I’m Canadian so I call it “centre” :)

If you’re a worship pastor or in any sort of church administration role and you’re not using Planning Centre Online, you should be. The power, flexibility and ease-of-use of this thing has blown me away the past few months. I can put together service outlines so quickly now and everything I need – charts, mp3′s, worship team email addresses, schedules – is right where I need it to be.

Here are some links to check out for more info but you should really do yourself a favour and try it out -
Planning Centre FAQ
Planning Centre Features
Planning Centre Video Tutorials

AND..

Jeff, the guy who put this whole thing together, is super accessible and VERY willing to make this program work to the best of its ability for those who actually use it.

Well last week was amazing. We ran our Krazee Arts Camp for the first time ever and from all reports it was a HUGE success. Lots of photos on my blog.

Hilights from last week -
>Having a peacock in the building
>Telling kids every day that God created them, God loves them, God wants a relationship with them
>Hearing them sing LOUD at the Variety Show on Friday night
>Working with amazing volunteers to pull off an incredible week

Our service on Sunday morning was another good one. We closed our “Like This” series by taking two of Paul’s “final instruction” verses and building a section of teaching around each verse. It went something like this -

Sunday, July 22, 2007 – “Like This”
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
Let Everything That Has Breath – Matt Redman
Open The Eyes – Paul Baloche

Teaching – v.23 – “A Prayer”
Communion
The Wonderful Cross – Trad., Tomlin & Reeves
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Trad., Tomlin & Giglio

Teaching – v.24 – “A Promise”
Faithful One – Brian Doerksen
Never Let Go – Matt & Beth Redman

Two really neat things from this service -
I felt like for the first time “Let Everything” really worked in a service here. Right tempo, right groove, right placement. It just worked.
The other really great thing was “Never Let Go”. This song rocks. I said to my team this week that the song feels like an epilogue to “Blessed Be Your Name”. Same authors, same theme, same conviction, same range separation from verse to chorus. Anyways – the congregation ate it up. It is definitely going in our regular rotation and we’ll for sure pull it out during our next series on David.

This morning, my friend John led worship. He’s been on one of our worship teams for about a year and a half and has been helping give leadership to our youth worship stuff since the winter. I was excited to have him lead our Sunday morning for the first time this week.

And he KILLED it!! Seriously, he hit it out of the park. It was awesome. This morning was all about song flow, integration with the message and thematic consistency.

Here’s our list -

Sunday, July 15, 2007 – “Like This”
1 Thessalonians 5:16-21
Your Love Is Amazing – Brian Doerksen & Brenton Brown
Holy Is The Lord – Chris Tomlin
Filled With Your Glory – Tim & John Neufeld

Indescribable – Chris Tomlin
Famous One – Chris Tomlin & Jesse Reeves
Blessed Be Your Name – Matt & Beth Redman

You’re Worthy Of My Praise – David Ruis

Dudes – the flow from the end of the chorus of “Holy Is The Lord” to the chorus of “Filled With Your Glory” was amazing!!

Go read the passage that we used for the service and you’ll know why we used this as a congregational reading during the second set -

Because we believe in and know the goodness of God,
we will always be joyful.
Because we believe and know that God hears us,
we will pray continually.
Because we believe and know that God is faithful,
we will give thanks in all circumstances.
We believe and know that this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

Alright readers – time to ask for prayer.

In exactly 9 hours we will begin seeing kids arrive for our first EVER Krazee Arts Camp. If you want an idea of what this camp is all about, here’s a little visual game.

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Alright, so I suck at this blogging thing. In my recent comings-and-goings I’ve failed to be consistent in my blogging behaviour. Hopefully the three of you who read this will forgive me.

Here’s a recap of what we did this past Sunday – we’re in the middle of a really great series in 1 Thessalonians that we’re calling “Like This.” Our Director of Youth Ministries, Kevin Van Dyken, had the unique opportunity of telling our congregation that one of the things they can do to keep our church healthy is to “respect and esteem” the leaders of our church. Not an easy task so I’m sure that our Senior Pastor wasn’t too upset that he was away on holidays and didn’t have to preach this message :)

Sunday, July 8, 2007 – “Like This”
1 Thessalonians 5:12-14
Your Grace Is Enough – Chris Tomlin version
There Is No One Else Like You – Robin Mark

That’s Why We Praise Him – Tommy Walker
Holy, Holy, Holy – Traditional

May The Words Of My Mouth – Tim Hughes

As a response to Kevin’s message we took communion together. Normally communion is done one of two ways – we pass the trays down each row OR we set up stations and people are served commuion. Because of the passage that Kevin was preaching this week and the focus on developing healthy community we thought we’d do something a little different.

We set up six communion stations around our auditorium and at each station we had communion trays which had both the bread and juice (we’re Baptists but not Baptist enough to use wine!) on the same tray. As people left their seats and went to one of the stations, there was someone their to serve communion to the first person in line. After this first person ate and drank, they took the tray from the person who served them and served the NEXT person in line. When that person ate and drank, they took the tray and served the next person. And on and on.

We had several positive comments from people that this was a good visual for them to immediately put in to practice what they had just been hearing from God’s word. Our hope, of course, is that the memory will stick with them and will continue to inspire them to serve and help the idle, the fainthearted and the weak.

Did I explain that okay?