“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.

Audrey Assad – Winter Snow

Lots of you have heard this song already because it’s on Chris Tomlin’s new Christmas CD (and if you haven’t got that yet, you are missing out!) but I wanted to share this with you. We did this song last Sunday at OBC and everyone loved it.

This is “Winter Snow” by Audrey Assad (web|twitter)- enjoy!

Paul Baloche – Today Is The Day

The new Paul Baloche (web|twitter) CD “Glorious” is coming November 3rd. I’ve had the chance to listen through a couple of times and I am pretty impressed. Stay tuned for details on a release day giveaway that’s coming for your chance to win a copy of the CD as well as the worship leader digital songbook from our friends at Integrity.

Here’s a video from the album. “Today Is The Day” is best-known as being performed by Lincoln Brewster (web|twitter)and Paul has his turn with the song that he co-wrote on this record. Check out the video –

RIFF iPhone Guitar App

This is all that I’ve seen of the RIFF iPhone Guitar App and it’s already got my vote for best iPhone app ever! Cannot wait to get to try this out.

Building429 & downhere – Ticket Giveaway!

UPDATE: We have a winner! Congratulations to Ami on winning the tickets. I hope your son and his friend have a great time! Thanks to everyone who entered and thanks to random.org for picking the winner –

Two great bands are coming up to Canada for a pretty solid tour and the good people at World Vision Canada want YOU to be there. Lots of tour info is available at www.building429canada.ca so head over to that site to get filled in.

If you’re not familiar with these two bands, here are the quick hilights -

Building 429

• 2005 GMA New Artist of the Year
• Signed to INO Records
• Toured with TobyMac, SonicFlood, TFK, Jeremy Camp, Tree63 and more!
• Latest album “Building429″ released October 17, 2008

downhere

• Juno, Dove and Covenant Award-winning band from Canada (!!!)
• Signed to Centricity Records
• Won 2007 Juno Award (Canada’s version of the Grammy’s) for Contemporary Christian Album of the Year for “Wide Eyed & Mystified”
• Performers of one of my favourite songs of all time, “Great Are You”

So here’s the deal. We’re going to give away one pair of tickets to one of the shows on the tour that these guys are doing together. If you live near one of the cities and are planning to hit the show, then this contest is for you! Here’s how we’ll do this giveaway -

1. Leave a comment on this post and tell me why you’re excited about winning these tickets. Lots of comments are great but it will still only get you one entry in the contest

2. Post about the tour and the contest either on your own blog or twitter – make sure you include a link back to this blog when you are posting! Post a link to your post as a second comment and you’ll get entered TWICE in the contest.

3. The winner will be chosen early on Friday, August 14th – so if you are wanting to go to the first show in Toronto on Saturday, August 15th you will have time to get your tickets worked out.

So leave your comments – good luck!

Hillsong Live – release day giveaway coming tomorrow!

The new CD from Hillsong called “Faith+Hope+Love” is being released tomorrow and I’ve got a giveaway that you will want to know about! To get you excited for that, here are some videos of a few of the songs that are on the CD – enjoy:

I Will Exalt You – Hillsong from Carlos Whittaker on Vimeo.

Hillsong “Hold Me Now” from Ben Arment on Vimeo.

We Will See Him from Pete Wilson on Vimeo.

Yahweh – Hillsong Faith+Hope+Love from Fred McKinnon on Vimeo.

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

Matt Redman – This Is How We Know

Hey OBC family – if you are coming on Sunday morning we will be doing this new song together. I wanted to post it here so that you would have a chance to hear it and read the lyrics before we gather.

Matt Redman is one of the great songwriters and worship leaders of our generation. We already sing lots of his songs at OBC and I’m excited about learning this one together. I came across it last week and it has helped me think through this idea of the neighbourhood of Jesus being broad enough to include those who are very different from us.

This is how we know, this is how we know what love is
Just one look at Your cross
And this is where we see, this is where we see how love works
For You surrendered Your all

And this is how we know that You have loved us first
This is where we chose to love You in return

For You so loved the world that You gave Your only Son
Love amazing, so divine, we will love You in return
For this life that You give, for this death that You have died
Love amazing, so divine, we will love You in reply, Lord

Our love will be loud
Our love will be strong
Our love shall be hands and feet
That serve You in this world
So let us stay true
And let it endure
That You will be glorified
And worshiped and adored

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.

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.

Love Story meets Viva La Vida

I can’t remember where I saw this posted first but it is too brilliant to not share. Seriously – genius!!

Avery, my 3-year old, is pretty much in love with Taylor Swift and at every possible opportunity is asking if she can listen to “the Juliette song.” She hasn’t heard this yet but I think she will be a big fan!

“Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.” -John Updike

Stage – truss help?

We are putting the final touches on our building project and stage renovation. I have one piece left in the stage puzzle and that is figuring out some kind of metal truss system for the back wall of our stage. I thought it was a bit complicated to explain in a post so I recorded this quick video.

Let me know if you have any ideas!

Video – Western Spaghetti

HT: Today’s Big Thing

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