Hope you like this 30 second video!

Love

Vicky

You’ll have heard me mentioning Spring Harvest a lot in my Blog and on Twitter. I led worship there for 2 weeks back in the Spring. The live worship recorded there is now available on a double-disc. You can order it here!

The album has a live version of my songs Inhabit The Praise, Break Our Hearts & Glory To God Forever.

Check out the video above to hear me talking about it!

Love

Vicky

Hope you’re having a great week!

Many of you guys reading this are singers and involved in singing in your local church and beyond. One of my favourite people to get singing advice from is Sheri Gould, a vocal coach who has years of experience and wisdom!

I just posted Part Two of a “Vocal Health Tips” series on the WomenInWorshipNetwork, but also wanted to flag it to all of you both guys and girls, as the info is obviosuly not just relevant for women!

Go check it out here…

Vicky

I just finished a wonderful couple of days leading worship at “New Wine USA”. It’s a conference that originated in England. The “New Wine” event has happened in the UK for years, and Soul Survivor – England’s big youth worship and teaching event, was birthed out of New Wine. So… it was great to go and be part of the American branch of New Wine!

I led there a couple of years ago at the same event, so it was nice to see some familiar faces! It took place in Charleston, South Carolina. The weather was 115 degrees on the heat index!!! WOW!!!

The photo above was the place we ate lunch – I had “deep fried cheese grits” for the first time ever! My guitar player, Micah Nichols, lives in Charleston so he knew all the best spots to take us to! Thanks Micah!

Here are some photos from the trip..

Me teaching…

I twittered about visiting a famous grocery store that began in Charleston and now has stores all over the Southern USA. It’s called “Piggly Wiggly”! Funny name! Anyways, the church had seen my tweet, so after my final session of worship leading they showed my tweet on the big screen, then presented me with some gifts from Piggly Wiggly – a teeshirt, a mug and a few other things… hilarious!

We looked at some of the historic sites in Charleston… This is apparently the oldest church in the USA… It was used in the Civil War as a storage space, and they ripped out the pews and threw them under the church. Once the war was over, this was the only church left standing in South Carolina…so the locals got the pews from under the church and re-installed them.

I took my digital SLR camera with me on the trip, for fun. Here are a couple of shots I took of a very cool bridge…

If you’ve never read “Worship Leader Magazine” I really recommend it! They have great content – it’s very thought provoking, and is designed to equip local sung-worship leaders in their role and calling.  Check it out here! It’s brilliant.

As well as creating a magazine, they also put on excellent events throughout the year. Last week I led worship at their event in Albuquerque, New Mexico. People travelled in from all across the West coast and beyond. It was great to be with so many worship leaders and musicians from across the country.

I taught twice on Songwriting too, which was fun.

Here is a shot of me and my band doing our soundcheck….

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CJ Hatlevig on drums…

Reid McNulty on bass…

Micah Nichols on guitar…

And this was my Songwriting class…

Look out for my regular column in Worship Leader magazine, which will kick of this autumn!

Vicky

I had a great time at the “DIVE” event in Charlotte. Dive stands for “Deep, Innovative, Creative Expression” and it’s a week long retreat masterminded by Rita Springer. You can read about these retreats and how to attend one, here!

I was BLOWN AWAY by how powerfully God met with each girl/woman on the retreat, and how passionately they worshipped when we sang together! They had written some great songs, and I sat on a panel with Rita and gave the girls some feedback and critique on their songs. Here is a pic of the panel..

Here are some of the girls and ladies showing us their songs!

After a great time at Dive, Rita, her adopted son Justice and I drove to the beach and had a great time relaxing there!

We walked along the beach at sunset, with flashlights. I love the ocean so this was a real treat for me!

So it’s been a great couple of days!

Now onto New Wine USA in Charleston, which I’m sure will be great too.

Hope you guys are having a great week!

Vicky

Hello from my two week US tour! I’m in New Mexico this week at the National Worship Leader’s Conference, in Albuquerque. It’s hosted by Worship Leader Magazine, and it’s been fun to see some friends there, like Tommy Walker, Israel Houghton and Evan Wickham.

The senior pastor drives a Harley Davidson! He let me check it out, so here’s the photo evidence!

More theological blog discussions to come soon… Loving all the continuing comments on what we should call “Worship Leaders”… I love how our community works here -with everyone sharing their thoughts. Great stuff!

Love

Vicky

“Worship” is such a time-worn and easy term to describing the act of singing to God. But it’s also quite misleading, and maybe not the best choice.

Among the community I live in, both at home and on the road, we often use “worship” to refer to the time we spend singing songs corporately to God in church. But many of us are realizing the dangers of calling it this, as it implies that the other things we do when we gather corporately are not “worship” in the same way that singing is. Worse still, it implies that when we are not singing, we are not worshiping. This is clearly not in line with Scriptures like Romans 12:1 which states that our whole lives are to be offerings of worship!

We also use the phrase “worship leader” a lot. This title is useful as it’s been used so much that we instantly know what is being refered to. But it is also misleading and theologically unhelpful.

It implies that the only person leading any form of “worship” is one person standing up the front. Some church traditions use this term to refer to the lead/senior pastor or preacher, as they are presiding over the “worship” of the corporate gathering. This seems unhelpful as again it pigeon-holes “worship” as something that is led by a certain person, and thus cannot happen unless we are in a room with that person; nullifying our ability to worship alone outside of that context.

Other church traditions – mine included- use “worship leader” to refer to the person who leads the musical and sung portion of the gathering. This also seems unhelpful, as it implies again that singing is the main or only form of “worship” in our spirituality, and also that we need someone at the front to enable this “worship” to take place.

The problem is, if we don’t use these time-worn titles (which are useful because they are widely understood), what do we use? I’m doing some study at the moment on possible alternatives, as I believe that as well as us using words, words use us. So words can actually colour our view of things. So it’s crucial that we choose the right words, to correctly represent our spirituality and theology.

Any ideas? What do you think good alternatives to “worship” and “worship leader” might be?  Perhaps “sung worship” and “song leader”? Other suggestions?

Excited to hear your thoughts in the comment section,

Vicky

Read the whole review here!

Vicky

Tom Wright: message to the next generation from krish kandiah on Vimeo.

Here are a few words from one of my favoruite theologians – Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham.

What do you think?

Love

Vicky