For God Alone

For God Alone - The Primacy of Worship In September of 2016, Central Baptist Church Bearden (Knoxville, TN), a church I served nearly seven years, launched a discussion regarding their direction and vision. Ultimately, that discussion led to the creation of a Vision Lay Team (VLT). Throughout much of 2017, this congregation-elected team met most Monday evenings for 1.5 - 2 hours praying over and discussing their future. Following much prayer, many discussions and meetings, this team (of which the author was a member ex officio) created four dreams around the general topics of worship, discipleship, community, and evangelism. Rightly so, worship was the first dream among the four. Worship is the church’s first priority. Bruce H. Leafblad is the person I respectfully call my worship mentor. Dr. Leafblad joined the music faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the fall of 1983, the beginning of the second year into my master of music degree at Southwestern. Le...

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.” (Psalm 95:7b-9) “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.” (Hebrews 3:7-9) This weekend, our church, Central Bearden is hosting one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Ken Medema. Ken is, without question, a poet-musician, a term I reserve for very few artists I have known through the years. (Cynthia Clawson, by the way, is another.) This will be the third or fourth time Central has welcomed Ken (and his wonderful associate, Bev Vander Molen), and my sixth or seventh since I first hosted him while serving Tallowood Baptist in Houston. I first ‘met’ Ken in the mid-seventies through his ...

Today marks the conclusion of a decade of growing deeper through joy, contentment, as well as pain and sadness. On Monday, June 30, 2008, I drove into Tennessee to become Director of Music Ministries at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Nashville. God had opened a door and pointed … east from our home in Frisco, Texas where, eighteen months earlier, I had begun serving as worship pastor at Stonebriar Community Church. While it had not been my plan to serve that pastor and congregation for such a brief time, it certainly was God’s plan. Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they...

The following is my first FOR GOD ALONE blog, written and initially posted in June of 2018, while I served Central Baptist Church Bearden (Knoxville), TN as Music/Worship Pastor. Recently, our daughter sent a song suggestion to her music/worship pastor dad. A few weeks earlier, a member of my team sent the same song. (Anna and Jeff are just two of several persons who are and have been caught in adoration of the living Christ, and who, at my invitation, regularly send song suggestions, for which I remain extremely grateful .) Then, not long after, the text of that same song captured my attention as I worshipped while standing beside a long-time friend during a recent trip to Waco, Texas. “And as you speak a  hundred billion galaxies are born; in  the vapor of your breath the planets form.  If the stars were made to worship so will I!”* I believe that humankind exists to worship God. God created me, redeemed me, sustains me by his Spirit, and has commissioned me ...