Ever since I joining the wonderful world of iTunes, I have always been looking out for new artists and new songs because it is so easy to sample them and just download a song or 2 versus committing yourselves to a whole album. This started with TV shows that use great music, such as ALIAS and Scrubs.

Then when Cheryl and I started attending Cross Timbers Church in Texas, I really wanted to know what songs we sang each week and without the standard C of C worship schedule in my weekly bulletin, I had to jot down plausible titles to search iTunes later. I discovered some Chris Tomlin, Jeremy Camp, and Hillsong (a church in Sydney) music that summer.

Once I joined Cheryl in England we visited Hillsong London as it sounded famailar from some of the new songs we had come to enjoy. The music was great and the church here even made its own CD recording in October 2005 which we were part of (you can totally hear us btw).

My search continued and I downloaded several Hillsong and Hillsong United (more youth/rock oriented) songs since that is primarily what they sing there. Since Caleb was born, it has been difficult for us to go to Hillsong because it is far too lound and bass-ridden for his little ears and we wanted a better lesson each week (the senior pastor is not the best communicator). Well, our friend and fellow American, Megan, found a smaller church with similar worship that was not quite so overdone.

We have been going to Holy Trinity Brompton since then. It is a smaller church, with a great worship time and has several great speakers. The worship is nice too because we listen to some older devotional songs from the Harding days and it is a nice change of pace. We have been singing some new songs the past couple of weeks, and this afternoon I wanted to search for some of them. Plus, I wanted to try out the Worship Central podcast led by the worship leader Tim Hughes.

I found a couple of new songs from Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman (which are currently in my iTunes shopping cart) then I started to listen to the podcast. Apparently, the worship leader at HTB has written several songs and previews them on his podcast.

The more I searched about music by Tim Hughes the more impressed and shocked I was. Tim Hughes is the author of some of the best devotional songs, most noteably, "Here I Am To Worship". Also, "Beautiful One" and "Consuming Fire" to name a few. During my search, I also found out the new song we sang today "Happy Day" was also written by Tim as well.

Cheryl and I were pretty amazed to learn that we attend church where such a great and famous songwriter is the worship leader.

Its like finding out your spouse is related to one of the most well known, influential, and significant Christian writers in the world. Oh, wait...

Labels: church