It's Water Cooler Wednesday where the creatives gather over at Randy Elrod's site, Ethos to discuss things that creatives discuss.It's Christmas time and it's that time of year that we sing a body of songs that only get sung once a year. Most carols have their traditional form that we've heard for years. However with contemporary worship on the scene some years ago we found that the traditional sound of carols juxtaposed against contemporary choruses really didn't fit.
I began some years ago by using Christmas carols that were written for youth choirs and ensembles (Word Music's THE NOISE WE MAKE (2001) and WOMEN OF FAITH Christmas) to add a contemporary sound to our services. Vineyard came out with a great Christmas album in 2000 and I've used most of it.
Along came Praise Charts in 2003 (?) with their first Praise Carols set. They were the perfect answer to the Christmas carol issue for contemporary churches. I use them year after year and they added a new set 2 years ago (although I didn't use all of them).
Just this year Sojourn church out of Louisville gave away their Christmas cd free and we're using it for preservice music. Some of them are really good and may find their way into our rep. next year.
So, what do you use for contemporary Christmas carols? Where do you find your resources?
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2 comments:
we still have a long ways to go before i'm excited to do Christmas music in church though...
Tyler
we start slow and then load up at the end. We still have people wanting to sing them all 2-3 times.... that's when it becomes overload.
Jim
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