New Blog

Hey... if you ended up here, it's either because you bookmarked my page or came from an old link. I finally moved to wordpress after about 6 months of blog nazi pressure.

So go up there and type in http://www.ericbeeman.com or just click on this link.

Make sure to update your bookmarks too.

Love ya!

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)

A Solid Family Church

They say that everything rises and falls around leadership... that people will only rise as far as their leader is capable of going... that a Church will be passionate about what it's Pastor is passionate about. Well I think it's safe to say that our Pastor (among other things) is passionate about family. And this is evidenced by the number of killer families we have serving @ Chorus Church, including his own.

If you've frequented this blog at all over the last year or so, you've probably noticed that Pastor Dave has been playing in the band a lot more lately. What you might not know is that his son Daniel plays guitar quite often as well. I have to say that it's pretty cool when they play together like they did this weekend. But it doesn't stop there. His son Grant plays percussion in our Jr. High Band, his other son Dean is an up and coming drummer (kids got it!), his wife Elena is on staff and can be seen designing bulletins, emails & flyers. She helps with setup, teardown and our Sunday morning welcome (amongst a gazillion other things). It's a lot of work for their family, but I have to say that something special happens when people see them all serving like they were this weekend.

You may have also noticed from our Worship Confessionals that Bradley and Andi are on Tech almost every weekend. But what you probably don't know is that they're husband and wife and have recently stepped up to provide oversight to everything tech @ Chorus. What a blessing they are, and not to mention their 2 adorable daughters who make me smile every weekend when they cuddle up next to me during prayer time.

And lastly, Kevin and his son Brandon blow my mind. There's something cool about family members playing instruments together, not to mention a drummer and a bass player. I think there's some kind of family connection that helps them lock in better than most. ANd when Kevin's not playing bass, he's making us sound good back at the sound board. What you might not know is that Kevin's wife Terri helps setup outside almost every week as well.

There are just a ton of families that serve week in and week out @ Chorus. In fact, there's too many to list. So many in fact that it leads me to believe that our Pastor values family... and our Church is all about family and family is all about our Church.

What about your Church and/or Pastor? What makes them unique?

Worship Confessional - Arrangements

This week was pretty cool. We were able to do a couple of my favorite worship songs, "Face Down" being one of them. They just seemed to fit with the message (The Transfiguration, matt. 17).

Things went pretty well. We had a little trouble with some arrangements that we did. Brandon our drummer was really excited about playing a couple of the songs just like the CD, but as you know, that doesn't always work on a Sunday morning; so we had to adjust. He did a great job holding back.

So here's a couple of questions that I have for you.

1. How often do you re-arrange songs and how often do you use an arrangement as is from the album.

2. How do you usually re-arrange the songs (tempo, verse/chorus/bridge structures, keys, etc.)

3. Why do you re-arrange the songs (unsingable key, lack of musicians, too long, too fast/slow, etc.)

I'm really interested to see what your responses will be.

Here was our setup for the week...

Tech:

Bradley - Lights
Andi - Pro-Presenter (Gotta love a girl who will serve on her birthday weekend!)
AJ - Audio (his dad was supposed to do it, but he stepped up and nailed it!)
Cindy - Audio

Band (Father/Son Crew this week!):

me - agtr/vox
Dave R. - keys/vox
Daniel R. - egtr
Kevin S. - bass
Brandon S. - drums

Setlist:

Oh Praise Him - Crowder
Marvelous Light - Hall
-welcome-
God Almighty - Tomlin (off his new album "Hello Love")
-message-
-communion-
Face Down - Redman
-offering-
Jesus Paid it All - Stanfill