Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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As Christians, we are blessed with a long legacy of great hymns. As contemporary Christians, we are blessed with many modern-day hymn writers who are carrying on the art. So how well do you know your hymns and their authors? This little quiz is designed to find out!
When I was a teen, I didn’t know much about Christian rock music, but I did know that it was for losers. Big losers. Big losers who were probably barely Christian at all. Those sad, sorry people listened to those sad, sorry bands playing their silly, shallow little ditties. But not me. No way. My best friend became a loser right around age 14. I had hopped a Greyhound from Hamilton to the far side of Toronto to spend a …
I do enjoy poetry. My few attempts to write it have not gone particularly well, but I have often benefited from reading and memorizing the work of real poets. Poetry has the ability to convey feelings and emotions in a way prose does not. Both genres communicate truth, but poetry has its way of being quicker to reach the emotions. I enjoy that at times. I need that at times. Most of the poetry I enjoy is the kind you …
It is ironic that music, an element meant to draw Christians together in mutual love and service (see Colossians 3:16) has become a force for significant division within the church. It just goes to show, I guess, that we can make a mess of pretty much anything. In their book The Compelling Community, Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop point out 3 common errors of musical style can stifle local church community: Music that’s difficult to sing corporately. If your music …
Every now and again I like to share a new song I’ve found. Recently I’ve really been enjoying one titled “Jerusalem,” written by Jonny Robinson, Rich Thompson, and Tiarne Kleyn. What do I like about it? I like that it is written in the present tense rather than the past tense; I like the constant calls to action: See, Hear, Feel, Lift; I like the progression from the streets of Jerusalem, to the cross, to the empty tomb, to the New …
In 1969 Leonard Cohen released a record entitled Songs From A Room. The fifth track on that album is “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy.” The song has become one of Cohen’s more popular ones; it has found its way onto one of his live albums and has been covered by several other artists. It is a dark, haunting song that speaks of a young woman named Nancy. The poetic words are difficult to interpret, leading many fans of Cohen’s music …
There is a vast amount of Christian music targeted at children. The problem is that there is a lot of junk as well–stuff like this. My kids are not particularly drawn to music so we have probably overlooked a lot of the great resources out there. Nevertheless, there are a few that we’ve come across that they continue to enjoy. So here are some of our favorite kids’ albums. I’d love you to read through and add your own suggestions …
Today’s guest blog comes courtesy of Matthew Smith. Matthew is a singer-songwriter from Nashville who takes old hymn lyrics and sets them to new music. He is a founding member of the Indelible Grace community, and tours full time, playing concerts of hymns at churches. I blogged here last week about his new song “Goodnight,” from his forthcoming album Watch The Rising Day. For this article I simply asked Matthew to writes about how he came to find such joy …
The band All Star United has released some good and fun songs over the years. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes found them to toe the line a little bit with their humor. On the whole, though, they write some memorable songs and songs that tend to speak to some of the trends in the Christian world. They have an album coming out in a few weeks and one of the songs is called “Song of the Year.” Written by Ian Eskelin, who …
Contemporary praise and worship music has achieved a poor reputation. It is often regarded as being of poor quality both musically and lyrically. Sadly, this critique is often accurate. Yet there are some who swim against this current. It is only in the last year or so that I have been introduced to an organization that produces music to which these critiques cannot apply. Sovereign Grace Music has released a wide variety of albums which provide not only top-quality music, …