God's Presence

So Pastor Dave has been casting the vision for our Church in 2008. I'm so excited because one of the themes that keeps coming up is "God's Presence". As a Worship Pastor, that is what I'm all about. I feel like it's my job to help usher in God's presence. How much easier is that to do when the people understand what that means?

Pastor Dave's going to be taking us through "The life you've always wanted" as we learn how to enter God's presence. He's encouraging everyone to purchase a copy and we're also using them in most of our small groups. I know some of you are probably thinking... "Oh great, another book. What about the Bible." The great thing about what we're doing (and what I hope this book does) is that we'll be heavily encouraging our congregation to become what Bill Hybels calls, "Self-Feeders". Check out this video... "reveal" I believe that it will revolutionize our Church.

I can't wait...

Where are you headed this year?

Doing Church as a Team

We're going through this book as a staff. So far it's been great. We started discussing chapter one this week and somehow got onto the topic of the stages of leadership in our Church.

My old friend and fellow Pastor used to use this model...

I do, you watch
I do, you help
You do, I help
You do, someone else watches, and so on...

We kind of modified it for our own personal use...

Potential Leader
Laborer
Leader of laborers
Leader of leaders

What model (if any) are you using with your staff?

From Guitar Hero to Guitar Phone...

What will they think of next?

Craziness with the Click

What a strange day. The service went well overall, but it started off a tad bit sketchy...

Right about the time we were ready to sound check, I pull out the click track and realize that for some reason all of my settings had been erased. I'm not sure what happened, but the only thing that I can think of is that when the battery died (yesterday) it must have reset. However I could have sworn that I check it last night after I changed the battery... Oh well...

So anyway, I had to scramble to re-set all of the songs except for one because we didn't practice it and I couldn't remember what the tempo was.

So here was our setlist today...

I am Free (Desperation)
The Stand (United)
-welcome-
Glory in the highest (Tomlin) - what key do you guys do this in? We did it in B but it's still stinkin' up there!
-message-
Amazing Grace (Tomlin)
Amazing Love (?)

Here were the players...

me - vox/e-gtr
Alexis - vox/a-gtr
Rick - vox
Rob - e-gtr
Stephanie - keys
Todd - bass
Daniel (a.k.a. Pastor's kid) - drums (he did really well on the click too!)

All in all it was a good day.

How was yours?

Even better than piano... The Keytar!

Not to mention that they had to learn all of their parts backwards for this video...

Mute Math

Another Band who's lead singer plays piano...

Karl, you'll love this one since it's got scenes from "Lost" in it... ;)

The Fray

Coldplay and Storytellers

I just finished watching Coldplay on MHD (that's Music HD for those of you who were wondering). I have to say that they're a lot better than I first thought. This program is a year or two old. It's the year they released their single "Speed of Sound".

As I was watching them on Storytellers I realized how talented they really are. They're a 4 piece band and they each have plenty to do. On the song "Speed of Sound" it hit me how in sync and tight they are as a band. The guitar player is playing the same riff as the keyboard. Not only that, the bass player is switching from keyboard to bass and back again throughout the song. And who doesn't love a drummer who can sing harmony and play at the same time!?

Either way, you gotta love a Rock Band who's lead singer plays piano. Check it out...

This is from "Top of the Pops" not their best performance but still pretty good...

Chargers win and a lost love...

I can't believe it... The Chargers won! I'm not a huge football fan, but I am from San Diego and I'm stoked... not to mention that I had Vincent Jackson on my fantasy football team this year. Had to drop him about half way through though...

Anyway, last summer we signed my son up for soccer and he hated it. We tried everything from threats to bribary and nothing worked. Then one of the other dads on the team (his kid was the star player) asked if I wanted to play on his adult soccer team. I thought, what a great way to get Joshua excited about soccer but to let him see his father play in a few games. So I signed up. It didn't work either but I re-discovered a lost love.

And here we are about 6 months later and I'm still playing. Not only that, but we just played our way right into the playoffs... just like the Chargers!

Who knew that I still loved to play.

What lost love do you need to re-discover?

Wasn't this post supposed to be about the Chargers?

Worship Debriefing/Confessional

<--That's Brandon. He's 15 and he's my hero!

Awesome Sunday!

We used a click track today for the whole service on every song. Brandon, our 15 year old drummer nailed it. We got off a couple of times, but he powered through and a couple of times he even got us back on track. It was amazing.

It was strange. It wasn't the best worship service that I've ever lead, but there was something really cool and exciting about it. I don't know what it was, but the band was amped even though it was a little tough. Maybe it's because they were all really paying attention to each other and trying really hard to lock into the pocket.

What is it about a click track that is so much fun?

Anyway, here's the lowdown...

Band:
agtr/vocals: me
drums: Brandon
bass/vocals: Dan
egtr (rhythm): Kevin (Brandon's Dad!)
egtr (lead): Dave (tore it up)

Set:
All We Need (Hall)
My Glorious (Delirious? - arranged by Chris Tomlin)
-welcome-
Here in Your Presence (Desperation)
-message-
Great is Thy Faithfulness (Dan lead this one on my guitar)
-offering-
I'm Coming Your Way (Desperation)

You'll notice that we did an older song "My Glorious" (at least to me) and a hymn. Dave rocked "My Glorious". You'll be seeing more of this from us this year.

Paid Positions in Church?

I was reading a blog on Rich's page called "Is Church Ministry a Waste of Time?" and it got me started down this line of thought. Obviously, ministry is so much more than Sunday morning Church, right? So here's the question in my head...

"What if there were no Church?" Or better yet, to all of you paid employees of the Established Church, "What if there were no paid position for you in the Church?" Would you still do the things that you do?

I'm sure that many of you have gone down this line of thought at one point in your ministry career, "I wish I was a layman again so that I could do ministry the way that I really want to!" And then you realize that if you were a layperson that you wouldn't be able to do half the things you can do as a full-time employee of the Church.

What a dilema. I don't know what good this post has done, other than make me think...

Am I doing ministry the way that I would if I weren't employed by the Church? If not, why not?

What would you do differently in ministry if you weren't employed by the Church?

Yamaha Clickstation

I've been talking about getting our teams on a click for quite a while now. My Christmas Present to the Worship Team this year was the Yamaha Click Station. Last week we used it for the first time and our drummer Josh made a great effort. We didn't really know how to set it up right and or use it in practice, so Sunday morning was a little rough.

After learning more about it this last week I adjusted the settings and let our drummer use a headset tonight. He's a 15 year old kid and this was his first time playing with a click. And you know what...

HE ROCKED IT!
We had what I will call the 2nd best practice ever. It's amazing what a difference it made. It was a little bit sterile, but I think we'll learn to get through that. Sometimes the band felt like it was just going through the motions, but overall it was nice to have dynamics without speeding up or slowing down.

I can't wait for Sunday!

Youth Group is Awesome!

We've planned a snowboarding trip for our Youth Group on January 22nd. Our Jr. High Pastor Gary took me to Bear Mountain today in an effort to get my legs back. I haven't boarded in over a year. We took it pretty easy; got there at 8:00am and left at 1:00pm.

I pretty much paid $25 for the day because I filled out this form to get $10 off. And then because we left before 1:00pm they gave me a $15 voucher. Man, Gary really knows how to do it! And what a beautiful day! It couldn't have been much better.

You've gotta go...

I love being in Youth Ministry again!

What'd you do today (yesterday)?

Worship Debriefing/Confessional

Yesterday was interesting. The school that we meet at was on vacation last week so everything was left up. I made sure that everyone was still there at 7:00am, our regular arrival time so that we could get a good sound check in.

There were two things that I was worried about this week. 1. our regular sound guy was out of town (he'll be gone for 10 weeks). 2. We had a new Lead Guitar Player and a new Bass player this week.

Needless to say, our sound check was rough and we actually ran up to our usually time of 8:30am even though we had an extra 40-60 minutes. I was a little nervous because it wasn't coming together during sound check.

Have you ever experienced that chaos before a service that makes you think there's no way we're going to pull this off today? Well that's what I was feeling (a little) and then the service started. As would have it, everything came together just fine. It was great having a lead guitar player that actually plays lead guitar today. Chris tore it up! And then our bass player came through tremendously. He was nervous during sound check (and so was I) but he pulled through marvelously during the services. And the monitors were cranking so Josh our drummer felt free to let loose... oh yeah, and we started using the Yamaha Click Station too. That's probably a whole other post though. Let's just say that it's going to take some getting used to... ;)

Setlist:

Let God arise (Tomlin)
Awesome is the Lord (Tomlin)
-welcome-
Here I am to worship (Hughes)
-message-
Glory in the highest (Tomlin)
-offering-
I am free (Egan/Desperation)

You'll notice that we did Here I am to worship. We've been talking about bringing back some of the oldies (is 4 years old?). You'll notice in the coming months some of the older songs finding their way into the setlists. It was cool to hear the congregation let loose on that old familiar song.

Sermon Player Test

Check out this Podcast software that I got from Bobby's site...

Sound Techs

Good sound techs are hard to come by. I can't say that I don't miss working with Alex. He and I had so much in common when it came to vision for modern worship and the overall feel of a Sunday morning service. But I can say that I love the sound techs @ Chorus Church...

Our main sound guy is out of town for the next 10 months and it's so cool to know that there are a few guys (and girl) that are stepping up. Kevin ran the board today. He has been working with the board for about 6 months. He's a good musician and quite technical too. That's a hard combination to find. He ran the board today and you could tell he was a little nervous but he did a great job. Obviously there are some things that we need to work on, but all in all it was a great week. Not only that, I love Kevin just because he's so teachable. That's another quality that's hard to come by in a sound tech.

Why are good sound guys so hard to find anyway? It seems that you always get one extreme or the other when working with sound techs...

1. Completely Technical with absolutely no ear for music.

2. Completely musical with absolutely no technical savvy whatsoever.

Thank God we have a good balance here at Chorus. Andy is more on the technical side with a decent ear for music whereas Kevin is on the musical side with a decent working knowledge of technology. And the beauty of it is that they're both super teachable as are Cindy and Enrique. Thank you Jesus!

Which type do you have?

Wedding Plans???

Is it strange for 4 year olds to talk about marriage? Joshua and Nicole have been talking about it for a few months. Yeah, that's right... months! She says that when she grows up she's going to marry a Pastor. She also says that she's going to marry Joshua, and he agrees.

Does that mean that Joshua's going to be a Pastor? I don't know which is scarier... that he's talking about marriage or the possibility of him being a Pastor...

My new Route 66 pedal

Check out my new Route 66 pedal! I can't wait to use it!

Anybody out there have one??? Maybe you can give me some tips on the settings...

Karl... Karl... Karl?

Superheros

Here's a picture of my new shirt. My wife thinks I'm crazy... maybe I am but my favorite show is "Heros". I just realized that I'm writing my own blog on their site called 9th wonders! (not really my blog). I can't wait until the season starts back up. My favorite is Peter Petrelli because he somehow collects powers from all of the other heros. That's cool!

What is it with our infatuation with Superheros? Is it because they represent our battle for righteousness in this sick world? Is it because of their supernatural powers? Is it their cool clothes? Can we find any spiritual significance whatsoever in this? Should we even try?

I have a friend that some of you know. I'm not going to name any names (Tom Payne) but he collects superhero comic books. He's over 30 years old and he collects comic books!

What is it that we love about Superheros?

Who's your favorite Superhero?