The Door is featured this month in Charisma Magazine. Below is the article in full. Praise God, He is still using The Door to get the message out there!

Indigenous Music Of The Chinese Church

A live worship recording is highlighting the indigenous sounds of the Chinese church––and drawing people to Christ

A live worship project that joins musicians from the U. S., Europe and China is highlighting the indigenous sounds of the Chinese church––and drawing people to Christ.

Produced during China’s Olympic Games, The Door was recorded during a Sunday service at Beijing’s 4,000-member International Christian Fellowship––where worshipers’ identities are checked by government agents before they can enter the hall.

“To get into the church, you have to show a foreign ID of some sort,” said Arkansas-born musician Mark Tedder, 47, who served as full-time worship leader at the fellowship for two years and spearheaded the project.

“There is a police presence at the front door.” Remarkably, authorities gave their offi cial permission, but Tedder and his team still made sure the hard drive containing the recording left China quickly. The main condition was that the team should not broadcast the recording before the Olympics.

“It was a miracle to pull it off , simply because it’s never been done before,” said Tedder, now based in Colorado.

Captured on both CD and DVD, the live worship recording brings standard Western worship sounds alongside 2,000- year-old traditional Chinese instruments such as the dulcimerlike yangqin, the harpstyle guzheng and the drone pipe hulusi.

“We wanted [the recording] to give the vibe that local worship teams could actually incorporate and redeem some of these ancient instruments,” Tedder said.

Tedder did not intend to make a commercial recording and initially distributed the album freely. But the project caught the attention of Integrity Music Europe and was picked up for distribution. In the U.S., the CD is available at worshiplanet.com. “I had no idea it would go outside of mainland China,” Tedder admitted.

“The heart of this project was that God would use it to encourage local churches throughout China.” There have been other major worship initiatives in China––notably the famous Canaan Hymns by Xiao Min, who wrote more than 1,000 indigenous praise songs.

In addition, Hong Kong-based Vine Band released From Ashes to Beauty in both English and Mandarin.

But The Door is the fi rst offi cially sanctioned live project to come out of China.

Reports claim that lives are being changed through it. “We’re hearing stories from China that villages are sitting down in one person’s home who has a TV and watching The Door project,” Tedder said. “People are getting saved through it.” —CLIVE PRICE

A Small Story of God's Marvel

We received this from a friend in the UK:

A small story of God's marvel:
I was asked very recently by a local church to help them out by leading worship singing at their evening service. The curate told me the Bible verses he would base his talk on and the basic layout of the worship programme. He asked that we both pray for guidance on suitable songs. He asked me to pray particularly about the song between his talk and the prayers.

We both did this and when we met to discuss the songs, we had both written down the same song for between the prayers! Your song: Be Still. Wow!

Many people were kind enough to speak to me afterwards and I was amazed by how many said that the "Be Still" song had really taken them into a mood of prayer.

Doors are opening!

The Door is opening many doors throughout the world! We just received this email from a friend working with pastors who are planting churches in Muslim countries.

Hi from the Philippines!
I'm here for a training seminar for two weeks geared to language coaches who train missionaries. I played one of your songs during a devotional (Redeeming Light of God) and a number of the Filipino missionaries who serve among Muslims asked if they could copy it. I wanted to ask your permission before I allowed them to do this.

And from Niger, Africa
We are in charge of Sunday night's church service here. I'm in charge of leading worship. Thought you might like to know that actually YOU are leading us in two songs. :) We are the People of God and How Great is Our God - off your Waiting for the Son cd. So, how about that?!?"

Hey all of you in the Manchester/Liverpool area come out to see us at Sutton Village Church in St. Helens on November 14 & 15.

"Tools for Worship"

Greetings from snowy Colorado!

We just returned from a tour of Thailand and Singapore. To be honest to try to tell the story would take several days of talking, lots of coffee and a room full of pictures!

I must tell you of a story however, of one of the guys Carrie met while we were in Thailand. This person asked that their name and location not be identified for security reasons. All I can say is that they are part of a 'pre-church planting' team in the middle east.

"Jim" asked the question in one of our worship workshops about how (as a worshiper) we can use what little we have to lead others in worship. Carrie began to explain how often in China where we served for two years, it was normal for worship services to be lead by human voice only! This prompted other questions - "but how can you lead them without instruments?" Jim asked; Carrie told them how many of the Christians in China often will create rhythm by taking a water bottle, filling it with rice and using it as a percussion (shaker) instrument.

The workshop ended. Later the next week, the Worshiplanet Band went into leading other events and the church planters returned to their host countries..... a few days ago Carrie received an email from "Jim" in the middle east. Following is the transcript from his email;

"Carrie - I hope this finds you well and the rest of your time in Chiang Mai was
blessed. I am sure that you all were a blessing to the churches there.
I want to thank you again for taking time out of your schedule to meet
with me and encourage and help me brainstorm ideas of how to bring a
more lively worship to my field and team. My teammates and I actually
got creative and used some empty water bottles and rice and made some
shakers that we incorporated into our worship the other day. It was
actually fun. At first we felt like little kids again, but I think
that really helped us just put everything aside and really get to the
heart of worship. Our neighbor's kids came over yesterday and wanted to know what they were so I got to sing worship songs over them while they danced and shook the shakers all over the room. I also contacted
my worship pastor back home and he sent me some stuff to help me get
going on the guitar again. I think this month, as it is Ramadan, will
be a good time to try and carve out some hours on the guitar as not
much else is happening here as everyone is fasting. Well I hope that
you guys found some time to enjoy Thailand and that you were in
someway blessed by being there as much as we were by having you there.
Thank you once again for all that you do.

In Him,
"Jim"

"After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb."

Thailand & Singapore

Hey everybody!

We just returned from a three week tour of Thailand and Singapore. The first week we led 15 worship sets, 2 workshops and found time somewhere in the middle of the week to head into the jungle for a half day of "zip-line" adventure - see (www.jungle-flight.com) Our mission the first week in Thailand was to equip about 800 pastors and their wives who faithfully serve Christ in the most sensitive nations in the world. A gathering of church planters and missionaries who are strategically sharing the viral message of Jesus in countries like Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Tajikistan, U.A.E., Indonesia, Turkmenistan, etc...you get the picture. I guess to sum it all up, (according to one of the pastors who attended the conference) he told me; "Mark, we all came hungry and thirsty...to meet with God; we are leaving refreshed and full of His Spirit, excited to continue the work He's called us to..."

What an incredible privilege it has been to lead those modern-day apostles into worship every morning and evening.

We ended that first week with a Saturday 'night of worship' with all of the local international churches in Chiang Mai. There was a real sense of God's presence with us as we saw pastors refreshed, the body of Christ unified in worship and the name of Jesus be lifted up! We spent 3 more days with the local churches in Chiang Mai, leading workshops and spending time with a couple of the pastors and their families.

We then left for Singapore, via Bangkok, where Integrity Media and Scripture Union set up a series of workshops, training, leading worship, meeting some of the worship 'gatekeepers' in Singapore and basically hearing about what God is doing in that nation. We can truly attest of God's faithfulness and blessing on Singapore. One of the things we felt very strongly to speak into was to encourage the songwriters of Singapore to be refreshed, renewed and released to write new songs of praise for and over their nation.

We had an additional opportunity of leading worship (some in Mandarin!) at an event where several Singaporean Chinese churches came together for an evening of worship and encouragement. Again, we were blessed to see how God is strategically using the Chinese church in Singapore to "sing" back into China and over their own land the songs of redemption and blessing.

We are grateful that we are allowed this opportunity to travel the planet, meet with people just like us who are serving local churches week in and week out. We bless the nations of Thailand and Singapore - we sing life, health, peace and God's Spirit over the pastors, worship leaders and teams who, each week, create space for God's people to gather together to lift up the name of Christ!

Please pray for Thailand and Singapore!
Till next time....
mark

PS - if you want more information about what we do around the world - go to www.worshiplanet.com

God TV

To all our Asia friends!

The Door is being broadcast this weekend all over China!

You can access The Door "live" worship concert on the Asia platform Dream Network package out of the Philippines this weekend! Broadcast times are as follows (Beijing local Time)

Saturday July 18th at 18:00 (Beijing local time)
Sunday July 19th at 14:00 (Beijing local time)

Please tell everyone in that region of the world to catch The Door live in China!

Blessings
mark