On my way to re:create

For the fourth year, I’m heading down to Nashville to be a part of re:create. Being involved with this group of people from all over the world has been incredibly inspiring for me personally and has had a great impact on my own ministry.

Randy Elrod has become a good friend and an inspiration and I’m looking forward to seeing him later today.

Want to follow along with what we’re doing at re:create? There are a few ways -

1. I’m planning to liveblog the sessions here and will hopefully have time to add a few blog posts as the week goes.

2. We’re using #recreate10 to tag our twitter posts. You can follower my twitter feed here – @chrisfromcanada
3. There’s some info on the re:create site here – www.recreateconference.com

One of the cool things I’m looking forward to this year? I’m sharing a hotel room with a Saints fan – he’s going to be in a great mood when I see him today!

Vicky Beeching – new EP preview!

Vicky Beeching is a favourite worship leader of mine, all the way back to “Yesterday, Today & Forever”! She is getting ready to release her new EP through Integrity Music on February 16 and we’ve got a preview of one of the songs just for you here at the blog.

This is “Blessing And Honor (Be To Your Name)” – although, using the good Queen’s english, as I’m sure Ms. Beeching would do, this is actually “Blessing And Honour (Be To Your Name)” –

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RSS friends – you might have to hit the blog to hear the audio

Blessing And Honor
Words & Music by Vicky Beeching, Jonny MacIntosh and Sarah MacIntosh
© 2010 Integrity Worship Music | Thankyou Music (Admin. by Integrity Music, Inc.) | (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing)

The air is filled with angels
Who speak and shout Your name
The atmosphere is changing as eternity invades
And suddenly above us the floor of heaven breaks
As Your Spirit falls down we will say

Blessing and honor glory and power
Be to Your name be to Your name
All of the praises throughout the ages
Be to Your name be to Your name forevermore

One day we will see You shining like the sun
Face to face with beauty
Eye to eye with love
Standing with the elders we will throw our crowns
At the feet of Jesus as we shout

You’re the Alpha the Omega
The Creator and Sustainer of all
Yes You are yes You are

Want a free chord chart for this song? Of course you do! Here you go.

Looking for more info on Vicky Beeching? Here are a few places to start –

www.vickybeeching.com
www.twitter.com/vickybeeching

You can hear the other two songs from Vicky’s EP over the next couple of days at these two blogs –

Monday, February 8 – www.chrisfromcanada.com
Tuesday, February 9 – www.klampert.com
Wednesday, February 10 – www.fredmckinnon.com

“Understanding Faith & Church Trends”

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada is touring the country making a presentation to Christian leaders where they are presenting some trends and statistics that relate directly to the church community in Canada. I attended the event in Toronto with a couple of other guys from our staff team and was fascinated by some of the things presented.

Although (or maybe because..) I’m an artist to the core, there is something about graphs, spreadsheets and colour-coding that just speaks to me! Several things jumped out at us during the presentations, giving us lots to talk about on the way back to Orangeville as well as the days following, but let me show you two stats that I think have lots to say about the church, social media and our opportunity to reach people where they are.

Here’s the first one -

And the second -

Okay. So why do I find those two graphics fascinating? If you are on staff at your church, where are you spending advertising dollars? If you do spend them (and we do, although not tons) then it’s probably in a couple of places – the church directory in your local paper, maybe a radio ad and then some special newspaper advertising for events or programs. If your church is a bigger congregation in a bigger market maybe TV advertising even play in to it.

So check the numbers. Where are advertising firms NOT spending their money? Newspaper, radio, TV. Where do churches generally think advertising? Newspaper, radio, TV. The ad firms know better than the churches – that’s not where the people are. Those three forms of media are either losing audience or losing audience attention. Got a PVR? Then you know that commercials just aren’t part of your TV experience anymore. When was the last time you actually decided to go to an event because you saw an ad in the paper?

But.. The opportunity is here to make some significant changes. Check where ad agencies ARE spending dollars – mobile, email, online. Why are they doing that? It’s where the people are. You’re trying to reach people, aren’t you? So why not focus some of your advertising attention on the places where those people actually are rather than trying to shout at them in a place where they are not!

I’m not here to tell you the “how to” of making this happen. Want to learn about social media? Go ask some students in your congregation. They will tell you. And don’t laugh off their suggestions – like the ad firms, they will generally know better than you.

Alright.. So what about the second?

The second graphic is interesting to me because it asks the question “Where would/should/could we put the ‘worship service’ in this little diagram?” Well.. where would you put it? Where would you LIKE to put it? Do you see the concept – richness vs. touches? I love the diagram and we are spending some time at OBC talking about how social media/networking will play a role in helping us to make disciples.

Three questions -

1. How is your church actively engaged in advertising and networking in places where people already are?

2. Have you made some decisions to stop advertising in certain ways? Should you?

3. How have you increased the richness of your worship services in a way that left lasting impressions on people?

Let’s hear it in the comments.

Looking for more info on this stuff?

Evangelical Fellowship of Canada – www.efc-canada.ca
Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism – www.evangelicalfellowship.ca/crce
Church & Faith Trends – www.churchandfaithtrends.ca

“Recording 48 Tracks with Studio One and the FireStudio”

If you are thinking about doing any kind of live tracking of your church services, you need to watch this video from PreSonus to see how you can do it without spending a ton of cash. These are solid products and pretty straightforward to use. We are hoping to install a similar system to this (24 channels instead of 48) to be able to live track our services on Sunday morning.

SongSuggest – iPhone app for worship leaders

Check it out – SongSuggest is the first iPhone app built specifically for worship leaders. This comes from the guys at WorshipApps and is a pretty handy tool if you are looking for a resource to help you make decisions on worship service content.

For the sake of being honest, you should know that I received a free copy of this app in exchange for the review but I would definitely be willing to pay the $4.99 price tag from the iTunes app store on this one.

Find it in the app store by clicking this link – www.worshipapps.com/ss – or search for “songsuggest”.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, January 31, 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010 – “Good News for Bad News”
Romans 2
Call to Worship
Glory to God Forever – Steve Fee & Vicky Beeching – Bb
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown – Bb
Worship Rises – Chris Vacher, Joshua Seller & WorshipRises – A
Offering/Announcements/Meet & Greet
Congregational Prayer
Message – “False Sense of Security“
How Marvelous – Charles Gabriel – F
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) –  John Newton/Chris Tomlin – E

Three things about this past Sunday -

1. Last week I asked if you would pray for our church. If you did, keep praying – people are being confronted straight up with the truth of the gospel and we know that it is only the Spirit that changes hearts.

    

2. We had to be a little flexible in our response section this week. I originally had planned to do Amazing Grace first and then key change from E to F up to How Marvelous. Now, a half-step key change isn’t always the most elegant thing but we made it work. After hearing from Earl Marshall with some more info on how he was going to end his message we decided to flip the two response songs – so that meant a key change of one half-step DOWN.. yikes. But.. we made it work. We took time at practice to work through the chords of the key change and it came off beautifully.

   Because we were flexible in the layout of our service even up to Sunday morning, we were able to bring more focus to the service and really tie our response songs to the close of Earl’s message.

3. This week marked the beginning of Operation ClapClap and it was very successful. I will blog more this week about Operation ClapClap and what it is we’re trying to do – we’re having fun with this one!

I’m back on the Sunday Setlists train – have a look at what other worship leaders are doing at their churches.

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