Roses are red
Violets are blue
Jim Drake is a poet
and loves Twitter, too

There is new crew who has influence on me
They don’t look like birds, but they tweet merrily
About nothing special, about something obsurd
They might even use an objectionable word

But they’re Tweets, the best of their kind
Who give of their thoughts, their thinking, their minds
They share what they know and the make up the rest
Who can tell who’s story’s the best!

We all rush to home to see whats a buzz
For the limbs of the tweets are shimmering because
We’ve found a familiar home with these creatives, these tweets
and to all who know it–it is certainly sweet!

There’s a new CD coming out later this year from a Canadian worship leader named Joel Auge that you will definitely want to pick up. Joel has been part of three pretty succesful bands here – you may be familiar with his band Capstone that was involved with some Worship Together stuff for a while – and is now one of the leaders at a multi-site church in Ontario called The Meeting House.

Joel has signed with Integrity Worship and his CD “On The Blue” will be released in June. I’ve heard some of the new material and it is, like all of his other stuff, incredible. The passion and integrity with which Joel sings are inspiring – he has an amazing way of connecting very quickly with the listener and getting them to the heart of the song.

You can check out his Myspace here and help Integrity choose the cover for the new record. If you vote they’ll send you a free track on release day. Maybe we’ll be seeing Joel at re:create 09?

Most of the press that comes out of Mars Hill usually has to do with Mark Driscoll calling someone a pansy or a heretic. Too bad, really, because they are up to some really cool stuff but I definitely get the sense that media exposure is not something they are looking to attract or care much about.

One of the things that they have been blogging about for a little while is for a dedicated social network that they are calling “The City”. There have been a series of blog posts over at Codex about The City and what they are hoping it will accomplish. Here are some excerpts:

• The City is an online meeting place for Mars Hill that ties together existing community groups, service groups, and interest/strategically-based affiliations into a social network
• Mars Hill changes frequently and we need to have the agility to keep up with a rapidly changing organization
• At the end of the day we want to enable everyone to know what is the next step in their walk with Jesus
• Last night, The City went Alpha

Very cool. My hat goes off to these guys for having the vision and dedication to pull this off.  If you’re interested in this stuff and can handle the geek talk you should check out these posts.

Under Development – The City
The City – Location, Location, Location
The City – What is it?
The City – Neighborhoods
The City – Taking The Next Step
The City Update
The City – Alpha

That’s how cold it got here last night. Yes, that’s cold. How cold?

I’m thankful that God has placed me in Canada but I’m more thankful that God has given me a warm bed.

It’s been too long since I’ve done one of these – gathering my thoughts around Sunday morning was one of my two main objectives when I began blogging (connecting with other worship leaders is the other) so I need to get back on track with doing regular prefessionals and confessionals.

We had a great morning on Sunday here at OBC. It was a nice change from the week before, I’ll only say that much! Here was our service outline from Sunday -

Sunday, February 24, 2008 – “Act One”
Scene Seven – You’re Crazy
Call To Worship – Apostles’ Creed
Your Grace Is Enough – Chris Tomlin – F
Beautiful One – Tim Hughes – C
Meet & Greet/Offering/Announcements/Prayer
Colossians 1:15-16
In Christ Alone – Stuart Townend & Keith Getty – D -> E
Mighty To Save – Ben Fielding & Reuben Morgan – A
Message
Saviour King – Mia Fieldes & Marty Sampson – E

Two things I want to highlight this week:

1. Call To Worship – Apostles’ Creed
   We don’t typically do a scripted call to worship at the beginning of our service. We may read a passage of scripture or just encourage people to focus their thoughts on God as we begin but this weekend we were very intentional about calling people to really consider what was about to happen. We wanted to remind them that when the church gathers for worship it is time that is set apart from the rest of the week – we gather to give God praise for who He is and what He’s done, we gather to hear from His word and we gather to encourage one another.

   I gave some context to the Apostles’ Creed and then we read it together. It is a great statement of the foundations of our faith and is very symbolic of joining together with the church around the world and throughout history. Doing this together set a really nice tone for our service and gave people a chance to just take a breath and focus their thoughts as we began our service.

2. Click Tracks
   This was our third week of using click tracks and the band pulled it off beautifully. I bought tracks and charts for Beautiful One and Mighty To Save from PraiseCharts.com and we had a great time with the tech team working on our communication and transitions from song to song. The loops added some really nice texture to the song and gave us a very full sound. Because we don’t use clicks and loops for our whole set there was some nice variety in our arrangements this week.

   I did some editing with Mighty To Save and pulled out the 6 bar guitar/drum intro – it didn’t really set the song up well where it fell in the service and the intro was very long. We came in with the whole band right on the intro to the verse which worked really well.We will definitely continue to use clicks and I’m excited to see what other possibilities this is going to open up for our bands.

If you read the words of the songs and the passages from the service (Colossians 1 and Acts 17) you probably get the sense that our morning was very much focused on Christ. Earl talked about the importance of knowing our story, knowing the story of others, knowing the story of God and knowing how all three of those stories intersect. We are at a time in the life of our church where interacting with people outside of our church is a huge thing and we are trying to equip and encourage people to be able to do that in a way that is natural and God-honouring.

At the end of both services we had people come forward if they were willing to make a commitment to find those connection points with other people and to remind them that the “unknown god” they are searching for is real, alive and waiting for them.

Anyone adding one of these to their worship teams? Apparently this is being sponsored and marketed by Absolut Vodka with the question “In an Absolut world, would machines be creative?”

I’ll post some photos and a bit of a description but you should really head over to Make Magazine and watch the video of this thing in action – incredible!

I met up with Dan Paluska (the other maker is Jeff Lieberman) – they have created the “ABSOLUT QUARTET”, an “automated multi-instrumental orchestral machine, a large-scale electromechanical sculpture consisting of three instruments and thousands of parts, working together to create one piece of music. The main timbre is a marimba played by balls shot from a robotic cannon. Other components include a series of wineglasses played by little robotic fingers and an array of robotic percussive instruments”. If you’re in NYC this is a must-see in person (186 Orchard st.).

This is my Watercooler Wednesday post.

The music and message of Hillsong United has pretty much swept around the globe but it is my understanding that southern Ontario is kind of like “Australia North” for these guys – to say that they are popular here is an understatement. At a time when NOBODY comes up on here on tours because they can’t sell tickets (Newsboys, Jars of Clay, Third Day, etc etc regularly have shows booked, promoted and then cancelled) the guys from Hillsong United are able to fill 3,000 seat venues twice in one night. It is a pretty amazing thing.

Last summer there were somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 people gathered for a Hillsong United concert. (The debate of concert vs. worship experience will be a never-ending one but I think it was promoted as a concert so I have no problem calling it that.) Those are huge numbers in any market but these guys have really struck a chord with students here and they are not missing the opportunity.

Later this summer Hillsong United will be running their youth conference in Toronto. The Facebook group is already alive and kicking! :) I’m excited that this is happening close to us – not because United is my favourite band or that I love a ton of their songs but I think that this will have a positive impact on the church culture and arts culture in our region. Hillsong will be able to gather thousands of students from Canada and parts of the US who will come together to worship (God, hopefully!) and who will be inspired to return home as worshippers.

..so I thought I’d pass it along. John Voelz has some pretty sweet blog action going on over at Vertizontal and is always sharing stuff that they are doing at Westwinds. With the loads and loads of cool things that are happening there, the coolest thing is still the fact that their teaching pastor is Canadian.

John as set up a Vertizontal Gallery that has some awesome stuff displayed including this beautiful re-work of a page from an old piano techniques & theory book.

Fascinating article in the Toronto Star last week.

The Songwriters Association of Canada proposes a $5 monthly fee on subscribers’ Internet bills that would make it legal to download music and hopefully save the failing music industry.

THE PROBLEM 

Sales of CDs are down 20 per cent worldwide and 35 per cent in Canada, compared to 2006.

An estimated 1.6 billion music files are downloaded in Canada each year on “grey-market” peer-to-peer systems, representing $1.6 billion in lost revenue, using the iTunes price model of 99 cents per download.

The total number of purchased downloads in Canada was 38 million in 2005. The ratio of shared to paid downloads is 98:2 (98% shared files vs. 2% purchased downloads).

Virtually every song ever recorded is available through peer-to-peer file-sharing (more than 79 million recordings). Only 3 million songs are available on legal sites.

Sources: Songwriters Association of Canada; Canadian Record Industry Association; PricewaterhouseCoopers LLB

WHAT’S THE PLAN?

SAC is calling for the creation of the Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing, which would make it legal to share music on peer-to-peer networks in exchange for the monthly fee. The fee – amounting to an estimated $500 million to $900 million annually in Canada – would be administered by a collective of artists, songwriters, music publishers and record labels. “Monetizing peer-to-peer file-sharing would generate significant new revenue for creators and the music industry,” says acting SAC president Eddie Schwartz, “and re-establish revenue levels (for songwriters) that we haven’t seen since 2000-2001.”

Links -
Toronto Star -  www.thestar.com
Songwriters Association of Canada – www.songwriters.ca

So what do you think? In principle I don’t hate the idea. I know that artists and labels are at their wits’ end trying to come up with a solution to get back to the glory days of the late 80′s and early 90′s. They know that there is money out there to be made and they need to find a way to make it.

As an artist, I believe 100% in the privilege of copyright and the duty that owners have to guard that copyright. I also sympathize 100% with those who are looking for a better way to allow their creative works to be distributed to the masses.

All I know is that it’s been around 18 months since I’ve actually purchased a physical CD. As a musician and consumer of music that must speak volumes to the music industry.

Things have been crazy busy lately – travelling, potty-training, wife getting ready to go back to work, getting ready to welcome baby #3 to the world this summer, Easter prep, etc etc – so with all that going on we’ve taken advantage (in a good way!) of some great friends and left the girls for a couple of days to spend time alone as husband and wife.

We’ll be enjoying sleeping through the night, reading some good books, eating at restaurants without high chairs, soaking in the jacuzzi tub, spending some good husband & wife time together and just enjoying each other’s company.

That picture was taken in the summer so you’ll have to imagine that there’s about four feet of snow added to this picture. This is where we are for the next two days. Obviously I won’t be blogging but I’ve got a couple of posts set to go while I’m away.

If you think you’re too busy to get away and spend time with your spouse, you’ll be too busy to notice that your marriage is disappearing.