News

Hi all, and Happy New Year! We've just done a little article with ideas for Lent - check it out and add your own comments! Don't forget to book in for our Supporters Day on 25th Feb if you're nearish London and would like to come and find out more about what we do. When we go to Leeds on 21st Jan for a weekend at Guiesley Baptist they are opening up the Saturday night celebration to anyone - so come and join us if you're in the North of England!

Merry Christmas! If you're here looking for last-minute Christmas worship ideas for your services, then you'll find a heavenly host of stuff by searching 'Christmas'!  Some highlights: Christmas video loops and fractal images Intercessory prayers with PowerPoint, and a Praying Through Carols idea A gritty Silent Night remix As a Christmas present we'd love to share this brand new song by Gavin Ball - Miracle Child.  We've also created a free video you can download for your services or send to friends this Christmas time.  Tidings of comfort and joy!  

We had a great time at Youthwork the conference, running the visuals in the big room and having a stand. We've posted the opening prayer from the first night - here! Also, Abby Guinness made a great opening video, that you can see below. It was lovely to meet some of you at our stand (pic of our handiwork below) - it was fun to make prayer beads together and we had some great chats about youth, worship, creativity, visuals... etc!!    

We’re currently taking bookings for 2012 to run training days for churches, regional networks and other events.  We can also extend these into whole weekends, potentially bringing our band or other creative trainers, leading services or celebration evenings.  After leading the Haddon Hall Baptist church weekend in September, their pastor fed back: "Sam and Sara took us on an amazing worship journey over our church weekend away.  All ages were led to experience God in new and fresh ways." Take a look at our Training page, and get in touch if you have questions or thoughts. Some pics below from our training day...

We had a great time at LST's Worship Connect Summer School in the beginning of September.  Ten sessions with the guys on the 'Planning and leading engaging worship' stream helped us go deep, and it was fantastic to see people grow and develop.  We also witnessed some really varied worship, including Taize, visual, simple acoustic and the uber-creative King Cave Project's jazz eucharist. Lots of people were asking for song/resource lists, so here goes: We led the first session with - Sam's 'Come you thankful', the 'Blessed be intro/liturgy' and then singing 'Blessed be', and Matt Redman's new 'Bless...

We're enjoying a fantastic summer staying with Sara's parents in Sweden.  It's an opportunity to work on a very exciting video project (which will hopefully be available in the new year), plus prep LST courses and other bits and bobs.  We're also doing our very FIRST non-UK engage event; the weekend 20-21st August in Kalmar, Sweden!  We'll also be getting ready for the London School of Theology Summer School: Worship Connect.  It is not too late to book yourself in to this great four days of worship input.  If you can't make it for the whole time but live in the North London...

Welcome to the new-look engageworship.org - cleaner, fresher and easier to navigate, but still as packed with inspiring, usable and free resources!  Do let us know what you think via our Facebook, Twitter or email accounts.  And tell your friends to come check us out! We had a fantastic time at the Broader, Deeper, Wider MWF weekend.  For us it was a key time, as MWF announced that they will be closing down their other output and focusing on engageworship.org to continue their ministy into the future.  It was great to see that chapter of MWF close with such a successful...

We had a fantastic time at Spring Harvest 2011.  Lots of people were asking for links to resources we used, so here's a list: In the Alternative Celebrations at Skeg 1 we used: "Jesus is Lord" shout based on Philippians 2 "Blessed be your name" intro liturgy "In the beginning" liturgy "Testimonies praise" idea Also the songs "He's my Saviour", "Come you thankful people", "When our songs (Have mercy)" and "Jesus lead us to the Father" from RESOUNDworship.org. The lament song we used...

If you're looking for input in worship leading, creativity and theology, then we're involved in a number of events just for you! Upton Vale Weekend 6-7th May, Torquay If you are in the South West UK, we've got the engageband with us leading a worship night on the Friday and a training day on the Saturday.  Tell your friends and come along! Broader, Deeper, Wider If its a weekend of refreshing, deep teaching, varied experiences and fellowship that you are looking for, book into the Broader Deeper Wider conference run by MWF and including us, Geraldine Latty, Jeremy Begbie and more. Worship Connect If you want...

We're really excited to be leading Tearfund's staff prayer morning next Thursday (3rd March) as part of their One Voice Global Poverty Prayer Week.  There are tons of creative resources for prayer available on their website.  It is not too late for your church to get involved.  Last year we ran a prayer room in our church for the week, and even took the prayer room into the local Secondary school for a lunchtime, which was a great session!  We will also be using the One Voice materials this year at London School of Theology Chapel on Tuesday - including...

Hope 2011 is treating you well!  Sam and Sara have had a crazy few weeks, finishing at St James, moving house to Luton, and even fitting in a worship training weekend at Saffron Walden Baptist!  They were really welcoming and receptive, so we had a great time teaching about creative worship and then leading the service and preaching on Sunday morning (hear the sermon here.)  Their pastor, Simon, fed back: “Over the weekend you both gently drew us as a faith community into a more profound understanding of worship. People who have been normally very quiet, found a new way to...

  Praying that your Christmas services and celebrations are full of creativity, authenticity and hope.  To help you along, we've got some resources that it's not too late to download and use: Silent Night done as a glitchy electronica instrumental track Video loops and fractal images for Christmas visuals creative reflections on Christmas as homecoming and the Bethlehem Star Also, Joel Payne has written two great articles about worship at Christmas: A Magi-cal approach to worship Subversive, radical and earth-shattering Christmas (which just got blogged at Musicademy.com) And...

We had great fun doing the visuals at Youthwork the Conference!  Take a look at the video below for a glimpse.  It was really good working with Vicky Beeching as she led the sung worship - no holding back with her in charge!  We also enjoyed doing talk visuals for people like Danielle Strickland, Rachel Gardener and Nick Sheppard from Centre for Youth Ministry. The folks from Bless were being super-creative with the prayer room and some corporate prayer activities.  We've just posted their re-written Lord's Prayer and congregational Psalm 16 with their nifty PowerPoints for you favoured folks to download and use,...

Look no further for some fantastic free Christmas worship ideas! For Advent: an Advent Candle prayer and a We look forward Advent liturgy, both with PowerPoint, or an Advent Walking Liturgy a Tenebrae 'Light of the World' service with candles and readings a Ribbon reflection If you're more visual, have you checked out Richard Lyalls's beautiful Christmas fractals and video loops?  Or for the crafty their is a Star of Bethlehem craft idea and an Advent Crowns idea. Or if music is what you're looking for, we'd love to recommend the Christmas stuff on...

STOP PRESS! Worship Leader Magazine in the US has just named engageworship.org one of their 'Best of the Best' online worship resources.  They say: "Artistic churches or churches that want to add some participatory elements to their services will definitely want to check out this website, which has a wealth of creative ideas."   If you've come here from that endorsement - welcome!  Do search around our articles and free resources, and sign up to access downloads, comment on stuff, and get email updates. In other news... Sam has now started lecturing in London School of Theology's Worship department.  It is really exciting to...

We've had a fabulous weekend at Greenbelt.  It is great to see such a diversity of worship, theology and creative expression.  Our Saturday morning worship session was such fun, with and amazing band, fab visuals and brilliant interaction from the crowd.  If you were there and wanted to get some of the resources, or weren't there but are interested, here is the outline: 1) We started with Richard Lyall's 'Unforced Rhythms of Grace' flash animation, available on his blog. 2) The music continued into singing the chorus of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', interspersed with a piece of spoken word piece 'What is your Hallelujah'...

Our activities will be limited in the autum due to Sam starting at LST (see here for full story), but we are going to be involved in a couple of awesome weekend conferences, and would desperately like to be involved in a third! Greenbelt (27-30th August, Cheltenham Racecourse) is an exciting, well established Christian arts festival.  We'll be leading some innovative, creative worship at 9.30am on the Saturday morning in the Underground venue (we have had so much fun rehearsing an amazing band for this!), and then are running a workshop on Interactive/Unfinished worship at 1pm in the creatively-titled Workshops 2 venue. Journey...

STOP PRESS - Worship Leader mag just posted a slightly rejigged article on Interactive/Unfinished worship from this site - check out their version, or see the original to comment or leave your own ideas! Lots to tell you...  Sam has just been appointed part time lecturer on London School of Theology's Theology and Music degree course.  This will start in September, and involve him teaching modules like Multimedia and Communication, Youth and Worship and Songwriting for the new stream of the course.  It is so exciting to be joining the faculty at this key stage in its development, and to explore the potential...

We've converted all our free videos, so you can now download them as .mpg format, which will easily slot into PowerPoint presentations and lyric software like EasyWorship on PCs.  There is still the option to choose .mov format which plays easily on Macs, and on PCs if you install Quicktime.  We hope this will make all of our videos more easily usable in your services.  Search under Media Types/Video for all our stuff, including 9 looping backgrounds. It is great having Andy Stinson here on a two week placement with us.  He has given us a reflective mp3 and a great...

We're really excited that our old college, London School of Theology, is announcing two new 'Pathways' to the Theology and Music course.  In addition to the existing course for music 'readers', they are now offering a second stream for 'non-reading', contemporary-style musicians, and a third for people who don't do music at all!  This really appeals to us as we're passionate about seeing a far wider variety of artists and creatives trained and released as worship leaders.  If you're wondering what to do from September why not check out the new courses on their website.  We recently taught the first and second...

Back from week 2 of Spring Harvest Skegness - Sam was leading the Culture Zone, doing the Student Central stream in the afternoons, and helping the Bless Network with their evening GODSpace celebrations.  Had loads of people at our Creative Worship seminars, and it was great to meet and chat to people. We've put up the In the silence video/poem that we used night 2.  Download it for free! We've also posted the We are chosen liturgy which closed night 1, the If we remain silent response from night 3, and you can also download the Praise Shout from Psalm 66 which...

The Worship Beyond conference was fab - we were especially excited by the concert with the local school in the evening.  It was great to feel we'd blessed the local community and walked out some of the things we'd been talking about.  Geraldine Latty was an absolute star leading most of the sung worship, and encouraging the school's choirs, and it was fab to see some DJ worship at the event by Steve Leach.  If you came, do feedback your thoughts, and anything you've been able to put into practice. Loads of Spring Harvest prep at the moment - putting together motion graphics,...

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...

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,...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

   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...

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...

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...

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 -...

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...

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...