This is my YouTube production for the original version of Up Where We Belong by BeBe & Cece Winans.

View my other YouTube videos

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We Are the Reason is my fifth YouTube video. It’s one of my favorite seasonal songs. I incorporated tweets from Twitter’s Tworship for the first time.  View my other YouTube videos.

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Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) is my fourth YouTube video. The song’s lyrics focus on God’s holiness, so I wrestled mightily with how to represent this idea in a slide show. Tell me how I did. View my other YouTube videos.

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This is one of my favorite worship videos. Is it the sign language, the enthusiasm, the song, the all black attire … ? You tell me. Watch the video and tell me what you think.

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If you worship with #Tworship on Twitter or would like to participate in #Tworship Talk, then you’ve come to the right place. Every night at 9pm EST 8 CST 6 PST on Twitter, a group gathers under the leadership of myself @mcProdigal and/or Marie @spreadingJoy to worship through synchronized YouTube worship videos, one beginning at 9 followed by a second that begins immediately following the first. This group can be easily followed by clicking on the hashtag #Tworship or by using our Drive-In green screen. You can see all of us tweeting praise and lyrics as the songs play in worship of our worthy King.

A group meets on Tuesday nights immediately following these two songs, around 9:10 ET. We call this #Tworship Talk because we leave Twitter temporarily and go to tinyChat for the topical discussion featuring webcams, headsets and talk. The tinyChat technology that enables us to fellowship in this way is free-of-charge.

Look around the room and you will see people filing in, their names (normally their Twitter names) appear in a box showing attendance. You enter the room immediately following the second Tworship song; you’ll see Marie and I tweeting that it’s time to go. Use of webcams and/or headsets is optional and highly dependent on your personal bandwidth (internet speed). They will not work for everyone; most enter the room with neither “on” and participate entirely through the text-only chat box. You can generally enter the Tworship room and watch Marie @spreadingJoy and I share through our webcam/headsets and participate in chat with only marginal bandwidth. We do not recommend that you use your own webcam/headset on the first try, it’s simpler not to. A small number of our participants cannot participate at all due to slow and/or inconsistent internet speeds. If you have any issues, then let us know and we will work with you offline (during non-Tworship hours) to resolve them. If you have a working webcam and headset, you are welcome to participate freely in our discussions.

How do you enter the tinyChat room to participate in Tworship Talk? Here’s the link:

Tworship Talk (password: spreadingjoy)

Once you follow this link, you will be asked to login using your account from Twitter or Facebook. We recommend that you login using your Twitter account so that your screen name will be the name we know you by. You will also see a list of those present and a chat box generally full of typed messages, mostly people greeting one another. This chat box remains active throughout the session, even while someone is speaking.

Generally, the Tworship Talk session runs from about 9:15pm EST (after the second Tworship song on Twitter) to about 10; sometimes the Tworship crowd gets very lively in worship and/or chat and we’ll carry on past that time. You are always free to exit when you choose by closing the tinyChat window.

If you’d like to check out your equipment for fitness for this task , the tinyChat room is available at the link above from about 8:30pm EST (one half-hour early). You can click on the link, login and have a look around even if no one is there — it’s a cool place. When you’re satisfied, exit and return at Tworship time or just hang out and chat until Tworship Talk begins.

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I was raised Southern Baptist, okay?! I’m not sure why I felt obligated to say that up front or why this topic makes me so tense. I’m a worshiper,  in fact, it was listening to “worship” music that I remembered from more than 20 years prior that was partially responsible for the end of my lengthy prodigal run. God intervened directly in my life — that was unmistakable — but I was left with this question: Which God intervened directly in my life? Bad experiences in Christian church buildings had contributed to my disenchantment with God so I was prejudiced against this God being that God, the Christian God.

I made a CD of some old Christian songs that I remembered, mostly simple choruses and hymns, and noticed that ;my heart would soar listening to them. Now I knew that it was that God after all. I would listen to this music when I was driving alone and often raised my available right hand. This was noteworthy because I was not a hand raiser in my youth.

When I finally worked up the nerve to walk into a church building again, I walked into a building full of hand raisers. I did not want to conform at any level because I still held some bitterness toward Christian congregations, I, of course would not raise my hands. I assumed that anyone who did desperately needed attention and I despised them.

I had a dilemma, I found that raising my hands was a spontaneous expression of worship for me but I did not want to appear to be “one of those”, whatever “those” are. I sought seats at the rear of the congregation so I could raise my hands at will and yet make it clear to everyone else that I did not need attention. This felt disingenuous — I use that word because it sounds much better than “fraud-like” or its dreaded twin “hypocritical”. I’m not sure why I was surprised that holding strong resentment toward Christians in general and hand raisers in particular impeded my worship. It took me months to unravel this truth while I repeatedly tried to reconcile the difference between the spontaneous, unfettered Richard and the uptight, contemptuous one.

Now I raise my hands when I feel it and don’t when I don’t. I most often raise just my right hand, bending it at the elbow over and over in celebratory praise. Of course, if you are new to our local congregation, this appears a great deal like a really big guy angrily shaking his fist at God. I’ll call this “cognitive dissonance” because it sounds more Christian than “frightening the children”.

I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. \o/

Psalm 63:4

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• Day Twelve of The 12-Day Prodigal Prayer Mission

1. Revelation Song -- Kari Jobe
2. Agnus Dei -- Michael W. Smith
3. Worthy is the Lamb -- Miriam Webster
4. Here I Am to Worship -- Hillsong
5. God With Us -- MercyMe
6. The Potter’s Hand -- Hillsong
7. Jesus Messiah -- Chris Tomlin
8. You’re Beautiful -- Phil Wickham
9. On My Cross -- FFH
10. Mighty to Save -- Hillsong

Sit back and listen to the Top 10 Worship Songs/Videos of All Time playlist — hear all 10 songs, watch all 10 videos uninterrupted.

This list was first played on Twitter for Tworship at 9pm EST on May 14, 2010 \o/

The greatest moment of all time in any worship video is exactly 4:31 into #3 Worthy is the Lamb, when the Korean Dance Group comes charging forward. Whatever your trials are, this one moment will lift you right out of your chair.

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