Dec. 21st/24th/28th worship confessional

Well, to say the least it's been a very busy couple of weeks. I was talking to Vince earlier today about how important it is to be consistent with your blogging and I realized that I haven't updated my blog in quite some time... so I've decided to lump 3 services into one. So here it is.

Dec. 21st:

The choir was sounding so incredible at our rehearsals that we decided to give the Church a sneak peak at what the Christmas Eve service would look like. They sounded great! A special thanks to Steve Vos, Tammy Cook and Lynette Lawson for taking the lead in their respective parts. Couldn't have done it without them.

Band:
agtr - me
egtr - Kevin
egtr - Daniel
drums - Brandon
keys - Dave
vocals - Lynette

Setlist:
It came upon a midnight clear (Caedmon's Call)
All Creation Sing (Fee)
O come all ye faithful (traditional)
-welcome-
-message- John Cappelen
Empty Me (Jeremy Camp)
-offering-
Empty Me

(Choir sang on first 3 songs)

Dec. 24th:

This was a packed house and a ton of fun! There were over 500 people that showed up (over 300 the first service). I wish I had more photos, but I only have these two... the first is of our Children's Director Sue Bushrow telling the story of "Humphrey the Camel" with Dave playing dramatic theme music behind her. The kids loved it.



This one is of my son Micah who when Sue called the kids down front for the story decided he wanted to jump up onto the choir risers and sing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"... a boy after my own heart!

Band:
Same as above

Setlist:
Carol of the Bells (instrumental) Daniel and Dave sounded amazing on this one!
All Creation Sing (Fee)
O Come All Ye Faithful (traditional)
Angels We Have Heard on High (traditional)
-Humphrey Story-
-Message-
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (Caedmon's Call)
-offering-
O Holy Night (traditional)
Silent Night (traditional)

(Choir sang on all songs)

The funniest part of the night was when Pastor Dave was talking about the Three Kings that came to worship Jesus. He said, "...and what gifts did they bring?" A little kid shouted out "Gold, Frankenstein and Myrrh!" Hilarious!

The best part of the night however was the choir... they nailed it!

Dec. 28th:

With the business of the holidays we decided to do an acoustic set this week. I love acoustic sets... in fact, I'd love to do them more often... maybe that can be my new years resolution!

Band:
agtr - me
bass/djembe/vox - Dan
agtr2 - Dave Bishop

Setlist:
Awesome is the Lord (Tomlin)
Everlasting God (Brown)
-welcome-
Here in Your Presence (Parsley)
-message- Jim Boyd
Create in Me a Clean Heart (Green)
-offering-
Mighty to Save (Hillsong)

(no choir this week, although it would have been pretty cool to have one)

This was a fun set. Great acoustic feel with Dan's Harmonies and David's guitar parts filling in a lot. I brought in the old song "Create in Me" because Jim was speaking on Psalm 51. That brought back a lot of memories.

I don't know what it is about the acoustic set, but it feels good! What do you think?

Bowling

We went bowling with the kids for the first time a couple of weeks ago. What a blast!

Here are some photos...

Vision 2009

We had an incredible Sunday... our Vision '09 Sunday. Check out the message here.

So I spent the week working on this video. Hours and hours of going over interviews and various footage. I finally got it down to 8 minutes... and then I sent it to Daniel who shot some of the footage. He spent about 10 minutes on it and got it down to 5 minutes and created some killer transitions, intros and added some amazing music. Here it is. Check out what God did @ Chorus in '08.



Tech:

Andi - Pro Presenter
Crawford - Lights
Gordon - Lights
Enrique - Audio
AJ - Audio

Band:

me - agtr/vox
Dave - keys/vox
Daniel - egtr
Dan - bass
Ross - drums

Setlist:

King of Majesty - United
Marvelous Light - Hall
-welcome-
All Because of Jesus - Fee
-video-
-message-
God of this City - Tomlin
-offering-
God of this City - Tomlin

The band nailed it today!!!

No Practice Sunday

Well happy belated Thanksgiving...

Because we usually practice on Thursday nights and it was a holiday weekend we decided to go without practice this week. We're in an Elementary School so we setup and tear-down every weekend but because it was a holiday week, the school let us leave our stuff setup this week. So we actually got an extended sound check on Sunday morning.

I have to say that whenever we do that, it's always a little rougher than usual. I really don't like doing it, however sometimes I find that I worship a little more because I'm not as worried about what the band is doing... ie, did they work on their parts, are they hitting that fill, here comes a transition, are they going to nail it?

In other words, when I'm not worrying about the music, my mind is free to focus on worshiping.

I guess the key is to just not worry about the music... ever! ;)

What are you thoughts on that one? I know that there are a lot of Churches/Worship Leaders that just have their teams show up on Sundays and their sound check is their practice. What about you. When do you practice? Do you notice a difference when you don't practice (duh)? Which do you prefer?

Here was our setup...

Tech:

Audio - Charlie
Audio 2 - Paul
ProPresenter - Jessi
Lights - Crawford

Band:

me - agtr/vox
Lynette - vox
AJ - egtr
Kevin - bass
Ross - drums

Rob was supposed to play keys, but he wasn't able to make it. We're praying for you Rob!

Setlist:

Awesome is the Lord - Tomlin
All we need - Hall
-welcome-
You are so good - Third Day
-message-
Thank You for hearing me - Crowder
-offering-
My Jesus I Love Thee (I asked Lynette to sing this at the last moment and she nailed it)