LifeChurch.tv – One Prayer

The guys at LifeChurch.tv are putting out the call for churches around the world to preach a 4-week series together starting the June 7-8 weekend called “One Prayer”. Craig Groeschel has put together a video that explains why they are doing this and how they see it playing out – very interesting.

They’ve set up a website with more info and instructions and a list of pastors whose messages will be available for this series. Looks like an incredible concept and something that will definitely get a lot of people talking.

Seeded paper

Some of you may have seen JVo’s post about printing bulletins on paper that had flower seeds in it. People were encouraged to take their bulletin home from church, plant it and have flowers in the garden a few weeks later. Very cool. I think we will definitely use this idea at some point when we do a series on spiritual growth, environmental stewardship, or something else where this could be a very physical take-away for people.

Here’s a link with more info – http://www.flowerseedpaper.com/seeds/flowerseed_lotka_computer_paper.html

Lotka paper is made from the bark of the Daphne bush which regenerates naturally providing a renewable resource. This paper is acid free and your purchase will benefit the economic enterprise of rural craftspeople in Nepal. The seeded paper on your right can be planted in soil to produce a gift of flowers for the recipient of your correspondence. All lotka papers are 50% recycled content. Both styles are 20# paper that is safe to laser or inkjet print at home.

William P. Young – Author of “The Shack” in Kitchener

I’ve blogged a couple of times about “The Shack” – a book that our staff and elders have been reading this year and has generated some good conversation. The author, William P. Young, is coming to speak at a church in Kitchener this weekend and if you live in southern Ontario you may be interested in checking this out.

If you want more info, head over to www.grandviewchurch.ca -

William Young Friday Session
7 – 8pm
“Why How We Understand God, His Nature and Relationship Within the Trinity Affect The Way We Live Our Lives: Why The Story of the Shack Is So Incredibly Powerful.”

8 – 9pm
Roundtable Discussion: William Young, Ian Campbell, and Dr. Barker. “Papa, The God Who Roars, and the God Who Weeps!”

William Young Saturday Session
9 – 10am
“The End of Future Tripping: Joy’s Companionship”
10 – 11am
Q & A Session with the Author
11am – Noon
Book Signing

Recent music purchases

The Afters – Never Going Back To OK
A nice follow up to their debut album. The whole myspace/yourspace thing comes off as a little hokey but there are some good musical moments on this record. “Tonight” and “One Moment Away” are my favourite tracks so far.

 

 Ben Cantelon – Daylight Breaks Through

I bought Ben’s CD after seeing that he co-wrote “Happy Day” with Tim Hughes. Good stuff from another solid UK worship leader. His songs are less congregational that Hughes or Redman but still a solid collection of songs. He’s definitely influenced by those guys and is probably still developing his own style but I think we’ll be hearing more and more from him.

 

Starfield – I Will Go

Some good representation from the Canadian boys. This is their third album released on Sparrow (they did at least one other full-length as indies in Canada) and my first impression is that it’s the weakest of the three so far. I know bands usually have a sophomore slump but I think this may be the slump record for these guys. They are sort of being cast as the new Delirious/Newsboys and I think they are still growing in that. The good thing is that these guys are STUPID talented and focused on God so they will continue to grow and continue to produce good music.

 

Eddie Kirkland – Orthodoxy

Love it. I’ve got to find a way to do “Hands Of The Healer” in a service. This is so different from the typical worship stuff that’s out there right now and if he’s as influenced by Chesterton as I think he is, you know this is going to have solid theology behind it. If you’ve seen the videos and responses to “How He Loves Us” online and have not really felt as WOW about it as other people seem to be (I’m including myself in the “I’m not so sure” group) then you may want to hear his version of this great song.

Lee McDerment – A Matchlight In The Dark

Lots of hype about this CD in blogworld. Lots. And it is warranted – solid record, good music, great lyrics. Lots of people are pumping this album as “worship for men” and I think that’s only part of the story. This is a solid record with songs that could definitely be used by churches whose sound lines up close with what’s on the radio.

 

 Tommy Walker – I Have A Hope (single)

I was on worshipsource.com randomly a couple of weeks ago and heard a preview of this song (I didn’t buy the whole album) and was instantly hooked. Tommy Walker is a genius of modern-day worship songwriting. I was actually trying to figure out a way to try and make this song work in our Easter Sunday service but it didn’t happen. We will definitely be doing this one – at least as a presentation song – sometime soon.

 

Nichole Nordeman – Recollection

I have loved Nichole’s songs for a long time. Buying this album was a no-brainer for me. She is one of the most poetic, expressive songwriters out there and the depth of meaning tied up in seemingly simple lyrics blows me away.

Worship Prefessional – Sunday, March 30, 2008

Alright – so tomorrow we are kicking off our new series here at OBC, “identity”. We’re talking about the things we do around here that make us unique. For this series we’re talking about breaking each service in to two parts – worship/community at the front end and teaching/application at the back end. We’ll focus on a certain aspect of the character of God during the worship part and move to the teaching part out of that.

The plan for tomorrow -

Because Of Your Love – Paul Baloche – F
Announcements/Offering/Meet & Greet
Scripture
How Awesome Is Our God – Chris Vacher & Craig Douglas – C
Yesterday, Today & Forever – Vicky Beeching – E
Unchanging – Chris Tomlin – E
Jesus You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown – F
Prayer
Teaching – identity:ignite

For the worhip section we’re focusing on the “unchanging-ness” of God. I don’t think that’s a word but it’s the second time I’ve used it so that makes it official. It’s going in my dictionary. We’ll be using the songs, scripture and prayer to remind people that God is the same today as He’s always been and can have faith that He will be the same tomorrow and the day after.

“ignite” is a cool concept for us – basically it covers the understanding that everyone in our church would take their own spiritual development seriously through Sunday morning, small groups and spiritual disciplines. We’ll be covering Sunday morning tomorrow – why do we do it? how do we prepare? how do we engage? Good questions to be asking and I’m looking forward to working through this stuff with our congregation tomorrow. We’ll also be providing people with some resources that will allow them to take some next steps in the area of spiritual disciplines – personal Bible study and prayer, specifically.

I’m actually off stage tomorrow morning. I try and do this once every couple of months so that I can check stuff out from our congregation’s perspective and also to give our musicians a chance to run rehearsal and the service on their own. Because I oversee our “first impressions” (greeters, ushers, etc) it’s good to be on the ground with them every once in a while.

Buckhead – Good Friday

You may have seen the video from Buckhead’s Good Friday service but there’s another post that you should probably check out.

First, go to the Buckhead Production blog and watch the edited video and see what these guys were able to pull off on Good Friday. Even in the shortened version you can tell that the experience was Christ-focused, meaningful and impactful.

After you’ve watched that head over to the Buckhead blog and read a post from Amber who produced the service. There is some great info here and gives some good insight into the brainstorm/production process at Buckhead.

Carlos did a confessional too showing some of their rehearsal time and showing some behind the scenes stuff.

Fun day today

I’ll be heading out real soon to head down to London, ON for a good day with old friends and new.

I’ll be having breakfast with an old friend that I haven’t been able to spend some good time with for a few years – it’s amazing how quickly time passes once marriage, kids, jobs, etc enter the mix.

I’m having lunch with a worship pastor at a church in London – I’d send you to their website but they don’t have one. When you see some pictures of the church you’ll be scratching your head about that. They’ve got a brand spankin’ new beautiful building but no website to tell people about all the great stuff they’re doing and give them opportunities to take some next steps in their involvement with the church.

I’ve got the chance to speak at a one-day conference tomorrow that is designed to help young artists figure out their calling and make some sense of the whole business side of being in a band. I’ve been able to give this seminar a few times and the response has always been positive so I’m excited about the content being helpful for people tomorrow.

To close off the day I’m having dinner with my friend Marty who has just transitioned out of full-time ministry. It will be good to see him and hear how things are going in his life.

Then I get to go home and get some sleep before Sunday morning comes.

Easter – my pastor’s thoughts

My pastor, Earl Marshall posted some of what he experienced before and during our Easter services on Sunday -

It all started with one of our elderly men sharing with me his own story of life change.  Before the first service this gentleman waited patiently for me as I finished a discussion with another individual and once I was done asked if we could speak somewhere in private.  When we got to my office he proceeded to tell me how that on Tuesday morning of this past week at 4:00 a.m. he had become a follower of Jesus.  I did not know that he wasn’t a follower of Jesus.  On his own admission he told me that all his life he has been a religious man but that the last couple of months our teaching on Sunday mornings has clarified for him that following Jesus is not primarily about believing about but believing in Jesus.

New series – identity

The next few weeks here are going to be fun. One of the things that our elders have been talking through is our membership process – we’re a church that is almost 150 years old and of course some of the things which were important and meaningful 20 or 50 or 100 years ago is probably not important and meaningful to our people today. We are not very “high pressure” when it comes to membership but we have tried to be very intentional in how we communicate what it means to be a part of our church.

At the beginning of this discussion we started talking about developing a new kind of membership class that would help people understand more about our church, our history, our function and give them some opportunities to take some “next steps” in their involvement here. We knew that we didn’t want to create the typical membership class that was just information download and as we’ve worked through the process what we’ve come up with is something we’re calling “identity”.

Here’s the basic concept – our mission statement as a church (the reason we exist) is to “glorify God by making disciples who love Him completely and others sacrificially.” There’s lots of stuff packed in to that statment but that’s a discussion for another day. When we look at that mission statement and start dreaming about what it would mean if our church would really take that mission seriously we come up with a long-term vision for our church, that we would “Transform Our Region, Transform Our World.” Again, lots packed in there but that has really become a tagline for lots of our ministries and activities here – people have really latched on to it.

As we’ve looked at that vision we’ve put some thought in to a “vision path” or strategic plan that we call our 4 I’s – invest, invite, ignite, impact. Here’s a quick rundown of each of those 4 I’s -

• Invest – the expectation that every person in our church would have a growing relationship with someone who would not call themselves a follower of Christ with the intention that we’d be able to share our story and share God’s story
• Invite – the church leadership’s responsibility to provide events across every ministry area (kids, youth, adults, etc) which leverage those invest relationships and give people an opportunity to discover more about what it means to follow Christ
• Ignite – the reponsibility on every person in our church to take their own spiritual growth seriously through 3 S’s – Sunday morning, small groups and spiritual disciplines
• Impact – the active “living out” of our faith in our region and in our world

As we started talking about how we were going to kick off this “membership class” the first time we realized that it was important to run our whole church through it. What better way than Sunday morning?? So we’ve taken the content and adapted it to a Sunday morning context and will be delivering it over the next four weeks. The format will be a little bit different – we will still worship, hear from God’s word and meet together to encourage one another but there will be much more crowd interaction and feedback from the congregation as well as more direct resourcing for people to help them take a “next step” in one or more of these areas. Our goal for this series is that every person who calls OBC their church home would take a next step in their spiritual journey over the next four weeks.

So what do those next steps look like? It might be a commitment to Christ for the first time, baptism, getting involved in ministry, joining a small group, putting a plan together to make personal Bible reading a priority, etc etc. Every week we’ll be giving people resources focused on the content of that week that will help them with that next step.

This Sunday we’re going to be look at IGNITE and how Sunday morning fits in to that. We’ll sort of be stepping in to the matrix a little bit – we’re gathering on Sunday morning to talk about why Sunday morning is important and trying to make Sunday morning important while we gather on Sunday morning

I’m going to be blogging through this whole series to give you a bit of an inside look on how we’re doing things.

Creative Chaos – Krazee Arts Camp

This post is part of Carlo’s Creative Chaos series.

We ran a camp last summer for 8- to 11-year old kids called Krazee Arts Camp. The focus was on just letting kids experience new forms of artistic expression without feeling any kind of pressure to produce good art. Every day kids rotated through six art workshops with krazee names – Art Attack (arts & crafts, sort of), I’ve Got Rhythm (dance), Joyful Noises (music), Running Wild (sports & games), Act One (drama), and Expressions By Hand (puppets).

Overall the camp was a homerun but the real highlight was our Variety Show on Friday night. We brought all the kids back and they brought parents, neighbours, grandparents, friends, etc etc to show them the great art stuff they had been doing during the week. It was a great night!

To give you a bit of a feel for what we did, here’s a little recap video -

Jill Paquette – ‘Tis So Sweet

If there is someone who stole the show at re:create this year it was Canadian singer/songwriter Jill Paquette. Her version of “Tis So Sweet” combined with the reading from The Voice Revealed was heart-crushing, in a good way. Immediately after that session people were asking who that girl was and how we could get her music. Jill put out a record a bunch of years ago on Reunion Records but seems to be an indie now and I don’t think anyone’s found out how to find her new stuff.

Thankfully Seth has saved the day and found this video on YouTube! Beautiful voice, beautiful song. Nice work, Jill!

Easter – hip hop ministry

Mar 26th, 2008 | asides, ideas, worship | 3 Comments

Do you think that since I did a Bill Gaither tune on Easter Sunday that it got me enough cred to pull this off??

HT: Church Relevance

Stats

Mar 26th, 2008 | asides | 6 Comments

I’m not sure if I qualify as a stat ho but this is interesting.

Worship Leader Magazine blog collision + StumbleUpon = most hits ever

Worship Leader Magazine thoughts

Mar 26th, 2008 | asides, ideas, links, tools, worship | 11 Comments

This was originally posted over at TheWorshipCommunity.com and I’m adding it to my blog as part of Randy’s Watercooler Wednesday.

Wow – what a crazy day of blog collisions that started out a few months ago and came to a head yesterday on several sites.

Tuesday morning Alastair (the original blogger) emailed me and the other commentors on his original post from a few months ago to let us know that Julie from Worship Leader Magazine had commented on his thoughts and that we may be interested in reading them. I re-posted her comment as did Mandy and Joel. And then things took off – we fired a whack of emails up and down the east coast yesterday talking about WLM’s reaction and how people were responding to the discussion as it was posted on our blogs.

One of the things that I said to that crew was that the “divide” is now gone between customer and company. In the old days I bought a product, told my friends if it was good or bad, friend either bought it or didn’t. But the company generally could figure out what public opinion was concerning their product based on sales – increasing sales, positive opinion and vice versa.

Today, sales probably aren’t a good indication of public opinion. WLM may be doing just fine (or at least think they are doing just fine) with subscriptions, advertising, pay-to-place on the SD CD (Fred – $2500?? Seriously??) but obviously they are NOT connected to the public opinion concerning their magazine. Obviously they are NOT connected to a huge portion of their audience and potential customer base who live and interact online.

For those of us who blog, consider ourselves at least mildly technologically savvy and are able to use Google, by the time an article shows up in WLM it is old news for us. By the time ANY print magazine is featuring new tech, new gear, new software, etc etc we’ve already seen it online, downloaded a demo, figured out if it works for us or not, posted a review, recommended the product to other people who may be helped by it or completely trashed it and told people to stay away – all of that BEFORE the review hits newsstands.

Again, it’s a whole new world. From the sounds of things today, WLM had a bit of a wake-up call over the past 18 hours and will be taking some of these comments to heart to discover what some next steps might look like for them.

Link – Worship Audition Info

Mar 26th, 2008 | asides, ideas, links, tools, worship | No Comments

Joshua Seller is the Worship Ministry Coordinator at Harvest Bible Chapel in Oakville, ON. He blogs over at Passionate Reverence.

He posted some great info on how they do auditions at Harvest here and I thought lots of you would find this helpful -

• Ask that a Worship Team Application is filled out
  • This form contains a brief background of the persons testimony, their understanding of what worship is, what and how long they have been playing or singing

• Phone call or email asking if they have attended a PWTP
  • HBC offers a night called “Party with the Pastors” where we invite new people out who have been coming to Harvest and want to get involved. This night is a way for someone to fast track, hear about our doctrine, history of the church and ask any questions. Its in a home, so its really a great way to get to know someone
    on a more personal level.
• Get them plugged into a small group
  • If they are going to be used in a stage ministry at our church it is important that they a.) call HBC their home church and b.) are growing with other believers in a small group. Harvest is a church of small groups not a church with small groups. Because of the rapid growth we have always had a hard time finding small groups for all congregates so a waiting list is usually the case for most people.
• Face to Face / Musical Audition
  • If they have stuck around long enough to make it to this stage than I am usually excited for the possibilities. Because we don’t let just “anyone” who can play or sing use their talent in our worship services it really weeds out who is there to perform and who is there to serve the Lord. What I would do is email a couple of chord charts along with a mp3 asking for a certain guitar hook or beat or arrangement to be learned and then brought to the audition. We would play through a couple of songs and the I usually spring a new song on them and see how well they can adapt to new material. I then give them a chance to play what they have been working on and then another opportunity to play something of their choice.
• Letter of response
  • Usually after an audition we like to pray about the person and really seek out where the best possible placement is for that person. We have many people audition but a lot of the time they would do better in a different ministry then on our normal weeekend worship team. (i.e. mens bible study, small group leading, children’s ministry). Again, this comes down to the person’s heart to serve- if they want to be on the weekend stage and no where else then a red flag goes up. After a decision has been made we will send out a letter to inform the auditioned where we feel would be the best place for them to serve is. If we don’t feel that they are ready to begin serving (as a singer or musician) we ask that they re-audition in 6 months.

• Weekend shadow
  • Because we run 3 identical services and rehearse on Saturdays its alot of hours and your weekend is pretty much tied up. To help each new member see and feel out how we run our services we ask that new members join us for 2-3 weeks to just stand on the stage and play along (unplugged) to get a feel and sense for what is expected.

Check his post and go read more stuff on his blog cause he’s got some good stuff!

Worship Leader Magazine

Mar 25th, 2008 | links, tools, worship | 12 Comments

A few months ago Alastair over at Live To Worship asked the blog world a few questions -

How do you guys rate Worship Leader Magazine?  Do you think it is worth subscribing to?  What are the enhanced song CDs like?  How many songs are on each CD?

A few of us answered and the responses were.. well.. less than stellar. Hop over to the site and check the comments. You’ll see that the folks at Worship Leader Magazine found Alastair’s post and our comments and decided to respond -

Hey Guys,
Great feedback. Thanks! I will share this with our Song Discovery Editor who listens to about 1000 songs every listening cycle to get down to the final 30 or so that go to the Board. To dispel any concern regarding getting on the CD, no one vote (including my own) can sway a panel, nobody can vote on any song which comes out of their own church or they have any bias, and the board switches every month – including often moving from regions throughout the US. We work hard to make sure the magazine are both must reads and must listens, but welcome any and all of your input to make it better for our readers and for those who are ready to give us a shot (or another shot). I would love to hear from any of you directly on specific feedback just so we can improve – our primary goal is to equip the churches we serve (approximately 45,000) so we want to be in touch!!!!
Thank you all.
Julie Reid
Executive Editor
Worship Leader Magazine

So I’ll ask the questions as well. How do you rate the magazine? Do you read it? Find it helpful? Post comments here or over at Alastair’s post and let’s see if we can put some thoughts together for the folks at WLM.

Worship Textfessional – March 23, 2008 – Easter Sunday

Mar 24th, 2008 | textfessional, worship | 7 Comments

So if there’s a Super Bowl in church world, yesterday was it. Like I told our team at rehearsal, every Sunday is important but Easter Sunday has added significance. It’s a unique opportunity to focus on celebrating the resurrection and it’s also an incredible opportunity to communicate the story of the gospel to people who are willing to listen in a way that they may not be the other 51 Sundays of the year.

We decided to focus on three things for Easter morning -  worship, word and testimony. Really that’s what we do every week but we wanted to communicate the significance of the resurrection in each of those ways and give people a real opportunity to celebrate in each of those ways.

Here’s our service outline -

Sunday, March 23, 2008 – Easter Sunday
Why It Matters – The Resurrection
Pre-Service – Our God Saves & Happy Day
Because He Lives video & chorus – Bill Gaither (what??!!) – G
Welcome/Intro/Offering
Resurrection video
All The Earth – Paul Baloche – E
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown & Ken Riley – A
Scripture – John 20:1-9
Mighty To Save chorus & bridge – Reuben Morgan & Ben Fielding – G
Message – 1 Peter 1:3-5
In Christ Alone – Stuart Townend & Keith Getty – D -> E
Baptisms!
How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin – A
How Great Thou Art chorus – Stuart Hine – A

Okay this is going to be a bit longer than usual but it’s my blog and so that’s how I’m going to roll. “How I’m going to roll” is a phrase that I’ve never said in real life but it works on the blog. Okay.

We did two songs as pre-service music to set the tone. We used clicktracks from Praise Charts for “Our God Saves” and “Happy Day” and the band pulled those off beautifully. We had an issue in our first service with the click for “Our God Saves” but our tech guys were on the ball – shut the click down and brought it back in for the intro of “Happy Day”. Nice work, Peter!

Right when we hit the ending of “Happy Day” we ran the “Because He Lives” video – the volume was up nice and high to get everyone’s attention. Right on the last note of the video the whole band came in playing the song in the same key (G, if you’re wondering) and we did the chorus in the same kind of feel that the video had just been doing. If you’ve been around here for a while you’ll know that “Because He Lives” is not really (okay, not at all!) my kind of song but by just doing the chorus and because of the feel we chose, it worked really well as a great opener for the service.

From there I welcomed everyone and threw to a spoken word video to get people focused on the resurrection. My only issue with Bluefish is that they put their logo at the end of the video. Sure their videos are cheap but I’d rather pay more and not have the logo at the end. I don’t know if I violated the license or not but I edited the logo out and just had the audio running under a black screen at the end. Sorry guys, you’ve got my money (at the price you set) so I’m not advertising your company to my congregation.

Our worship set out of the video was very high energy and the congregation was really engaged. “All The Earth” and “Everlasting God” are two favourites for our church so people were really singing out. I love being able to back off the mic to let the congregation carry the melody when they’re really comfortable with a song – I was able to do that several times in both services yesterday. We closed that set by reading the resurrection account from John and then doing the chorus and bridge of “Mighty To Save” – I set up the bridge by just saying that instead of the words being focused on us (we should be the ones to shine our light and let the whole world see) that we were singing the words as a prayer to God, that he would shine His light that the whole world would see that Jesus is the risen King. I’m not sure if it had an impact on how people engaged with the song but it was a bit of a teachable moment so I took it.

Earl’s message was short but very sweet. Focused on the power and hope that we have because of the resurrection. Because of the spike in attendance we know that there are people who simply think the Jesus story is a nice little thing to hear at Christmas and Easter but doesn’t really have much impact beyond that. I love the way that Earl is able to communicate truth that can be understood and applied by people at various points along their spiritual journey. One thing he told the congregation was that a man in the later stages of his life came to Earl before the first service and told him that he had given his life to Christ earlier this week – talk about celebrating the living hope we have in Christ! Using “In Christ Alone” as a transition between the message and baptisms was beautiful.

The real hilight on Sunday was the baptisms. At our church we do it like this -

• baptizer and baptizee come in to the tank
• baptizee  is introduced and reads a one-page testimony of who they were, who they are and why there are being baptized
• family or close friend reads a few verses for that person and gives a short word of encouragement
• baptizee is dunked
• congregation erupts in applause

So on Sunday we repeated that process seven times over the two services. Incredible. It is always amazing to hear the unique stories of how God has worked in the lives of each of those people and to know that He is using those stories to impact people who are listening. We baptized a husband and wife as well as three high school girls, one of whom came to faith through the other two and had her not-yet-Christian family there to hear her testimony and witness her baptism. Awesome.

We closed the service with an arrangement of “How Great Is Our God” and “How Great Thou Art” that blew the roof off the place. Nothing spectacularly ingenious with the music but two very familiar songs combined together with the spirit of the rest of the service and people were just ready to explode. We did verse1/chorus/verse2/chorus/chorus/bridge/bridge of HGIOG and then launched into the chorus of HGTA and it was on. Back to the chorus of HGIOG and ending with an accappella chorus of HGTA was pretty much the perfect ending to our morning together.

So there you go. Longer than normal. Sorry again. Bonus points if you made it this far. I need to start doing these on video but my computer decided this week that it doesn’t like video editing.

My dog & my daughter

Mar 24th, 2008 | asides, family | 2 Comments

This is my dog. Spencer. You can’t tell from the picture but he is big. He’s as tall as our kitchen table and weighs about 85 pounds. He’s a real man dog.

This is my daughter. Avery. You can’t tell from the picture but she is sassy. She’s got an attitude that is quite well-developed for a child who’s only been alive for 30 months.

This was a conversation we had yesterday -

Me: So, Avery, did you see the Easter bunny?

Avery: Uh huh!

Me: You diiiiid?? What did he look like?

Avery: Ummm… He was orrrrrrrenge and short hair and long ears.

Me: So the Easter bunny is Spencer?

Avery: (looking at me) Are you kidding me?

She gets it from her mother.

Umbrella (Christ mix)

Mar 24th, 2008 | asides | 5 Comments

Okay – fess up! How many of you played this yesterday morning??

At first I cringed but then I realized that he is probably the ONLY guy hip enough to pull this off.

P.S. Dear blog, I feel a little bit icky for posting something from GodTube. My bad. Don’t take it personal.

Easter

Mar 23rd, 2008 | textfessional, worship | 5 Comments

Yeah today was pretty amazing. We’re a simple church in central Ontario who only does two Easter services so I had it easy today compared to a bunch of you. I’m going to post a full confessional in the next couple of days but here’s what I can tell you so far -

• We heard how God has changed the lives of 7 people who were baptized today – that never gets old!
• We had a 50% increase in attendance this morning compared to a typical Sunday  – talk about a ton of great opportunities to impact lives with the gospel
• We celebrated the resurrection through song, word and testimony
• The band rocked it!
• At least one person gave their life to Christ this week – that is a win for the kingdom!
• I think I’m officially a Baptist – we opened our service with “Because He Lives” – more on that in the confessional

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