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Worship Confessional – 02.08.09

February 8, 2009 in Ministry, Worship, Worship Confessional with 15 Comments

Today was the first day in our new series about MONEY MANAGEMENT. Practical, right???

It was Mark & myself on guitars today and Liz on keys. It’s always fun to have three part harmony.

Not To Us – Chris Tomlin
King of Glory – Chris Tomlin
Mighty To Save – Reuben Morgan
Heart of Worship – Matt Redman
Holiness – Scott Underwood
Desert Song – Brooke Fraser
You Alone – David Crowder

It was good to call everyone back to the “Heart of Worship” after Matt talked about what we should really do with our finances in this economy. Well… I think I was mostly calling myself back to the heart of worship.

I’m blown away week after week over what kind of man our Pastor is. I know if he had extra money, he would put it all back into the church or into our community.

It’s no secret, that if I had more freedom in my finances, it would go to one of two things:

Paying off debt
Fun material items

I don’t want to be THAT kind of person. I want the least of these to benefit from my mere existence. I WANT to find myself in THAT place, where my heart’s desire is to make it ALL about Jesus.

Man… I have a LONG ways to go.

So, tell me…

if you had an extra $10,000 a month, what would you do with the money???

Worship Confessional – 02.01.09

February 1, 2009 in Ministry, Worship, Worship Confessional with 2 Comments

Today was the last day of our 30 Days to Live Series.

Whenever we wrap up a series, I wonder how much of what Matt says is actually taken to heart… enough for them to take action. Time will tell, I guess.

The Set:

Let The Praises Ring – Lincoln Brewster
Forever – Chris Tomlin
Meet With Me – Ten Shekel Shirt
Desert Song – Brooke Fraser
Hosanna – Brooke Fraser
Till I See You – Joel Houston
Jesus Paid It All – Kristian Stanfill

I had an allergy attack yesterday. I think it was cat allergies, but I’m not totally sure. You see… when I get about, oh let’s say, 20 miles to a cat, my eyes tear up, my throat closes up and my face blows up. It lasts a couple of days.

At least, I AM sure I’m not sick because I feel a million times better today. I had a pretty bad allergy hangover today though and I felt like it totally affected my voice in leading worship this morning.

With that said, I still felt that today’s service went really well. Everything ran REALLY smoothly and connected.

How was YOUR weekend service?

Worship Confessional – 01.25.09

January 25, 2009 in Ministry, Worship, Worship Confessional with 4 Comments

We got home a little past midnight last night. Paxton was a pretty awesome little sleeper and the whole way home from Medford.

But by the time we got home, fed him, unpacked and got prepped for the next day, it was almost 2am. Of course he also had to wake up twice to be fed.

At about 7:30am, Paxton started crying. He RARELY cries… but when he does, he stops pretty quickly once we meet his needs. However, 1.5 hours later, he’s still crying. Poor baby had gas. Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted this morning.

I think it goes without saying that I was pretty scattered by the time I got to church.

All I could do was pray that God would work quickly to get me to the place where I could authentically lead and not “fake” it.

Can’t say I was there the first half, but by the second half (response time), God met me right where I needed Him to be.

This was the set:

Evermore – Joel Houston
Better Than Life – Marty Sampson
King of Glory – Chris Tomlin
SPECIAL: Legacy – Nichole Nordeman
Till I See You – Joel Houston
How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
Shout To The Lord – Darlene Zschech

I’ve been leading all these songs for years now, but Evermore and Till I See You are BRAND new to Church! at Bethany. I was SUPER excited to introduce Till I See You because it is one of my favorite songs EVER. It’s my life anthem:

The greatest love that anyone could ever know
That overcame the cross and grave to find my soul
And ’til I see You face to face and grace amazing takes me home
I’ll trust in You

With all I am I’ll live to see Your kingdom come
And in my heart I pray You’d let Your will be done
And ’til I see You face to face and grace amazing takes me home
I’ll trust in You

I will live to love You
I will live to bring You praise
I will live a child in awe of You

You are the voice that calls the universe to be
You are the whisper in my heart that speaks to me
And ’til I see You face to face and grace amazing takes me home
I’ll trust in you

You alone are God of all
You alone are worthy Lord
And with all I am my soul will bless Your name

I’ve been singing it to Chance ever since he was born. Actually, I sing it to my kids almost every night as a lullaby. Chance can actually sing every word at the ripe young age of three. I’ll have to video that someday.

What’s YOUR favorite worship song of all time?

Worship Confessional – 01.18.09

January 18, 2009 in Ministry, Music, Worship, Worship Confessional with 6 Comments

Today was my first time back on the platform leading worship since having Paxton (not counting Christmas Eve).

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve played and sung in front of people. It doesn’t matter if it’s 3,000 I used to lead or if it’s 10… I STILL GET NERVOUS.

I think it’s just the nature of what I do. When the goal is something this much bigger than you could possibly imagine, I guess nervousness is the least one should feel. I think it would be easier for me to just perform. But since leading worship is what God has called me to… ON WITH THE NERVOUSNESS.

Today’s set:

Beautiful One – Tim Hughes
Famous One – Chris Tomlin
My Glorious – Martin Smith
Our Great God – Mac Powell & Fernando Ortega
Lead Me To The Cross – Brooke Fraser
Grace Like Rain – Todd Agnew
Mighty To Save – Reuben Morgan

We’re in the second week of our series, 30 Days to Live.

Matt talked about our eternal perspective, or rather what our eternal perspective SHOULD be. I followed it up with “Our Great God” to help focus in and respond to a God who is eternal and glorious.

Here’s a clip of Todd Agnew & Rebecca St. James performing it:

I think my highlight today was someone coming up to me, thanking me for preparing and leading worship the way I do. The reason it was my highlight is because this man sits in the back with his arms crossed most of the time. By sheer appearance, he seemed to be one completely unaffected no matter how much effort I put into it.

God never stops surprising me.

TECH UPDATE: After LiveWorship crashed last week, we purchased ProPresenter (thanks to the recommendation from Brent & Joshua). Today was our first time running it and it was AWESOME! Smooth like BUTTA! Other than some screen size tweeking I had to do, it was seemless and easy to run.

Today was a great day. I feel challenged to live my life differently… for eternal purposes. I need to be MORE intentional with how I pour into my children, how I build up my husband, and how I reach out to me friends.

What will YOU do this week for the Kingdom of God?

Worship Confessional – 01.11.09

January 11, 2009 in Ministry, Web/Tech, Worship, Worship Confessional with 1 Comment

Today was a day of technical madness.

Seriously… everything else was great… if not perfect. Liz & Mark led worship and did a PHENOMENAL job. Matt gave a brilliant sermon that really made us all think. The sound was pretty darn good. Graphics – yeah… that was me – NOT SO HOT.

We upgraded to iWorks ’09 and my laptop wasn’t liking it. After that, my Mac also decided she no longer wanted to be in a intimate relationship with LiveWorship and dumped him and all his files. Not a single song was to be found.

Matt and I looked everywhere. Gone… like a potential girl/boyfriend once you tell her/him you’re a serial killer.

What’s crazy is it was all there yesterday during run-thru. I must have deleted part of the program or something…

During the whole set up time, I was typing up song lyrics like a mad woman on Keynote so people wouldn’t have to make up their own lyrics, though that would have been AWESOME!!! I finished the worship response portion on Matt’s MAC during his sermon and had Matt Isborn run the sermon graphics on my Mac for me.

Totally genius… until Matt’s laptop ran out of juice. So of course I plug it in and turn the power back on.

“BWAHHHHHH”

That’s the sound a MAC makes when it’s powered on. If people didn’t know there were technical difficulties before this… they sure knew now.

Overall, I think it was still a powerful Sunday. I think I was the most distracted out of everyone, but it was for a good reason — so THEY wouldn’t be.

I’d still give today a score of: 8.5

Not to shabby!

Just for fun… here’s a picture of sound check this morning:

It really wasn’t THAT bad

Worship Confessional – 01.04.09

January 5, 2009 in Worship, Worship Confessional with 2 Comments

The first Worship Confessional of 2009. I feel like I’ve been confessing forever.

Hmmm… I just re-read that last sentence and am totally aware it sounds weird, but I’m gonna leave it. Awkward is beautiful, people… awkward is beautiful.

So, yesterday… Whipple Creek sent a team to lead worship since I’m slowly working myself back into the main services (I really have one more week till I’m back up and leading up front).

The team that was sent did a great job of being prepared musically to lead us. I contributed by running graphics which was actually super easy since I created mapping for everything WEEKS before and Matt didn’t have any talk graphics for me (his Mac has been at the doctor’s all week).

This is my confession this week though:

I have failed as a leader the last few weeks. I haven’t communicated with my team and I’ve barely communicated with Matt. I need to pull it together.

No one knew what time they had to be at church to prep. The majority of us got there AFTER the guest band had arrived… um… I’m LAME! I’m so sorry, Whipple Creek Team, if you’re reading this. Totally my bad!

It was nice running tech stuff this week though and slowly coming back into the mix. The only rough patch was we recently switched from using large screens to flatscreen TVs. It’s more appropriate for our space and they work well… except that I have to reformat ALL my song lyrics because they appear too small on the smaller tv screens.

After I got that done… all was well.

Next week, Liz is leading… then I’ll be back the week following that.