John Mayer... Songwriter, Musician, Philosopher???

I took this quote from one of John Mayer's latest posts in regards to the pressure that he's feeling from the paparazzi and everyone else at this stage in his career. I had to pass it along...

All I can do is concentrate on keeping my heart and soul correct and then redecorate around it.

Man, whether you agree with his personal beliefs/philosophies or not, you've got to admit that if we could grab a hold of that idea as Christians, this world would be a different place.

In essence I believe that what he is saying is, if I quit blaming everyone else in the world for my problems, trials and insecurities I might actually accomplish something significant this year... and I believe that if we as Christians were to embrace this idea we'd put a huge smile on the face of Jesus by actually becoming salt and light instead of just talking/arguing about it all the time.

I tell my son almost everyday, "You worry about you and let everyone else worry about everyone else." I think I need to hear that myself every once in a while.

By the way, he's a pretty great songwriter/musician as well. Check out his latest live album "where the light is" My favorite song is "stop this train". It's pretty amazing! Oh yeah... and he plays a Martin. ;)

John Mayer, songwriter, musician, philosopher?

Worship Confessional

Well, we're finishing up our Fear Knot series. We've got one week left. Pastor Dave and I have been working hard to tighten things up as far as the band goes and I think it's working. They sounded great this week... And they did 3 songs they'd never heard before.

I think God was really doing something this week, as evidenced by the trials/struggles that we encountered during first service. Here are some of the obstacles that were overcome...

We got a late start (we still got setup before 8:00am!)
There was a weird white noise coming from the bass channel (padded the direct box and it went away)
Crawford broke a bass string during sound check (Kevin's wife brought his for Crawford to play)
The Master EQ was all messed up for the 2nd week in a row!!??? (Enrique noticed it and dialed it in)
We did 3 new songs (I think we nailed them)
Mike's girlfriend fainted during the first service (Thank God for Sue Bushrow our resident Paramedic and Children's Director)
Dave's Mic was giving us all kinds of crazy popping/static (Enrique dialed it in)

Wow!!! What a great team we have. God really allowed us to be tested today and I think the team came through with flying colors!

Here's what the team looked like:

Tech:

Enrique - Lead Audio
Paul - Audio
Kevin - Audio Setup
Andi - ProPresenter
Chris - Lights
Bradley - I'm not really sure what Bradley was doing... (Just kidding) ;)

Band:

Me - agtr/vox
Dave - keys/vox
Crawford - bass
Dalton - egtr
Brandon - drums

Setlist:

All Because of Jesus (Fee)
Let the Praises Ring (Brewster)
-welcome-
What if I Stumble (DC Talk)
-message-
Never Let Go (Redman)
-offering-
Walk by Faith (Jeremy Camp)

Check out some audio clips here.

Thanks again team for all of your hard work and dedication!

Chris Tomlin Does It Again

Every time Chris Tomlin comes out with a new album I determine not to buy it. I'm so tired of hearing about this guy and his music. I think every Church in the world is playing his stuff. And every time I determine not to buy it, I end up buying it... And worse yet, I end up loving it! What is it about this guy that makes him such a good song writer? (can you tell I'm a little jealous?)

I've been listening to "Hello Love" for the last couple of weeks and it amazes me how incredibly perfect it is for today's Church (any Church!). It's almost like he could write a song about how Mark ran through the streets naked (Mark 14:51-52) and it would be a hit. The more I listen to the album the more I want to do every song this Sunday. It's like the perfect worship set. So here's my setlist for this week...

Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin)
Jesus Messiah (Tomlin)
You Lifted Me Out (Tomlin)
God Of This City (Tomlin)
I Will Rise (Tomlin)
Love (Tomlin)
Praise The Father, Praise The Son (Tomlin)
My Deliverer (Tomlin)
With Me (Tomlin)
Exalted (Tomlin)
God Almighty (Tomlin)
All The Way My Savior Leads Me (Tomlin)
My Beloved (Tomlin)

(Obviously he didn't write every song on the album, but you get the picture)

Could you imagine having this guy as the Worship Leader at your church (check it out)? I can just see him and Giglio now...

Giglio: "Hey Chris, I'm going to be teaching on how Mark ran through the streets naked, can you put together a song that drives the message home?"
Tomlin: "Sure thing Louie, just give me a few minutes would you?"
Giglio: "Hmmm... I'm not sure we've got a few minutes, the service starts in 2 minutes!"
Tomlin: "Oh, really, well then I'll just wing it."
Giglio: "Sounds good..."
5 minutes go by...
Tomlin (speaking to the congregation): "So Louie and I were talking about how Mark ran through the streets naked in Mark chapter 14... yeah I know, but I'm working on this song and I thought I'd share it with you guys."

One year later

"And the award for best new Christian album goes to Chris Tomlin for "Naked Worship"!"

You have to admit, as tired as you are of hearing about Chris Tomlin, the guy is amazing! He's like Bono and U2, they just can't write a bad song. Are you with me Karl?

Worship Confessional

I'll keep this short and sweet (okay, so not really). From what I've heard and what I experienced myself, this was one of our best worship services in a long time in regards to worship. Probably somewhat due to my new Martin (just kidding... kind of), but also due to some fine tuning that Pastor Dave and I have been working on. Here's what we've been working on.

Prayer...

I'm praying more, Dave's praying more, the team's praying more. Enough said!

Tighten up the teams...

We're trying to keep the teams together so that they get used to playing with each other. We went from a fairly random scheduling system to something a little more structured. I'm trying to schedule teams instead of players. I also schedule them 2 weeks in a row. So the team will play for 2 weeks and then have some time off. Then they play for 2 weeks again.

Changing the sheet music...

I'm not a big fan of sheet music, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. For a while I've been using sheet music that's based on patterns instead of the straight ahead chord over the word style. For example, instead of writing the chords over each word, I write "VERSE 1 (Em - C - D)". The purpose of this is to help people memorize songs quickly, thus eliminating sheet music. This worked great when we had one band that played together all the time, but with multiple bands and a lot of new music... not so much. So I'm back to putting the chords over the words (kind of). I think it helps...

Click Track...

While we don't always stay on the click track, it at least gets us started on the right track (get it?) and eliminates the whole tempo discussion. I think it's a must for every team. We use the Yamaha Click Station.

Setlist Scheduling...

We're trying to schedule our set lists a few weeks out now. While I'm not super stoked on being locked into certain songs, I do like giving the team a few extra days to work on the songs. The Planning Center Online is a huge help with this.

Sound Check...

While we're stoked to have so many different sound guys (I think there's like 5) it does have it's setbacks. Each person has a different feel and a different level of knowledge in regards to the board and mixing. We're going to be doing some training this Spring to help everyone get on the same page, but until then we're taking a more pro-active approach to our sound checks. Dan suggested we keep track of the settings for each instrument/player so that they're always the same. Also, I'm going to make an effort to listen more. In fact, I pretty much went the whole service this week without my ears. I'm contemplating not using them at all so that I can hear what's going on in the room and get a better feel for the mix. I'm sure my vocals will suffer some, but in the long run it's probably worth it. This week Pastor Dave was able to help Kevin dial in the Mix pretty well.

Here's the band we had this week:

backing vox - Lynette
agtr/vox - Me
bass/vox - Dan
keys/vox - Dave
egtr - Daniel
drums - Ross

Tech Team:

Lead audio - Kevin
Audio - Charlie
Pro Presenter - Andi
Lights - Bradley
Lighting setup - Crawford

Setlist:

Marvelous Light (Hall)
King of Majesty (United)
-welcome-
Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
-bumper video-
-message-
I Can Only Imagine (Mercy Me)
-offering-
I Will Rise (Tomlin)

I think one of the highlights of the morning was when we broke into an acappella, 4 part harmony of the bridge on "I will rise"... Good stuff and perfectly placed. Especially when Pastor Dave had just taught on not fearing death.

How was your week? What pro-active things are you doing to tighten things up in your area of ministry?

Gibson, Martin or Taylor?

For a few years now I've been playing a 1956 Gibson LG1. I love the way the low-end fills the room when I'm doing an acoustic set. It feels amazing and it looks even cooler. The L.R. Baggs pickup accentuates the lows like no other and one of the coolest things is that I sold my Taylor 310 for $1,000 and picked up the Gibby for $400 on ebay. Needless to say the Gibson sounds 10 times better than that Taylor ever did.

But here's the deal. I just don't do acoustic sets very often. And... well... the old Gibson just doesn't cut through the mix very well. When you've got drums, bass, keys & an electric guitar, there's very little room (or need) for such a full bodied instrument. Not to mention every time I use a capo I have to re-tune because it's so old.

So Pastor Dave has been encouraging me to pick up a new guitar for a while now. You don't even know how cool it is to have a Pastor that cares so much about your tone! Or maybe it was just the tuning during his prayer time...? Either way, it's pretty cool!

So obviously I had to make a decision. What kind of guitar should I get? I've owned a few in my short time as a musician. A Harmony (classic!), a Takamini, a Taylor and a Gibson. And of course I've played a million over the years. So I did some research and narrowed it down to 2 guitars that have decent reputations, will cut through the mix and sell for under $1000. Here they are...



The Taylor 214CE



The Martin DM

Needless to say, due to my past experiences with Taylor and the tone I so often hear from the guitar of choice for worship leaders I went with the Martin. In fact, I went with Martin despite the fact that the Taylor came with a pickup already installed. I went with the Martin even though the Taylor is a little prettier. I went with the Martin when every worship leader I know was urging me to get the Taylor (not really, but I'm sure they would of had I asked). Yes, I went with the Martin for a few very distinct reasons... Dreadnought, Tone and Reputation. Not to mention my good friend Kreg is a Martin man.

A few other selling factors were that it came with a hard case, new strings and a strap. And with the "Church Discount" I got them to throw in the Fishman Rare-Earth pickup (one of the best out there) all for a smokin' deal! My dad always taught me not to take "no" for an answer. ;)

So far, it's my favorite guitar of all time... even if it doesn't have those sweet Gibson lows.

What's your favorite guitar of all time?

Fresh Eyes #2

Here's the second installment of Fresh Eyes!

Clean Campus! - The Church we visited was extremely neat and tidy. I noticed that they had put quite some effort into making their facility look clean. I led worship at a conference here a few years ago. I noticed that since then they've re-done their staging and lighting which made for a cleaner look.

I'm Lost - However, as clean as it was, it surprised us to note that there was absolutely no signage to speak of! As we walked up to the sanctuary, despite the fact that I'd been here before, we weren't quite sure where to go. And on top of that, there were no greeters to help us find our way.

Granted, we were 10 minutes early so maybe we missed the greeting party, but most first time guests will probably be 10-15 minutes early. The worst part was that we walked by numerous people, even staff members and not one of them said 'hi'. hmmm...

I hope we never lose the concern that we have for the first-time guest.

What are you doing to make your guests feel welcome?

Fresh Eyes #1

My wife and I took the weekend to celebrate 9 wonderful years together (more on that later). So needless to say I wasn't at Church on Sunday. But we did go to Church, just not our Church. It's always great to get out and experience other communities.

Staci and I have this problem though. Some people like to call it "Fresh Eyes". But Staci and I like to call it what it is... critical hearts.

It seems that whenever we attend other Churches, we have a tendency to be critical. Do you ever struggle with this?

Well, we decided that this weekend would be different. We were going to go to Church and worship... period!

That lasted about 30 seconds... the 30 seconds that it took for us to walk from our car to the sanctuary. So we decided that we would no longer consider this gift that God has given us to see the faults in other Churches as a negative, but as a positive. In fact, we're from this point on going to refer to this gift as "Fresh Eyes". And I thought it would be a great idea to share this gift with each of you in a series of posts dissecting the Church we attended over the next few days. (please note mild sarcasm).

Now let me preface the rest of this post and the posts to come with this statement. The Church that we attended is a great, Bible Believing, Jesus Worshiping Church. I want to make that clear. Overall, the experience was pleasant and encouraging. However as Church Planters with "Fresh Eyes" there were some things that we noticed that I believe will help all of us make our own Churches more pleasant and welcoming places to worship.

Here is my first observation...

Positive #1

Skatepark! - I used to run the one we had at Horizon in the late 90s. I'm all for it. It's a huge liability, but the connections that can be made with the community are well worth it. If you've got a facility and go about getting the right type of insurance, it can be a huge Kingdom Builder.

A couple of cool things about this one were that it was constructed well, it had a nice flow and a variety of ways to skate it (quarters, tables, rails, etc.) The coolest part was that kids were on it every time we drove by.

Area of improvement #1

Skatepark Staff! - Now I was only there for the weekend so this could be a little skewed. So let me make this generic statement to anyone who wants to start a Skate Park Ministry. If you're going to have a Skatepark, please be willing to staff it correctly! The whole point in having this type of ministry is to connect the Church with the community.

While every time we drove by the Skatepark we were sure to see kids skating it, we rarely saw any staff members connecting with the kids. In fact, on Sunday morning there were kids skating in there without any supervision whatsover. Not only is that a huge liability, but it's also a waste of resources. If you're not connecting with the kids, what's the point?

All in all, I love the concept and I think it is well executed at this Church. I do think they could beef up the staff a little.

Great idea!

Keep your eyes open for "Critical hea... I mean "Fresh Eyes #2"...