Perry Noble – “Seven Reasons Why I LOVE Our Worship Leaders!”

Perry Noble is the senior pastor of NewSpring Church in South Carolina. He posted this on his blog last week and I loved it –

#1 – The Church Is Not “Their Gig,” – it’s THEIR CHURCH! They love NewSpring Church…they pray for it, work on it, support it financially and do not want to use it to boost their CD sales. They don’t run to it when they can’t find a “better opportunity,” they are here serving each and every week. They love the people in this church and have a heart to reach the community in which they are in!

#2 – They Have A Servants Heart – Our worship leaders do WAY more than sing on Sunday’s. In fact, they would be willing to do ANYTHING to advance the ball down the field. I am not kidding when I tell you that I could call any of them right now and tell them we are scrubbing toilets this afternoon and they would do it.
If a worship leaders thinks “their job” is to just sing then you don’t have a worship leader…you have an arrogant performer who wants people to worship them rather than leading them to worship Jesus. Worship is WAY more than singing…it’s serving Jesus by doing whatever it takes to make His Name known!

#3 – They KNOW the Scriptures – Our worship leaders know God’s Word…they read it, memorize it…CRAVE IT…and it shows as it FLOWS out of them in natural conversation and in their leadership on Sundays.

#4 – They Are Always Striving To Improve – I love that none of them are ever satisfied with the way things are…they are always striving to improve as vocalists and musicians…none of them believe they have “arrived” vocally/musically!

#5 – They Are Not Afraid To Try Something Different – I have gone to them a few times and asked them to attempt a song that isn’t quite their style…and they always says “yes!” They are not afraid of hard work…and if something isn’t familiar to them they will bust their rear ends to make sure that they absolutely kill it when it comes time to make it happen.

#6 – They Call Each Other Out – They love each other enough to tell each other when a vocal or musical part just isn’t right. AND…they also challenge and call each other out OFF of the stage. (Which is essential for a great worship team…if they are only concerned about one another ON stage and not OFF the stage then their obsession is the performance…not the person.)

#7 – They Write Awesome Music – Yes, we do other people’s music…I think it is both arrogant and stupid to not do a song that has a great message; however, our worship leaders also write their own stuff…which is SO pleasing to me because hearing their lyrics gives me a front row seat to what Jesus is doing in their hearts.

Now, listen. Don’t read this post and think “MY senior pastor never says nice stuff like that about me!” Instead, read these seven things and ask if those are things that could be said about you as a worship leader and about the rest of your worship team.

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” -

 

Carlos Whittaker – Ragamuffin Soul EP

Okay, so it’s not available on iTunes in Canada but if you live in the US you’re able to buy this EP today from fellow re:create peep Carlos Whittaker. You may be familiar with his blog – www.ragamuffinsoul.com – but you should check out these songs.

Here’s a short video that tells some of the story behind these songs and why Carlos is excited about them –

If you’re looking for chord charts for the 3 songs, Carlos has posted them on his blog here – www.ragamuffinsoul.com/music

Worship Confessional – Sunday, September 6, 2009

Worship Confessional – Sept 6, 2009 from Chris Vacher on Vimeo.

“You Are” by Mark Roach is on iTunes here or you can check out more of Mark’s website at www.markroach.com

Harvest Oakville – Production Director

My friend Joshua Seller posted some exciting info on his blog. He’s on staff at Harvest Oakville (part of the Harvest Bible Chapel family) and they are looking to hire a full-time production director. If you’re pumped about serving Jesus with your A/V giftedness and equipping others to do the same, you should check this out –

The church I work at (Harvest Bible Chapel) has a new position open that probably comes once in 20 years. Recently our Audio/Video Director resigned to follow a different path God had for him and his family. With that left a immediate position available.
Because we have seen such rapid growth over the past 5 years, it has been a learning curve for everyone. From multiple services, multiple staffing, volunteers, special events, budgets and now the new building campaign we are in the middle of has forced a lot of us to play ball and “do church”, no matter what it takes, for one reason Jesus Christ!

Job Title: Production Director
If you are a Jesus loving, Audio/Video, Production, Creative, Tech Head, Gear Geek, recording guro or know someone who is and has experience in medium to large size churches then please pass this post on to them.

Planning Center Online – new mobile features

I’ve been using Planning Center Online for all of our service planning for a couple of years and it has become an invaluable tool for us in scheduling, learning new songs, communication within our worship ministry, etc etc. These guys built an incredible tool on a great platform when it launched – they listened to their customer base and did it right. Planning Center Online has really become the standard for scheduling and song management for me.

They just announced that they’ve made some changes to their mobile functionality which is pretty intriguing to me. Not only have they released an iPhone/iPod application but the first step in mobile scheduling has arrived. From the app, an administrator can schedule a person for a service and request their participation. I am really hopeful that this is the first step in total mobile functionality for Planning Center Online and being able to do full service scheduling from the mobile site.

If you are looking for a way to manage your songs, volunteers and scheduling you should check out Planning Center Online. They’ve got a free 30-day trial so you can give it a spin and see if it works for you.

Great work, guys! Very impressive.

NorthPointOnline.tv

If you live in church-world you’re probably familiar with North Point and all the incredible things that they’ve done over the years. No sense in recapping what they’re about but – like ‘em or not! – they’ve made some bold moves over the course of their history and have been committed to doing whatever they can to make sure lots of people are hearing the gospel.

One new thing that they are just launching is an online campus at www.NorthPointOnline.tv. North Point is not the first church to do this (LifeChurch, NewSpring and others have done this) but you know that  if they are going to do it, they are going to do it right.

Check out this preview video -

North Point Online – Promo 1 from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Tonight was the soft launch of the online campus in preparation for the live service experience on August 16th and I was able to catch part of what was happening. Andy Stanley & Jeff Henderson talked about the what and why of the online campus and then they spent the last part of the session praying for opportunities and for the people who would be impacted.

All in all, these guys have done a great job so far. John Saddington & Carlos Whittaker have been talking this up like crazy and they did not disappoint. They and their teams have pulled off a great-looking environment and even though not everything worked perfectly tonight, they’ve got time to get it up and running for the August 16th launch dates.

Here are some initial impressions from the session tonight -

• The cohesiveness of the environment branding is impressive – but what else would you expect from North Point? The logo, look & feel of the site, promo videos, etc all have a very modern edge to them and they have definitely spent some time thinking about the vibe they want to portray
• Integrating chat, Facebook & Twitter all on the same page is impressive technically but I wonder if it’s too much all at once?
• The pulled back, out of focus camera shot while Jeff and Andy were praying was beautiful – a really nice way to take the attention off of those two guys and encourage the viewer to be focused on prayer
• I’m intrigued by the “live-to-online” concept that these guys are going with. As far as I know (other than a live stream to the web concept) this is the first true online campus that will be doing the full service live as it happens at the originating church. I’m sure there’s the potential for lots to go wrong with that
• I appreciated Andy’s comments around North Point’s view of why they should be doing the online campus and of technology in general. While I might not agree 100% with the HOW of what they’re doing, to know that they’ve spent significant time thinking about the WHY is encouraging.
• So why don’t I agree with the how? That’s a long discussion. Here’s an easy touchpoint – At one point Andy said that North Point hopes that the online campus should be a temporary substitute for a local church congregation until someone gets plugged in and comfortable. I’m not sure that North Point really believes that – I think they would be quite happy with people all over the world making the online campus their ‘home church’. If North Point DOES think it’s important and valuable for online campus viewers/participants to be engaged in a local church congregation, I’m guessing that we will see the movement from the NP experience to the local church not only talked about but also encouraged and facilitated.

All in all, these guys have done it again. They began with a dream, got the right people to take the first steps, put a plan in motion and then got to work. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the potential for a tool like this to facilitate the spread of the gospel is immense! I’m excited to see how this plays out and how North Point will encourage the right use of the right kind of technology in other local churches all around the world.

Review – Israel Houghton: Power of One Worship Leader Edition

Here’s a quick video review of the Israel Houghton CD “Power of One” with some added features for the worship leader edition. Check out the videos below –

Okay – so this is stupid. The video works fine on my computer but YouTube has decided to detach the audio from the video. Hopefully you still get the gist.

Israel Houghton – Power of One – iTunes
Worship Leader Edition – WorshipMusic.com
Israel Houghton – iPhone/iPod App

Jesus Neighbourhood

We’ve started a new series at OBC called “Jesus Neighbourhood” where we are looking at Jesus’ interactions with different people through the book of Luke. Here’s the intro video –

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

We don’t normally do intro videos like this but we thought we’d do something different for the summer and were able to use an After Effects project from RevoStock.

Kate McRae – Little Light

Before I went on holidays I was hearing pieces of Kate McRae’s story and overwhelmed with what was happening. I don’t know the family personally but as the dad of three little girls, Kate’s story weighed heavy on my heart for days. If you haven’t heard about Kate McRae and the tough road ahead of her, you can get the whole story at www.prayforkate.com

I came home this week and heard that Audrey Assad (one of my favourite singers since hearing her at re:create this year) had written a song for Kate. I hadn’t had a chance to listen to it until today. Oh. My. Ohhh myyyy. Scroll down past the video to see the lyrics.

Pray for Kate. Pray for Kate’s family. Pray that Jesus would be lifted high.

Little Light
Audrey Assad

Look at all the angels watching you
They’re singing songs that we have never heard
Their voices ring like bells over the mountains
Oh, if only we could hear their words
God is near, little girl.

Your eyes are brilliant,deep sky blue.
Your quiet wisdom is an evening song.
The angels must be breathless at your beauty
Like the world catches its breath before the dawn.
God is near, little one.

And Jesus bends to hear you breathe;
His tender hands are holding you tonight.
His heart is ravished when you look at Him,
and oh, the endless mercy in His eyes;
God is here, little light.

“Sometimes Risk Works Out”

A friend of mine sent me the link to this post and asked whether he thought something like it would be able to fly at OBC – check it out:

A year and a half ago I met a new friend named J-Griff. He has become part of our church and has an amazing gift.

He speaks a different musical language than most of our congregation and I have wanted to use him as part of our worship experiences for a long time, but could never quite muster up the courage. Then I read this post and decided that just because something might fail I have no an excuse not to go for it.

The “this post” he’s referring to is some great thoughts from Tony Morgan on the “new traditional church music” –

Only it’s as if we got stuck in the 80s. While the church still leans on a mix of rock and pop music as the preferred worship genre, our culture has shifted once again. Now, according to iTunes, 1 in 3 of the top 100 songs in the country is either hip-hop/rap or R&B/soul. My guess, though, is that you can’t name a church in the country that’s using these genres of music for worship. Why is that?

Now, before you let your “it’s-not-our-culture” bias set in, consider this. Most of the hip-hop and R&B music has been recorded by black artists. 14% of the U.S. population is black. But, remember, nearly one-third of the music purchased on iTunes is one of these two genres. You do the math. White people like hip-hop.

If you want to hear the recording that inspired this song, check out “One Way” from Soul Survivor 2008 on iTunes here.

Ed Stetzer in Toronto – September 30

Ed Stetzer is coming to Toronto in the fall to be part of a “Church Revitalization” event at Richview Church. If you are in church leadership and interested in the future of the church, you will want to be part of this. Here’s a quick bio blurb with more info on Ed –

ED STETZER has planted churches in New York, Pennsyl-vania, and Georgia and transitioned declining churches in Indiana and Georgia. He has trained pastors and church planters on five continents, holds two masters degrees and two doctorates, and has written dozens of articles and books. He is currently the Director of Lifeway Research and Lifeway’s Missiologist in Residence.

Event details –
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Richview Baptist Church – 1548 Kipling Ave., Etobicoke, ON
416-247-8701
12:00 pm—4:30 pm for Pastors (including lunch)
7:00 pm—9:00 pm for Church Leaders
info@FEBToronto.com

The Skit Guys – God’s Chisel

This video (God’s Chisel from The Skit Guys) was making the rounds on twitter this week and we were able to use it on Sunday morning at OBC. Normally we never use videos this long but the content, production and delivery was so powerful that we decided to go ahead with it. We are working through a chunk of 2 Peter that is focused on spiritual growth and the push on Sunday morning was that growth isn’t about perfection, it’s about journey. We are often critical about the lack of perceived growth in our lives because we are not perfect in self-control or goodness, etc. The point, however, is that if we are connected to Jesus (John 15) then our lives will bear fruit. Rather than being focused on the character trait we should be focused on our connection with Jesus.

We showed this video right at the end of Earl’s message and it worked beautifully – people laughed at the right spots, nodded in agreement, took deep breaths at the meaningful moments. The impact was significant. Lots of people asked if we could post the video for others to see.

Worship Pastor position near Toronto, Ontario, Canada

I received an email late last week letting me know that Uxbridge Baptist Church is hiring a full-time worship pastor for their church northeast of Toronto. I know I’ve got some friends who are looking for a worship pastor position so I thought I’d post the info here.

If you are interested in applying, there’s instructions in the job posting which you can see here.

Prayer For Africa

I`m gathering some resources that we may use on Sunday as part of the Global Day of Prayer and came across this video -

Catalyst Music Project

You may be familiar with the Catalyst Conference movement and all the cool stuff they’re up to. One of the new things they’ve just launched is the Catalyst Music Project. While I’m not crazy about the 18-page publishing contract that the winner has to sign, I do think that they are on to something very, very cool.

Check it out here – www.catalystmusicproject.com

We believe there are new anthems and worship songs being written on the hearts of our generation across this nation and around the world. This is a call to leaders who have a vision to share these songs with the body of Christ.

Catalyst Music Project | Aaron Keyes from Catalyst on Vimeo.

If you follow my twitter you know that I’ve been really excited about something called WorshipRises – I’m intrigued by some of the things Aaron is saying in this video and how much it resonates with some of the things going on in my own heart and mind right now. I’m excited to see the steps of this journey as Catalyst begins to uncover some of what God is doing in and through worship leaders around the world.

Loop – Sing to the King

“Sing to the King” by Billy Foote & Charles Horne is a very simple song of declaration that’s pretty easy to teach and sing. If you are a church that’s going through a bit of a worship style transition and looking for a song to bridge from some older, more traditional songs to newer, contemporary songs then this could be a good pick. The melody is easy enough for most people to pick up the second or third time they hear it and the lyrics are very straightforward.

The last time we did this song I was looking to spice it up a bit by using a click track. We’ve been using click/loop tracks for about a year and a half at OBC and they’ve become another one of the instruments in the band. We don’t use them every week but when we do they help the band play better and give another sonic layer to the song.

I normally get all my click/loop tracks from PraiseCharts.com but they didn’t have one for this song so I went on a bit of a hunt. I found that Greg over at DigitalWorship.net had posted loops to use with an Ableton Live setup. I haven’t posted about Ableton before but basically it’s click/loops on steroids – guys who are using it can do phenomenal stuff – but right now we are using the standard linear kind of loop during our services.

I took the snippets that he posted on his site and put together a beginning-to-end loop that we used last week in our services. Have a listen -

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(RSS readers you probably need to hit the blog)

The loop we used has a click track to keep our drummer on tempo with a one-bar count-in. You can download the loop here – it’s a stereo WAV file so you can separate the loop from the click.

Here’s the structure for the click -

(click only) One bar – count-in
Intro – 8 bars
Verse
Chorus
Turnaround – 8 bars
Verse
Chorus
Chorus
Turnaround – 16 bars
Verse
Chorus

William Paul Young (author of “The Shack”) on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos

Lots of you end up on this site because I’ve talked about “The Shack” several times – both about my interaction with the book and about my interaction with William Paul Young, the author. Paul was in southern Ontario last week and was part of a show on CBC called “The Hour” hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos. George has become a very well-respected journalist in Canada and I love his interview style.

If you want to see the interview (it’s less than 13 minutes) you can see it here – http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=1124988848

After you watch, I’d love for you to come back and drop your thoughts in a comment. Here are mine -

• .George is a fantastic interviewer. He gets to the heart of the matter very quickly and knows enough of the story & context to come off sounding well-informed and intrigued by the answers.
• .Paul has heard every question in the book over the last couple of years and has an answer ready for every one of them. He has become very experienced at the interview thing.
• .I am amazed and excited that a book written for this guy’s six kids has opened these kinds of doors for spiritual discussion. Agree or disagree, like him or not, Paul’s book has given the church new opportunities to talk about the gospel with those who have questions. Are you taking that opportunity??
• .What is the deep, preconceived, misguided notion of God in my own life that I need to get rid of?
• .Big thought on this one – there is NO WAY that CBC would have given this guy 15 minutes of airtime 10 years ago. No chance. Pretty awesome that he was given that opportunity to declare Jesus is the Word of God, that God is existent as the Trinity and that He is exceptionally fond of each of us. That is very cool.

“It was just an idea but now it’s become a part of us.”

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated what God has been doing here at Orangeville Baptist Church over the last couple of years. Two years ago we embarked on this crazy journey called BEYOND and we began to dream about God using us to transform our region and transform our world. That transformation first began in us and is now happen regionally and globally so we wanted to hit the pause button, in a sense, and come together to remind people what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and that it’s only because of the grace and goodness of God that this is happening.

We invited some artists to come and perform for us to help celebrate the evening and one of them, Phil Aud, wrote a journal with some reflections on his time here with us. Pretty exciting to hear that others who are in our midst are also getting to capture a bit of what God is up to –

Probably my favorite DVD is Sting’s “All This Time”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it…suffice it to say that I can quote most of the lines in the documentary. If you don’t know anything about this recording, it’s basically a small concert on Stings property in Tuscany. He re-arranged and performed many of his well-loved songs. In the documentary section he talked about when it was just an idea and how somebody took the ball and started to run with it. Before he knew it he had a construction crew, band members, video crew, etc. at his house. He said that he felt like saying “Stop, it was only a whim…”. (Hopefully I’m not misquoting since I just said I could quote most of it). In my opinion, this was an incredible “whim” and one of my favorite projects that he has released.

Saturday night Marisa, Tony (our guitarist), and myself went to play at a coffeehouse type event at a church in Orangeville (a place that does not grow Oranges or have orange buildings, or deal in anything orange to the best of my knowledge). We’ve starting doing this stripped down thing and it has been a lot of fun. The church we were at was celebrating what God has done in and through them over the past two years. One of the things that they have involved themselves in is child sponsorship in Uganda. They have also been there to build as I understand it, and have on some level partnered with some folks from there. The Pastor spoke for about 5 minutes and he said, “2 years ago Uganda was just an idea. Now it has become a part of us”. You could sense how much it really had become a part of them. It was awesome to be a part of the night. It got me thinking as I was driving home, how many “whims” or “ideas” do we just pass up and what are we missing out on? Could these whims not be the voice of God at times? I think we often believe that when we don’t pick up the ball and run with some of these thoughts that other people are missing out. This is often true. However, I think that WE are often the ones that are missing out. I could see that these people had a great impact on Uganda. But, I could also see that Uganda had a great impact on them. It was in the air and it was amazing. Maybe we need to start asking ourselves what is holding us back from these whims, and risk a bit more. Maybe some of these “whims” could be the best thing that ever (or never) happened to us.

Okay, I’m going to stop because I’m afraid that I may use the word “whim” one more time.

That is awesome. We are excited to be part of what God is doing here and I cannot wait to see where it goes next.

—————
By the way, if you want to hear some great, fresh, really enjoyable music you need to listen to Phil’s stuff. He is a great songwriter and an incredible performer. He was definitely the hilight of the night when we brought him to Orangeville! His songs are available on iTunes and he’s available for bookings – buy his music and support what he’s doing.

Vote for Isabelle!

Thanks to my beautiful wife I’ve got 3 incredibly beautiful daughters – Avery, Emerson and Isabelle. Our youngest, Isabelle, needs your help on her way to doing a photo session with our friend (and unbelievable photographer, Gillian Gauthier). We’ve been bugging everyone we know to vote for her and now it’s time for me to harass my blog readers!!

So – if you’ve got two seconds to spare, head over here and vote for Isabelle. She would definitely appreciate it!

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