Blog : Arts

Ever wonder what it looks like to participate in one of our ordered learning classes? Check out these images for a first-hand view.

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Caleb Keller approached me at a music rehearsal in November of 2014 with an idea to write a song, as our network was studying Jeff Reed’s series on the Story. "What if we added some verses to O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, so that it was a really full depiction of The Story?" The first verse was evocative of Israel’s messianic expectation in exile, but the Story was not fleshed out through the rest of the original verses. Caleb wanted to use that longing for Emmanuel to frame a song laying out the ma

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Mix the elements of music, food and families together in a local park and you’d think what resulted would be an ordinary church picnic. However, last Sunday’s gathering of the Ames-Des Moines CityChurch was anything but ordinary.

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Tom and Kelsie Olsen recently joined Yuma church as part of a strategic move initiated by their church cluster's leadership team. One of the first things that Tom noticed when they got there was the lack of quality music. Yuma Church’s music time mainly consisted of singing to worship videos on YouTube, and without live music, it felt like something was missing. Tom had played the guitar in high school, but hadn't picked it up much in recent years. He knew, though, that if he applied himself, he

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Northwest Ames Church is becoming skillful at using music as a teaching and community building tool. The church just happens to have two talented singer/songwriters as part of their family, Jaime West and Emily Hilleman. A couple years ago the leadership of Northwest Ames Church—Steve Kemp, Kevin Berg, and Chad West—started thinking about how to use the musical talent of their church with more purpose.

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