"Could I have a copy of the notes from your talk?"

As that question began to follow Kyle around from retreat center to lecture hall to pulpit year after year, it began to dawn on him that maybe he was neglecting a built-in opportunity to help some people in an unexpected way. As an experiment, Kyle began posting short song commentaries at his website and in small booklets at his CD table after concerts. And when those articles and quotes began turning up in publications like Lectionary Homiletics ("Preaching that Sings"), "The Good Life" (Upper Room Books), Baylor's Christian Ethics Journal (2 hymns and a liturgical worship service), and church newsletters ("Ending the Worship Wars"), it seemed clear that he should take his prose more seriously.

New projects are perpetually on the drawing board, but check out the great resources that are already available in our Store:

Once you hear Kyle's music, you know a lot of thought goes into each lyric. These four attractive booklets contain the stories and inspirations behind the songs from each CD, along with the lyrics and some scripture references. They're ideal for personal devotional reading, but they can also serve as terrific teaching tools; the songs and stories lead inevitably to scripture.

5) Songwriting 101 & The Life of the Songwriter
Or "Everything I Wish I'd Known Before Moving to Nashville and Making a Fool of Myself."
These are the notes from Kyle's popular songwriting seminars, with pointers on everything from the craft of songwriting itself to how the commercial music industry works. It includes everything but the chance to ask questions and have your material evaluated. You'll need to book a seminar for that!

Writing a song is one thing, but figuring out how to cultivate the lifestyle habits to do it again and again, or how to improve your craft, or how to make money from it is another subject entirely. This inventive article demonstrates in clear terms the challenges of songwriting as an amateur, a semi-professional, and a professional, to give you the tools for self-understanding and goal setting. Since songwriting--like any free-lance, artistic career-- is a challenge at every level, from personal time management to finding inspiration to paying the bills to explaining it to your dad, you'll need all the help you can get. There are lots of books on songwriting, but there's nothing like this anywhere else. [buy]

6) The Silly War: Ending the conflict over music styles in the church and reclaiming worship for the people of God
Everybody has an opinion, but few people have a plan to help churches move beyond the conflict without excluding anyone or disparaging their opinions. After years of study and consulting with local churches on this issue, Kyle has developed a process that can lead churches out of the quagmire by gently raising the level of discourse from that of mere style preference to the level of those biblical concepts that matter to us all. If you can't work it out for Kyle to come in person, this collection of writings can equip you and your church leadership to start a substantive conversation about what biblical worship really is. Complete with new methods for worship planning. [buy] [review]

7) Preaching that Sings
Or "What I've learned About Preaching from Songwriting"
Ineffective preaching or public speaking is like bad breath. Everybody knows it, but nobody will tell you. The sponsors of the annual Festival of Homiletics (www.Lectionary.com) so enjoyed Kyle's humorous diatribe on bad preaching, they published it! Now you can read it for yourself, and see if your sermon preparation and delivery stands up to some of the fundamentals of good writing and communication. Subtitled "Everything I've Learned About Preaching from Songwriting," this piece will give you a good laugh, something to think about, and tools for being a more effective communicator. [buy]

More to Come! Stay tuned...