Paul Baloche – A Greater Song

I’m planning on introducing What Can I Say from Paul Baloche’s CD “A Greater Song” later this summer and once we do that we’ll be using four songs (Hosanna, Because Of Your Love and Your Name are the others) from the album at our church. I can’t think of any other CD that has that many songs in our rotation. Paul is a brilliant songwriter, a great worship leader and it is clear that he is immersed in the life of a local worship pastor. The combination of those things means that he has put together some incredible songs that are helping the church grow in their worship of God.

Seriously – can you name another CD (not compilation or “best of” CD’s) from a single artist that has FOUR SONGS that you can use in regular rotation at your church?? I think right now we are living in an incredible time where there is an endless number of resources and songs available to us but let’s not overlook the BEST songs and resources that are sometimes right under our noses.

I’m pretty sure Paul Baloche doesn’t read my blog but, Paul, if you’re reading this – thanks, man. Thanks for serving God and giving your gifts and your talent to serve the church. You are a mentor and a role model to so many of us and I’m praying that there are many great songwriters who follow in your footsteps.

Give Paul some props.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, July 27, 2008

We’re a couple days removed from Sunday morning but there are still lots of moments that are very clear in my mind so this should be a fun confessional to write up. This Sunday wasn’t part of a series but instead we had a member of our church teach through Ezekiel 47 and his message was incredible. He spoke on the idea of going deeper in our relationship with God and from the conversations I’ve had with people in the last few days the words hit home in our congregation and there is some real life change happening. That is always exciting to see!

Here’s what our service looked like -

Call to Worship
Reign In Me – Brenton Brown – C
He Reigns – Newsboys – E
Our God Reigns – A
Offering/Announcements
You Shine – Brian Doerksen – E
How Awesome Is Our God – Chris Vacher & Craig Douglas – D
Forever – Chris Tomlin – G
Message – Ezekiel 47
Step By Step – Rich Mullins – G

Yeah so even just writing out what we did on Sunday is bringing back some good memories. Overall we did some things very well on Sunday so I’ll post those – maybe they’ll be helpful for you.

1. We called our people to worship and set the tone very early. If you are smarter than the average bear you can figure out that there is a nice theme tying the first three songs together. I found some verses that talked about the reign of God and opened our service with them – Psalm 93:1, Lamentations 5:19, Revelation 19:6 – and then gave a quick bit of context and read a few verses from 1 Chronicles 16. Trying these verses to the first package of songs was nice – it was a fairly easy way to create some continuity and focus peoples’ attention on one specific attribute of the nature of God’s character.
2. We tried a new key for a song that is familiar. “How Awesome” is a song that I wrote with a good friend of mine – we’ve sung the song several times at our church and this week we decided to kick it up a full key just because it was coming later in the service when voices would be warmed up and ready to go. We tried it in C in rehearsal but it just wasn’t flying the way it should – I got our musicians to take it up to D and it brought the song right where it needed to be. The chorus “sang out” a lot more and it really felt like the verses were sitting in the right spot. We kept it in D for Sunday morning and that was the right call.
3. Instead of asking a new(er) leader to lead the whole service he just focused on the music. This is a new strategy for us and will eventually be the model for training new leaders in our worship ministry. Rather than giving the whole service to the leader – songs, transitions, meet & greet, prayer, etc etc – I just asked our leader to focus on leading the congregation in worship through song and that I would take care of the other elements – call to worship, transition lines, introducing what is next, etc etc. By taking those things away from him I think he was able to give more mental energy to his role rather than spending brainpower trying to remember when he was supposed to ask people to greet each other or introduce the speaker, etc etc. I LOVED doing this and I can see us bringing up new leaders slowly by giving them partial responsibility on a Sunday morning rather than asking them to lead the service as a whole right off the bat.

So there you go – 3 things that might help you out. This Sunday we start a series through the book of Jonah and I am super-pumped for that.

Wreck This Journal

My re:create friend Nathan posted about a book he bought called “Wreck This Journal” and it immediately grabbed my attention. I ordered a copy from Amazon yesterday and it arrived today. Look at how excited I am!!

Here’s the description from the publisher’s website -

For anyone who’s ever wished to, but had trouble starting, keeping, or finishing a journal or sketchbook comes Wreck This Journal, an illustrated book that features a subversive collection of prompts, asking readers to muster up their best mistake- and mess-making abilities to fill the pages of the book (and destroy them). Acclaimed illustrator Keri Smith encourages journalers to engage in “destructive” acts-poking holes through pages, adding photos and defacing them, painting with coffee, and more-in order to experience the true creative process. Readers discover a new way of art and journal making-and new ways to escape the fear of the blank page and fully engage in the creative process.

So yeah. I’m excited about this. Especially because the next month or so is going to be absolute bananas. This book will be my creative outlet and I hope will spur some new thoughts inside the ol’ noggin. I’ll keep you in the loop.

Here’s the first page I completed to give you an idea of what it’s all about.

Before -

After -

P.S. I don’t normally link photos but if you’re up for an adventure click the picture and let’s play the game of “What was Chris figuring out on his whiteboard?“

How old are you?

This was printed in our newspaper last week -

50 YEARS AGO Wednesday, July 8, 1958

• Orangeville Baptist Church celebrated its 97th birthday on Sunday, June 29. The church dates back to July 1, 1861. In its reference to Orangeville, Mitchell’s Canada Gazetteer and Business Directory 1864-65 names Rev. A. E. Kitchen, B.A., as minister in charge of the Orangeville Baptist congregation at that time. Mr. Kitchen was probably the church’s first pastor.

Do the math and you’ll see that we’ve got a pretty big anniversary coming up in a few years! It will be fun to dream about how to celebrate the past 150 and look ahead with excitement to what God has in store for us.

Video – Western Spaghetti

HT: Today’s Big Thing

Some family photos..

Earlier this week we got some family photos done – baby is coming in about a month, whether weather (edit: can you tell I’m a little tired??) is beautiful, the girls are very photogenic right now so it seemed like perfect timing for everything!

Our friend Gillian did a great job with the shots and has posted some of them on her site – check out the whole story here.

Brooke Fraser – concert review

I haven’t had a chance to talk about going to see Brooke Fraser in concert at the legendary El Mocambo in Toronto last week. I had a great time with lots of friends – old and new. The venue was packed (I’d guess capacity to be 250-300) but it was stinkin’ hot!!

The opener was a solo acoustic guy with a great beard. His songs were very good and he had an awesome personality. Unfortunately the PA was very quiet and so it was kind of hard to hear what he was saying/singing. He actually asked people to be quiet and listen to his songs while he was playing so that people could hear.

Brooke came out with two other musicians – a girl who played keys and violin and a guy who switched between drums, xylophone and keys. Brooke played acoustic and piano for a couple of songs.

Overall the show was good, not great. I’ve listened to lots of her stuff this year so it was good to see it in a live setting. Brooke is a fantastic singer with a beautiful voice but she is not the most engaging personality which makes things kind of tough when you’re in a small, hot room with poor PA. She talked LOTS between songs – and talked between EVERY song, which is a big no-no in my books – and really never got much momentum happening over the course of the night. Her songs are great but it seemed like just as the crowd would get in to something she would stop, talk and draw out the segue to the next song.

The PA issues continued through her whole set. People were calling out for her mic to be turned up – everything else was loud enough but for some reason the sound guy couldn’t get her vocals to the same level. I’ve seen lots of loud shows in the venue so volume is definitely not a problem. There was never anything close to feedback so I don’t know what the issue was. The combination of Brooke talking for good chunks of time and the quietness of her mic really didn’t help things.

All in all, it was a good night. Lots of friends there which made it a great chance to catch up and hear how people are doing. It was a rare opportunity for me to get out for a few hours without kids (thank you, wifey!!) so I tried to make the most of it. Brooke’s show seemed more like background, mood music rather than her being a feature entertainer that we were all there to see.

I’d pay money to see her again in a heartbeat. Her songs are incredible, her voice is incredible and I’m sure that she will develop as a performer as her career continues.

LampLust – rechargeable candles

I’ve been trying to think of some ways to use light and colour in our new space once our addition/renovation is finished. One of the things I keep going back to is candles – they add an incredible amount of atmosphere when they are used but there are lots of problems with using candles. There’s the danger of something catching on fire, the limit on where candles can be used, the mess that can sometimes happen, the cost of replacing candles, etc etc.

I came across something pretty cool today over at LampLust.com – rechargeable candles! The basic idea is that you have tea-light shaped “candles” which are rechargeable and can be used just like normal tea lights. Check out this video -

I am impressed. This (along with other electric candle ideas) could definitely be a solution for what I’m looking for!

Worship Confessional – July 6, 2008

I’m trying to find a good way to quickly do these on video but since I’m not part of Mac nation it seems like it would be too complicated. Anyone got an easy solution?

So Sunday was pretty amazing. It was the first Sunday since our pastor started his sabbatical. He’ll be gone until after (Canadian!) Thanksgiving and we are learning what it means to be a staff team and a church with him being gone for an extended period of time. There are no secrets here – if you’re interested in finding more about the situation we’ve posted letters and audio from the announcement here.

For the month of July we will be using people from within our church to do the teach and yesterday we started a short series that we’re calling “Big Truths From Little Books” – basically preaching through three books which often get overlooked and are not a regular part of the preaching rotation for most churches: Philemon, 2 John & 3 John.

Our student ministries director, Kevin, preaching through Philemon yesterday and the push of the morning was the idea that God transforms to bring transformation – He changes us so that we can bring change. Our service outline looked like this -

God of Wonders – G
Holy, Holy, Holy – C
Offering/Announcements
All The Earth – Paul Baloche – E
Wonder of Your Cross – Robin Mark – A
Word of God Speak – MercyMe – Bb
Message – Philemon
Changed – Aaron Niequist – G

Overall the morning was an A+. There was one moment in the middle of the service where I had to stop singing and just let the congregation carry it – there was as much engagement in the worship as I’ve seen in my time here. It really seemed like people were doing much more than just singing words – they were genuinely in worship as they were singing. As someone with the desire to lead people to those kinds of experiences, Sunday morning was a big success for me.

I led the team with two other very capable singers so we took lots of turns leading verses as the morning went. Running songs together became really easy because of the theme and the keys we picked. Let me unpack that a little more.

The main theme in “God of Wonders” is the idea of the vastness or big-ness of God and how everything we see in creation speaks to that big-ness. The tag coming out of the chorus “You are holy, holy” is a nice line to repeat a few times and becomes the perfect transition line to “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Doing “God of Wonders” in the key of G means that transition line alternates between an A minor and C. If you come out of the repeating of that tag line and just hang on the C you are pretty much ready to start in to “Holy, Holy, Holy” in that key – just hang on the C and maybe add a little Cmaj7 here and there. You can keep the feel just about the same and go right in to the first verse of the hymn. It worked beautifully.

Going from “All The Earth” to “Wonder of Your Cross” was just as smooth – notice how in both cases the key of the first song is the dominant of the key of the second song. That might be a bit too much theory speak for you but if you do some google searching you’ll find some good info on what that means. At the end of the “All The Earth” we just dropped the band out and left the acoustic playing that little transition section where the chords are a bit more syncopated than in the chorus – E/B/C#m – but there’s almost like two shots on the E and then the B is a passing thing leading up to the C#m. With the feel we had going for the song having just the acoustic playing that thing added a really nice breakdown section. At the very end of the song we used that and just repeated the “You came down/You saved us through the cross..” section which is a very natural lead in to the next song – thematically it carries over very nicely and again the key change is almost a no-brainer.

Okay this is getting long. Sorry about that.

For “Word of God Speak” I went to my homerun resource of PraiseCharts and got a click track to use. Again, perfect! The keyboard and string pads added so much to this song and the words of the song really fit in to our theme of the morning. I spoke a couple of times about the importance of having an appreciation for the entirety of Scripture – not just our favourite verses or the books we turn to out of habit. Knowing that God speaks to His church through a letter written by Paul to the master of a runaway slave is a pretty amazing truth and there is great stuff in there that we need to hear.

Closing the service with “Changed” was a perfect. If your church is kind of edgy and willing to do new stuff that is a bit out of the box you need to check out this song. I heard it at the Willow Arts Conference last year and we’ve done it a few times since then – the lyrics are bang on, the melody is great and musically it is one of the more interesting songs that we do on a Sunday morning. Aaron Niequist, the writer, was on staff at Mars Hill (Michigan) when I heard this song but apparently is up to some new things now. Check out his music – it’s good stuff.

Alright. So that’s a good recap of the morning. I’m excited for the rest of the series as well as the rest of the stuff we’ve got planned for the summer. What are you excited about?

One Thankful Canadian

At the end of a long, glorious Canada Day filled with the things I love most, my heart is full with the overwhelming reality of how thankful I need to be for so many things.

Maybe it’s some of you USAmericans rubbing off on me but I’m willing to admit that this national holiday has had some added significance in my life this year. I have always taken this great country for granted, knowing that we are fortunate to have the things we do – decent government, state health care, endless opportunities for my kids to succeed – but I’m not sure why this one has been more important to me. Maybe it is because of the impending arrival of beautiful daughter #3, maybe it’s because this is my first Canada Day as a 30-something. I’m not really sure.

But, for whatever reason, today is a day where I have spent time thanking God for the amazing blessings in my life. And not thanking Him because I have been blessed but truly thanking Him for blessing – yes, there’s a difference.

So, for what am I thankful? (You can thank my english teacher mom for the grammar of that beautifully awkward sentence.)

• My incredible family – my supportive, loving, faithful, dedicated wife and my precious, hilarious, unique, squishy-faced daughters.
• My friendships – long-lasting, good time and bad time relationships with people who move in and out of our lives but always have a seat at our table and a glass of our best wine.
• My job – I’m still afraid that someone’s going to pull back the curtain and tell me that working at this church, with this staff team, serving these people is all a cruel joke and that I’ve fallen for it hook, line and sinker.
• My backyard – it’s not big, trust me. But it’s big enough for my dog to catch balls that bounce off the roof, big enough for Avery to drive her van up to her playhouse and big enough to have my slice-of-heaven barbecue beside the porch. Calling it a porch is a little misleading but play along.
• My country - my parents ended up here only because of dreams for better things. My dad’s dreams were simply to see the world (this is a story I need to tell sometime) and my mom’s dreams were kickstarted by her father’s dream of a better life for his children. Those dreams colliding eventually led to me being able to call this great country home and it is an incredible privilege to be able to do that.

Those are only a few things but they really sum up where my head is at today. Sure, I have heavy things weighing on my mind and heart, regrets and worry and fears about the future but right now I am, above all, thankful.

Happy Canada Day to you, too!

HT: Fotographic

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