I was off stage this Sunday (except for doing announcements and next steps) which is always gives me an interesting perspective in how things are going. We continued our series through Romans 12-14 this week and spent some time in a chunk of scripture that’s not exactly the most inspiring, dynamic, energizing, blood-pumping passage you’ve ever read in your life. Have a look for yourself - 

My friend Rich has launched a new site that you should check out over at tehillamusic.com -

I have launched a brand new blog and site for my music company Tehilla Music.  Please check it out, link to it, subscribe to it and spread the word.  This site will have a focus on worship for more than this current blog of mine (RKWL).  I wanted a space once again where I could share my thoughts and those of other worship leaders with the rest of you. 

For those of you who are looking for new music to use in your churches you’ll want to check out a new song called “God of the Ages” by a band called Exodus. It’s a song written by a fellow Candian, Travis Doucette, who has been down at Liberty University for the last bunch of years.

I first heard this song when a video of a performance at LU was sent along to me. I was pretty impressed with what I heard and saw - 

The band’s CD is available now on iTunes and although the quality of the recording isn’t the greatest there are some good songs there that may be helpful for you in leading worship at your church.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted by email from Chris’s posterous

I rarely never talk about politics here  in blogworld but I’ve just got one question about this whole bailout fiasco.

Where the heck is Bush getting this $700 BBBBBillion to make it happen??

The US is already $400 BBBBBBillion in debt. And so now he’s found some magic treasure tree with million dollar bills hanging from it?? Seriously – this is insanity!

Check this quote - it’s attributed to Bono but whether or not he actually said it, there is a profound statement here. We have officially lost our brains.

“It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.”

UPDATE: This seems a little more reasonable of an explanation of what’s happening - 

I posted some photos of our new stage last week and wanted to send some photos of our new building along. In addition to the renovations in our gym/auditorium we are adding a room on the north end of our building that will have permanent stage and sound and will be able to seat about 230 people. This will be a great mid-size room for us which will get tons of use during the week and allow us to run multiple events at the same time in our building.

I went over to the site on Friday and took some photos after the guys had finished work for the day. If you click them you’ll get to see the big versions. The first one is from the stage looking out at the room, the second one is from the door looking towards the stage.

We are deeply committed to long-term, life-changing cultural impact in Uganda and have been working on the ground there for a couple of years with some amazing people. We have led a consortium of churches in Ontario to fund a project that would see the lives of thousands of children changed for the glory of God. One piece of this puzzle is a new project we’re launching this fall called “Love For Uganda” – here’s a quick video that someone from our church put together. We’ll be showing this on Sunday morning.

RSSers – you may need to hit the blog!

I’ve been talking about our new stage for a while and some of you have been asking about photos so here’s the best I can do right now -

Here are a few pictures of what our platform looked like before the renovation – remember that our auditorium is a gym and every week we set up about 400 chairs, set the stage for the worship team AND set up 6 portable stage boxes that build the lower portion of our stage. I’ve pointed these boxes out on the photos below -

If you want a better view of any of those photos just click on them and a bigger one will open up.

Okay – so that was the before with some of the wonderful features of our stage pointed out. Why did we need to change things? A few reasons - 

1. The amount of work we were putting in each week to set up our stage was getting ridiculous. We weren’t able to leave any of our A/V stuff set up – because of the short depth of the stage and the crazy amount of use that our gym gets during the week we had to tear down after Sunday morning and then come back in on Friday evening to set up before practice. Add to that the strain of moving those “portable” stage boxes (they really aren’t that portable – it takes two guys and a dolly to move them) several times a week was getting very old, very fast. We needed a better solution.
    
2. The footprint and layout of our stage meant that we were very limited in any kind of set design or creative stage set up. We were basically stuck to the same format every weekend – drums in front of the tank, piano off to one side, bass off to the other, singers down in front with the guitar or keyboard player squeezed in wherever there is room. Not cool.
    
3. The look of the stage was very dated – the back wall was purple, the carpet was green, the tank was finished with that beautiful oak panelling. Our building was built in 1992 and its age is starting to show – we needed a fresher look that fits with the contemporary vibe of our church and our services.

So the work isn’t totally done but we are far enough along that the stage is usable on Sunday morning. Actually in these photos you can see some of our A/V techs terminating cable so that we can use our new stage boxes. Here are some photos of where we are right now -

If you’re wondering about the boxes where we’ve placed the plumbing and drain for the new tank, the box on the opposite side of the stage is where our new sub is going to go. We decided to build the stage symmetrical but leave that side box open – after using our tank a few weeks ago we figured out that we needed a better plumbing solution than we had thought. The idea of installing that stuff in the empty side box was a beautiful solution that made sense for everyone.

The last photo is a little tough to figure out but I tried to show how much stage space we have gained by removing the tank. It’s a shot from the side and I’m basically standing in one of the alcoves that used to exist below the walls that covered the stairs leading to the tank.

Also, showing the retractable sections like that is a little misleading. When they are pulled out full there will actually be about 2′ of those sections still underneath the upper stage so they will come out 8′ toward the middle of the room. We are going to come up with a solution that will allow those sections to be bolted securely to the floor once they are in place – right now they are on heavy duty casters and they can be moved with a little momentum if you’re standing on top of them.

So there you go – let me know if you’ve got any questions or if I can take some more pictures to clarify anything.

I’m hoping to get some photos posted this week but on Sunday we used our new stage for the first time. We are in the middle of a building expansion as well as a bunch of renovations in our auditorium (which is also our gym, making things interesting) – new PA, new projectors/screens, new stage, new soundbooth and storage rooms. Lots of new, lots of work!

The big change on our stage is that we’ve removed our elevated baptistry as well as torn out the existing stage, rebuilt the whole stage area with two retractable sections that pull out towards the middle of the room – before we had been using 4 very heavy “portable” 4′x8′x16″ stage boxes. I’ll have to get some pictures up to show you the changes but basically we’ve gained 30% more stage space as well as modernized the look of our auditorium with new paint and carpet. There are still some final touches to come but using the new stage was a bit of a milestone in this whole process.

Our set list from Sunday morning - 

God’s Distinct Society – Romans 12:3-8
You Are – Mark Roach – F
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown – Bb – with click from Duane Rogers
Mighty To Save – Hillsong United – A
Christ Arose – chorus only – A
Video – I Am Community
Message – Unity With Great Diversity
Communion
You Are My King – Stuart Townend – D
Solo – O Church Arise – Keith Getty & Stuart Townend – D
Next Steps
O Church Arise – congregation 

Okay – so if you’re thinking that the line-up looks pretty packed, you’re right! We ended right on our time limit and it felt like there was alot to pack in to the morning. I’ll just hilight a few things - 

1. Clicks – Carlos tweeted about Duane Rogers and his click tracks this week and they are amazing! I think I will be using a bunch of these and that started by using his ‘Everlasting God” track on Sunday. The vibe of the click is very different from other ones we’ve used and it worked perfectly. He’s added a nice touch by inserting audio cues on the metronome side to remind the band what’s coming next. Have a listen and you’ll understand what I mean.
2. Christ Arose – I was playing through the songs on Friday afternoon and got to the end of “Mighty To Save” and felt like that package really needed something to close it off. Playing off the theme of the MTS chorus we went straight into a very open, mid-tempo chorus of “Christ Arose” and it worked beautifully – first time through we had just piano and vocals and the whole band dropped in right at the end of the last line, leading us back to the “Up from the grave…” lyric. It was awesome – a great closing tag to a package of very solid songs.
3. Next Steps – This is a new thing for us and I need to blog about it some more. Basically we have introduced a “connection card” to our worship service that is serving three main purposes – giving our congregation a chance to communicate prayer requests to staff and elders, gathering contact info from first- and second-time guests, and also to encourage everyone in attendance on Sunday morning to be taking intentional next steps in their walk with Christ. We launched this last Sunday and after two Sundays we are seeing some good results. 

Some of you have been asking about a new song that I wrote with my friend Craig from the Meeting House in Oakville, ON called “How Awesome Is Our God” – it’s shown up in my worship confessionals for the past six months or so and the song has become part of the worship repertoire at both of our churches.

Craig & his team did a live recording of the song and sent it on to me – it’s always cool to hear a song go through the progression from just a melodic or thematic idea to a chorus hook to an actual arrangement to a full band recording with lots of re-writing along the way.

#dddddd;background:#f8f8f8" id="audioplayer_1">Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you’re interested in a lead sheet you can grab the PDF here – How Awesome Is Our God – D.pdf