How would Jesus lead worship was recently reviewed as part of a really helpful article on books about 'worship beyond music'.  Clem Jackson writes that this is a "book which all church leaders should have on their bookshelf and share with those in their church who lead (musical) worship."  Read his other comments and the rest of the article here.

Our book can now be purchased from this website!  We've also posted a free, eight session, interactive group study guide.  This downloadable, 18 page pdf will help you, your worship team, your church leadership and/or your home group to engage with the issues thrown up by viewing 21st century worship through the life and work of Jesus.  How does he enable and inspire us to give authentic, passionate and whole-life praise today? 

We've also posted an article which is generating discussion on blogs like musicademy about whether our worship should be Inward looking or Inside-out?  It explores some of the themes we'll be tackling at the Worship Beyond Conference - book yourself in to guarantee great input for you and your team in 2010!

We had a great time on 31st Jan at the Engage/Cambridge YFC youth worship training day.  If you're in the Cambridge area do check out our six week evening course for young worship leaders - it would be great to see you!

Sam and Sara

Our book How Would Jesus Lead Worship is now available to be purchased from this website!  We've also posted a free, eight session, interactive study guide for our book.  This downloadable, 18 page pdf will help you, your worship team, your church leadership and/or your home group to engage with the issues thrown up by view 21st century worship through the life and work of Jesus.  How does he enable and inspire us to give authentic, passionate and whole-life praise today?  What does Christ-like worship leading look like?  How can we hold the tensions of being Humble Servants, Leaders with Authority, Creative Communicators and Reliant on the Spirit?

We've also posted an article which is generating discussion on blogs like musicademy about whether our worship should be Inward looking or Inside-out?  It explores some of the themes we'll be tackling at the Worship Beyond Conference - book yourself in to guarantee great input for you and your team in 2010!

Sam and Sara

We had a great time at Youthwork the Conference! We've posted some of the creative resources and visuals we used on the main stage, including the Luke 4 motion graphics Bible reading.

We also did a devotional time at a UK Songwriters Consultation, which included a lot of liturgy on PowerPoint, so we've been able to post three of those - a great gathering liturgy, a confession focused around worship and justice, and a closing act of dedication.

There are tons of ideas for Advent now posted - check out these new ones by Kieran and Chloe. 

Its not too early to be booking your conferences for next year - young people in Cambrige need to be at the Engage day on 30th Jan, and everyone in the UK should make Worship Beyond on 13th March a top priority!

In what was supposed to be a 'quiet' term we seem very busy; had a great Saturday with the Chinese Church in London, songwriting training days in Manchester and Ispwich, loads of prep for Youthwork the Conference (not too late to book in!) and a visuals-in-worship night this friday at C3 church Cambridge.  Phew!

Don't forget to search 'Advent' or 'Christmas' for creative seasonal resources, and email us if you've developed any great ideas to use this year which we could share with others.

Worship Beyond will be the cutting edge worship conference of 2010 - wrestling with the integration of worship, mission, evangelism, intercession... This will be the fourth MWF Prism of Praise national conference, as hundreds of people meet in the Midlands to go deeper with God.  We are thrilled to be playing a part in this amazing day which also includes folks like national worship leader Geraldine Latty, dance music pioneer Steve Leach, justice-and-worship enthusiast Eileen Shipton and many more speakers from different spheres of influence.  Visit the website and book online today!

Worship Beyond will be the cutting edge worship conference of 2010 - wrestling with the integration of worship, mission, evangelism, intercession... This will be the fourth MWF Prism of Praise national conference, as hundreds of people meet in the Midlands to go deeper with God.  We are thrilled to be playing a part in this amazing day which also includes folks like national worship leader Geraldine Latty, dance music pioneer Steve Leach, justice-and-worship enthusiast Eileen Shipton and many more speakers from different spheres of influence.  Visit the website and book online today!

We had a great time last week leading creative worship at the Tearfund Journey conference - we've posted the prayer stations and video we used on our ideas pages.  Over the three days we also made use of the Blessed be your name intro idea, Psalms Praise and one of Richard Lyall's video loops.  We were particularly challenged by the talk Mark Powelly gave - he leads a community called Breathe exploring Christian Simplicity - "less stuff, more life".  Check out their 'Promise of Life' and other resources on their website.  It was great to chat to people (including the lovely Steve Stockman and his interns from Belfast) about the connections between justice and worship.  Well done Tearfund Youth team and well done God!

We're back from holidays, conferences and the like and have found some space between the piles of washing, emails and overgrown garden to put up some of the resources we used and a report on how the festivals went.  So do have a look around and see the new content.

This summer is going to be a time for making new resources, so please pray for our creativity.  We've also picked up a couple of new contributors, so be on the lookout for new resources by some new faces.

A few other things we are really happy to recommend - our friends at BIG Ministries have recently published a book of excellent all age Bible readings - check it out here.

We've been put in touch with an excellent artist/photographer called Ben Hodson - check out his website.

Finally, if you are anything to do with youth ministry, book in to Youthwork the Conference which this year features Jim Wallis, Pete Greig and also us doing bits of creative/visuals stuff.

And enjoy your summer!

The WorshipConnect conference at London School of Theology is coming up soon, and we wanted you to know there are now Day and Evening tickets available. 

For instance, why not join us for Tuesday 21st July: a Multigenerational Worship lab with Big Ministries, seminars including the engageworship.org stream on 21st Century Worship, and an evening of new songs with RESOUNDworship.org?

Or Wednesday 22nd: a worship lab on Lament, seminars including the engageworship.org stream on Indigenous Worship and Worship the Connects with Real life, and an evening on Celtic worship?

Or Thursday 23rd: our Emerging Worship lab, seminars including Worship with the Unchurched and Technology in Worship, and Ian Collinge on Multiculural Worship in the evening.

Check out day ticket prices here and all the other details on their website.

We were recently interviewed for the latest edition of Christianity magazine, for a piece called 'Worship Idol' (read the opening paragraphs here).  We've also written an article for August's copy of Youthwork magazine on our dream for the future of youth and worship over the next 20 years - so check out both of these quality magazines at a Christian bookshop near you!

Tour news
We had a great time in York for the penultimate Tour date - a real 'singing' crowd, positive feedback, and a really productive training morning at St Michael le Belfrey on Saturday.  Friday night is your final opportunity to catch the How Would Jesus Worship Tour at Riverside Church, Birmingham - come and bring your friends!

Adoration
We'll be at the Adoration music festival on 3rd & 4th July in Stoke-on-Trent. NXT Ministries have given us a stand in the Marketplace, and our friend and web genius Kieran Metcalfe will be on-hand throughout the event to chat about engageworship.org, or even just to say 'Hi'. He'll also be playing on the two fringe stages on the Saturday afternoon, both of which are free of charge to the public.  Also on the bill for Adoration are some great names like: Matt Redman, London Community Gospel Choir, Hillsong London, YFriday, Andy Hunter, The Steels, Lifecolour, ...and more!

NXT are working with Stoke City Council, taking over the town Centre of Burslem, and bringing great music to the local community as well as the usual festival crowd.  There will be 3 stages in the town centre (2 of which will provide quality Christian music free to the public, alongside a ticketed Concert Stage which will showcase artists on the evenings of both days of the event) and Cross Rhythms Radio station will be broadcasting from a venue in the middle of the event.  We're really pleased to be able to be there, and would love to see you there.

 Hi All

If you want to keep up with what we're doing, to support, pray or just be nosey, sign up at www.twitter.com/engageworship.

We are also pretty excited about a new partnership with Wendy Beech Ward at Spring Harvest - we're working together to produce some motion graphics video stuff for worship.  Sam's first stab at this can now be downloaded - its a reading for your Pentecost services.  Take a look, let us know what you think, and if you're doing similar stuff we want to know about it!.

Grace and peace,

Sam and Sara

We've had a great time at Spring Harvest Skegness, leading creative worship at iScape and the Big Top.  It has been a great privilege to work with such creative and inspiring teams.  Over the next few days we are going to be putting up a bunch of the PowerPoint and liturgy resources we've been using, so do check those out.  We also led workshops on developing creativity in the local church, and it was really exciting to hear lots of ideas and enthusiasm coming from the groups.

A couple of resources which we've picked up and can recommend - our friend Steve Leach has produced and album for Spring Harvest of his amazing remixes of sermon soundbites (from folks including Pete Greig, Matt Redman and Steve Chalke) put to bang-up-to-date dance music - 'Right here in this room' is really worth checking out at the Spring Harvest website.  You can also pick up the new songbook, which has the usual selection of new and old songs, plus some particularly excellent liturgy resources this year by people like Gerard Kelly, Martin Leckebush, John Leach and our very own Sam Hargreaves...  Some of those liturgies are about to go up on this site with accompanying PowerPoints.

At the event Sam got to oversee visual artists Hideyuki Sobue and Josh Butler.  Below are some pics of their work - the central panel changed each night, whilst an aspect of that panel was picked up in the surrounding panels.  In the second pic you can see the removed central panels.  Check out Yuki's beautiful website.

Finally, Spring Harvest and Faithworks have produced a guide to putting on a community art project, with examples from existing projects, background theology and practical application.  You can download the two pdfs here.

The completed work at the end of day 5.

The central panels which were removed after each night.

Load of people stopped to take photos.

The new piece done on morning 6,

We're really excited to announce the engageworship.org track at the London School of Theology Summer School - Worship Connect.  This is the first of its kind - four days at this residential conference to explore worship which engages with a new generation.  The blurb says - "Ideal for anyone wanting to break the mould, lead worship in new ways and connect with contemporary culture, the historical church and our timeless God. We want you to bring your ideas, creativity, questions and perspectives, to share your successes and frustrations, to pool our experiences and begin to carve out some new space for engagement with God." 

This will be a complementary track alongside what is already a great line up of speakers and leaders, covering topics like multi-generational worship, lament, sing and play gospel... and loads more!  Each day will also feature 'worship labs' - an opportunity to experience a number of diverse worship styles and then spend time reflecting on them.  This will be one of those life changing weeks where you get to really grapple with the big questions - not to be missed!

Interested?  Know someone who might be?  Check out www.worshipconnect.org for loads more info, or email us if you have more questions.

We had a great time on our first tour date in Keynsham, Somerset. This pic shows how sunny it was!  The band were amazing (thanks guys!) and we had a really mixed crowd from lots of different churches in the area.  Thanks to everyone who came and supported it.  A few comments from the response cards -

"Lively, heart-felt and interactive led by friendly, passionate people."
"Inspirational worship, Christ exalting, helpful, spiritual, opportunity for creative prayer, well presented information, great music, visual illustrations."
"[I liked] the enthusiasm! The variations leading between prayer and worship. The band!"
"Authentic, powerful, inspiring. Wonderfully relevant for today’s church."

Do come and see us on one of the other dates, and let your friends know about them.  We've also added a comment feature to the book page, so when you've had a read do let us know what you think.

We're really pleased to have a stand at the ECG Conference, 14th-19th April in the Llandudno Conference Centre, Wales, UK. It mixes teaching, worship and the opportunity to get involved with local mission projects. Do check out their website at www.ecgevent.org.uk.

The How Would Jesus Worship Tour kicks off this month, beginning at Keynsham near Bristol, and then going to Kent and Cambridge in March.  We are excited to announce the band will include Sunil Chandy on bass, Richard Morgan on drums and Helen Barnes on violin.  The evening will be a creative celebration of Jesus - how he has made the way for us to worship the Father, by the Spirit, and how he inspires us to worship today - featuring music, multimedia and a few thoughts from our book...  

How would Jesus lead worship? is published by BRF on 20th Feb - preorder your copy direct from their website, other online bookstores, or better still go and ask your local Christian bookstore to stock a bunch of them!

Other news - we had a great time with BIG ministries at the Childrens' Ministry conference - and Sam even got to dance with Duggy Dug Dug (err, sorry about that).  We're also going to be blogging regularly on the Musicademy site, so check that out as they have loads of other great stuff there.

Please do all you can to promote the tour in your area, and come along yourself!

Welcome to engageworship.org v2.0 - the new site for usable, downloadable worship ideas and thought-provoking articles on fresh approaches to worship.  We pray you had a blessed Christmas, and are really looking forward to all 2009 has in store!  Thanks for all the people who have fed back on the site - here is one satisfied visitor:

"A gorgeous, user-friendly site that does what it ambitiously claims on its virtual tin."  Martin Saunders, Editor, Youthwork Magazine.

A few things to highlight:

Getting Engaged - Its great to see new people sign up over the Christmas break - if you haven't done this yet why not do it now?  You get to download stuff, comment on the message boards and can receive a monthly news email.

BIG at Children's Ministry - On the 24th Jan Sam and Sara will be playing in the band with Jo and Steve Squires and the BIG Ministry team at the Eastbourne conference, as they model innovative, creative worship for children.  Check out their website.

Tour - Check out the How Would Jesus Worship Tour to see when it swings by a venue near you.  If you can promote this locally please email us for some posters and flyers.

And please do let other people know about this site via email, facebook or other ways of badgering them.  Nicely. 

Sam and Sara

Welcome to our all new, all singing all dancing version 2.0 of engageworship.org!  We are really excited about the possibilities of this website.  We will be able to share usable creative worship ideas from grassroots church contexts in the UK, feature articles by a wide variety of worship thinkers and practitioners, keep you up to date with our movements and more besides!  Do sign up to be able to download content, comment on our message boards and recieve monthly email updates.  And please do feedback your thoughts, ideas and other stuff so we can get the whole thing ship-shape for a more formal launch in January.  Your prayers are really valued as we seek to serve the church with this resource.  

If you are wondering what we've been up to, the Autumn term has seen us be involved with the LST Deep Calls to Deep conference, run a training day in Melton Mobray Baptist, lead worship and a seminar at the LST Alumni Day, and Sam has done two weekends as Creative Director at Youthwork the Conference.  So quite busy!  But we are moving into even more activity in the new year (see the Events page) and would really value your prayers as this ministry begins to enter its second year.  Thanks for stopping by - see you again soon!