"Just write already."

The problem is I want this first post to be grandiose. It needs to be the epic tome that shapes the future of all things that I write here. But before I can write the greatest first blog post ever, I need the greatest blog name ever. Everyone knows that titles are everything. You can write the most prolific piece of literature known to western civilization, but unless you have the title to match it – no one will ever read it. Even before the title, I need to choose a blogging platform. Where shall I post this? Shall I self host? Oh and what about the design? And what about....

And so went many weeks’ worth of excuses. My aspirations were great, but my actions were non-existant. I think many people suffer from this problem. We dream larger-than-life and allow the shear size of our dreams to overwhelm us to the point of non-action.

“Just write already.”

In all reality this blog isn’t about the writing. And while the title could be better, it couldn’t be clearer.

Worship + Justice.

There is one thing that excites me over any other. That is the worship of Yahweh-God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. For me a great portion of that worship occurs while leading my local church in music. And that is the first purpose of this blog. To discuss, present new ideas and share frustrations about “worship leading” in a local church.

While worship is about music; It is not just about music. It is about art and personal expression and enjoying the life God gave us and everything else that we say or do.

In that everything, there is one thing that I continually find rising to the top and thus the second point and third word in the title of this blog – justice.

Justice has become trendy. Thank God that it has. If it weren’t for rock star activists and post-modern pastors, I might not know the first thing about justice. Bono taught me about the AIDS crisis and extreme poverty in Africa and Rob Bell taught me about the need for clean water sources. God taught me how to love.

When you love God, you must love others. The greatest command is to “love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself.” It is impossible to separate the two. While love of God and others are the commands, it is by worship of God and acting out justice towards others that this command comes alive.

In this space, I set out to be very practical. I’ll talk about what I’m doing in my local church with my worship teams to make our corporate worship experience the best that we can and I will talk about what I am personally doing and encouraging others to do in order to live out the mandate of justice that I believe cannot be separated from worship.

I realize that I’m not the first to write about such things; I most certainly will not be the most influential. In fact, many of my ideas will not even be original, but that’s ok at least I’ve started writing.