My good mate Steve Crain (an amazing jazz guitarist and Music Pastor at St Barnabas’ Anglican Church Broadway, Sydney) just lent me a copy of a book by Rory Noland called The Heart of the Artist.

Rory Noland was a founding member and for many years music director of the Willow Creek Community Church. Many people think his book should be compulsory reading for all members of a church music team. It addresses issues of motivation, criticism, sensitivity and personal godliness in the context of the creative arts (not only music).

I haven’t finished the book, but this extract I think speaks to a lot of what we as a band have been talking about for this next album (which we start recording on Monday, by the way!):

Authenticity is a powerful witness to the presence of God in our lives. It doesn’t mean that we’re perfect. It means that we’re real. It means that we’re honest about our imperfections and our struggles. We don’t gloss over them and put on a happy Christian face to cover up our pain. We admit that we struggle. The non-Christian can detect when we’re being inauthentic. The biggest giveaway is when we come off as if the Christian life is a carefree life with no pain or struggle. That’s simply not true. If we treat serious life issues in a trite manner, that tells our non-Christian friends that we are out of touch with reality. Being authentic includes being real with our struggles and shortcomings. –Rory Noland, The Heart of the Artist, p 37.

We are really hoping to focus in this new album on being real with people. We still want to be encouraging, of course (and it’s not like everything we’ve done previously has not been real!). But I think the challenge of great Christian art is to look forward to the Kingdom and back at Christ’s great victory over death on the cross with unshakable joy, while in the same breath acknowledging that things are not yet as they should be. That is the tension of the Christian hope: may your kingdom come. We’re not joyful because we’re blind to the pain and suffering in the world; we’re joyful because we know that they story of God vs Evil has a happy ending. What happened to Jesus’ body on Easter Monday will soon go global.

There are now five videos to help train pianists to play church music from chord charts.

They address topics like major and minor chords, voicings (also called inversions), playing with other musicians and more.

Click here for the videos.