Doxologist ContentWelcome to the Mars Hill Worship site!
Welcome to the Mars Hill Worship web site. This site is the voice of our departmental staff and volunteers. Our Worship department is responsible for everything that happens on stage during Sunday services as well as other Mars Hill events with the exception of teaching and preaching. This includes the worship band’s performance, audio, video, lighting, recording and production. It takes literally hundreds of faithful volunteers and a staff of eleven people to pull it all off. I like to say we’re like a little nation of geeks. And as the Herder of Nerds, I suppose that makes me the Chief Geek!
As we seek to work out the quality production of our gatherings we are driven by the question, “What is worship?” The sad reality though is that “worship” has come to be defined almost exclusively as music performed and sung in church services. But the fullness of a truly biblical worship entails much more than simply singing praise songs at a particular place and time.
As seen in the perfect relationship embodied in the Godhead of the Trinity, God pours himself out in unending glory and worship. But for better or worse, worship ceaselessly flows out of human beings too-whether in idolatry or in spirit and truth-simply because we are created in God’s image. And without this first-things-first understanding it is impossible to comprehend or rightly lead gatherings of corporate worship in a biblical, orthodox way.
This site is dedicated to the relationship between right thinking-rooted in a biblical theology of worship-and right action which seeks to glorify God holistically throughout all of life. This site is intended to be a conversation which will include essays about the big picture of worship as well as an ever-growing section for frequently asked questions.
We will listen in to the worship of the world through music, film, books, art and concerts seek to engage our culture as we set our sights on sharing the glory of Christ amidst the fallen-ness around us. In addition we will share our stories of songwriting inspiration and how our lives are changed as we perpetually contend for God’s glory.
Above all we want to extol Jesus in hopes that others will see his glory and love Him along with us. As pastor of our worship department, I have dedicated the rest of my life to exploring this conversation with the people of Mars Hill Church. On behalf of my team we welcome you into that conversation.
Tim Smith is the Worship Pastor for Mars Hill Church and leads Mars Hill band “The Parsons”. You can hear his band Sundays at all the campuses on any given Sunday.
Thank you for making this whole website available.
It will be a great place to dialogue on such an important topic as “WORSHIP”
I wanted to comment on the 10th most frequently asked question of-
“Why does Mars Hill sing songs I have never heard before?”
The following statement is made in answer to this question-
“…And, because worship is the response of a people in a particular time and place to God, it would only make sense that the songs they sing include songs that come from them and their lives in Christ. For this reason Mars Hill uses a lot of older songs to connect us to the history of the Church—songs that have been composed by our people out of our life together in Christ—and tends to shy away from more contemporary worship songs, as they are not very representative of our church community.”
The question that comes to mind is, who is the “church community”?
We love to listen to the very best of these “more contemporary worship songs” wherever and whenever they come from. We are becoming members of Mars Hill church and are therfore part of the community. I know in fact that there are many others who feel this same way.
Mars Hill most assuredly has a tremendous talent pool to draw from and there are some fine songs that have been written within the Mars Hill “worship ministry community”… It’s just that there are so many other great songs that are part of the world-wide “community” of Christ that are listened to by Mars Hillians which should thereby qualify them as “representative of our church community.” The world-wide community of christian songwriters is a pretty deep well to draw from and just as significant horizontally (contemporary time frame) as the historic community (older songs) is vertically.
Hey Bruce,
You have a great question here. In the process of addressing your questions my answer ended up turning into a blog post all by itself. It’ll be here soon.
At the heart of the question I would add this: how do we define Mars Hill community? How does Mars Hill community relate with the larger church community? With so many people acquainted with mainstream Christian praise & worship music, why would a mega-church like Mars Hill not turn to that catalog for use in their services? If the music possesses a unifying quality, then why plot your own course and chose not to use what’s already there?†In some ways, that seems like mega-church-growth suicide.
I’ll address your questions and these in the post.
Thanks for contributing!
Joe
It’s actually a little comforting to know that there are some other people who feel the same way as my wife and I do. We’re very new to Mars Hill and one of the things that we’re very unsure about is the worship music at Mars Hill Church. I totally respect the need to sing new songs and show creativity to God. However, I think there’s also a place for contemporary praise and worship music that you hear on local stations like 105.3 and 106.5.
I would hope that some point in the future that the leadership at Mars Hill will see that there needs to be a better mix to the praise and worship then just new songs all the time and songs that I never heard of. Just my two cents, really.