Top 3 photos from my reader today

From VeryWeirdNews.com:

From Carlos:

From ParisDailyPhoto.com:

Cool “first impression” from Granger

I’ve had the opportunity to be emailing back and forth with Mark Waltz from Granger Community Church over the past little while and thought I’d pass along the story I told him about our amazing first impression when my wife, my oldest daughter and I visited Granger on our way back from Chicago.

My wife and I had the pleasure of visiting GCC back in June of 2006. I had made the trip down to Willow for the arts conference and on my way back decided to visit a few churches that we had been following. It was Father’s Day weekend and GCC was in the middle of the iPod series – I think the message that day was on iLove but I’m not 100%. I think it’s important to note that this was my first Father’s Day as a dad, our first trip away as a family and our first time leaving our daughter in the care of total strangers at another church.

Anyways, we had our 8-month old (at the time) daughter with us. We came in to the building and found a check-in station. The guy there asked for my last name and when I gave it he said “Chris?” I was a little surprised that I was already in your database but he asked if I was on the GCC mailing list and said that all of that info is connected. That was pretty impressive.

A nursery volunteer met us at the check-in station and brought us downstairs where we met some other volunteers before heading up for the service – which was fantastic. That was the morning that one of your music guys sang “Fix You” – gave me chills.

After the service we got Avery and then had a quick tour thanks to some of your production guys. We thanked them, grabbed some lunch and headed back to the hotel. When we went to get her ready for her nap she needed a diaper change. Okay – this is the good part!! On the back of Avery’s diaper was a bright pink sticker that said “I’ve Been Changed!” with a time and the initials of a volunteer. This sounds really silly but that was the most impressive thing of our visit to GCC. The amount of care, concern and intentionality that sticker communicated was through the roof for me as a new, overprotective dad.

As I said before, that small sticker impressed me so much that it is still the main thing I talk about when GCC comes up in conversation. I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t the lights or the video screen or Mark’s preaching or the coffee or the greeters or any of that which impressed me the most about GCC – although how you guys use all of things is incredible. It was the care for my daughter communicated through a silly little sticker that really showed the heart behind what you guys do.

Ever had a really great first impression?

The Shack

So this book has generated quite the buzz since the author decided to publish it himself. I’ve heard lots of talk about it and am excited to start reading it this week. My pastor and his wife both read it and he gave me a copy for me & Sonya to read. Sounds like we’re in for a big of an adventure together!

If you haven’t heard about it, you can get more info on the book at these spots:

• WindRumors (the author’s blog)
• www.TheShackBook.com
• Subversive Influence (interview with the author)
• Lo-Fi Tribe

Have you read it?

Worship Textfessional – November 25, 2007

All in all, we had a great morning together at OBC on Sunday. One of our worship volunteers led the services and he did a great job. I love his enthusiasm when he’s leading and his ability to speak through song transitions to lead people from one song to the next – he did an exceptionally good job with that on Sunday, I thought.

We started with a very solid set – “That’s Why We Praise Him” and “Your Love Is Amazing” are both favourites of our church so even though I broke a string (again!) during the second song at the 9:00 service, the congregation carried along just fine without me. It also helped that we had an incredibly solid piano player on the team. We did a key change in the first song and took it up from C to D in the bridge so we had people really belting out right from the first song.

Our second set flowed really nice – “Everlasting God” and “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” with a responsive reading from Psalm 37 thrown in the middle. We were talking this week about the faithfulness and provision of God in our times of worry and also in our times of greed – look through Luke 12 and see how Jesus tells people to respond in each of those situations. Pretty interesting.

Our response section was the hilight for me in both services. We found a really nice arrangement of “Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus” and then blew the roof off the place with “Step By Step” by adding the “Forever We Will Sing” like Smitty does on his worship album.

So 3 sections of 2 songs each which some people don’t like but by playing around with transitions, scripture elements and dynamics we were able to make each section on its own very strong and they worked together to pull off a really good service on Sunday morning.

College Football

Although this year has been lots of fun for people who are big fans of NCAA football, I think I’m not alone in saying that I’m not overly excited about the prospect of Missouri vs. West Virginia for the national championship.

  

Maybe someone from down south can educate me but is there an another option for the big game??

Please say yes!

Going to hang with some Meeting House friends

My friend Craig asked me to come and speak to his worship volunteers this weekend at their Amplify Worship & Music Conference. I’m excited about doing it – I’ll be working with one of their musicians to do a main session on how to arrange a band effectively (when to play, when not to play, what you should play, etc) and then doing a breakout on my own related to songwriting and how to write well for congregational worship.

I’m not sure why but this week has been filled with three very different teaching/training opportunities – Tuesday night with World Vision speaking to artists who have itinerant ministries and helping them think about how to be more effective in booking events with churches. Then on Thursday night I visited some new friends at an “in-residence” ministry in our town that has students come for training from all over the world. There were students from the US, New Zealand, France, England and India. It was a real privilege to talk with them about what it means to live a life of worship and to look at the story of Abraham together. Today’s conference is much more practical and hopefully it will be helpful for the people who are there!

Needless to say, I’m excited to get through the weekend to have my day off with my wife and kids!

What have you done this week?

Worship Pre-Fessional – Sunday, November 25, 2007

Here’s what we’re doing at Orangeville Baptist Church tomorrow – November 25, 2007.

Sunday, November 25, 2007
“Follow Me”
That’s Why We Praise Him – C -> D
Your Love Is Amazing – G
Offering/Announcements/Prayer
Everlasting God – A
Responsive Reading – Psalm 37
Great Is Thy Faithfulness – C
Message – “Making God’s Agenda Yours” – Luke 12
Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus – D
Step By Step – G

A couple of cool things for us tomorrow – we’re using a really nice arrangement of “Tis So Sweet” that I found by scouring iTunes the other day. There’s lots of hoedown and bluegrass versions of that song! But we found this one which will serve us nicely (we’re adding vocals, obviously). And then going into “Step By Step” we’re using the chorus/ending from MWS’s “Forever We Will Sing” which we’ve done before. I think those two songs are going to work really nice to close our service and give people a chance to respond to the message in worship.

New online brainstorming tool

I was looking online this week for an online tool that would help with some brainstorm/mindmap stuff and I found this – bubbl.us

The interface is really intuitive – start with your “big idea” and then hit return to create a child balloon or hit tab to create a sibling balloon. After spending 20 minutes or so playing with some ideas for our Christmas series here’s what I ended up with -

 

Click on the image and you can see it full-size.

At any time you can click and drag a balloon to change its location or you can “associate” balloons together (see the good->bad connection just below the “Surprise” box in the middle of the screen?). If you like you can collaborate on these things and invite other participants or export the diagram to post online for people to check out.

Good tool! I think I’ll be using this one alot.

Helping artists book more shows..

I was asked by my friends at World Vision if I would come teach a seminar on helping artists become more effective in booking more events in churches. Because I’ve worn many hats in the past (artist, manager, promoter, consultant, booking agent, publicist, radio promoter, blah blah blah) and am now the one receiving phone calls from artists I was able to put some (hopefully!) helpful ideas together for people who are looking to share their ministry with churches.

If you want the full notes from my talk, send me an email or leave a comment but here’s the quick recap:

Top 10 Things I Wish Artists Knew About Booking Events In Churches

1. Plan ahead
My calendar is sometimes 18 months ahead. Don’t call in November for a Christmas booking. September kick-off planning starts in the spring, Christmas planning starts in the summer, Easter planning starts in the fall, Summer special event planning starts in the winter. Be working 6-9 months ahead. Coming with a tour routed and 2-3 potential dates is very helpful.

2. Know when to call
Not Monday or Friday – those are usually church staff days off – don’t call those days.
Tuesday is staff meeting – don’t call that day.
Wednesday & Thursday are good options but Wednesday is best. Thursday is usually doing final details for Sunday. Best approach – send an email Tuesday evening letting me know you’re calling on Wednesday and send me links to your website, clips of your music, video and references.

3. Who are you?
Make sure all of your promotional material (emails, websites, printed pieces) advertise the same “you”. Are you a children’s entertainer? Your promo picture should tell me that. Don’t make me figure out what you’re about!

4. Have a crystal clear mission
Are you a worship artist best-suited for Sunday morning? Do you have songs to sing specifically to women? Is your focus outreach to youth? If you have a clear description of what you’re trying to do with your ministry, it will help me decide what events are suitable for booking you. And, perhaps more importantly, if I don’t have an event that would fit you I will probably know someone who does.

5. Come with realistic expectations
If this is the first time we’ve worked together, don’t call with huge expectations of payment. Unless I’ve budgeted for X number of performance events per year I’m going to have to pull the budget money from somewhere else. If you’re calling me as a chance to get some exposure in a new market or to gain some experience then that may be “payment” enough for the event. If you’re going to a “big church” for the first time, don’t expect that to mean you’ll get a big audience unless your performance is tied to a bigger church-wide event – ie. Christmas banquet, community outreach event, etc.

6. Develop relationships
Getting an opening slot through the artist vs. talking with the promoter about that opening slot. The artist may or may not be able to get you added and they may or may not ever go back to that venue BUT the promoter will more than likely work that venue again AND will have other events in the same region that will need artists.

7. Give permission to say “no”
You called me, I didn’t call you. So if it doesn’t work out and I need to say no, please don’t be disappointed or upset. “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything!”
And remember..

8. “No” doesn’t mean “never”
Just because a church says no to you this time, don’t drop communication with them. Ask if it’s okay to add them to your email or mailing list – you should have a “fan list” and a “promoters list” with different content targeted towards each group. (NOTE: You may also want to consider having an “industry list” as well for radio stations, booking agents, labels and other industry people who are looking for different info than fans or potential promoters.)

9. Help spread the word
Once the booking is confirmed, get all the info online as quickly as possible. The church is investing significant amounts of money, time, volunteer hours, energy and logistics on making this event happen – make their investment worthwhile! An artist that promotes events along with a church is an artist that will be booked again!

10. Do what you say you’re going to do
This goes back to “who you are”. If you’re booked to be entertainment for a dinner theatre event, don’t spend half the show talking. If you’re booked to perform at an outreach event and give a clear presentation of the gospel intertwined with your music, make sure you give a clear presentation of the gospel. The church is not asking you to sell out or be someone you’re not – the church is just looking for an artist with the skill set that matches their need for that particular event.

Christmas resources at worshipmusic.com

www.worshipmusic.com has some “Featured Christmas Resources” available – cause I know we’re all looking for them right about now!

Here are a few things worth checking out:

Various Artists – Come Let Us Adore Him
If you’re planning on doing “specials” during Christmas, you’ll want to check out this CD. We used “Sanctus” by Ana Laura as the opener for our Christmas Eve services two years ago. This is a compilation CD featuring different artists and there’s a good mix of new and traditional with some pretty good arrangements.

iWorship Christmas – Resource DVD
I know that lots of people aren’t fans of the iWorship stuff but the Christmas one is a good resource to have. There’s the Christmas version of “Offering” by Paul Baloche which changes up some of the lyrics and tells parts of the Christmas story – it’s pretty well done. We’ve used these videos as walk-ins during Advent the last couple of years and I think we’ll do the same this year.

Hillsong – Celebrating Christmas Resource CD
It’s Hillsong so you know it’s done well. Again, if you’re looking to do a special and you need charts, this is a good resource. “O Rejoice” and “Saviour Christ The King” could both be used as Christmas Eve performance songs.

Visual Tracks – O Holy Night by Point of Grace
I haven’t used this but I have seen other Visual Tracks. They’re okay – but I thought I’d put it here in case you’re looking for something like this. Basically this is the poor man’s version of iWorship videos (and some of you are cringing at the thought!) but they have a pretty good selection of songs available.

Hope that’s helpful!

Worship Pre-Fessional – Sunday, November 18, 2007

It’s early and I’m in my office waiting for the rest of our team to arrive. Our musicians and tech team show up at 7:45 Sunday morning and are here for about 5 hours – their dedication to leading our congregation in worship is inspiring.

Here’s what’s on for today -

Beautiful One – Tim Hughes – C
Our God Saves – Paul Baloche – C
Ancient of Days – Gary Sadler & Jamie Harvill – C
(Yes, three songs in C. We’ll “C” how that goes.)
Our Father In Heaven – Brian Doerksen – G
Message – Luke 11 – “How Should We Pray?”
Our Father In Heaven – Brian Doerksen – G
(Yes, twice. We’re using this song to bookend the message.)
Extended prayer response

Should be a good morning. I’ll let you know how it goes! I’m excited about the prayer response at the end. Since Earl is preaching on prayer we thought that actually having people pray would be a pretty good application – we’re geniuses, eh??

Jeff Johnson – Glorious Day

I came across Jeff’s song “He Rose” on a compilation CD and just found out that he’s released a new CD called “Glorious Day”.

I’ve had a quick listen and there are a couple of tracks that stand out. There’s a nice re-worked version of “Old Rugged Cross,” a new version of “He Rose,” (which we’re going to use for our Easter services) and the title track is really nice too.

If you like Shane & Shane, Justin McRoberts, Bebo Norman, Casting Crowns or other artists that are similar, you’ll probably enjoy Jeff’s music. Help an indie artist continue his ministry and buy his record!

Jeff Johnson’s website
“Glorious Day” on iTunes

 

Christmas – here we come!

Yesterday afternoon we finished our service planning for our Christmas series and I’m excited. Lots of work to do but I think the services will have lots of impact. I’ll blog through the process but basically we’re going to look at the “unexpected” side of Christmas – God Himself born as a helpless baby, coming to dwell among us as a human, born to unwed teenage parents, angels appearing to shepherds and magicians and then the unexpected responses of each of those people.

Of course those responses speak to how we should respond when God makes Himself present in our lives. Hopefully we’ll get people to a point where they’ll consider that response.

We’re building this as a three-part series – part one on Dec 16, part two on Dec 23 and then part three on Dec 24.

I’ve seen lots of people talk about being in the thick of their Christmas planning process but I haven’t seen many details from people.

So what are you doing??

Blessed Be Your Name. Really?

I had a huge post done on this but I went and deleted most of it just cause I’m still processing in my brain. Here’s the condensed version.

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On Sunday morning we sang one of the classics of the modern worship movement, “Blessed Be Your Name”, written by Matt Redman and his wife, Beth. The song won a Dove Award in 2005 for “Worship Song of the Year” and the lyrics represent this amazing contrast between the dark days that life sometimes brings us with the hope and peace we find in God.

Playing that song has often been encouraging for me personally and also for our congregation – but Sunday was different. And I’m not really sure how to explain this so we’ll see where this goes.

Right before our second service I met a woman who we’ve been praying for. She is related to someone from our church and has a pretty intense form of cancer. I’m not sure of the official prognosis but I’d say it doesn’t look good.

As we moved through the set, I knew we were coming to that song. And I knew that I was going to have a hard time singing it. Because I was thinking about that woman – Was she able to sing the lyrics? Was she upset with us for being so trite with a song like that? Is she thinking about her life as we do this or have songs lost all their meaning?

That moment had a significant impact on me and I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with it. I wonder if anyone out there has wrestled with the same kind of thing. I’m sure somebody has.

More thoughts on songwriting

I told you about a songwriters’ forum we hosted a couple weeks ago and how I thought it went really well. Out of that we decided to get together again so this week 7 of us spent a couple hours digging through this idea of what it means to write our own material for congregational worship. We talked about the importance of the lyric for “worship music” and where we can find inspiration.

After a couple of hours together we found that we had 3 potential song ideas to work with all based on the theme of grace. We’re taking those ideas home to work on and everyone will be sending me some song/lyric ideas next week. We’ll be getting together again before Christmas and hopefully we’ll keep on taking some next steps with this stuff!

If you’re interested, I’ve got a two-page outline with 14 inspirations for songwriting. Let me know if you’re interested in seeing it and I’ll pass it along. Here are some quick ideas:

• Google
  • Decide on a topic for a song, put that world in Google, hit search and see where things take you. If you use Firefox or the newest version of Internet Explorer, click the results with the middle button of your mouse and it will open the page in a new tab. You can open dozens of new pages this way while still staying on the Google results page.
• Read poetry
  • Great words will often inspire great words. If you don’t have a favourite poet, go to the library and get an anthology of poetry. Don’t feel like you have to write poetically but let the beauty of the language inspire and direct you.
• Write a song every day
  • I know people who do this because it really works for them and I also know people who do this simply for the discipline of doing it. Don’t worry about quality – one great idea may come from one hundred attempts but that will make all of those attempts worth it!
• Go for a walk
  • Be inspired by creation! I know it sounds silly but as you walk just start naming the things you see. “Oh, there’s a green leaf. It’s on a branch way up high on that big maple tree. Look at the squirrel making his nest with those sticks.” You might want to make sure that you’re by yourself when you’re doing this
• Keep a notebook
  • You never know when a great idea will strike! Have a notebook in your car, your purse, at your office, wherever and be disciplined about using it. It’s fine to have the notebook there but if you are always putting off the actual note-taking (“Oh that’s a good idea – I’ll have to remember to write that down later”) you will never actually see the benefits. Another option is to have a small audio recorder with you – lots of PDA’s have this now.

Have you got any good ideas?

The student has become the teacher – but still needs to be a student.

That’s a long title for a blog post, I know.

Okay – so here’s my situation. I’ve been asked to do some teaching over the next few months with other churches and ministries and I’ll be looking for some “real world” input from all of you wise, brilliant folks. Those of you are not wise or brilliant, keep your opinions to yourselves

I’m teaching a seminar shortly to a bunch of musicians who are interested in booking more events in churches. Because I’ve been a travelling artists, managed artists and helped get them booked and am now on the church side of things, I’ve got some insight from both sides of the fence.

But what about you? What do you wish artists knew when they called you looking for a booking? What would be really helpful for you when it came to booking artists?

Please help!

Gibson Robot Guitar

Will this thing play itself too?

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(Another video for you RSSers)

Get more info here – http://www.gibson.com/robotguitar/index.html

 

Four links on Monday

I’ve scoured my Google reader for the best of the best of the blogworld and here’s what I’ve come up with.

• Fred McKinnon is telling the “O Holy Night” story and it is very quickly becoming very funny
• Stephen Barry’s church is giving one of their small groups some moola to implement a great missional idea. Got some ideas to help them out?
• Michael at Oak Leaf Church has a great “behind the scenes” blog and pointed to some resources they give to newcomers
• Billy Chia is doing a series of posts on “5 Purposes That are Vital to a Thriving Worship Ministry“

Worship Textfessional – November 11, 2007

Orangeville Baptist Church – Sunday, November 11, 2007
“Follow Me” – Luke 6
Our God Saves – Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown – C
How Awesome Is Our God – Chris Vacher & Craig Douglas – C
Blessed Be Your Name – Matt & Beth Redman – A
Message – “Obeying Jesus”
Communion
Jesus Paid It All – Trad. & Kristian Stanfill – Bb
You Are God Alone – Billy & Cindy Foote – A

As a whole, our gatherings on Sunday morning were fantastic. Being Remembrance Day we opened our service with a video and a moment of silence. For you RSS folks, the video is at the end of the post on the site.

The set of music before the message was very solid – “Our God Saves” is a new one for us so we did it as a prelude and the congregation caught on very quickly. Paul & Brenton write songs that are so easy for people so sing – they are a big help to us! That song led really nicely in to “How Awesome” which we’ve done a few times now and the congregation is pretty familiar with. Our worship leader (one of the three volunteer worship leaders we have) transitioned really nicely from those two songs in to “Blessed Be Your Name” in both services. Overall that package of music flowed really well together and the congregation was pretty engaged.

Earl’s message was solid. We are looking at what it means, in practical terms, to follow Jesus. After we “pray the prayer” what does following Him actually look like. Looking at what Jesus says about loving our enemies is always convicting but Earl brought it down to a very practical level. We all have that person in our life whose picture we place on “the dartboard” – we may not say or act out in negative ways to them but we may have thoughts and desires of negative things towards them. Earl’s comment was that to live out loving our enemies in practical terms means to take that picture off the dartboard, find the nicest picture frame we have and place that photo in a place of honour among the pictures of our family and close friends.

We came out of the message focused on God’s mercy – taking it back to the cross – and transitioned right in to communion. I loved the arrangement we did of “Jesus Paid It All” and moving to “You Are God Alone” was great. We did this as a presentation and brought the congregation in for the bridge and chorus at the end. People responded pretty incredibly in the second service to this song and we had some amazing moments of worship.

All in all, it was a great morning. The songs flowed very well, the team played together incredibly well, I had lots of comments on how good the mix was and we gave an opportunity for our congregation to give praise to God.

What more can you ask for?

Here’s the video produced by Veterans Affairs Canada a couple of years ago -

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