We've got awesome help once again with checking the new worship book (blue) lyrics for meaning, content and Biblical reliability, thanks to Sam Dando, Peter Hermann and Tim Hocking. We do allow a fair bit of personal/artistic expression and less formal approach in language when compared to a standard hymn book but we try to balance this with the fact that we are actually printing/publishing these lyrics. Not all songs will 'speak' for all people - some are personal songs, some are congregational... Psalms is a great model of the many types of emotions, approaches and intent used within 'praise' poetry. Life is varied with its ups and downs, so it makes sense that lyrics which authentically express might be as well!

Our next Worship book will be blue!!!! It's nice to go back to a cool colour, like our first book which was purple. We are limited by Buckram's colour palette, but the blue is one of the brighter colours, keeping in line with our previous colour choices. 

There were lots of excellent colour suggestions on our FB page, including yellow, pink, lime green, all possible future (??) colours....

We are currently working through a list of 144 songs, listening, notating, creating accompaniments, cleaning up scores. Thanks to our hard working notators from all over the world:
Timon Burney (Australia)
Dan Hardy (Germany)
Rachel Hocking (Australia)
Nita Lawrie (Australia)
Amy Parkin (UK)
​Phil Rosser (Australia)

In other news, we’re planning a launch April 6th, 2024 DV, to be held in Newcastle, Australia, in partnership with the upcoming Newcastle conference. Here’s the link to find out more about the conference: 
​https://www.newcastle2024.com/ 

We've officially closed submissions for Worship 3, thanks to all who have submitted! Just quickly scanning through the list of over 240 songs, there's a great blend of our old fave composers as well as some younger composers who have submitted! Very appreciative of everyone's efforts!

We will start listening to these soon, then divide up the worklist - hoping to launch the new book for May 2024, God willing. If you would like to assist with notating, please contact rachel@theworshipbook.com - please note, you would need your own copy of Sibelius and have an excellent working knowledge of music theory/notation (eg studying a Bachelor of Music).

Thanks!

Once again, it’s been a while since the last post. Covid is still here, but still new mercies and new praise is happening every day. In the past year, the Voices of Worship project has put out a few songs and tutorials which can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgz91ZPpuHOsV1cR0ZPnaOQ
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Songs are also available on streaming platforms - just search for The Worship Book and look for our logo. We’ve also continued to do the spontaneous live videos on FB:
https://www.facebook.com/TheWorshipBook

Big news for this year is that we will be announcing production of a new Worship book including a call for song submissions. Hopefully all the lockdowns have meant lots more new music!!!