“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

You are probably familiar with that quote from Dr. Seuss’ “Horton Hears A Who” but I was surprised to hear it as I watched a video of a 12-year old girl making her case against abortion. As a follower of Christ, I agree with pretty much everything this girl has to say and am wildly impressed by her passion and clarity on the issue. Guess how I excited I was when I found out that this girl is from the Toronto area!! Very cool.

Here is the video –

So next time you’re reading Dr. Seuss to your kids, be reminded that we are all created in the image of God and that, as the wise Horton once said, “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Digital Piano – check this out!!

Okay – this is a blatant re-post from another blog but I know that lots of you would love to see it so I wanted to post it here!

Tim Corder leads the audio team at Kensington Community Church outside Detroit and posts amazing stuff on his blog. He posted today about their new all-digital grand piano setup, included a bunch of info on how they did it and also posted a video with a live mix of the piano in action. You have to hear this to believe it!

Go and read the full post on Tim’s site but here’s the basics -

The shell is made by Slam Grand Pianos.  It is a 7ft 4″ model based off of the Yamaha C7 shape.  Gary Raffanelli at Slam Grand did amazing craftsmanship and was so easy to work with.  His company builds piano shells for practically everyone who’s anybody – TV shows, touring, casinos, etc.

Inside the shell is a Yamaha CP33 Stage Piano that we use as a MIDI controller.  We chose this board based on the recommendation of some of our keys players for its realistic feel.  Even though we don’t use the internal sounds in the CP33 as a part of this setup, its great to know that its built in piano tones are still pretty strong and a good option to have available in a pinch.  But for realistic feel when playing, the CP33 is pretty awesome.  The Graded Hammer Effect action gives all keys an authentic resistance that increases from the top register to the lower – just as on an actual acoustic piano. Which means that you can naturally pound out thunderous low notes with your left hand and let the fingers on your right dance and fly with the high notes.

Here`s a video of this thing in action – beautiful!!

On a side note, if you ever find yourself in or around Troy, MI make sure you get out to Kensington. You will not regret it! I visited Kensington on a trip back from Willow Creek three years ago and still remember it as a landmark moment in my life. It was my first Father`s Day as a dad and everything that happened during the service seemed to be speaking directly to me – it was awesome.

Worship Confessional – February 15, 2008

This is week number six of our series on marriage called “Marriage Matters” and after five weeks focused on God’s design for marriage and the roles of husbands and wives in marriage we decided to take a bit of a turn and focus on celebrating singleness today. That may seem odd for a marriage series but we know that 1/3 of the people here on Sunday morning are either single and not yet married or single again after divorce or being widowed. Learning how to live in a way that honours God while being single is just as vital as it is while being married.

Like every week in this series we have done a personal Q&A during the series – other weeks it’s been couples who have been married a looooong time (as in 50+ years!!) but this week we did a Q&A time with a great woman from our church who was widowed 12 years ago after being married for 41 years. She has experienced singleness before marriage, over four decades of marriage and now an extended time of singleness again. Her life is a great testimony that marriage is not the be all and end all of our relational lives.

For our time of worship, we didn’t really do anything thematic but just spend some time focusing on giving God worship for who He is and what He’s done – as well as celebrating the really unique fact that corporate worship has to happen in community. We are not in our own little worlds doing our worship time – for the church to worship best in every way, it must happen in community.

Here’s what our morning looked like -

Call to Worship

O Lord, open our lips
and our mouth will proclaim your praise.
O God, come quickly to save us.
O Lord, come quickly to help us.
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever. Amen.

Doxology – Traditional – G
Forever – Chris Tomlin – G
Responsive Reading

The Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us rejoice and shout for joy,
giving God the glory.

Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever. Amen.

Salvation Belongs To Our God – Adrian Howard & Pat Turner – A
Adoramus Te

We adore Thee, O Christ, And we bless Thee,
Who by the holy cross have redeemed the world,
Who have suffered for us! Lord, have mercy upon us!

Lead Me To The Cross – Hillsong United – E
Message – “Celebrating Singleness”
Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher – G

So nothing way out of whack – I know not everyone is used to doing responsive readings but they are a regular part of what we do here. Starting of our service with a reading was a good way for me to remind people that this is a communal event – it’s not a performance from the stage, it’s not your own personal worship time with God – we are here together! Leading from that to the Doxology and Forever set up the service really nicely.

I’ll talk about the Adoramus Te for a bit because it’s probably the thing that is the most unique for people who are reading. It is a poem or song of worship that is typically read or sung during a stations of the cross celebration on Good Friday.

Here are the words in Latin -

Adoramus Te, Christe, et benedicimus Tibi,
Quia per sanctam crucem Tuam redemisti mundum,
Domine, miserere nobis!

And in English -

We adore Thee, O Christ, And we bless Thee,
Who by the holy cross have redeemed the world,
Who have suffered for us! Lord, have mercy upon us!

Beautiful! I found a really nice recording of the Adoramus Te being sung by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge on iTunes. The link is here if you’d like to listen. We put the English words up on the screen, played the song and asked people to focus on the words as they listened – praying and thanking God that He has redeemed the world through the cross. Very cool moment!

There you go. Make sure you hit Fred’s site and check out all the other stories of what’s been happening at churches all over the place today.

Kings – A Hero Is Born

NBC is releasing a new show in March called Kings which seems to be a pretty flashy re-telling of the life of David. I saw this posted over on Shane Bertou’s blog and he says this – “Think: Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet meets 1 Chronicles.” Love it!

I did some looking around online and it seems like there is some anticipation for this show both from within the industry and from the sci-fi crowd as well. Even from watching the preview videos on the NBC site there are lots of direct and indirect allusions to the story of Saul & David and already people are beginning to look for all the ways that the story is re-told.

So how awesome is this? One of the biggest mass media companies in the world is taking a story directly from scripture and re-interpreting it to be told to a modern audience?? Hopefully the talk and hype that is happening for this show right now will continue and it will have a good run. I know I’ll be watching the premiere on March 15th!

“Hope lies in bravery. And we need hope.”

Cover of Rush’s “Subdivisions” by Jacob Moon

Jacob Moon is a crazy talented Canadian musician and you have to see what he does with “Subdivisions” by Rush – another Canadian classic!!

Go here and click “watch in high quality” to get nicer video.

Elevation Church – Watch. This. Video.

I know that lots of you track with Steven Furtick and the guys at Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC – it is amazing to stand back and see what God has done over the last 3 years with those guys. They would be the first ones to say that they have no idea what is happening but they are just trying to be obedient to the things God is calling them.

Here’s a video recap of 2008 at Elevation Church – amazing.

It’s a recap of Year 3 at Elevation.  In 5 minutes.
Our anniversary festivities were out of control-as always.
We were praying for 650 new volunteers to sign-up yesterday.
They printed 750 t-shirts just to be safe.
We were 730 t-shirts short.
That’s 1480 new volunteers.

The best is ahead…

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ReVue – Light in the Darkness with Freddy Rodriguez

My friend Fred over at The Worship Community asked me to be part of a review for a new live CD along with Erika, Joel and Russ. I was happy to be a part of it and wanted to share the review with you.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this CD. Usually I’m not a fan of live worship albums from churches – not because they aren’t good or valuable but just because the quality of songs and performances isn’t always up to par with what we’re used to hearing. This CD surprised me over and over with the quality of the songs, the performances and the production. It’s not full of songs that will work for every church but the songs kept me engaged and definitely inspired some worship moments as I listened.

There’s lots more in the review over at TWC.

On my way home

It has been almost a week since I kissed my wife and daughters goodbye, made the drive down to Buffalo and hopped on a couple of planes to end up in Nashville to be a part of re:create for the third time. I feel like I have lived so much life in the past six days and I’m not even sure where to start in describing what happened.

If you read my blog then you’re probably familiar with at least a few other blogs who were keeping track of everything going on. If you live in twitter world then you may have had a sense of the kinds of things we were doing while we were there. But, like with anything in life, it is hard to give you an real picture of what has actually been happening in my heart and my mind this week.

My quick summary would be that God has again confirmed that He loves me as His child and that He loves the church as His bride. I’ve been reminded that I am uniquely gifted to communicate those truths in a certain way. I’ve been encouraged to expand and explore the implications of what it means to lead God’s people in worship. I’ve been struck (again!) with the gentle brutality of God’s word. I’ve been assured that while I am destined to suffer God is with me, God is at work in me and God’s love has rescued me.

Randy Elrod, the founder of re:create, spoke to us on Wednesday morning and in a follow-up question that I had for him he said (and it was clear that most people in attendance agreed with him) that those of us who are artistic and spiritual leaders are “destined to suffer.” Great encouragement, right?? There is so much more to say than what my brain can handle right now but those are words that are going to stick with me for a long, long, long time.

My week at re:create

If a picture tells a thousand words, this photo sums up my week pretty good –

Lots more coming soon!

re:create ‘09 – Friday – EMI

• 12:35 Chris - Recreate is officially over but a bunch of us are hanging out at the EMI building today talking about songwriting. A nice panel put together to help us think through some stuff.
• 12:35 Chris - As with all of the other events this week I’ll be pulling in comments from other people in the room.
• 12:35 bradandrews - audrey assad just led us in an anointed time of worship here at emi cmg. blessed. #recreate
• 12:35 westerfield - Glad #recreate is at EMI. You guys make this one of the best work days of the year for us.
• 12:37 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #1 Define Your Purpose
• 12:38 Chris - ‘Songs that have universal appeal fall in to that trap. They have no specific purpose and no specific meaning.’
• 12:40 Chris - Lots of worship songs are filled with phrases that have worked really well in other worship songs.
• 12:40 Chris - ‘What is my purpose here? Is this how I would talk with someone I love? It this really how I talk or am I treating people like cattle?’
• 12:43 Chris - Example of specific songs with specific purpose – Heart of Worship by Matt Redman, God of Justice by Tim Hughes.
• 12:44 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #2 Eight Seconds
• 12:44 Chris - ‘Whether it’s A&R or a congregation, you don’t have more than about eight seconds to get them engaged.’
• 12:47 Chris - ‘Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.’
• 12:49 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #3 Show and Tell
• 12:49 Chris - ‘Communicate the image by telling them what it is.. but you also have to provide them with a picture, something they can see, something that they can put in context.’
• 12:50 Chris - Don’t go overboard on the pictures – make sure part of the song also TELLS the meaning of the song.
• 12:51 Chris - Examples of songs that show and tell – East to West by Casting Crowns, One by U2.
• 12:53 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #4 Strong Lyric and Melodic Hook
• 12:53 Chris - ‘If it’s not entertaining or captivating or interesting you’ve missed your point.’
• 12:54 Chris - ‘We’re all free – create whatever you have to create. But if we want to be better communicators with our music we have to do things that are captivating and interesting.’
• 12:55 Chris - ‘Lyrically, people just get lazy. Melodically, you’re just not daring enough.’
• 12:57 Chris - Talking about songs with great hooks and listening to some too.
• 12:58 Chris - Sound of Your Name by Above the Golden State, Crazy Beautiful by Chasen.
• 12:58 bradandrews - 5 elements of great song: 1) define purpose, 2) 8 sec. 2 grab, 3) show + tell, 4) strong lyric/melodic hook, 4) critique + rewrite #recreate
• 13:00 Chris - Weave hooks through different sections of the songs.
• 13:01 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #5 Critique and Re-Write
• 13:01 Chris - ‘When you co-write, critiquing happens in real-time.’
• 13:02 Chris - ‘I think it’s important that you let the song happen. Give the song an opportunity to be birthed.’
• 13:04 Chris - ‘Don’t do critique and re-writing right away. It’s a creative thing and you need to give it time before you can come back to it with a little more objectivity.’
• 13:04 Chris - Listening to the first two versions and then the final take of Great Things by Matt Maher. This song killed us at recreate last year.
• 13:05 Chris - Kind of nice to be talking about practical, helpful stuff rather than the heart-wrenching (and awesome!) stuff we’ve been dealing with the rest of the week
• 13:07 Chris - ‘A melody is good if you can remember it after going for a drive and spending the day at work.’
• 13:09 Chris - Awesome – great stuff here so far today. Looking forward to unpacking all my thoughts once I get home. Later peeps.

re:create ‘09 – Thursday AM

• 1:39 PM Chris - Anne Jackson – the author of Mad Church Disease – is here to do the talk this morning. Really looking forward to it.
• 1:39 PM Chris - Like with all the other sessions, I’ll be pulling in comments from other people who are in the room. This is going to be good!
• 1:40 PM Chris - Anne also blogs at www.flowerdust.net – check it out.
• 1:41 PM Chris - Anne re-did her entire talk yesterday after hanging out with us for a couple of days. Courageous!
• 1:42 PM Chris - ‘The health of people in ministry is something I am very, very, very interested in.’
• 1:42 PM fmckinnon - @flowerdust is kicking off the next session, author of Mad Church Disease, @petewilson here with her #recreate
• 1:44 PM Chris -
  
• 1:44 PM Cynkeys - Anne Jackson a.k.a @flowerdust is up…PK’s rock! #recreate
• 1:44 PM markjaffrey - @flowerdust bringing her message at #recreate. http://twitpic.com/1cb5g
• 1:46 PM Chris - Anne comes by the whole understanding of mad church disease honestly -her dad was a pastor and his life changed pretty dramatically while he was in ministry.
• 1:48 PM Chris - The inner politics of church leadership struggles never cease to amaze me.
• 1:48 PM fbcjdrake - this is all too real @flowerdust is plowing in my field again! #recreate
• 1:49 PM Chris - ‘Things eventually became a Southern Baptist, west Texas bloodbath.’
• 1:52 PM Chris - Anne’s story is reminding me of the incredible importance of my relationship with my girls.
• 1:52 PM Chris - What will my girls think of God and the church based on what they see happening in my life and at OBC?
• 1:56 PM Chris - ‘Another job came up and I took it because I have pride issues.’ Yeah – good stuff from Anne. This is going to be big for people here.
• 1:57 PM Scope71 - Has @flowerdust stolen my life story? #recreate
• 1:57 PM danp - http://twitpic.com/1cbbc – Anne Jackson AKA flowersust.net touching hearts at #recreate
• 1:57 PM janjowen - Listening to the insightful anne jackson talk about health in ministry #recreate
• 2:00 PM Chris - ‘I was so busy doing things for God that I had forgotten about being with Him.’
• 2:00 PM Chris - The question that changed everything for Anne – ‘Is serving in this church interfering with your communion with Christ?’
• 2:02 PM Chris - ‘I was making killer videos, killer graphics, I could produce a service like *that* but because it wasn’t the overflow of God working through me I was being disobedient.’
• 2:02 PM Chris - ‘If you are not operating in God’s strength, you are being lied to. You are not fine.’
• 2:03 PM fmckinnon - when we withdraw from communion with God, we will burnout, and you won’t know it until it hits you. (@flowerdust) at #recreate
• 2:03 PM Chris - What matters more than my relationship with Christ – my job? my paycheque? my confidence in future?
• 2:04 PM fbcjdrake - meeting of all of the Pastor’s kids in the back of the room for immediate counseling after this session #recreate
• 2:05 PM Chris - ‘If you are in one of those places where you communion with Christ is being sacrificed, you must leave. Losing your relationship with God is not worth it.’
• 2:05 PM Chris - ‘God is your provider. Your job has never been your provision.’
• 2:06 PM fbcjdrake - I don’t want my kids growing up resenting the church. Lord help me to help them understand the real Body of Christ #recreate
• 2:06 PM Chris - ‘God didn’t say love ministry, love your job, love what you do. He said love me.’
• 2:07 PM Chris - Next question that struck Anne – ‘Are you living within the integrity of your conscience?’
• 2:08 PM Chris - Anne is talking about her trip to Uganda with Compassion and how it rocked her world. I have an amazing story of what Compassion is up to with the people in this room.
• 2:08 PM bradandrews - “you are not the provider of your family, God is the provider of your family…” – anne jackson. #recreate
• 2:09 PM Chris - Right when she returned from Africa, Anne had to sign an invoice for $100,000. Another landmark moment for her.
• 2:12 PM Chris - ‘What does being obedient look like to you? Are you doing that?’
• 2:13 PM Chris - Anne’s talk is making me think that Pete Wilson at Cross Point is an incredible leader. She serves at his church.
• 2:14 PM Chris - ‘Does it look like I’m struggling with stuff? Maybe not. But I am. And someone has to be the one to go first to give someone the gift of going second.’
• 2:15 PM Chris - If money and providing for my family were not issues and concerns, would I being doing what I’m doing now and doing it the same way?
• 2:17 PM Chris - ‘Some of you are in a very healthy place, spiritually. It is your responsibility to help carry the burdens of those who are struggling.’
• 2:17 PM Chris - ‘It would be completely irresponsible of us to let hurting, broken people in ministry continue to be broken.’
• 2:19 PM Chris - ‘It’s time for us in the room – those who have been brought here providentially – to carry the burdens of others. We have walls to break through but we’ve got to break through them.’
• 2:20 PM Chris - Okay – this is getting real. Time to shut it down. This is off the record now. Love y’all.

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