Great Free Christian Music

There are some great Churches and musicians giving aways some awesome music this Christmas season.  Here are a few good albums and songs that I’ve run into:

Here’s a few songs from Austin Stone church with a great remake of On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand.  http://austinstoneworship.com/

 

 

A FREE awesome contemporary Christmas Carol full album from Lifechurch.TV http://www.lifechurch.tv/carols

 

 

A FREE copy of Laura Cooke’s album, Christmas in a Day

 

Here is some great FREE music :Emmanuel byLaura Story, O Come All Ye Faithful byPhillips Craig & Dean, & Christmas Time by Phil Wickham.    This offer is from K-Love radio station.  The itunes Code didn’t pop up right away for me, so here it is in case you run into the same problem: LLJWEJYPPTWA

 

Here are free version of What Child is This by Holly Starr 

 

 

 Here’s 5 great songs from Soma Austin’s Daniel Darnell in a FREE Christmas EP

 

 

Here’s a FREE version of Go, Tell it on the mountain by Seryn ft. Mark Apel

 

 

Here’s a Free Copy of Soma Community’s Jenny Snipstead’s original song Emmanuel

A FREE copy of the Civil War’s O Come Emmanuel

Missional Training #6 – The Need for Story

Caesar Kalinowski, of Soma Communities, shares how story is the main vehicle through which we learn.  He introduces us to sharing the bible through storytelling.  Watch the following video.  Consider the questions below as you watch. 

Also, If you’d like some additional information on storying, Caesar has compiled some related notes through his Story of God Training, which roughly follows the video.  It may help in retention of this teaching.

1. What is the value of knowing the Story?
2. Caesar read a quote from Stephen Shoemaker, “Our lives must find their place in some greater story, or it will find itself in some lesser story.”  What do you think that means?  What lesser stories have you put your life in?  What lesser stories are the people around you living in?
3. Caesar said “Stories encourage community and communities encourage stories.” 
4. How do stories change worldview? 
5. What were some of the facts that you found interesting about the way people learn?
6. Why do we need spread the bible through Story? 
7. What’s the difference between dialogue and Q&A?

For my Core group, Continue with reading The Gospel-Centred Life, Chapter 6, look back to the Cross. Read it,  meditate on it, and live it.  We’ll talk about it the 29th.

The Art of Neighboring

We make evangelism way too hard.  Yes, some of us are called to go over seas and share the Gospel in a foreign land.  Yet what about the unchurched around us?  God’s given each of us a mission field in our own neighborhoods, work places, & community hangouts.  Check out this video:

 

Here are a few questions to think about:

1. How many of your neighbors do you know?
2. What can you do to learn more about your neighbors?
3. How can you build up your neighborhood to show the love of Christ?

Ask a neighbor from your community to help you organize a block party.  Involve some other Christians from the neighborhood, your missional community, Small Group, or church.  Don’t bait and switch.  Don’t invite people to a BBQ and then hold a revival.  Rather, take the time to show interest in others, learn their stories, and deepen relationships.  Later opportunities might provide for a Gospel witness.   

Here’s a great Neighborhood block party kit which will help you think through every aspect of planning a block party.

Check out the source of this information, Building Blocks:Rediscovering the Art of Neighboring

Missional Training #5 – Examining life in a Missional Community

Here’s a great testimonial video on Missional Communities from The Austin Stone Community Church.  Watch this video.  For preparation for our next meeting, Answer the questions below:

1. From the testimonies in this video, What are your impressions of missional communities.
2. Do missional communities always run smoothly?  What frustrations are shared in this video?
3. Missional communities are families.  Families grow and multiply. Children grow up and start their own families.  What emotions do you feel when you think of people from you MC leaving and starting a new MC family.  What challenges do we need to face as we multiply?  Why can’t our MC family always stay the same?
4. What are some ideas that you have for a missional community?  Are there individuals you want to invite, neighborhoods or social circles you want to reach? 

For next week,  read chapter 5 of the Gospel-Centred life, Look up to God.  Read it,  meditate on it, and live it.  We’ll talk about it next week.

Gospel-Centred Life, A Great Missional Resource

I’m a church planter and this blog is published to help my core group and missional community grow in their understanding and living of the Christian life on mission through missional training.   

One of the resources that I’m using is Steve Timmis & Tim Chester’s The Gospel-Centred Life: becoming the person God wants you to be.  This material was created to help “Ordinary Christians live the truly extraordinary life that God calls us to.”  It continually teaches and demonstrates, through scriptures and stories, how the Gospel message changes everything.  It will help reshape your identity, how you spend your time and money, how you prioritize your life, how you deal with heartache and how you witness to others in everyday non-threatening ways. 

This booklet could be used as a small group study.  Yet we are using it more for a weekly devotion for each of our leaders.  Our Core group meets every Tuesday.  I ask them to read each chapter on their own every Wednesday and come back to it once or twice a week.  I want my core group to not only read the content but to live it and incorporate it into their lives.  Then at the next meeting we discuss the content and how we’ve put it into action or how it’s changed us.  This material has been a helpful tool to slowly shift our perspectives and priorities.  Its helped us to understand the Gospel more and to understand how to live with greater Gospel intentionality.