What an incredible weekend we had, full of praise, amazing music making and collaborating, energy, love and lots of hard work! You can view our launch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYOr9lY_mLg.
People came from all over Australia, even with the crazy challenging weather! Thanks to the commitment, hard work and can-do attitude from everyone who participated including:
Choir - Peter, Kyria, Nathan, Tim, Liz, Andrew, David, Belinda, Susan, Meah, Jacqui, Gabriella, Nita, Rosie, Phoebe, Madeleine, Timothy, Jonathan, Hava, Jake, Fiona, Siana, Zadok, Judah, Margaret, Anne.
Ensemble - Miriam, Carolyn, Brent, Harry, Caitlyn, Heidi, Caroline, Nita, Phoebe, Georgia, Julia, Rosie, Rhiannon, Ash, Matt.
AV - Chris, Andrew, Luke (huge thanks to Luke Wheeldon Audio)
Stage - Chloe, Ketty
Catering - Anne, Wendy, Leanne, Madeleine, Ketty, Tim
Logistics - Ali
Theatre - Christina, Dominique (huge thanks to Lake Macquarie Council)
Chairs, instruments - James, Clyde (huge thanks to Charlestown Ecclesia), Matt, Pete
Distribution superstars - Nita, Georgia

One section in our service included the dedication of the worship book and below is our dedication prayer, given during the service:
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Dear Father
“LORD God, there is no one is like You. You never forget the promises You have made with Your people and You are loyal to those who faithfully obey Your teachings.”
Thank You for bringing us here together tonight in person from all over Australia, as well as online, from all over the world.
We now present this book, the blue Worship book, to You as an offering of our service and love to You, and as an offering of service and love to this community of believers worldwide.
We pray that the Worship book is used to glorify Your’s and Your son’s names, to help believers focus on You, to help bring them into a sacred space where they can sing and meditate and praise Your name.
We thank You for inspiring the talent within our community to produce this work - the composers, the lyricists, the musicians, the poets, the notators, the proofreaders, the distributors, the many people worldwide who have come together to collaborate on this book, as well as all the participants tonight, all of these servants of Yours who belong to You. We ask that You continue to bless them, to continue to inspire them to put their talents into service for You and for this community of believers.
We ask that You always turn our hearts to You, fill our hearts with thankfulness, help us recognise the blessings in our life that You provide, including forgiveness of sins, and fill our hearts with these good things so that we praise You joyfully with our whole being. Keep us turned towards You so that we focus on Your goodness rather than our own fears.
Please help us to remember to sing together as a congregation, in harmony with each other, focusing on our commonalities in Your love, rather than any petty differences. Help us to use this book to create more harmony, more music in our community to help unite us. Help us to listen to the lyrics contained in these songs, inspired by You, so that they motivate us in our individual lives.
Please always help us to have a new song in our hearts, for Your mercies are new every morning. We look forward to a time when Your glory fills the earth, when entire nations, not just denominations, sing with one voice Your praises, when a new heaven and a new earth is finally here.
We give all of this night to You, we give this book to You, and we pray You hear our words, hear our praise, and accept these.
In Jesus' name we pray,
Amen

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 [email protected] - 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!!!