Okay...You've Got My Attention

Years and years and years ago, I subscribed to Worship Leader Magazine and their special songDISCovery program. If you're unfamiliar, it essentially works like this: every two months you get a magazine about worship and a CD of 12-14 songs for worship (usually new songs, many of which have been independently released.) The CD comes with .pdf chord charts and PowerPoint slides, all sorts of good stuff.

For what it's worth, songDISCovery was a good purchase way back when. During my first subscription, I learned a whole lot from the magazine and added quite a few songs to my church worship catalog. But after awhile, I wasn't really gaining anything by getting the CD and the articles had lost a bit of their zing. (Add to that the fact that I was paying for this out of pocket, and you understand why I cancelled my membership.)

Enter full-time church! That's right, once I was on staff, I signed right back up with songDISCovery and started getting the magazine somewhere close to February of 2007. So far, I've really enjoyed the magazine - sometimes it can come off at a Christian-music version of Teen-Beat magazine wherein a majority of the articles focus on the smart, beautiful and coolest of the worship world. But for the most part, it's been a good resource. Especially some of the smaller articles about songwriting, service planning. (Their record reviews drive me crazy because they never give a bad review!) I've done record reviews before and I understand the desire to be diplomatic, but some WL magazine gushes just a bit much for me.

The songs, though, have not been good. It's okay - I realize that their trying to pick 13 songs that will fit the intricacies of probably thousands of churches. I know the CD's a gamble, okay.

But today, I get this very clever advertising package. They mail me a magazine and a CD. Except it's not a CD. It's an ad for the songDISovery community. This is a new aspect of their website where worship leaders can post profiles, leave comments for each other, blog, post original music....think Worship mySpace. Or better yet, Worship VIRB.

So, I signed up. I think you check it out at http://www.songdiscovery.com/ by clicking the community button. I'm new to the thing, but we'll see. I'm interested. It might be cool.

(Who knows what will happen when I start posting all this anti-establishment worship blogs! I AM SO INDIE!)