Category: Ministry

Happy New Year 2020 !

It’s time to kickoff a fresh new weekend, month, year, and decade of blogging here on WordPress. I don’t know if I’ll still be here at the end of this new decade, but I was here at the start of the previous decade. (I just didn’t stay very long.)

I blogged 171 times in 2010, and that dropped down to 6 in 2011 and 4 in 2012. After that I abandoned WordPress in favor of Facebook. I returned in 2018 with 167 blog posts, and that went up to 191 in 2019.

As was the case last year I’ll blog every Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday – with a few special Tuesday blog posts thrown in as well. Weekends start on Thursdays here, and my Thursday blog posts can be about anything that comes to my mind at the moment that I’m writing them. My Friday and Monday blog posts are music-centered, and my Sunday blog posts are inspired by Scripture.

My blog posts can be read in 3 minutes or less, and I never write about politics. This is a political-free zone in an election year that will be full of politics everywhere you look.

My other social media accounts include Twitter and Flickr – both of which you can link to here on the front page of this blog.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my regular Friday blog post. I’ll be going RETRO back to January 2010.

My Top 19 Hits – 2019

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date December 31, 2019

55 hits created 52 weeks of Top 10 Christian hit music charts based on personal preference and influenced by radio airplay. Here it is – my Top 19 hits of 2019:

“Nobody (But Jesus)” – Casting Crowns Ft. Matthew West [peaked at # 1 for 7 weeks]
“Church (Take Me Back)” – Cochren & Co. [# 1 for 4 weeks]
“Fear No More” – Building 429 [# 1 for 6 weeks]
“Dead Man Walking” – Jeremy Camp [# 1 for 4 weeks]
“Born Again” – Austin French [# 1 for 3 weeks]
“Confidence” – Sanctus Real [# 1 for 5 weeks]
“Maybe It’s OK” – We Are Messengers [# 1 for 3 weeks]
“Greatness Of Our God” – Newsboys [# 1 for 1 week]
“Raise A Hallelujah” – Bethel Music [# 1 for 4 weeks]
“Red Letters” – Crowder [# 1 for 2 weeks]
“Resurrecting” – Elevation Worship [# 3 for 4 weeks]
“Prize Worth Fighting For” – Jamie Kimmett [# 1 for 2 weeks]
“I’m Gonna Let It Go” – Jason Gray [# 3 for 2 weeks]
“Burn The Ships” – for King & Country [# 2 for 1 week]
“Alive” – Big Daddy Weave [# 1 for 4 weeks]
“Is He Worthy ?” – Chris Tomlin [# 2 for 2 weeks]
“Nobody Loves Me Like You” – Chris Tomlin [# 1 for 4 weeks]
“Till I Found You” – Phil Wickham [# 2 for 3 weeks]
“My Feet Are On The Rock” – I AM THEY [# 2 for 1 week]

# 1 Of 2018:
“Do It Again” – Elevation Worship

# 1 Of 2017:
“Broken Things” – Matthew West

What a great year for positive and encouraging music that tells the story of God. What a great chart to represent His music.

“Nobody (But Jesus)” is no surprise at # 1. It’s been in my Top 3 for the past 20 weeks in a row, and that’s # 1 for 7 weeks, # 2 for 9 weeks, and # 3 for 4 weeks. This week it also becomes the # 1 smash in the entire 150-week history of this current era of my chart.

There were some surprises further down the chart. I forgot how big “Church (Take Me Back)” was from February to July. I loved that song, and then K-LOVE all but abandoned it after that. We haven’t heard from Cochren since then.

“Alive” from Big Daddy Weave should have been a bigger hit than it was. It spent 12 weeks on my chart – 4 of them at # 1 in April and May – but again K-LOVE stopped playing it after that. As this chart is influenced by radio airplay it quickly dropped off of my chart after its run at # 1. A few months later K-LOVE started playing it again – perhaps more so than they did originally when it was actually a hit nationally on Christian radio.

Finally my # 19 hit of 2019 is actually one of my favorite songs of the year. I still get excited with joy whenever I hear “My Feet Are On The Rock” on the radio and on my iPod Shuffles. Nationally it was a Top 15 hit on Christian radio during the Summer of 2018, but K-LOVE didn’t start playing it until February of 2019, and they played it for a couple of months as if it were new. (Well it was new to me.)

It sounds like I’m a little bit critical of K-LOVE after 150 weeks of listening, but really it’s still the greatest radio station of my lifetime. It’s not perfect. If I could change one thing about it I’d tweak the currents-to-recurrents ratio to be closer to 50-50. In other words play a few more current hits (expand the playlist a bit), and play a few less recurrent hits (of the past 10 years) in a typical hour. Also don’t suddenly abandon your hits. Keep playing them, but gradually play them less often over a period of time as they evolve into recurrents.

Casting Crowns, Matthew West, Austin French, Elevation Worship, and Chris Tomlin appear in my Top 19 of 2019, and they also appeared in my Top 18 of 2018. Casting Crowns, Matthew West, and Chris Tomlin also appeared in my Top 17 of 2017 (which was never published online).

An interesting tidbit for Chris Tomlin’s # 1 smash “Nobody Loves Me Like You”: It was my # 17 hit of 2019, and it just barely missed my Top 18 of 2018. (It was # 19.) It straddled both years almost evenly.

My Top 19 Of 2019 chart was compiled by awarding 10 points for each week at # 1, 9 points for # 2, and so forth and so on down to 1 point for # 10. The points are then added, and the hits are ranked.

There were 15 # 1 hits in 2019, and 2 of them failed to make my Top 19 – “Well Done” (The Afters) and “Unstoppable God” (Sanctus Real). They were the first and last # 1 hits of the year respectively.

This concludes another weekend of blog posts. I’ll do it again next weekend – with 4 new entries on Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday. I don’t blog on Saturdays. That’s my day of rest.

Your likes, follows, and comments are always appreciated. Thank You for being part of my online ministry to share God’s Good News and win souls for Christ through His music. I’m also on Twitter @ChrisMDay, and I’m the man behind the tweets for my church @LivingWatersHFL.

Happy New Year my friends ! May the God of hope fill you completely with joy and peace as you trust in Him.

Tags 2019, KLOVE

Christian God Ministry Music Radio

My Top 10 Hits – Week 150

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date December 30, 2019

Every Monday I post my all-new Top 10 Christian hit music chart based on personal preference and influenced by radio airplay. Here it is – for the week ending Sunday December 29TH 2019:

“Unstoppable God” – Sanctus Real [# 1 last week / 8TH week on chart]
“Holy Water” – We The Kingdom [2 / 5TH]
“Nobody (But Jesus)” – Casting Crowns Ft. Matthew West [3 / 22ND]
“Smile” – Sidewalk Prophets [5 / 4TH]
“Dead Man Walking” – Jeremy Camp [4 / 24TH]
“Rescue Story” – Zach Williams [8 / 12TH]
“The God Who Stays” – Matthew West [9 / 6TH]
“Almost Home” – MercyMe [10 / 2ND]
“Faith” – Jordan Feliz [7 / 12TH]
“Believer” – Rhett Walker [6 / 7TH]

# 1 One Year Ago This Week:
“Well Done” – The Afters

# 1 Two Years Ago This Week:
“Lions” – Skillet

It’s my 150TH weekly hit music chart since its resurrection during Presidents’ Day Weekend of 2017. When the previous era of my chart ended almost 10 years ago at the end of January 2010 I thought that it was probably the anticlimactic ending of a hobby that dated back to my elementary school years – back when I would seek out and study the brand new edition of Billboard Magazine at my local public library. A 7-year hiatus began almost a decade ago, and then I discovered K-LOVE. This chart was reborn.

May God Bless this hobby, chart, blog, and ministry for another 150 weeks.

It’s my 52ND and final weekly hit music chart of 2019. I’ve got my Top 19 of 2019 queued up and ready to go for a special New Year’s Eve Tuesday blog post. I’ll have it online at 3 AM U.S. East Coast Time.

Tags KLOVE

Bible Christian Church Computers God Holidays Internet Ministry Scripture

Sunday Scripture

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date December 29, 2019

On this 522ND and final Sunday of the 2010s I did what I’ve done for about 475 of those 522 Sundays, and that is to praise, worship, and celebrate our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ with my brothers and sisters of my church family.

I opened the service with God’s Word from First Thessalonians Chapter 5 (9 to 11):

For God decided to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ – not to pour out His anger on us. He died for us so that we can live with Him forever – whether we are dead or alive at the time of His return. So encourage each other and build each other up – just as you are already doing.

We had an unusually well-attended Sunday morning service for the final Sunday of the year – during the peak of holiday vacation time. In fact it was actually one of our biggest crowds of the year !

Today I led with my 30TH sermon over the past 3 years and 3 months. It was a groundbreaking sermon for me personally, and one that I was most nervous about. It’s the first time I went unscripted. I essentially had no idea what I was going to say until I actually said it. I used Internet memes to tell the story of how great our God is.

Earlier this year I began saving, collecting, and organizing Internet memes – mostly from Facebook. I then came up with the idea of preaching an entire sermon based solely on memes. Then I decided that it was a silly idea – perhaps even corny. Then I kept thinking about it, and praying about the best way to have a few dozen memes tell the story that I wanted to tell without the usual full manuscript that I write, edit, rewrite, enhance, finalize, rehearse, and print for each of my typical sermons.

I preached “Ways & Memes” today. It lasted a little over 45 minutes, and I think that it went fairly well considering I was out of my comfort zone at the pulpit. It can be rather risky giving me a wireless mic and 45 minutes to preach without a script, but I managed to do so without saying anything controversial.

Here’s 1 of the 30 memes that told the story of God’s Way:

Jesus Is

My next sermon is already half-written, and it’s titled “Church & State”. I hope to preach it to my church family in January or February. Meanwhile the saving, collecting, and organizing of Internet memes continues on. I’ll start compiling a new batch for “Ways & Memes 2” later in 2020.