Second Huntsville Sunday.

Got back last night from our second Sunday at Southwood Presbyterian-- here are the songs that we played in morning worship:

Song Of Praise – Come Ye Sinners

Song of Confession (solo)– Jesus I Come

Songs of Thanks
1) O Love That Will Not Let Me Go
2) On Jordan’s Stormy Banks

Offertory (solo) – None Among*

Song of Preparation –Thou Lovely Source Of True Delight

Song After Sermon – Jesus I Am Resting*

Cason and I had lunch AND dinner at Nothing But Noodles (not as good as Noodles and Company but still very good). The evening concert was in their youth building, which is called The Lodge. Cason played acoustic guitar on some songs, and keyboard on others. Here's the setlist:

And Can It Be
His Love Can Never Fail*
Let Us Love And Sing And Wonder
Come Ye Sinners
All I Owe*
I Asked The Lord
My Lord I Did Not Choose You*
Free Grace
-Q&A-
'Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus
Be Thou My Vision

Most of these can be found in the RUF Hymnbook.

Thanks to all the volunteers and others who made these past two Sundays happen-- Southwood was great to us, and I'd love to come back sometime soon.

*Songs from my upcoming record, All I Owe.

"All I Owe" lyrics.

I've noticed (by way of my blog's StatCounter) that a lot of people find my blog by searching for "All I Owe lyrics" or "Matthew Smith All I Owe," and I also frequently get emails asking for the lyrics and chords for that song.

"All I Owe" was first recorded on my EP Even When My Heart Is Breaking (available in the right column of this blog, up near the top), and a new recording of it will be on my album (curiously titled All I Owe), releasing this October. I plan on making the chord charts/lead sheets available closer to the release of the album. Sign up on my email list or become my friend on MySpace if you'd like to be kept updated.

I could also use your help-- I'd love to hear stories of how you've used this song in worship, what it has meant to you personally, etc. I may use a few of your stories and comments as I begin spreading the word about the new album. Just leave a comment on this post, and include your first name, city, and state. Thanks to all of you who have already let me know how this song has encouraged you. If you haven't heard it yet, the EP version is streaming on my MySpace page.

All I Owe
Words by Robert Murray McCheyne and Matthew Smith
Music by Matthew Smith
© 2002 detuned radio music (ASCAP)

When this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon glaring sun,
When we stand with Christ in glory,
Looking o'er life's finished story,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.

All I owe you paid for me
From all I owe I’ve been set free
And all I owe proves your great mercy to me

When I stand before your throne,
Dressed in beauty not my own,
When I see you as you are
Love you with unsinning heart,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.

All I owe you paid for me
From all I owe I’ve been set free
And all I owe proves your great mercy to me

Chosen not for good in me,
Wakened up from wrath to flee,
Hidden in the Savior's side,
By the Spirit sanctified,
Teach me, Lord, on earth to show,
By my love, how much I owe.

All I owe you paid for me
From all I owe I’ve been set free
And all I owe proves your great mercy to me

"What The Darks Do."

Last Friday night my wife and I went to the SYNC @ Nettwerk to see Sarah (Masen) Dark, her husband David Dark, and their daughter Dorothy Day Dark, well, do what the Darks do. The Darks are the proverbial friends-of-friends that I've never really gotten to know, but admire quite a bit.

Before things got underway, we were all handed what can only be described as "skulls on a stick"-- paper cutouts of drawn skulls, taped to a wand-like white stick. I was never quite clear as to their purpose, except that Sarah kept saying something to the effect of "this evening is about death." Attendees whose paper skull had a star on the back were periodically invited to come up and read a word and its definition. The definitions weren't from dictionaries, but were instead written by poets and authors. My skull had a star on the back, but I did not reveal this fact. Probably has something to do with middle-school trauma.

Dorothy Day (seven years old) began the evening proper with a reading of her poetry. Now, I suppose I am not much of a judge of poetry, but I liked it very much. Not in a "isn't it cute that a seven-year-old is writing poetry" kind of way, but in a "wow, that would be good even if a 22-year-old wrote it" kind of way. This was both highly enjoyable and slightly scary, as if she could be a superchild who would use her powerful mind to make me levitate about the room at any moment, my arms and legs flailing about, helpless.

Next was David, writer of such books as Everyday Apocalypse and The Gospel According To America (the latter which I own, have attempted to read twice, and failed to finish for now). He read short portions of fiction and invited us to come up to him afterwards if any of them sounded like they would be a good novel. They were intriguing, but I would have preferred to hear an entire short story or one of his non-fiction pieces. He has a very unusual voice and I love hearing him read.

Sarah was last, singing first with some friends of hers, then alone with her guitar. She played all new songs, including a few (surprise!) about death. I enjoyed them, but was getting tired. Her voice and playing make me sleepy (always have), but in those last conscious moments, I think "this is wonderful."

There are a couple of younger Darks, not old enough to get on a stage with microphones...I wonder what they will Do when they are older?

Snap snap flash flash.

I'm looking to buy a new digital camera. I've read lots of reviews, but am having a hard time finding the ideal one. I'm looking for something that has at least a 4x optical zoom, works well in low-light, resists blurriness, and is small enough to fit in my pocket. Are there any that you've used personally that you'd recommend? If so, please do leave me a comment.

Two Beams Of Heaven albums?

Purgatorio points us to an artist whose album title is the same as the latest Indelible Grace record. Nice. (Thanks to Matt Ward and Kevin Twit for directing me to this.)

I wonder if that amp is loud enough for Athena to hear inside Nashville's Parthenon.

U2's new record leaked by a handheld recorder.

Just a quick note here to say I just found out that about nine eighteen minutes of bootlegged U2 that have been leaked on the internet...by someone who taped them on a handheld recorder. The band have been in the studio working on their next album, and this sounds like it's the early fruit of their labor. The songs are very melodic, and already feature some great solos from The Edge. I can't wait! Clips page.

"All my life I've been waiting for a moment of you"

"Go-And-Make" vs. "Follow Me."

Kevin Twit sent me a link to a powerful Christianity Today interview with Rt. Rev. Dr. David Zac Niringiye, assistant bishop of Kampala in the Church of Uganda. In it, he addresses how American Christians, who are at the center of power, often get the church's call wrong. I agree.

What could equip us to be more countercultural, living in a nation that is very much at the center of power?

We need to begin to read the Bible differently. Americans have been preoccupied with the end of the Gospel of Matthew, the Great Commission: "Go and make." I call them go-and-make missionaries. These are the go-and-fix-it people. The go-and-make people are those who act like it's all in our power, and all we have to do is "finish the task." They love that passage! But when read from the center of power, that passage simply reinforces the illusion that it's about us, that we are in charge.

I would like to suggest a new favorite passage, the Great Invitation. It's what we find if we read from the beginning of the Gospels rather than the end. Jesus says, "Come, follow me. I will make you fishers of men." Not "Go and make," but "I will make you." It's all about Jesus. And do you know the last words of Jesus to Peter, in John 21? "Follow me." The last words of Simon Peter's encounter are the same as the first words.

I am a go-and-fix-it person, and part of my coming alive to the Gospel in college was realizing I need Jesus to make me, not me make something -- anything -- for myself.

If you have a heart for Africa (or need one), it's worth reading the rest of the interview.

Sunday morning in Huntsville, AL.

Yesterday morning I rose at five o' clock (breakfast: hard-boiled egg, cup of Honey Nut Cheerios, Black Cherry Almond Clif Bar) and drove down with Cason to Huntsville, AL, where we led worship at Southwood Presbyterian. Here are the songs we played:

Song Of Praise – Thy Mercy

Songs of Thanks-
Jesus, What A Friend For Sinners
Let Us Love And Sing And Wonder
Be Thou My Vision

Offering Song (solo) – All I Owe

Song of Preparation – ‘Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus

Song After Sermon – I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say

Free sheet music for all of these (except "All I Owe") is available at the RUF Hymnbook Online.

Afterwards we ate ribs (yum) at the home of some old friends before heading back to Nashville. We're going back this coming Sunday to lead worship again, as well as play a concert that night. If you live nearby, we hope to see you there. Info here.

Donald Miller on love as a commodity.

Don understands that, when approached from behind by a rabid, murderous, Cujo-esque dog, it's best to not panic, but smile.

From an interview with Donald Miller at the Leadership Blog:

You've said that the church "uses love as a commodity." What do you mean?

Miller: We sometimes take a Darwinian approach with love—if we are against somebody's ideas, we starve them out. If we disagree with somebody's political ideas, or sexual identity, we just don't "pay" them. We refuse to "condone the behavior" by offering any love.

This approach has created a Christian culture that is completely unaware what the greater culture thinks of us. We don't interact with people who don't validate our ideas. There is nothing revolutionary here. This mindset is hardly a breath of fresh air to a world that uses the exact same kinds of techniques.

What's the alternative?

Miller: The opposite is biblical love, which loves even enemies, loves unconditionally, and loves liberally. Loving selectively is worldly; giving it freely is miraculous.

(then, later in the interview)

Imago [Miller's church] makes me feel parented and not alone. I spoke at Imago right after the election, and a woman, a homosexual, was sitting on the front row with a giant sign that said, among other things, that she hopes our children die, that the legacy of hate will end.

At the end of the service, her sign was laid down in front of the communion table, and she was being held by me, and many others, sobbing as she had never heard truth being presented in love. She had not known the difference between a parental communication of truth and a judgmental, hate-filled communication of truth.



I use love as a commodity all the time. Oh Lord, please change me.

Reciprocity is reciprolicious.

I'm trying to expand the reach of this little blog, and need your help. If you have a blog, please consider adding a link to mine on yours. Once you do, leave me a comment here with a link to your blog, and I'll add it to the column on the right. I've already added a few of you. Reciprocity is mmm mmm good.

Thrice the Tim Keller.

Steve McCoy's Reformissionary blog points us to three talks by Tim Keller at the recent Reform & Resurge Conference:

Being The Church In Our Culture [audio] [video]
Preaching The Gospel [audio] [video]
Doing Justice [audio] [video]

I like how this pic (falsely) implies that Keller just got finished shredding on that guitar.

Note that these are talks, rather than sermons-- if you're interested in more Keller resources, Steve has a gold mine here.

U2's The Edge on community.

"There is that community sense that I would associate with the Christian ideal of looking after your neighbor. But it isn't always pretty; in fact it's often very rough. Like do you care enough about someone to risk confronting them with the truth, if it is going to hurt them? That's love in action, real commitment to one another, real community, and it has nothing to do with being nice to everyone at all times. So in some ways rather than being a once a week concept, it's sort of the way we try and live here. And the challenge is to try to move it out further, so there's not just your immediate small community but it's asking, can you get it to be bigger and bigger?" -- The Edge

(from @U2)

This quote is powerful and true. (You might want to read it more than once.)

Do you have real community in your life? Do you want it? Or would it cost you too much?

May God give us all the courage to live in community.

Oh, how I love the rock.

Friday night I went to The Basement to hear my friends Jordan (who did the artwork for Sandra McCracken's The Builder And The Architect) and LT (Laura Taylor, from the Indelible Grace CDs), play in their band, which is called "Dawson Wells, Some Hot Chicks, And Bob." This is perhaps the worst band name I've ever heard, and I wish they would change it to something less ridiculous. It was fun to watch them though, especially LT, who is the drummer. I've long heard of her renewed passion for drumming, and it was good to see her in action. I especially enjoyed their cover of Tom Petty's "Honey Bee."

Following them was Butterfly Boucher, who is my favorite female artist. I hate to say that though, because it sounds sexist. Her first record, Flutterby, is one of the best albums of the past few years, period. I supposed "highly melodic pop-rock" would be a good description of her sound, but you should just hear for yourself. Her backup band was basically a supergroup. Daniel Tashian (from Nashville's The Bees) and singer-songwriter extraordinaire David Mead were both on electric guitar and BGVs, and Marc Pisapia was on drums. Butterfly played bass, which was indescribably good. I am a huge fan of both The Bees and David Mead, so standing just a few feet from this band was completely surreal. Butterfly played six new songs and three from her first record, and said that while her new one is basically finished, there's no release date planned. This drives me crazy.

Butterfly (which is her real name, by the way) writes songs that are both delicate and fiercely passionate (the pictures below are proof of both), with lyrics that capture feelings or experiences that are common to everyone, yet are so unique. If you ever get the chance to see her live, don't miss out. In the meantime, you must get this to make it through the summer.

"Love...don't point, don't scare it..."

That's David Mead on the right. This pic weighs in at an astonishing 7,583 RUs.

More dance party madness.

Have a great weekend.

Matthew mystery solved.

So, the mysterious "Matthew S." read my blog and sent me a message through MySpace the other day, letting me know that he is indeed not me. I won't reveal his last name here, but it is, thankfully, not Smith. Just wanted to let you know, as I'm sure that many of you, like me, suspected that this event would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!

Curmudgeons dig Indelible Grace.

Famed curmudgeon Chuck Colson gave a shout-out to Indelible Grace yesterday on his Breakpoint radio show, in a piece called "A Curmudgeon I Shall Be." You can download the MP3 here. Thanks Chuck!

My two favorite curmudgeons.

Weekend with the band.

This past weekend I played my first concerts with the band (this time: Cason, Tripp, Clint) since February, and had such a good time. First was Conyers, GA, just outside of Atlanta. Lots of folks came out to see us, and I had several good conversations afterwards.

The next day we drove down to Panama City Beach, FL to play at a retreat center for a bunch of Campus Outreach college students. This was perhaps the craziest concert I've ever played. The energy, both from the audience and from the band, was through the roof, and we kept feeding off of each other. It was a blast. Afterwards, they cleared the chairs and had a dance party (???), where this happened:



Later that night, we went out to the beach and talked until 2:30 in the morning. I love these guys so much.

The next morning we got up and drove almost seven hours to Decatur, AL, where we played at Decatur Presbyterian. DPC is the only church where I've played at three times, and it's always fun to go back somewhere you've played before.

We seemed to be playing better than ever, and were just getting going, when the weekend was suddenly over. Time for me to go book some more band dates...

Welcome.

If this is your first time at my blog (if you're on the Indelible Grace mailing list, you probably just got an email about it), here are a few tips of things you can do:

• Please bookmark this page-- or if your browser has a symbol in the lower-right corner that looks like this or this , click on it and subscribe to my blog. It's free.

• Download a free MP3 sampler of my EP, Even When My Heart Is Breaking.

• Read some past highlights:
• Compassion in Ecuador.
• Who's in the band?
• MySpace meets real life.


• Scroll around for yourself, there's some fun stuff here. (Look at the post just beneath this one for a video clip of us recording my new album.)

Enjoy, and feel free to leave a Comment!

Video Preview: "Thy Blood Was Shed For Me"

Cason and I have been working on my solo record for the past couple of months, and I've wanted to somehow post a preview of what it sounds like. Today we recorded electric guitars with Paul Moak on several songs, and I videotaped a bit of it.

Here's Paul adding some guitar to a hymn I wrote music for called "Thy Blood Was Shed For Me." The video itself isn't very interesting (it's choppy because it's dark in the studio, so I had my camera in low-light mode), but hopefully you'll like the music. Post a comment and let me know what you think.

The album will be called All I Owe.

Fourth fun.

I played a concert last night a little north of here in Goodlettsville, TN for Faith Presbyterian's 4th of July celebration. Hot dogs, pie eating contests and hymns were on the menu. I had a lot of fun, despite the heat. Afterwards, my wife and I drove back to East Nashville and caught the end of the fireworks display and hung out with some friends. Good times.

Old post, new record.

So...I meant to post these pictures a couple of months ago. Three days after I got back from my trip to Ecuador, I hit the ground running. A full day of booking on that Monday gave way to two days of tracking for my new solo record on Tuesday and Wednesday. I was sick (making my guide vocals both pitiful and painful to hear), but despite my Dayquil-enduced haze, it was an exciting time. The band was Jeff Irwin (bass), Paul Moak (acoustic guitar), and Will Sayles (drums). We tracked six songs in two days at Paul's studio, The Smoak Stack, here in Nashville. Cason Cooley, who produced Even When My Heart Is Breaking and Derek Webb's Mockingbird, is again taking the helm on this project. More soon.

Irwin.

Sayles.

Moak.

Good new music.

Two new records out this week that you should know about:

Katy Bowser's first record in five years (!!!) is a 6-song EP called All Of My Friends. Many of you know Katy best for "O The Deep, Deep Love Of Jesus" on Indelible Grace. This EP marks a new direction for her, taking a turn to the folky, bluegrass side of things. Her husband Kenny Hutson (formerly of Vigilantes Of Love) provides many stringed, acoustic instruments here, and he is pretty much the best Nashville has to offer. Go listen for yourself on her MySpace page. Oddly, my two favorite songs from the EP ("Come On Or Go On" and "The Weight Of The World") aren't previewable there. All that means though, is if you like the three songs that she has up there, you should go ahead and order the EP, knowing that the best is yet to be heard.

This CD comes in a paper bag. No foolin'. You can pack your lunch in it if you want to.

The second record is Red Mountain Music's Help My Unbelief. My Birmingham brethren are the only people who love hymns as much as I do, and they show it by releasing their fourth record in three years (!!!). I haven't actually heard it yet, but I'm sure I will this coming weekend, as RMM co-producer Clint Wells joins me to play some guitar in the Indelible Grace band. Hear it on their MySpace page here, and buy it here.

I am a big fan of triple-exclamation points in parentheses.