“Knowing Jesus” album is available on Sunday night at North Side. We are hosting our “Knowing Jesus ” worship event at 6pm and would love to have you join us for worship!
The album is 21 tracks. We would have done more, but we were seconds away from having to go double-disc. We have so much music, we aren’t doing it all on Sunday night, but I have listed a track list to give you an idea on what each of these songs are.
Last night, I had the privilege of listening through the “Knowing Jesus” album with our band at our home. They had each contributed in the writing, arranging, recording of the process, but none of them knew until last night that this project is 21 tracks. It is as close to 80 minutes that the disc will allow.
Why that much music? Why 21-tracks?
The end of John gives us a hint:
You can tell a lot about something based on what words are used the most.
“Wordle” is a program that you can copy a section of text and it highlights the most used words by making them larger. The more the word is used, the larger it is displayed.
So, do you know where this wordle is from?
I am excited to announce the details for our “Knowing Jesus” Night of Worship. Mark your calendars for Sunday, September 30th at 6:00pm for an incredible night of Worship entitled “Knowing Jesus.” Get ready for a unique worship experience where we walk through the life of Christ and worship Him at every turn. We will also be releasing a new album with songs you will hear on this worshipful night. Invite your family and friends, and we’ll see you there (you can get more info on the City and also help us get the word out on Facebook).
Back in January, our worship team began studying Scripture and writing songs around pivotal moments in the life and ministry of Christ. Since that time, we have shared 4 songs from this upcoming project (It is Finished, Risen, All Things Are Possible, and I Will Follow; with more to come this Sunday and in coming weeks). We start with the anticipation of the Messiah, go to the incarnation, Jesus’ baptism, the temptation, and so much more. We eventually end up at the cross, the empty tomb, and the giving of the Great Commission.
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). “May Your Life Be” is the 16th (!) and final track off the album we released in June. It is such a wonderful prayer with which to end the entire worship project.
John Kennerly wrote this song and we included it on “The Time is Now” project with an acoustic feel. The vocals on this song are some smooth and open, I wanted to take a different approach to really open it up. We went to a pad being the primary instrument for the song, and besides a few piano parts and timpani hits at the end, that’s all you hear from instruments. Vocally, John and Angela changed up some of the parts, but once again, the congregation on this song sounds amazing.
Since the song is a prayer for lifestyle worship, we needed all of our singers on this one, so North Side is singing their hearts out. Sometimes, I walk into our worship center during the week and see the empty seats and imagine the worship that might be going on all over the city while we are scattered. We want Jesus’ life to be alive in us!
“Oh, what joy could make You stay? Enduring the cross, despising it’s shame…”
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). Track #15 is “No Greater Love.” I originally released this song on a solo project that was a fundraiser for our adoption. We had used it often at our church, and so it seemed a good fit to include it on this project.
We also decided to do this semi-live. In the worship world, all live recordings are semi-live. Elements are recorded live, but overdubs are done on every project because of bad notes played or off-tone elements. We don’t have the capabilities at the church to produce a high-quality live recording, but so much of what happens special with our team is when our congregation is in the room with us. So we played along with a click-track to make sure our tempo was correct and set out to record live congregational singing more than anything else.
“If there’s one thing I can’t get over, it’s You.”
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). Track 13-14 is the “It’s You” suite.
This song was originally written for our “Submerge” student camp years ago. An in-house band, “Brannon,” recorded this song on an EP. We never used it with the church as a whole, but with much of the teaching we have been focused upon in John, I felt like we needed to bring it back.
The song was basically written as a commitment to the sufficiency of Christ in a prosperity-focused American Christianity. So much of people’s faith nowadays is based upon Jesus plus something else. While Christ blesses us in so many ways, if all of them were taken away, we would still have more than what we deserve.
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). This song, “Worship Your Name,” was penned by our very own John Kennerly years ago, and I felt the need to bring it back.
The song was recorded on the first live album North Side recorded probably in 2003. John had written the song earlier than that, and it was a special call to worship song for our church.
In this recording, we took a very acoustic, folksy turn on the song. John is a singer-songwriter. He is great in a coffeehouse setting telling a story and singing and playing his heart out. I wanted to create the feeling on the track that there were a few guitars, voices, and percussion pieces sitting around a circle in a room. We were very pleased to say it feels that way.
“You can take all the pleasures of this world, for You are my portion.”
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). Track #11 is entitled “My Portion” and was birthed out of a United Youth Worship event we were having at North Side.
I was gathering together a collective of worship leaders from different churches to form a band for the event. As we prayed about songs, I felt led that a message needed to be sung that we couldn’t find the perfect song for, so we wrote it.
“Till You come, we will go, to the world, till all may know.”
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). Track #10 is entitled “However Whenever Wherever” and is a missional commitment song.
I wrote this song as we prepared to go to Ethiopia to adopt Eli. While the activities may be different, God calls each of us to follow him in unexpected ways. This song was a commitment of mine to follow Christ wherever he called. I didn’t want anything to sway me from obedience.
“Praise the Lord, all the nations, exalt Him all peoples. For His lovingkindess is great towards us, and the truth of the Lord is everlasting. Praise the Lord.” -Psalm 117
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). Tracks 8-9 are the “Psalm 117” suite. My torn up guitar got a beating on this track as we had a great time arranging and recording this song.
It’s titled “Psalm 117” because it is completely taken from Scripture. All songs I write are based on Scripture, when it works, I like to just sing Scripture without any extra (how could I say it any better?!).
“King of kings and Lord of lords, You reign, every creature in heaven and earth will proclaim the greatness of our God.”
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). Track #7 is “King of Kings” and my lovely bride sang the lead on this song.
The reason why the image for this post is the back of Amanda’s head with Baby Gloria draped over her shoulder is because this is how she recorded the majority of her vocal.
“Make me holy through and through, less of me and more of You, help me live pleasing to You.”
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). Track #6 is a song called “Make Me Holy” which we originally recorded on “The Time is Now” project.
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). This storyteller edition covers the remix of “All Things New” and the next track that is an instrumental reprise of that track.
We originally recorded this song on “The Time is Now” project. I never really imagined that for a upbeat song, many people told me how the words impacted their lives as it focuses on the grace of Jesus. As a way to re-introduce the song, our band reworked it one night.
Here’s what we changed:
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). “Glorified” is track #3 on the album and also part of the 1st nonstop musical sequence on the album (a majority of the tracks run into each other).
I wrote this song back in 2010. As a worship leader, my heart has grown to be much more concerned with what happens in the lives of our worshipers Monday-Saturday than what happens in a brief few moments together on Sunday. If all I do is provide people with a religious, emotional, or musical experience, I have failed them as a pastor.
I wanted to share another story behind the song from one of the tracks off of our “Enter His Gates” album (You can get your copy of the album at the church or on iTunes). The title song, “Enter His Gates,” was a song I wanted to write for a while. Psalm 100 is such a rich portion of Scripture and such an enduring call to worship.
We have used this Scripture as teaching for much of what we do at North Side. We are not called to enter into God’s presence and then start the thanksgiving and praise. We are called to enter in already in the process! Worship is a lifestyle, and so when we gather together with God’s people, which is a very special thing, we should continue to give thanks.
We are so excited to share that you can now get your copy of “Enter His Gates” on iTunes today! This project developed into a focus on psalms and other scripture passages of worship. It contains 16 tracks, 3 of them are instrumental selahs, 2 of them recorded live at our church, some of them new arrangements of old tunes, and the intro track was begging to be something special.
I had this idea months ago about a way to introduce the entire album, but I put it on the backburner to see if we could get everything else done. With a day left before deadline, I couldn’t get away from the thought and so we went with it, and we had to go for it very quickly (so quickly that unfortunately, Jamie Strutton isn’t given trumpet credits on the album notes, because it wasn’t recorded before the artwork was done).
So, let me explain to you the story behind “Psalm 150.”
What an incredible, busy, jam-packed, God-connected, worshipful, missional week last week was! We had the privilege for our worship band to play out in the community. Back in January, we prayed for opportunities to play outside the church walls, and God so happened to drop two in our laps at the time we were planning on releasing our 2nd album of the year.
Here’s a rundown of the week:
What a special day day of worship! With a full week of events associated with our “Enter His Gates” release, it was great to be able to celebrate it one more time with our church family. In addition to the new 16-track CD, we also had some new t-shirts and such. I have already received from very special encouragement concerning the new tunes. We are very grateful.
Today, we worshiped with songs from the new CD:
Enter His Gates is an in-house recording where we worked on a few different types of songs: 1) Psalms – Many of the songs are taken directly from the Psalms or other passages of Scripture, 2) Instrumentals – We have 3 instrumental tracks which are proving to be some of the people’s favorites as we took the psalmic idea of the instrumental selah pauses in …
As you can see, Eli has been hard at work recording and mixing the newest North Side Worship album. You will be impressed with his legit skills. We are just weeks away from “Enter His Gates” being released and we couldn’t be more excited about how it came together!
When we set out to record 4 albums this year, I intentionally made each project get a little bit more difficult. The sermon remix mainly needed keyboard instruments then we added some more. Enter His Gates added more live instrumentation and live vocals. The Jesus album and Bluegrass Christmas is gonna be full scale in many ways.
With that being said, we have learned a lot on this project. A lot.
Special day at North Side! We had some info on promotion Sunday (June 3rd), family dedication with 9 families, great time of worship, great interview video on “who was Jesus,” and a wonderful message! Jeff’s teaching on John 12 was so good. So much to take in considering how we are to lay our lives down just as Christ was anticipating his sacrifice for us.
Today, we worshiped to:
John 11:49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. 50 Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” 51 He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
What a wonderful text that led our worship time today! We focused on Jesus’ selfless sacrifice today and that is always time well-spent! Jeff’s message was plain ridiculous. The thought that we could possess a faith not to “offend Rome” really challenged some introspective time in my own life. Powerful!
Today, we worshiped to:
If you were at North Side yesterday, you got a snippet of the big project we are working on this year: The Jesus Album (working title). I was humbled by the response I’ve been receiving since yesterday when we led the new song, “It is Finished.” This was one of the first songs we wrote for this project, and the first one we have done live.
So, let me explain the big picture: 1) Our worship ministry desires to help disciple people, 2) Music has a way to make theology portable, 3) We are attempting 4 recording projects this year to do this, 4) We are currently studying through the Gospel of John on Sunday mornings and it’s been unbelievable, and 5) This project, #3, needs to reflect all of that somehow.
In a way to bring all that together, I felt led to challenge our worship team: What if we wrote an album that looked at the life of Jesus chronologically and worshiped him at every step along the way?
Exciting stuff in the works with North Side Worship this year. As a worship ministry, we are really focusing our efforts this year to help disciple our church through worship. I have shared some of what that means, but I thought I would clue you in a little bit more today.
Today, you can pick up THE MANIFOLD WISDOM OF GOD: SERMON REMIX 2011 on iTunes or you can get a hardcopy at North Side. That is just the 1st step of projects that we are working on as a worship ministry this year. Months ago, I gathered the band together and asked them, “What would be better than 1 worship album this year?” Someone got bug eyes, and replied, “2?” The answer was correct as I shared what would be album #2 for us. But then it went to 3. And then even to 4.
Yep, we are planning on releasing 4 worship albums this year through North Side.
What a fantabulous day at North Side! We were thrilled to release our new album “The Manifold Wisdom of God: Sermon Remix 2011” (photo courtesy of Taylor Wolfe). While I couldn’t talk Jeff into doing his part live, the band did accompany his preaching. We played track #10 off of the album which is in my top 2 favorite tracks.
Thank you for all that got copies today. I loved hearing about the lines at the bookstore! Hope the biblical truths are impacting you today!
Today, we worshiped to:
You are looking at the great cover that Cory Wilson designed for our upcoming Sermon Remix 2011 album. If you missed this announcement, we have taken pivotal messages at North Side from 2011, spliced them down to under 5 minutes, written and recorded music to back them up.
Since the last time I mentioned it here, we have added 2 additional tracks. An EP is a 5-7 song collection, when you get all the way up to 8, you might as well go for 10! Jeff picked two additional messages from last year on Habakkuk and Nicodemus. So glad these were included!
Cory did a wonderful job on the artwork, and the final mixes are being worked on currently and they are sounding great. The worship team members who have been involved have all stated that they thought this was a neat idea, but now, listening to them, they are blown away with how impacting these tracks are all the while being impacted by biblical truth. This is a very unique project and we can’t wait to get it in your hands on Sunday, March 18th.
Here is the back cover and the track listings:
North Side is blessed with some wonderful musicians. I’m blown away I get to even be a part of this talented and godly group.
We also are blessed with some wonderful songwriters. While different members have written songs, we have never written songs together.
Until Saturday.
I hauled everyone up in our house. Split everyone into teams. And then I was amazed by how the Holy Spirit led our time together. Here was the secret to our time together:
I’ve mentioned in the last couple of weeks some pretty exciting stuff coming up for North Side Worship this year. I’ve talked about how we plan on discipling our church through our worship ministry. I shared with how I felt the Holy Spirit was leading to a pretty big initiative and our team jumped at all the opportunities. Let me now share our 1st offering coming your way very, very soon.
In many of our previous recordings, we have included a spoken-word track. On Overcome, it was a message that was trimmed down from 40 minutes to 4 minutes with some music written for the piece. The sermon served as a catalyst for the entire album and really summed up a lot of how God was leading our church at that time. Jeff was originally against the idea because he didn’t want to have a lot of focus upon him. I was able to talk him into it, and since we have released that album, I have heard more encouraging words concerning the track “Don’t Give Up” over any other track on the entire project. It is powerful.
And I’ve always wondered: what would it be like if an entire project was dedicated to a sermon remixes?
I mentioned recently that our worship team is embarking upon some pretty exciting stuff. I’ve struggled with how to share our plans – in parts or all at one time, but for right now let me give you a couple pieces of the puzzle. As our team has met together, our time has focused on one verse in particular.
Colossians 3:16 says: Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
I am very big on reminding people worship is all about God. And that is true. But in that glorification of God process, there is also a discipleship element. This verse is shocking to me in some ways. As Paul reminds his people to let the biblical message abide within oneself, he reminds us that we are called to teach one another – through worship! Our worship should be so biblical and so memorable that it makes theology more portable.
That is why we are going to focus in 2012 that our worship ministry is going to focus on: discipleship.
The process of picking a place to worship has kind of become like picking a place to eat. We all have individual preferences, but when did worship ever become about what we got out of it?
If you weren’t able to get your copy of our latest worship hymn project, Songs of Our Faith, you can get your copy on iTunes! Click here to get your copy or to listen to samples.
Few songs endure for generations. A rare few endure for centuries. Many songs that we sing today will not be sung in five years. So if a song has served as a voice for many generations as God’s people have proclaimed worship to Him, that’s something special. Now, when it comes to arranging and recording hymns, there is hesitancy involved. …
Last night we had a fantastic practice/worship time as we prepared for this Sunday’s night of worship. I say it was practice, but it was really worship. When you get to work with the people I get to, practice turns into worship.
I’ll say this: this entire project (recording, planning, arranging, practicing) has been a more daunting attempt than anything else we have ever done. The arrangements are very complex. The instrumentation shifts from song to song. Players and vocalists are being pushed to the max.
And, I’ve never been more proud of this group!
On November 20th at 6pm we will have a worship service here at North Side. We will be releasing the new North Side Worship album, Songs of Our Faith, after the service. This is the followup to last year’s Overcome service. Groups, ministry teams, other churches, families are all invited. We are partnering with other churches who will be helping …
Here are some highlights from our 2nd full week of recording our hymns project, “Songs of Our Faith.”
We are so excited as recording is picking up pace around here. North Side Worship is in the recording studio again working on our next worship project entitled: “Songs of Our Faith.” This collection of worship hymns is full of wonderful lyrics pointing the church to Jesus!
The concept art is coming together. The band is putting together some unbelievable music. The vocalists are pushing themselves more and more each week. The arrangements are more complex than anything we have ever tried to pull off.
We are planning on releasing the CD on Sunday, November 20th at 6pm. We are in the initial plans of this worship event, and we hope you can come out. We have some really special stuff planned.
So do you want to know what hymns made the cut?
You may or may not have heard that North Side is going through some changes now. Many have asked me, “Are you guys getting rid of the traditional service?” The short answer is yes. The other part of the answer is: we are also getting rid of our contemporary services.
We are uniting our church from 3 services into 2. There are many theological and logistical reasons of which this one post cannot address. Succinctly, we believe that God is more honored when we unite in worship regardless of our preferences (theological), and we have accommodated preferences to a point where our schedule is actually a hindrance for many families in our attempt to please everyone (logistical).
So, no traditional. No contemporary. So everyone assumes that we are doing blended worship. The only problem with that is North Side’s worship pastor (me) is absolutely disgusted by that format. Let me explain why:
North Side Worship has been working pretty hard behind the scenes as we have begun another worship recording project. The focus of this next recording: hymns.
Last year when we worked on Overcome, we had many conversations concerning where we would go after the next project. During that summer, we began talking about doing a hymn project celebrating some of the most enduring songs of our faith.
Little did we know what God would be doing in our church in the coming year concerning unity and bridging the gaps among all of our generations. We didn’t know it, but God did. So as North Side moves forward to a united worship in the near future, God has seemed to ordain it that we celebrate the songs of some of our spiritual fathers and mothers.
Few songs endure for generations. A rare few endure for centuries. Many songs that we sing today will not be sung in 5 years. So if a song has been a voice for many generations as God’s people has proclaimed worship to him, that’s something special.
Now, when it comes to arranging and recording hymns, there is hesitancy involved. t’s a dangerous thing touching a classic.
You must be logged in to post a comment.