Pho Shizzle!

I’m in Cambridge this week taking a class – about an hour’s drive each way for me. One of my favourite things about spending time in a different city is that I often have friends who live there that I can catch up with. Today was no exception!

I spent about 5 years touring around North America with a bunch of guys putting on rock shows and leading worship at events. It was an awesome time in my life and we still get together a couple of times a year. I had the chance to get together with my friend Jamie for lunch today. Jamie was the weird one in our band – you know how there’s always ONE GUY in a band who’s just weird?? That is Jamie. Weird hair, weird clothes, would play shows in bare feet – just weird.

Since he’s the weird one, he’s continued on to youth ministry. That is a completely natural progression, I would argue! Getting together with Jamie today for a quick lunch was very cool but almost as cool as just being with him was the place we went to.

Check out this photo!!

Pho Shizzle! That is amazing. So brilliant. The best part is that as good as the company was and as good as the name of this restaurant was, the food was even better – famous award-winning pad thai and spring rolls. What a great way to spend an hour!

So next time you’re in Cambridge, Pho Shizzle on me!!

Why do I love blogging?

Lots of reasons. Too many to name right now.

Want to hear about one that’s near the top of the list? Community.

Yeah. Strange, eh? I’ve “met” loads of people through blogworld and was encouraged by them this week in a pretty major way.

After our services on Sunday morning I was in a pretty tough spot. I had a ridiculously hard and uncalled for conversation between services and I let it put me in a bad place. I was needing some encouragement and so I emailed a bunch of folks – lifelong, close-as-brothers friends as well as people I have only met through blogs and Twitter.

“That’s kind of weird,” you say? Well… Yeah. I would have said the same thing a couple of years ago. But check some of the responses that came back from these guys that I have never had a real-life conversation with - 

I am absolutely praying for you. An I’m happy to know how I can specifically be praying. 
I WAY respect you for asking now – the time to ask for prayer is not to wait until it’s too late.

–

Even though you and I have never met in real life, I consider you a friend, and you have my prayers – like, I prayed for you right when I received your message this afternoon, but I’m also committing to pray for you.  I know you’re pursuing God’s will, and believe me, I know how hard that can be sometimes – and even if it isn’t hard, it’s not always easy.

–

I’ll definitely be praying for you, brother!

Now come on. Does it get any better than that?? I was in need of major encouragement and those guys came through for me big time. As much as blogworld would like to make you believe, life is not all roses and sunshine and having friendships that reach outside of the “here and now” is a pretty awesome thing.

New Site – check it out!

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. 

 

Thoughts after a funeral

So far today has been pretty tough. Actually the past several days have been pretty tough. I haven’t blogged about this yet but last Wednesday my friend Mike died. Mike was 24. It doesn’t matter what the issues are – 24 is too young to die.

I only knew Mike for about a year. He started coming to our church with his mom and immediately got plugged in to our worship ministry. He was an incredible piano player and was passionate about being part of a team of people who would lead our church in worship. Mike had lots of worship leading experience and was eager to learn more. I remember one of our first conversations, Mike came up to me and said “Chris, I want to do what you do!” That conversation started a series of meetings where Mike & I got together to talk about his faith, his desire to serve God and to be obedient to the call on his life.

Mike & I used to talk about how awesome it would be if he could spend a year or so in a real high level role with the church where he would serve in a different area of our worship ministry every week – planning services, playing piano or guitar, helping our tech team, lots of different things. Mike was so passionate about just being part of the team and accomplishing whatever we could so that our congregation was able to worship God.

When Mike told me a couple of months ago that he had been accepted to a Bible college to start taking courses in music ministry, I was incredibly proud of him and the steps he had taken to make that happen. It was so exciting to see him be able to put some flesh and bones on his dreams. At the same time I was really bummed that Mike wouldn’t be around our church – the school is out of town and he would have to live on campus.

If I have heard one thing about Mike in the past week it was that Mike was the gentlest guy anybody knew. If ever there was a guy that was impossible to NOT be friends with, it was Mike. I honestly cannot think of a moment of knowing Mike where he was not smiling, excited and genuinely interested in those around him. How could you not like a guy like that??

Mike was also incredibly talented. He was one of those musicians (and the worship leaders who read this will understand the value in what I’m about to say) that I had 100% confidence in. When I asked Mike to be a part of a service or asked him to carry an intro or a solo I had ZERO doubt that Mike would be able to pull it off at a level that would make me proud. Someone told the story this morning that some people who heard Mike play once nicknamed him Michael W. Thwaites because of his natural ability and what he was able to do on the piano.

I could honestly talk about Mike for hours. And, this week, I have. I’ve talked about him with other pastors here, I’ve talked about him with his family, I’ve talked about him with other people from our worship ministry and I’ve talked about him with friends. I’ve told them stories of Mike’s deep longing to be obedient to God and his desire for God to use his life in incredible ways. I’ve remembered how much Mike taught me in the short time that I knew him and how he continues to teach me through the stories that I hear about him, telling me new, incredible things about his life and the impact that he had on those around him.

So I am not ashamed to say that I miss my friend Michael. I do, so much. I will treasure the last conversation we had where he told me about some great things God had recently done in his life – things we had been praying about for months. I will miss his goofy smile, the funny way he would sit at the piano so he could see his music just right. I’ll miss his talent and the music that came when he played.

I do not doubt for one second where Mike is right now. Mike is in the front row of heaven with his arms up worshipping in a way that is wholly familiar but completely new at the same time. Mike has very literally been given new eyes and new ears to see and hear the glorious things that God has for him now. My prayer is that we would never forget what Mike has taught us – to seek God first, to be obedient to the call on our lives and to be faithful with what God’s given us. I know that I have been pushed in all of those areas because of my friend Mike.

---

THWAITES, Michael Gordon

Suddenly at his home on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 in his 25th year; beloved son of Wendy and David Thwaites. Michael leaves behind his brothers Bryan and Matt, his grandmother Marie Willan and his grandparents Carol and Peter Koeslag. Michael is survived by his aunt Linda, uncles George, Stephen and Rod, other relatives and many friends. Having been predeceased by his grandfathers Graham Willan and George Thwaites and his uncle Russ Willan. Michael walked his 25 years on earth with a passion to serve, to love God and others. He loved music and worship, he served in mission outreaches in Honduras, El Salvador, and New York City and serving at both Teen Ranch Orangeville and Teen Ranch, Scotland. He completed college at Faith Mission College Edinburgh, Scotland before returning to continue his service at Teen Ranch, Orangeville.

Randy Elrod’s thoughts

There was some interesting talk last week about an “Evangelical Manifesto” which of course led to some good blog buzz. My friend Randy Elrod has the links, including one to an article that he wrote on Hugh Hewitt’s Townhall.com blog -

Read what Alan Jacobs writes in The Wall Street Journal The Associated Press says THIS. The Chicago Sun Times weighs in HERE. Blogger Jim Wallis talks HERE, and I guest blog about it at Hugh Hewitt’s Townhall blog.

Accident at Starfield show in BC

On Saturday morning someone told me that they had heard on the radio about an accident at a Christian concert out in BC. I immediately thought of my friends in Starfield and Unite Productions who had just started a cross-Canada tour with Shane & Shane, Bethany Dillon and David Nasser. I jumped online to try and find the story and was able to confirm that there had been a very serious accident at the Starfield show at Central Heights Church in Abbotsford, BC on Friday night.

I checked a couple of articles online and this was the basic story – there were between 1,000 and 1,200 kids at the show and at some point in the evening kids were jumping near the front of the church and some of them caused the floor to cave in. People fell through the hole to the basement below and then some lights and sound equipment fell in on the crowd, injuring about 40 people.

I quickly called my friend Nathan who is out on the tour and he was able to give some more details – Starfield had just started their second song and all of a sudden a 20′x20′ section of the floor just broke open and kids fell through. Nathan said that the Starfield guys did a great job of encouraging everyone to get out of the building and that everyone was pretty shaken up.

This is the hole right in front of the stage. On the left-hand side of the picture you can see the light truss that fell in towards the crowd. Wow!

Because the light & PA gear belonged to the tour and not the church the building was locked down and the police were bringing in some forensics teams to find out what happened. The show on Saturday night was cancelled but it looks like the rest of the tour is ready to go as planned.

Praise God that nobody was killed – from the sounds of things this was a pretty brutal accident and people were surprised that the injuries were not more serious. Pray for the people who were injured as well as the bands and crew on this tour – something like this has got to play with your head in pretty big ways!

A quick message from Starfield -

As you may have heard by now, there was a serious accident at our concert last night, and many young people were injured. At this moment, we are consumed with concern and compassion for those who were injured, especially for those who were described to be in serious condition. Our hearts are with them. We ask that you join us in prayer for them. As a less important side note, none of the members of our tour were injured in the accident. The band would like to thank everyone for the outpouring of encouragement and support that we are receiving.

Here’s a news report from CBC -

UPDATE from Mike Jenkinson -

Here’s a TV report about the concert. Footage of the floor collapsing appears about 45 seconds into the clip.

Catalyst Church closing

I heard today that Catalyst Church in Greenville, SC will be closing at the end of April. They have expressed some financial struggles the past little while and it sounds like all of that just caught up with them. I’m not only sad to see a church close its doors but I’ve had the chance to email back and forth with a couple of their staff guys and I’m sure they must be heartbroken over this. I know that they love God, they love the people of Greenville and they love Catalyst and I can’t imagine what it must have taken to make that decision this week.

Three of the Catalyst staff guys blogged about telling the news to the church this morning – Casey Ross, Ryan Fitzgerald and Jake Miller. Head over to their blogs and let them know you’re praying for them.

If you’re interested, here’s the video of Casey making the announcement -

Good times with good friends

I’ve had the opportunity to spend some good times with friends – new and old – this week. I’m an extrovert – not the extreme kind but the kind of extrovert that gets energized and refreshed when I spend time with people who have similar passions and life goals. Being with people who remind me of the things I’m passionate about gets me fired up!

On Monday I got together with Carey Nieuwhof, the lead pastor at Connexus Community Church, and before we knew it we had spent 3 hours talking about life, ministry, family, Canada, culture and smashing guitars. Carey is crazy passionate about reaching the people of central Ontario with the gospel and they have had a “do whatever it takes” kind of year to do that. I’ve posted about Connexus a couple of times here but you should check out the story of what God has been leading them through the past year – re-visioning ministry, leaving their denomination, raising a crazy amount of money to be able to launch two campuses simultaneously, it’s been a pretty wild ride.

Last night I had the privilege of spending some time with my friend Janette and the worship volunteers at Waterloo Pentecostal Assembly. Janette is an old friend – we met in university and led worship together for years at different events, she was one of my wife’s bridesmaids and she sang at our wedding as well.

I invited my friend Dan to come and play drums with me last night and that was awesome – Dan is also a good friend who I’ve known for several years. We first met working at camp together in high school and eventually we found ourselves touring all over North America in a band which was our full-time gig for a few years. If any of you have been in a band and had the opportunity to tour, you know how unique and memorable that experience is. Now that we’re all married, buying houses, having babies, working real jobs, etc it’s harder to get together with everyone so nights like last night are really special.

We spent some time last night together in worship – Janette has organized a series of “worship vision nights” for her people. Leading people who are natural worshipers is always a cool thing – it makes my job easier in some ways and harder in others. It’s easier to engage them quickly and get them focused but it’s harder to move them beyond worrying about the sound, the transitions, the mistakes, etc. It was nice to spend some time in the middle of the week being reminded of who God is and responding to that through worship.

I closed the night by working with some of their musicians and talking about how they can make songs sound differently – sometimes bands get in a rut where they structure all of their songs the same: guitar/drums/bass intro, bring in the vocals on the verse, build it up in the chorus, pull back in the verse, build back up for the chorus and end with a couple repeats of the last line. While the songs may sound good musically, the audience is going to grow tired of it pretty quickly. So we talked about different ideas for arranging songs – moving intros around, “stacking” instruments rather than everyone playing all together at the same time, using dynamics, and remembering that just because you’re on stage doesn’t mean that you need to play every single note of every single song. Remember – “the music happens between the notes!” Great quote.

So that has been my week. Very energizing. Something I need with two young kids at home and another on the way

Joel Auge – On The Blue

There’s a new CD coming out later this year from a Canadian worship leader named Joel Auge that you will definitely want to pick up. Joel has been part of three pretty succesful bands here – you may be familiar with his band Capstone that was involved with some Worship Together stuff for a while – and is now one of the leaders at a multi-site church in Ontario called The Meeting House.

Joel has signed with Integrity Worship and his CD “On The Blue” will be released in June. I’ve heard some of the new material and it is, like all of his other stuff, incredible. The passion and integrity with which Joel sings are inspiring – he has an amazing way of connecting very quickly with the listener and getting them to the heart of the song.

You can check out his Myspace here and help Integrity choose the cover for the new record. If you vote they’ll send you a free track on release day. Maybe we’ll be seeing Joel at re:create 09?

Good times at Camp Wartburg

I had the chance to spend a couple of days with the worship team members of First Baptist Church of Columbia, IL at a beautiful little spot called Camp Wartburg. We spent time together in worship and prayer, just hanging out with each other, spending time talking through some good worship philosophy stuff and looking at some practical ideas to make it easier for our congregations to respond in worship to God on Sunday morning. They’ve got a good thing going with their worship pastor, Mark Warnock, and it was a real honour to be able to spend time with them.

Any of you guys got some pictures from our time together??

Pray for Fred & his family

Many of you know Fred McKinnon and read his blog. He just posted some info on his son and is asking everyone to pray. I’m re-posting this so that more people will pray for Andrew and their family.

Hey Everybody,

I’m sending out a prayer alert to my friends and family in blog world. Andrew, our 1-yr old (almost 2!) is about to be taken down to Nemours Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, FL.

We discovered a lump in his .. well, no way to say it other than just to say it … “bottom” … or “butt” … a couple of days ago when changing his diaper. Seemed to be a tough lump down under the skin, and when we called the pediatrician, he wanted to see Andrew right away because it sounded like how some of this nasty staph infection starts.

Upon observation and an ultrasound at the hospital today, the results showed it wasn’t fluid like we thought, but rather some type of a solid mass. It’s puzzling to the doctors because it’s not causing Andrew any pain whatsoever – he has no clue about it!

Due to the nature of it all, the doctor has referred us to a surgeon at Nemours in Jacksonville, FL and wants us there “sooner than later” to get further imaging, testing, and if necessary, a biopsy or surgery. Nemours just called and we’re scheduled to get there at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning (Thursday).

Would you please pray for Andrew, and for us? We are in faith that this won’t be anything serious, and we’re praying (and asking others to pray) that by the time we get to JAX this thing will just have disappeared. God is a miracle God, and we know He is able. Pray for the Dr’s to have wisdom about it and to diagnose it properly. Of course, if it’s gone, that won’t be an issue, right?

Lastly, just pray for peace for us. We recognize that Satan would love nothing more than for us to be gripped by fear, and we don’t want to go there at all. We refuse to!

My friend Mark

I had a great phone call with my friend Mark on Wednesday. Mark is the worship pastor at a church near St. Louis and we met up last year in Nashville. Earlier this year he came up to visit and we’ve been talking about some training stuff that I’m going to do with people from his worship ministry in February. I’m looking forward to spending time with his team and talking about worship in a local church context and also getting the opportunity to lead worship with them on Sunday morning.

I think that the time that Mark & I have with folks from his worship ministry team is going to be beneficial for them and for me also. I love meeting new people, hearing about their journey and listening to what God is doing in their lives. Exciting stuff.

Mark is also the one responsible for spurring on my daughter’s Johnny Cash addiction. Awesome.

New Year’s with friends!

We’ll be getting together tonight with friends from our small group to ring in the new year together – nothing better than hanging out with friends playing some Wii, enjoying good food and laughing together.

There’s lots of young kids who will be there so there’s some talk of doing Happy New Year Greenland! as part of our festivities

2007 has been a pretty memorable year for me – personally, professionally, musically and blog-ly. Thanks for being a part of the ride. I’m looking forward to a great 2008!

2008 Make It Great!

ASBO Jesus

Dan, my friend and also a guy I work with, sent this to me and it reminded me that I need to subscribe to this blog again:

That’s great.

By the way, Dan reads lots of blogs (including this one!) and sends me lots of good stuff that he reads. He knows he should be blogging but hasn’t started yet. He’s our Associate Pastor and has lots of good thoughts on processes and structures and staffing and keeping things running smoothly in a church environment. But he hasn’t started blogging yet. Tsk, tsk, Dan! Maybe if people leave some comments here to let him know that his thoughts would be appreciated he’ll start!!

Tell Dan you’re a fan!

Next Level recap thoughts

So I mentioned on Wednesday that I would do a post to recap my thoughts from the Next Level worship conference this past week. Overally, I had a really good time. The teaching was challenging, the worship was refreshing and inspiring and spending time with old friends and making new friends is always a hilight for me.

Jody Cross is the worship pastor at Harvest Bible Chapel in Barrie (and used to be on staff here a bunch of years ago) and pulled off a great event with his team. The staff and team at Muskoka Baptist Conference in Huntsville were great, as always. I really do hope this conference happens again next year and for years to come.

I said I had a few specific thoughts on some things and would post more, so here you go.

• Brenton Brown has chronic fatigue syndrome

Brenton and his band were the “feature” worship leaders for the conference. They did the Sunday night, Monday morning and Monday evening sessions. They are all talented musicians and seemed to genuinely enjoy what they were doing. I’m pretty sure the bass player used to be in Lifehouse but I’m not 100% on that. He mentioned Sunday night that this was a struggle for him and then expanded on it some more on Monday during a Q&A time. Basically there are times in his life where he’s been so physically drained that he had to leave his calling as a pastor, wasn’t able to attend church and from the sounds of it both he and his wife have had to make some major adjustments to their lifestyle because of what they’re dealing with.

I think the easy reaction would be “Oh the guy is just tired – he needs some sleep and then he’ll be fine!” but I really got the sense from him that this is something that has had a major impact on his life and his ministry and he really sees it as something that God has placed in his life to keep him humble.

• More learning can happen with the right people over lunch than in a whole bunch of workshops

On Tuesday I had lunch with some friends from The Meeting House in Oakville and we had a great conversation. Apparently we talked a little too long because before we knew it we were being shooed away from our table and I was late for the afternoon session. Whoops!

During our conversation we talked about things like designing environments for worship, engaging males and females in their church experience, Fight Club, spending millions of dollars to cater to peoples’ expectations of what worship should be like and many other fascinating subjects.

I’m looking forward to spending some more time with those folks in a couple weeks but I’m pretty sure that that was a significant learning time for all of us around that table. We laughed, we raised our voices, we told stories, we asked questions – and through it all we learned together. Doesn’t mean we left with perfect worldviews or understandings of how we should be doing things but we learned.

• Transitions in worship sets are really, really important

One of the discussions we had around the table was the issue that lots of men have with singing songs of intimacy about Jesus. Songs that talk about our love for Jesus as though it borders on some sort of sexual interest. Don’t be shocked at this – if you haven’t thought about how men in your congregation react and respond to the songs you’re singing, you need to ask them. We sing lots of songs that guys would be red-faced to sing to their wives. I’m not saying we shouldn’t sing songs like that but a big part of it is in how they’re presented and how the congregation is prepared.

Here is my example – during the Monday evening session, the speaker had us physically bow on our knees or at the waist as a sign of adoration and respect for who God is. We have lost this in our modern worship expression and it was incredibly moving to respond physically to who God is. Brenton and his team then led “Adoration” (which I can’t find on iTunes or on any of his records but you’ve probably heard the bridge in a Paul Baloche song that goes “Hallelujah/We want to lift you higher!”). The song was just one of awe and honour to God and the chorus basically said that we were bringing Christ our adoration by bowing before Him. Of course when the bridge hit many of us stood and lifted our hands up to God in a sign of praise.

As a whole, the experience was very natural, unforced and filled with worship.

When the first song closed, Brenton moved in to “You Are My King” and as soon as we hit the chorus, I just shut down. The verses were great – talking about honouring and bowing before God. And then the chorus hit – “I love You/I love You/I love You, Jesus”. I literally stopped singing. The moment was gone. We had been in this place of awe, wonder, adoration and all of a sudden I’m expected to sing about how I love Jesus.

Now hear me – I’m not saying there is anything wrong with proclaiming our love for Jesus. I think that’s a good thing. But to go so quickly from bowing on my face before God the Creator to singing about “I love You, I love You” was jarring. The whole thing was a good reminder of how we need to take people on a journey when we’re leading worship and not just move from song to song but give people some direction – point out the signposts along the way.

I’m back – here’s some links.

Spent the last couple days up north at the Next Level worship conference. I’ll post later this week about the things I learned while I was there but here are a couple quick things:

• Brenton Brown has chronic fatigue syndrome
• More learning can happen with the right people over lunch than in a whole bunch of workshops
• Transitions in worship sets are really, really important

So here’s the deal – I’ll expand on each of those in my “what I learned” post. Cool?

I came home to a whack of stuff in my Google reader and found a few things that I thought were worth passing on.

• Color in Science: Microscopic Photographs (via Tim Challies)
• Shrimp nets, waiting rooms and today’s dreadful meeting (If you’re not reading Prodigal Jon, you really should be!)
• Igniter Tracks (via Church Video Ideas)
• Burnout Self-test (via Church Communications Pro)
• Carey Nieuwhof’s blog – if you’ve seen my post on Connexus (and a bunch of you have) you may be interested in following the story of their lead pastor as he blogs through this journey
• Christian Copyright? – excellent post and comments at Milestone Worship

Connexus Community Church

Got some time and want to read a pretty interesting story about a church going through some amazing changes in a very short period of time? Connexus Community Church is the newest extension (I’m not even sure if that’s the right word) of North Point. Connexus will be launching in a couple of weeks as a multi-site church in Barrie and Orillia and has plans to expand to other locations within the next year.

I know some of the guys on their leadership team (including Pat, whose blog is linked over there ->) and I know they’re excited about the next steps. This is a story worth reading – start here and follow along.

My pastor’s thoughts

Yesterday we took the morning as a staff and went to a local camp/retreat centre to spend half of our day in prayer. Like most churches, September and October are crazy months for us so we wanted to get away and spend some time to pray and also speak words of encouragement to each other.

My pastor, Earl Marshall, posted some of his thoughts on our time together here.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we took an entire morning to talk and listen to God about our relationship with him and each other. Perhaps this does not sound like such a revolutionary idea for a church ministry staff but there is so much activity that creeps into the daily and weekly life of a church that can get in the way of fundamental spiritual disciplines.

This was a good life moment for me. One that was very much needed.

A few highlights from my space . . .

Having Justus Miwanda with us. Justus is our partner with International Needs Uganda. It has been an absolute joy to get to know this man of God over the last few years. He is an answer to prayer for our church as we have prayed that God would help us transform our world and now we are able to do so in Uganda. Justus prayed with and for us. I was reminded again of what God is doing in our church. It was like he was part of our ministry staff. I suppose that is how I see him now. Part of us and we of the ministry in Uganda.

Reflecting on the words of “Take Time to Be Holy” encouraged me especially of God’s continued guidance in my life. What a great reminder.

Having the ministry staff pray over me. There is not a week that goes by and I am reminded of how blessed I am to work with such a talented, gifted, committed and called group of people. And if some of you are reading this what blows me away the most is how jazzed you are about being with one another. This team is amazing and I am blessed to be able to be part of this family.

Do you love working for your boss as much as I do?

Fred’s happy.

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=273000061

Right?

This one’s for Billy!

Hey Billy this post is for you!

Link – http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=229

Ten Illegal Job Interview Questions
#1: Where were you born?

#2: What is your native language?

#3: Are you married?

#4: Do you have children?

#5: Do you plan to get pregnant?

#6: How old are you?

#7: Do you observe Yom Kippur?

#8: Do you have a disability or chronic illness?

#9: Are you in the National Guard?

#10: Do you smoke or use alcohol?

Hopefully they really don’t ask you numbers 5 or 7 – if they do, run!!

(via Kottke)

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