the story

In December of 2008, I sent an email to a few worship pastors inviting them to join me in discussing the possibility of a collaborative worship project. We met together over the next few months and planned the project. Our vision was to produce a collaborative album of original worship songs written by worship leaders and songwriters in the South Bay Area.

The idea for calling the project "The Invitation" came from the monthly "Invitation" worship and prayer nights sponsored by TASCC (Transformation Alliance of Santa Clara County). These monthly, multi-congregational gatherings flow from a desire to see God come and transform our region. We see our project as another part of the unified church "crying out" for God's transforming power to come to the South Bay Area.

Our first big step was setting up the Invitation Worship website (which you're looking at right now). The site, in it's original form, laid out the vision of the project and included a form for submitting mp3s of original worship songs. We received about 40 song submissions from songwriters around the region - mainly San Jose and Santa Cruz. Out of those 40 songs, we picked our favorite 12 - a very tough task! You can see the top 12 selections on the songs page.

At first, we planned to bring the songwriters into a studio to record the songs; however, after lots of discussion and planning, we changed directions and made the decision to record the whole album as a live worship concert. The live event is planned to take place on May 14th at Church on the Hill in San Jose. See the live event page for all the details.

Our current plans are to release a 12-track live album as well as a DVD of the concert. All proceeds from the project will benefit CityTeam Ministries in San Jose.

~ Andrew Isaacs