A Voice For Worship

10/13/2026

Thirty days. Halfway. Let me put the whole message on one page.

The music is the door, not the room. Worship built for eternity outlasts worship built for the room. Worthy is not the same as excellent, and if you must choose, choose worthy. A new song comes from a new revelation, not a new arrangement. Grace goes up and grace goes across. Talent is not the bottleneck — formation is. And feeling is a wonderful passenger and a terrible driver.

That is it. That is forty years, eleven books and twenty-nine years of Sundays, compressed.
If any of it has been useful, the place I go deeper is The Worship Letter — one letter a month, teaching and reflections, no spam, unsubscribe whenever you like. It is free and it always will be.

The next thirty days change shape. Less teaching from me, more conversation with you. I want to hear your songs, your questions, your rooms, your year nineteen.

Pull your chair in. Link in the comments.

10/12/2026

Nobody in your congregation will remember yesterday's set list by Tuesday.

They will remember the person who told them they had something worth developing.

I can name mine. I was an undergraduate at Wits and a lecturer took an interest that was frankly
disproportionate to my ability at the time. Fourteen years later I was on the faculty of the same School of
Music.

That is what one person's attention does.

So here is the Monday move, and it is the most important one I can give you today. Identify
one person on your team with more potential than platform. Not the most talented — the most underdeveloped.
Then give them something real. A song to lead. A rehearsal to run. Twenty minutes of honest feedback
nobody else will give them.

You are not building a worship set. You are building the person who will still be leading worship when you
are gone.

Who is yours? Name them in the COMMENTS — I want to pray for them by name this week.

10/11/2026

Is the passion God has for you the same as the passion you have for God? I made a whole podcast episode out of that question because it would not leave me alone, and I still have not fully answered it. There is a gap. Most of us assume the gap is a rebuke. I have come to think the gap is an invitation. Selah.

Do you experience a gap between the passion God has for you and wha...

10/11/2026

One question today.

Is the passion God has for you the same as the passion you have for God?

I made a whole podcast episode out of that question because it would not leave me alone, and I still have not fully answered it.

There is a gap.

Most of us assume the gap is a rebuke.I

have come to think the gap is an invitation.

Selah.

10/09/2026

Here is something to keep.

This is YOU ARE MY PORTION, an original composition of mine, and you can download the score for free — no email, no form, no funnel. It is on the site under Resources.

Play it in your church. Rearrange it. Change the key. Give it to your pianist. Teach it to your choir. Put your name on the arrangement if you improve it — I genuinely do not mind.

I have made a decision about the second half of my life. Whatever I can give away, I will. Part of why Malan Family Ministries exists as a non-profit is so that free resources can stay free, and so that coaching can happen in places that could never afford it.

So take it. It is yours.

If you do play it somewhere, send me a recording. I would love to hear my own music in a room I have never been in.

COMMENT "portion" to get your FREE copy!

10/08/2026

"I do not feel anything when I worship anymore. Is something wrong with me?"

This is the question I receive most often, and it is almost always asked with shame attached. So let me take the shame off first.

No. Nothing is wrong with you.
Something is being matured in you.

Early in faith, feeling and truth arrive together, and we understandably conclude that the feeling is the evidence. Then at some point the feeling arrives late, or not at all, and we assume we have lost something.

What has actually happened is that you are being taught to worship on the basis of who He is rather than on the basis of how you are.

That is not a downgrade. That is the whole point.
Anybody can worship on a good day.
What you are learning is how to be the kind of person whose worship does not depend on the weather.

"Feeling is a wonderful passenger. It is a terrible driver."

10/07/2026

10/07/2026

A lateral thought... because it is Wednesday and my mind does not run in straight lines.

We say God is everywhere. We say it so often it has gone 'soft', often becoming a cliché without meaning.

But follow that thought properly for a second.

If He is everywhere, then He is already in the conversation you are dreading on Thursday or Friday. He is in next year, waiting, having already been there. He is in the room where the decision about you is being made without you.

Omnipresence is not a doctrine about geography.
It is a doctrine about arrival.
You cannot get anywhere ahead of Him.
There is no room you will walk into where He has not already been sitting.

This is the kind of thoughts I collect in "Spiritual Musings" — random thoughts, way-out mind travels, sometimes weird, sometimes extra-normal, always provoking and deeply personal.

I wrote two volumes because my mind will not stop.

What is one thing (or thought) you believe that you have never actually followed all the way through? I look forward to every COMMENT.

10/06/2026

Grace results in worship and unity. I spent a whole book in Ephesians on that one observation.

Here is what struck me.

When Paul writes about grace, he almost never lands on individual assurance.That is where we land. He lands on two other places: doxology (a short Christian hymn or expression of praise to God), and the dismantling of the wall between Jew and Gentile.

Grace goes up and grace goes across. Which gives you a diagnostic that is uncomfortably useful.

If you have received grace and it has not produced worship, you have understood it as a transaction.

If you have received grace and it has not produced unity, you have understood it as a possession.

The most graceless environments I have ever served in were full of people who could explain grace with precision.

So the question is not whether you believe in grace, rather it is whether the people around you can tell.

Which direction is harder for you — the up, or the across?