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Family Worship Resources Email Newsletter |
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September 2008 |
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Welcome to the Newsletter |
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Please let us have your thoughts on this question! |
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Christmas Resources back in the shop |
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Ishmael - making a wonderful recovery |
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| Our last email newsletter was back in April, so a very warm welcome to new subscribers. I hope you have had a great summer (if it was summer where you are - those of us in the UK are busy debating that very point!). We had a great time ourselves, leading the children's programme at the annual Ichthus event, "Revive", and the children seemed to have an especially good year, which was encouraging. We also managed to escape for a week to a Greek island, which was a new experience, and a very refreshing break. This Autumn (Fall) promises to be busy, with preparations for the next FW recording, and we are also somewhat pre-occupied as a family with the recent news that our eldest daughter, Beckie, has got engaged to be married next year, so we are thrilled and excited about that! As always, you can keep up to date via the FW Blog, or as up to date as my periodic and sporadic entries allow...
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As we plan for the next FW recording, we are in an ongoing discussion with our long-time publisher and distributor in the UK, ICC Records. The discussion is focussed on our policy of making all of our songs available for free download - MP3's, backing tracks, lyrics, sheet music, guitar chords, etc.
As a non-profit ministry, the most important thing to us has always been just to get the songs out, in the hope that they will be of some use and purpose. We have always, of course, also sold CD's and songbooks, and as well as our own direct sales, ICC have distributed our recordings in christian bookshops and via "the trade", which has been great, as it has meant the songs find a wider distribution that we could achieve alone.
So, long pre-amble - here is the question:
"Should we continue to make all of the FW songs freely available on the website?"
ICC suggest that if we do that, people are less likely to buy the CD's, particularly in today's digital age, where CD sales are declining in the secular and christian markets.
When we set the FW website up in 1998, it rapidly (and incredibly) became the most popular worship site in the UK. A huge part of the reason for that, I'm sure, is the free downloads. My feeling is that in making all of the resources freely available, people are more likely to try the songs, use them, and if they like them, order the CD's, as many people still like to get hold of "physical product". But even if people don't order the CD's, we are just pleased to get the songs out there.
Anyway, we do have some decisions to make, and so if you have a moment to drop me an email and let me have any thoughts or comments on this issue, then I would be very grateful.
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We have been thrilled with the response to iPray, the second in the "Nuts and Bolts" series of CD's, with "Get into the Word" being the first. So, it seems high time for the 3rd in what was originally planned as a 4-album series, but may be more, or may stick at 3 - I'm not good at long-term planning at the best of times!
Anyway, iPraise is the provisional title, and as it suggests, would contain songs focussing on the power of praise and worship - mainly up-tempo, and mainly new songs, but maybe one or two up-to-date covers of our strongest praise songs from previous albums, like "I will lift up the name of the Lord", or "Dance on the streets".
We tried out a new song, called (predictably enough) "I Praise" this summer, and the response was very positive, not just from children, but from adults too - our aim is always to write songs that are totally accessible to children, and totally acceptable to adults - not always a compatible combination!
We'll set up an iPraise section in the Blog soon, and if you are a songwriter yourself, please do send us any songs for consideration - we are always looking for great songs to include on our recordings.
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Talking of songs from other writers, one song we recorded on iPray was "Wait for the Lord", by Anju Ebanks. Anju is a very talented and anointed writer, who has recently moved to Holy Trinity Brompton, one of the UK's largest churches, pastored by Nicky Gumbel, and the home of Alpha, and Tim Hughes current church, so with a very strong worship focus.
Anju has been writing recently towards her own recording project, and we heard demos of the songs recently, and it promises to be a fantastic CD. You can check out Anju, and over 100 other "grass roots" writers in the FW Showcase, where there are over 500 songs, which needless to say, are available for free!
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Many of you have kindly been praying for Ishmael - we sent out a one-off email in April as an urgent appeal for prayer, and hundreds of other churches and organisations did the same, as he is so well known in the UK worship scene, particularly in the area of children's worship and ministry.
He is making wonderful progress, which is a fantastic answer to prayer, and you can check out ongoing progress via the news updates on his own website.
Talking of which, Ishmael posts something new pretty much every day to his website - it makes my own efforts of once every few weeks look very lame! Must do better...
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This newsletter is written by Mike Burn and is published by Family Worship Resources, London, UK. Copyright 2008, Mike Burn.
Inclusion of links and quotations does not imply full endorsement of the contents. The newsletter may be forwarded or reproduced in full or in part providing that the source is acknowledged.
Send comments or queries, or suggested articles or links for inclusion in future newsletters to MikeBurn@familyworship.org.uk
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