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!!

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 -

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 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?

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