Author Archives: Warren Anderson
A Prayer for Corporate Worship at the Beginning of a New Year
Happy New Year! I hope 2021 has started well for you. May God grant us grace to survive and thrive amidst whatever comes our way over the next 12 months. Doctoral dissertations in sociology will be written in the years … Continue reading
Thoughts on Worship in the Academy at the End of a Rough Year
We celebrated the blessed end of a really difficult semester this past Saturday in the Demoss Center for Worship in the Performing Arts at Judson University. (OK, we really celebrated Christmas, as is our wont in early December, but this … Continue reading
A New Christmas EP That Put a Smile on My Face This Weekend
At the end of a sometimes frustrating week, at the end of an often difficult semester, and at the end of a frequently laborious year (but at the beginning, praise God, of a still hopeful Advent season), I was made … Continue reading
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Bidding Farewell to The Practice
“Those smaller fellowships that do survive COVID-19 might very well end up determining that the worship practices heretofore deemed immutably necessary for cultural relevance in 2021 and beyond no longer make sense for them in our current reality. And that might look a lot like The Practice. Here’s hoping.” Continue reading
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Songwriting Tips from the Experts, Part 11
I get to feature a Land-of-Lincoln homeboy in today’s post, Peoria-born Dan Fogelberg, who died far too young, 56, of prostate cancer back in 2007. I’m partial to the singer-songwriters anyway, but I’m especially partial to Fogelberg, whose “Longer” my … Continue reading
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Tagged contemporary worship, songwriting
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Songwriting Tips from the Experts, Part 10
Very rarely do the best baseball players turn into the best managers. Sparky Anderson’s lifetime batting average was .218; Tony LaRussa’s, .199. Mediocre numbers on the field didn’t stop either from becoming the only two managers to win a World … Continue reading
Songwriting Tips from the Experts, Part 9
“I was doing a concert, and I sat down at the piano and started playing a new song in D, and the crowd started clapping even though they’d never heard this song, because what I was playing in D [sounded like] what I always habitually play in D on the piano, and they thought it was a song they’d already heard.” Continue reading
Songwriting Tips from the Experts, Part 8b
“I’m not advocating that level of scrutiny for cwm necessarily, but it would be nice to get a sense periodically that an inner critic was at work a bit more often in cwm.” Continue reading
Songwriting Tips from the Experts, Part 8a
As was the case with Bob Dylan, I came late to the Leonard Cohen party, and I’ve been catching up ever since. Non-aficionados will at least recognize “Hallelujah,” his best-known song, one covered by a slew of artists over the … Continue reading
Songwriting Tips from the Experts, Part 7b
We feature more this week from the always mercurial, occasionally obnoxious, often puerile, never boring mind of Frank Zappa, courtesy of the interview conducted by Paul Zollo in his Songwriters on Songwriting. As noted earlier, though Zappa died in 1993, … Continue reading
Emmaus Road Worshipers 