Jennifer Knapp is Back

“Undo Me” was probably my favorite Jennifer Knapp song for the longest time. I loved her energy, passion, guitar skills…she was GREAT in concert. I think I first saw her when I was a senior in high school at Creation ’98 at the Gorge at George, and then a couple times when I was in college. I still remember seeing her open for Third Day at a concert in Spokane that a bunch of us went to…

Her music was great – and then….she was gone. I don’t remember knowing much about what happened when she took off, but I just remember no more new Jennifer Knapp albums and being bummed.

Yesterday, on my 30th birthday, I received some wonderful presents from my wife, GLEE returned and I found out that Jennifer Knapp was coming back to the music scene with a new album to be released on May 11th. The interwebs were also all atwitter about another fact of Jennifer Knapp’s life that I hadn’t known: she’s gay.

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Carrie Newcomer’s “Before and After” Album: A Review

I was really excited to get a new Carrie Newcomer CD in the mail a few weeks ago. About two years ago, I had the chance to interview Carrie and also got a chance to see her perform in a small venue in Philadelphia. The show was really great and definitely got me hooked on Carrie’s singer-songwriter music. She has songs that are deeply theological, some that just make you laugh and others that have some really thought-provoking and well-crafted lyrics. Her songs are stories of faith, spirituality, social justice and of a life well-lived in pursuit of truth and deep meaning.

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Very Bad Praise Music Lyrics

With the recent purchase of a new guitar, and my desire to get back into leading worship and playing my guitar and writing more, I decided it was time to weed through all of the worship music I’ve had on my computer since college and do some categorizing. I made folders (Good Songs, Okay Songs and Bad Songs) and went to work going through them, reading the lyrics, deciding which songs were ones I could sing with integrity & use in congregational worship.

Unfortunately, some of my college favorites made the “Bad Songs” folder, while using the “Okay Songs” folder as a form of purgatory for the ones I wasn’t quite ready to claim as theologically-inappropriate.

While going through the process, I did find some really bad lyrics…many that I’ve sung and used to lead worship in the past…and thought I’d share them with you. Please feel free to share below in the comments some of the lyrics that you find inappropriate-theologically, uber-cheesy or just bad.

Can a nation be changed?
Can a nation be saved?
Can a nation be turned back to you?
We’re on our knees, we’re on our knees again.
Matt Redman“Can a Nation Be Changed?”

Sure, a nation can be changed…should we sing in worship for our nation to be converted and “saved” and turned back to you? There is the implicit understanding that our nation (while Matt Redman was probably referring to the UK) was previously a “Christian” nation and that everything would be better if it returned to such a state. Not so.
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