JOY

Things that bring me joy...

Me and the girls

Toffee

Mocha

-- Post From My iPhone

Test post from Blogpress

Hey everyone. Long time no...anything. I'm trying to revamp this blog a bit & am trying to do some posting from Blogpress on my iPhone. Here's a pic from the Willow Creek conference I went to last month. Anyway, come back and check out the revamping over the next few months.


-- Post From My iPhone

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.

Gateway CONNECT Pastors Conference

A few weeks ago we took a team to this conference from our recovery ministry "The Well". Although it is a pastors conference, we were primarily going for the breakout sessions on what Gateway calls "Freedom Ministry". Let me just say, our brains are overflowing with knowledge for this ministry. I'm so excited to see how God uses our leadership to take it to the next level. The future is bright!

However, today I want to write a bit about the first thing that we learned. We all went to learn more about how to do "The Well", and as God typically does, He spoke to us about so much more. The first message, right out of the chutes, was brought to us by pastor Jimmy Evans of Trinity Fellowship Church. One word...EXCELLENCE. I'd like to think that I do everything with excellence. Though I try, I have so far to go. Let's start with the Word:

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

-Matthew 5:13-16

Here's a question for you. If we're not the salt & light, who's going to do it? How often do we go through life expecting others to step up to the plate? It must begin with us!! Here's a few thoughts to help you. 

 

Excellence is not

-Perfectionism (Yes, I've been accused of this one. I'm recovering.)

*Perfectionism is a sickness. Excellence is a standard. (That's good stuff!)

-Materialism (ouch)

-Legalism

Excellence is

-Good stewardship - Mark 4

-Effective witnessing

-Teachable spirit

-Attitude of the servant spirit

What keeps us from excellence

1. The deception that excellence is more difficult. - Hebrews 3 

2. Social comfort, or fear of status quo.

3. LAZINESS!

Wow, that last one hurt! Could the one thing that's keeping us from excellence simply be laziness? I know one thing. I work with some incredibly talented folks, but unfortunately that's not enough. God wants much more from us than just our willingness to use those talents. He wants our hearts to be so much more engaged than our talents. Don't get me wrong. In whatever you do, you must have the skills needed to do it well. However, if the hearts not there, the skill will only take you so far. 

I hope to bring you more in the future from this conference. I have to believe that there's a reason that the first thing we heard was about excellence. Is it time for you to step it up??

...Until next time.