas but only 4 are found in most hymn books. It was first written in tract form in 1855. The entire hymn revolves around the name of Jesus. What a powerful name! The name of Jesus promises us great things from the Father. It promises to be with us in every circumstance. How we should love Jesus for all the great things He has done and is doing for us.
There is a name I love to hear, I love to sing its worth;
It sounds like music in mine ear, the sweetest name on earth.
It tells me of a Savior's love, who died to set me free;
It tells me of His precious blood, the sinner's perfect plea.
It tells me what my Father hath in store for eve'ry day,
And tho' I tread a darksome path, yields sunshine all the way.
It tells of One whose loving heart can feel my deepest woe,
Who in each sorrow bears a part, that none can bear below.
Oh, how I love Jesus, Oh how I love Jesus,
Oh, how I love Jesus, Because He first loved me!
Click here to worship along on the song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTv2Eg4lxBM
Click here to hear Elvis sing the song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2z5IacR_3A
Click here to worship along with Melinda Watts:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY0fI4FXJOM
“Breathe”
A friend's suicide had left her reeling, but out of Marie Barnett's desperate need for God came a worship classic sung around the world.Marie Barnett didn't consider herself a worship songwriter, although she had led worship with her husband John for years and wrote her own compositions during her personal worship time. John was the writer, penning what Barnett terms "tons" of worship music through the years (including "Holy and Anointed One"). "He's the worship writer," she explains, adding "I never sat down and wrote thinking, This could be sung in a congregation. It was more between me and the Lord in my bedroom with the door locked."
But that all changed during a Sunday evening service at the Mission Viejo Vineyard in Southern California. The Barnetts were leading worship as they had done hundreds of times before, and words to what would become the worship song "Breathe" just spontaneously came out.
" We had been singing 'Isn't He' by John Wimber," Barnett recalls, "and my husband continued to play. I was so enthralled with Jesus at that moment, thinking I could never live, I could never even take a breath if I didn't have a word from Him every day. And so I heard those words-'this is the air I breathe, this is my daily bread'-and I started singing them."
Before she knew it, the congregation had joined her. Still, it wasn't as if Barnett left that night convinced she has a worship hit on her hands. There had been other spontaneous songs, but she soon realized "Breathe" was different. "People would come up to me at the grocery store and say, 'You know what we were singing on Sunday night? I've been singing it all week.'"
So they began to sing the song regularly in church and it continued to elicit a strong response, bringing many to tears. Barnett says even now she can hardly get through it. "I think the word 'desperate' digs deep into me," she says by way of explanation. "The longer I'm a Christian, the more desperate I am for God." Not to mention Barnett was feeling particularly desperate around the time the words for "Breathe" came to her. A dance teacher by day, Barnett's boss of 10 years had recently taken his own life, leaving behind a note asking her to take over the dance studio. "He was very depressed and had just gone through a divorce and was on all kinds of weird medications and into New Age thinking," she recalls of the tragic incident. "He even came to church with me once right before he took his life and I was like, Well, what good did that do? In the end, the event left Barnett with questions for which there were no answers. And that desperation came out in her songwriting."
Shortly after being written, "Breathe" wound up on Vineyard's Touching the Father's Heart #25 and seemed to be on its way to finding a broader audience. But if there's one thing Barnett learned from watching her husband's songwriting career, it's that the timing isn't up to us.
"We recorded the song for Vineyard and then nothing happened," Barnett says. "Not that I thought anything about it because to me it was just a neat thing the Lord gave to our church." Five years later, worship leader Brian Doerksen was putting together Vineyard's Hungry and contacted Barnett about including "Breathe." Then came Michael W. Smith's version on his 2001 release, Worship.
Barnett was driving in her car when she first heard the track playing on the radio. "I just started bawling. I love that version because at the end when he's saying 'Cry out to Him' it's like 'Oh! People are worshipping Jesus! Yea!'"
Since writing "Breathe" Barnett regularly contributes songs to the worship time at Vineyard Community Church of Laguna Niguel, the California church plant where she and her husband lead worship today. And she continues to run the dance studio as her late boss wished. With more than 600 students and 20 classes to teach each week, Barnett says the business venture provides with her plenty of material for her songwriting. And to round out her schedule, she also teaches at worship conferences, going "wherever people invite me."
Click here to worship along with Michael W. Smith:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oad8ov10AjY
Click here for a moving video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwLgyMzzh0M
"The More I seek You"
click here to read more about Zach Neese who wrote this powerful worship song
www.gatewaypeople.com/churchinfo/index.php?action=staffbiodetails&sid=180
Click here to worship along with Kari Jobe (LD Bell High school graduate)www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3GijrnfStk
"Great is Thy Faithfulness"
Thomas Chisholm was born in 1866 in the state of Kentucky. He wrote over 1200 hymns, such as: "Living For Jesus," and "O, to be Like Thee." But the hymn we remember the most is "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." Chisholm did not write this hymn because something great and miraculous had taken place in his life. No, he wrote this because over his entire life he had learned to see the greatness of God. At the age of 75, he wrote:
"My income has not been large at any time due to impaired health in the earlier years which has followed me on until now. Although I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God and that He has given me many wonderful displays of His providing care, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness."
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father, There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not; As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, Sun, moon and stars in their courses above, Join with all nature in manifold witness, To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide; Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, Blessing all mine, with ten thousand beside!
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided - Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!
Click here to worship along with Selah:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRCClg8pEY
Click here for a stirring arrangement:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kabwrNk3JAQ&feature=related
Click here for another arrangement:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydrfj7eNUtQ&feature=related
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