A lesson on "flow"

Happy Tuesday everyone! For some reason, this week I thought it appropriate to give a bit of a hands on lesson. Several years ago, I had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Paul Baloche on the subject of songwriting & leading worship. For those of you that don't know, he is a very accomplished songwriter & leader in the realm of corporate worship. As a fellow songwriter, he has been hugely influential in my writing style as well as my worship leading. 

One of the lessons that really impressed upon my heart was that of maintaining "flow" within the worship service. There are many aspects to creating such an environment...being prepared both spiritually & musically, Being aware of the keys that you are playing in and around, being aware of where your congregation is both spiritually as well as their musical skill level, and the list goes on & on. For a broader lesson from Paul, click here to go to an article on his website. My simple definition of "flow" is to lead in such a way that nothing hinders the Holy Spirit from doing His thing. That thing would be LIFE CHANGE! As worship leaders, we don't ever want it to become about us. Everything MUST point towards Him!

I want to touch on one aspect of "flow" that I learned from Paul, but he doesn't mentioned it in the article that I linked to above. That is that, sometimes, within your worship set, you may have two songs back to back that do not go together in keys, or maybe even style. However, they do fit together really well lyrically. This past Sunday we did an old deliriou5? favorite, "Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble". For those of you that have done this song before, you know that in the original key of D, it's about as far of a stretch (vocally) as is possible for the average congregation. So, A key change on the chorus to E would be out of the question. However, the key to the next song, "Cleansing", was, you guessed it...E. What to do, What to do? Even though, the chorus in E would have been way too high, the verse was fine. So, we basically ended the song per normal in D, the band faded out & I transitioned us to E as we sang only the 3rd verse as a tag before leading into the next song. You know what, it actually worked quite well. The "flow" was kept in tact & the transition was made quite smoothly. The video below is of that transitioned key change into the song "Cleansing." I hope this was helpful to all you blogophiles out there. Until Next Time... 

CLEANSING

A Passover week blessing

During this passover week I thought I'd post a bit on a specific Jewish blessing that I learned of over the last few weeks. As you know, I'm not Jewish. However, I think there's a lot to learn from that culture, seeing as I serve the King of the Jews...Jeshua. 

Last Sunday, Darrell preached a message about the parent child relationship. Within the message he listed four things that are vital to that relationship...Wisdom, Blessing, Hope & Forgiveness. As I began to do a little research, I discovered a Jewish tradition that I really latched onto. Every Friday evening, as a part of the sabbath ritual, the parents will bestow a blessing on their children that comes straight out of scripture. After stating that blessing, they will then whisper a positive note about the child's week into his/her ear. After reading this I thought, what an incredible joy to be able to speak a blessing into your child's life. If you would like to learn more, you can follow this link to aish.com. The chart below has the blessing printed out. Who knows, maybe this is something you might want to implement into your weekly routine. I don't think the Jewish community will mind.

A Son's Blessing

A Daughter's Blessing

The song in the video is called "A Child's Blessing". I was blessed for God to pour it into me through my studies on the subject. I hope you too are blessed by it.

4-6-08 Worship

For those of you that have been asking about the missing part to this week's podcast, here's the video. For some reason we didn't get the audio recording from the beginning of the service, but we got the video that has the same audio feed. So, here it is. More than likely, we will soon just be putting the messages on the podcast & any music will be put on this blog. Stay tuned.

I look forward to soon being able to post an entry with some substance. I feel like I've been going a mile a minute, but I think thing's are now slowing down a bit. Hopefully, I'll also be able to catch up on my songwriting. Also, I want to thank all of you for praying for my wife Lisa. She came through her surgeries with flying colors & is now resting. She's sore, but doing really well. Thanks for loving on us this past week. We are incredibly blessed with AMAZING friends. 

Blessings!

Await The King

Hello friends. Thank you for keeping my family in your prayers over the last couple of weeks. In case you didn't know, my wife's last remaining grandparent passed away. The good news is...he loved the Lord & is now with Him for eternity. The bad news is...we miss him. As soon as our third Easter service was finished, we packed up the van & drove twelve hours to San Antonio. After two days there, we went on to Abilene to visit my parents. All is well & we are really grateful to be back on firm ground for a while. If you think of it, please remember my wife Lisa on Friday. She will be having some much needed surgery, that we pray will make her life a bit easier.

Before leaving you, I wanted to post an audio clip from our Easter services. The final song of each service was a collaborative effort between a few of the songwriters here at FBC. It's called, you guessed it..."Await The King". I was really pleased with how it turned out. Let me know what you think.

Blessings to you & yours.