“Mick McGuire” Performed by Gents in Remarkable Hats
In 2010, Alliance Music Publications published my arrangement (for TTBB choir + piano) of the Irish folk song “Mick McGuire.” It’s a comical number about a hapless bloke who woos a girl but, astonishingly enough, doesn’t get on quite as well with her mother. Since then, it seems to have achieved a wee bit of [...]
This is a choral arrangement I did for our church a while back. We performed it again this year in our Christmas program, and Jenna recorded this video. Like most live recordings it has a bit of background noise, but I suppose of all the pieces I’ve written, this one goes best with various interjections from [...]
What is “New Creation”? New Creation: Hymns of Wonder, Love, and Praise is a CD of worship songs composed by Eric Pazdziora (piano, vocals) and performed by Carrie Pazdziora (guitar, vocals), Øystein Torp (violin), and Petras (percussion). With a diverse blend of piano-centered musical stylings, it explores biblical, devotional, and liturgical themes of repentance, forgiveness, grace, and new beginnings in Christ. Theologically rich hymn texts are set to [...]
This is my contribution to Rachel Held Evans' Rally to Restore Unity. Read about it at the link. Augustus Toplady was, frankly, a bit of a jerk. He was an evangelical Anglican clergyman with a strong Calvinist bent. If he lived today he'd certainly be one of those Calvinists, the kind who write annoyingly combative blogs ranting [...]
(Or, How to Start Your Own Worship War With 7 Simple Tools You Probably Have Around Your Home If They Haven’t Burned It Down Yet) – A response to “Pop Goes The Worship” - Why do people quarrel and fight and split hairs and churches over something as seemingly petty as “traditional vs. contemporary music”? In [...]
I'm hoping to start blogging more about worship and church music in the near future. Meanwhile, enjoy this from a while back. A while back on Internet Monk's website, there was a fascinating conversation on worship–you could do worse than to check it out–prefaced by this zinger: (The theological term for this, if I recall from my [...]
“Thank You, O my Father For giving us Your Son, And leaving Your Spirit till The work on earth is done.” Over at Scriptorium Daily, theologian Fred Sanders (author of the new Crossway book I’m still itching to read, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything) treats us to an exploration of the trinitarian [...]
I’ve studied, read, taught, and even preached on John 4 (the story of Jesus and the woman at the well) ever since I first started studying what the Bible teaches on worship, which means it’s been many years now. Every once in a while I come back to this, and I realize that I’ve barely [...]
Over at the redoubtable Internet Monk blog, Chaplain Mike (carrying on for the sainted Michael Spencer) just posted a splendid piece about worship. It’s exceptional, in all the many meanings of that word. He emphasizes the necessity of congregational involvement and the false dichotomy of “form vs. freedom” (because every service has a form!). I [...]
“The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom” Isaac Watts (1674-1748) Psalm 98:4-8 One of our best-loved Christmas carols isn’t really about Christmas.(Technically, it isn’t even a carol.) It’s one of a set of paraphrases of the book of psalms, converted into hymn form by the 17th-century “Father of English Hymnody,” Isaac Watts: Joy to the world, the [...]
Pop Goes the Worship War
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