Uncover the Color – new resource site

This looks pretty interesting – Uncover the Color.

 

 

From their website:

Uncover the Color is a collection of artists committed to creating high quality art in a wide variety of visual, auditory and live media. Whether in a worship gathering, in print or part of an original project, we believe that art is meant to reflect the deep creative heart of God. Our artists seek to challenge The Church into deeper expression and authentic experiences through a renewed depth in the creative process.

Our website features a combination of completed works, elements for use in your original works, services and training tools – all designed to help you do what you do more effectively.

Giveaway – “Equipping The Saints” from Harvest Bible Chapel

My friend Joshua Seller has been working on a live hymns album with his church Harvest Bible Chapel this year. Here’s what Joshua had to say about this project -

We are excited to release Harvest Bible Chapel’s second live worship project capturing 11 amazing hymns of our faith.

The vision behind this project was to align with our year long theme, “Equipping the Saints”. The past year as a church, the goal was to not only know what God’s Word says, but apply it to our lives in such a way that we actually grow in godliness. Growing in godliness begins with a right view of God and that includes worship. This project was recorded with the hopes that it would become a rich resource for you and your family as you sing back to God what you have come to know through His Word to be true. And in singing biblical, theologically correct truths back to Him you can know your times of worship will be meaningful as He has intended worship to be. The hymns are a great place to find some of the greatest truths and the best part is these truths can be sung at anytime. Its our prayer that this album would be played, replayed and pass down to your family as you grow in godliness.

 

I’ve got five copies of this CD to give away. I’ve been listening to it for the last week or so and these guys have done a great job. I think you will really enjoy these songs! To be entered in to the draw, leave a comment here and let me know what your favourite hymn is. You can get more entried in the giveaway by posting something to twitter or your blog or facebook – just leave a second, third, fourth comment with links to where you’ve posted it.

Good luck! We’ll draw a winner one week from today, June 2nd.

UPDATE: We have our winners! Congratulations to Dan, Jonathan, Erin, Mark and Aaron on winning the CD! Thanks to everyone who entered. Another giveaway is coming very soon!

Bluetree – “God of this City”

As a follow-up to this last post I thought it might be helpful to post a video from Bluetree (facebook|twitter) telling the story behind their song “God of this City” -

 

100K!

A couple of weeks ago this blog rolled over the 100,000 visitor mark. I have no idea if that’s good for a blog like this or not but the point is that there are more than a few of you reading this and I think that is awesome! Thanks for encouraging me along the way, helping me to learn, pointing me in new directions. Looking forward to seeing where we go next with this whole thing.

PS Contrary to previous reports, there will be no free Tim Horton’s given in celebration of this monumental occasion. Anyone who objects to that can come visit me in Orangeville and I’ll take you out for coffee. Deal!

Bluetree – Adventures in Myanmar

This headline on CNN.com grabbed my attention this week: “Christian band: We were spared death by Myanmar general” I’ve been a fan of Bluetree for a few years (if they are new to you, you may not know that they are the original writers of Chris Tomlin’s “God of this City” and their version is pretty incredible, too) and I was amazed to hear what they went through on a recent trip.

Bluetree’s lead singer, Aaron Boyd, added  a video to the band’s facebook page and you can watch it here – http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1337823690637

All in all, this is a pretty incredible story. It’s hard to believe that this news isn’t spreading through twitter/blogs/facebook a little faster than it has. Why not grab those two links and post them where people can find them?

Worship Confessional – Sunday, May 23, 2010

We are in a pretty sweet season at OBC and our Sunday mornings are hitting a really nice groove. We’re not satisfied, of course, with just letting things go well but it is definitely encouraging to have bands that sound good, tech people who know what they’re doing, and services that bring glory to God.

Here’s what we did on Sunday -

Romans 5:12-21- “Pandemic”
You Are – Mark Roach – F
Holy Is The Lord – Chris Tomin – G
Meet & Greet/Announcements
Congregational Prayer
Romans 5:12-21
What The Lord Has Done – Reuben Morgan – C
Psalm 51:1-3, 10-12, Psalm 32:1-2, 10-11
Worship Rises – Joshua Seller & Chris Vacher – A
Message – “Pandemic”
Jesus Paid It All – Kristian Stanfill* – Bb

Overall, we were trying to make a few things happen in this service: 

• Last weekend we ended with a real tone of celebration and in our call to worship I encouraged people to continue in that. You may not have heard “You Are” before but if your church likes to sing Tomlin or Matt Redman, you should definitely check out Mark Roach‘s music. 

   

   

• The passage from Romans that we were focusing on led us to spend some time in confession during our service. We had our pastor come and lead our congregation in prayer and then read the passage he was preaching from – we don’t always do this. We sang two songs between that spot and his message and as part of that section we read together from two confession psalms. I had people take a few moments and reflect on that last verse of Psalm 32 and meditate on the words – “Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!”

   

• The end of our service was just a great opportunity to respond to this truth from Romans 5 that our righteousness is from Christ alone, not from our own good works, our own keeping the law, not even from our faith in Christ – our righteousness is a “free gift” given by God for our good and His glory. “Jesus Paid It All” was a great song to close our service and people definitely made the connect from the truth of that passage to the truth of the words.

   

 

Great morning. You can read more Sunday recaps like this over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

*I realize that Kristian isn’t the writer of this song but it was his version that we played. Most people would be familiar with the original hymn and this version has an extra chorus added by Alex Nifong. You can find it on the “Everything Glorious” CD from Passion.

 

Friends are friends forever

On Monday a bunch of friends gathered together at my house to pray for the ministry of WorshipRises (facebook|twitter) and dream about what might be next with this unique bunch of artists. I’m privileged to be a part of this group and can’t wait to see what God is going to do next.

The first big “next” thing is that we’ll have four songs available for you to hear very soon. Very soon. Check out the facebook page or the twitter account to get the latest info. You can also fill in your email info below and we’ll get you details as soon as they’re available. We promise to not sell your private information to the facebook mafia.

 

“Worship Rises” – Live at HarvestU

Here’s video of my friend Joshua Seller singing a song that he & I co-wrote together:

This song “Worship Rises” has become the anthem for a movement of worship pastors/leaders across Canada who are writing songs together to share with the church. We will be releasing a 4-song EP (including “Worship Rises”) very soon and I can’t wait for you to hear the songs.

Until then, you can get more info on WorshipRises here –

Facebook – www.facebook.com/WorshipRises
Twitter – www.twitter.com/WorshipRises

Hillsong – A Beautiful Exchange

Here’s a preview of the upcoming Hillsong live album “A Beautiful Exchange” –

Video – “Made Us Alive” by Michael Bleecker & Seth Jones

May 6th, 2010 | songwriting, tools, worship, youtube | No Comments

Additional resources for this song here -- http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/blog/worship/?p=168

5 things the worship team wishes the sound team knew

May 6th, 2010 | ideas, worship | 3 Comments

Yesterday I posted an article “6 things your sound team wishes you knew” that my friend Peter Bruce had written. Peter is one of the guys who heads up our AV teams at our church and he’s also one of our acoustic guitar players so he’s got thoughts on this subject from both sides of the stage.

Check out some of his thoughts about what the worship team wishes the sound team knew -

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Things the worship team wish the sound person knew :

1. We are a team. We need, appreciate and value honest and tactful feedback. If you hear something is wrong let us know or pull us down in the mix if it is during the service. We are trusting you so that we will not be a distraction to the worship.

2. Get to know us and make a note of what we typically need in our monitors and preset them before soundcheck. We are artists and knowing you have taken time for each of us goes a long way
3. If you explain why you want us to do something we will trust you more and follow your direction.
4. Please don’t expect us to be warmed up vocally at 7:30-7:45 AM. We know you need to get levels set on the board but we need to warm up for a few songs first.
5. If we see you on sound, set up and tear down regularly we get to know you better and trust you more. Be on time, we know that you are usually the first people in and the last to leave and we appreciate you for that but if you are always scrambling at the last minute it makes it hard for us to get comforable.

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More great thoughts from Peter on this. I love how people at our church are dedicated to serving together in team and finding ways to make the experience more valuable for people who come to our church.

Thanks for all your hard work, Peter! (And Rebecca, too – I’m sure your great wife was a part of putting this list together.)

What do you guys think? Any thoughts to add to this?

6 things your sound team wishes you knew

May 5th, 2010 | ideas, worship | 9 Comments

One of the real privileges I have at OBC is working with an incredible group of people who are dedicated and passionate for our worship ministry. Our teams are committed to leading people in worship, to developing their own ability and are always willing to try new things. This isn’t limited only to our musicians – we have some of the most dedicated and talented people serving on our AV/tech teams.

I asked Peter Bruce to put together a couple of blog posts that I could share with you. Peter is unique in that he’s one of the guys who heads up our tech teams but he’s also one of our acoustic guitar players, so he has some insight on the worship team experience from both sides of the stage.

Today he’s written some thoughts  about what your sound team wishes you knew and tomorrow we’ll post some things that the worship team wishes the sound team knew. Some of you have great relationships with your tech team, some of you do not. Hopefully this is helpful for you.

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A while back Chris asked me to give some suggestions for Worship Teams and Sound Teams. As a sound person and guitar player I have been on both sides of the board. My wife who also takes part in both and I talked about some of the things that each team would benefit from knowing about the other.

Things the sound team wish the worship team knew:

1. We are a team,  we process every sound that comes off the stage and send it to the speakers. We are all working together to produce the best audio mix that we can. Invite us to join you during your pre-service/practice prayer times etc. If you need something just ask, we will do what we can to help, but remember we don’t like last minute surprises. Think of it like being handed a new song that you have not practiced two minutes before the service.
2. Know what you need not want in your monitor. If you have too many instruments or vocals you will have a hard time hearing yourself. Less is more. As a guide, pick 3 things that you must have and a couple more that would be nice but not necessary. Until we get levels set don’t keep stopping and asking for adjustments, once you have gone through a song and we have set our levels we can then make any adjustments you need.
3. Trust your sound person to do the mixing, Things sound different for you on stage especially if you are using in-ear montiors. We are in the congregation ( or we should be, but that is a whole other topic for sound booth position) and will be mixing for what sounds best out there.
4. Please be aware of your monitor or amp level.  You may like to “feel” the music and want your monitor loud but that noise bleeds out into the room and deminishes the quality of the mix for the congregation.
5. Please be on time. We will do our best to have everything ready for you to start the sound check so we ask you show up on time especially if you need time to set up your own gear.
6. Please use proper mic technique and hold your mic close, where we tell you to and not keep dropping it lower because of your own insecurities and issues.

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There is some good stuff here. What do you think? Any thoughts to add? Tech guys, what do you wish your worship team members knew?

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