Hockey night in Canada

Last night we had our first real injury of the season. Check out my friend Paul as he re-caps what happened.

this is worth watching: Bob Kauflin

Click Above

Got your passport?

On Monday I am off to Chicago to be a part of a live worship CD/DVD of some songs that Harvest worship leaders have been writing and singing in our churches. If you live in the Chicago area and want to come out to the live recording then visit here for all the details.
I'm taking my Macbook and my digital camera and am going to try and "time lapse" each day to give everyone a inside look as to what is actually going on. Stay tuned.

let Heaven break in

Today was one of those days where I had a lot to think about, in fact, I'm still thinking about a lot of the stuff in my head and thus, why I can't sleep and have been up. It been a day where I've brought a lot before the Lord and really just confessing my need once again for more of Him. One thing that got me thinking was "Worship Matters" by Bob Kauflin. Its seriously kicking my butt and getting me to face the truths about being more than just a "worship leader" (what does that even mean anyway?). Don't get me wrong, I haven't been on my couch crying all day about how far I have to go before being anything, its just a season of pruning and reflecting how I can love Jesus more and do ministry. One of my biggest struggles as someone who is in full-time ministry is sometimes to get so caught up in the doing and forget to sit at the feet of Jesus (kinda like Mary and Martha). Sure, I read my Bible and pray and seek the Lord through out my day but like a lot of people I'm sure, when the sun goes down and you're on your knees before the Lord you realize still how the day could have given more credit to Christ and less to self.
As I read this chapter called "The Leader" I was filled with a determination to continue to press on to whatever God wants to do with my life. Even if that looks a lot different then what I think He wants to do with it.

Here's what I underlined in my "Worship Matters" book:

"But leading worship starts with the way I live my life, not with what I do in public. It's conceivable for us to see ourselves as worship leaders if we're not giving attention to what we do everyday."

"Everything we do should be governed by one goal--to see Jesus Christ praised, exalted, magnified, lifted up, and obeyed."

""Godly example is too often assumed or ignored, while public gifting is highlighted or exalted.
But Paul can't imagine a leader whose personal life doesn't commend his message." (1 Timothy 4:12)

"Every time we open our mouths, we're leading others....letting others know whose words matter more--ours or God's."

And then I finished the chapter by reading this and it was like YES LORD!!!!!!!!

"You've tasted God's goodness and power, but you want more. You aren't content to simply lead songs on Sunday morning or be a great musician. You want your life to count for eternity. Worshiping God is an eternal occupation, and you know that we'll barely scratch the surface in this life."

Thats me. that's where I am. I want more Jesus, I can't rush him, gain more favor with him, somehow pray a prayer to get a bigger dose of grace or love. I wish it was just that simple. What I can do though is obey, read my Bible to better know him, and take more time to speak to Him and grow in realtionship with him. I'm not seeking a "high" on Jesus by doing this- Im simply trying to empty myself so he can fill me (only to be emptied again).
Just this past Monday night, while the men of our church staff were on our retreat, the Spirit of God showed up in a sweet way and just filled the room, the songs we were singing weren't any different then the other times we have sung them, nor were the prayers any more crafted or prepared. It just so happened that the Lord blessed us with his presence is a great way (and we all knew He was there and working, and we're grateful for it).
I've heard it said in real estate that if you are the agent, never take the home owners to a house that is out of their price range because they will have much higher expectations when going back to anything that they can really afford. After seeing hardwood floors and granite counter tops its hard to go to stained carpet and fiber board. As a follower of Christ I have those moments sometime. Much like the worship on the staff retreat--when you see God in a new light, when heaven breaks in to your heart in a new way, you don't want to have to go back to the times when your flesh battles for who's boss. But thats part of the Christian walk. That's the beauty behind it all.
When you taste him, when you see him and feel His presence and know he is working and revealing His truth in your heart to love him more you just don't want it to stop. But then come the trails and persevering that Paul talks about so often and our roots of faith need to dig down deep into the facts of who God is and how he works. And so you fight the flesh, you war against it as John Piper preaches, until you're at that place again of utter brokenness before the Lord, so needy of more of Him and then your spirit is quenched, God fills you with a fresh love, passion, desire, discipline and life continues. and the cycle just keeps getting better and better because your trust and faith in the One who controls it all gets bigger and bigger.
I'm contently dis-content with my walk with my Saviour right now- desiring for more of Heaven to break into my heart.

Weekend Review

We just finished the 3rd service and they just seemed to get better and better. I just walked off the stage to a church congregation singing acapella back "we exalt thee, we exalt thee, we exalt thee, O Lord". So powerful! so privileged to serve the Lord in this way. During the 9am the team brought their favorite worship song lyrics (just the words) and we read them out loud and talked through each of them. Here's the list of the songs they brought:

Made me glad
Lead me to the Cross
Heart of Worship
Give me Jesus
Everything
Let the Peace of God Reign
In Christ alone
It is well

It was so good as musicians to just read the words, and not think how we play it. Just strip it down and see Jesus in it. It was a good exercise that I want to do more often.
Our Weekend Set Looked like this:

G Forever
A Everlasting
B Not a god (You are God Alone)
G Be Magnified
Announcements/Prayer
Baptisms: 10 total! -Quote of the day "I'm not going to lie Craig, Life is AWESOME!"
C Holy Holy Holy
D We exalt Thee
Sermon: Daniel 2: Pastor Robbie Symons
A How Great is our God

this is entertaining

The other night my wife flipped past a show called "so you think you can dance" and this guy was doing his routine. Watch this video and be amazed.

Joel Auge is sweet

I'm a wedding singer

My pastor has a sweet story about how he got invited last minute to attend Matt Redman's wedding in London years ago. He said that he was there and his friend was pointing out all the guest. Tim Hughes was there and Martin Smith was the wedding singer. Today I get to be a wedding singer for my good friend Jason. I'm singing 3 songs. "By Your Side" (Noel Richards), "What I have Vowed" (Matt Redman), "How Great is our God" (Chris Tomlin).

meeting with Noel Richards

Just got a email from Noel Richards, one of the best known worship leaders from the UK. He's in Canada doing some teaching on worship at another church in the Toronto area. We're having coffee and talking worship next Wednesday afternoon. This guy has been doing worship since I was in diapers and I am hoping he can give me some insight to finishing strong, leading more effectively and sharing some insight of what he has learned over the years. (not that he's anywhere near to being done doing what he is doing).

• In January 2000, Noel and his band had the privilege of playing at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, Wales, to a crowd of 66,000 people. This event was organised by BBC Television and was broadcast live to an audience of at least 5 million in the UK. HRH The Prince of Wales also attended this event.

• As well as the albums listed on his discography, Noel has also appeared on numerous "live" worship event/compilation albums. The most successful of these is Sparrow records "I could sing of your love forever" on which Noel is featured singing a live version of "We want to see Jesus lifted high". This album has sold in excess of 500,000 units.
• Noel is the creator of www.worshipjournal.com which is an amazing resource for worship leaders and those who are looking for new material to sing in their church. It's kinda like christian myspace minus all the pictures of chicks on motorcycles.
  

Pray for the Chapman's

Please pray for the Chapman family today as they mourn the lose of their youngest daughter Maria Sue who was killed last night tragically at their home in Nashville. The full story can be found here.
I can't even imagine the pain that something like this would bring a family but know that God will both comfort, and heal this situation.
Stories like this put a persons faith to the test and ask a person who they will turn to in the valley. It is so easy to look to God and trust his sovereignty during the good times but it is hard times that our flesh so badly wants to take over and try and "fix" things or doubt that God is there. He IS there and proves his faithfulness time and time again. My heart goes our to Steven and his wife and the entire Chapman family and I truly pray that the God Steven has so beautifully portrayed in his songs over the years will comfort his heart back to restoration.

look who reads blogs

Got an email from my brother today concerning Bob Kauflin interested in his song called "let songs arise". I'm so proud of Jonathan and how God is using him. He is a gifted song writer.

i love this guy

Kristian Stanfill might be a familiar name to some, and to others it might not be, but let me tell you that this guy is writing songs that are leading me to the throne of God everyday, (Lord of all, Beautiful Jesus, You will always be). I've never spoke to him, except through facebook and don't know if we would get along if we lived together back in college but one thing I do know is that I love his heart for seeing God glorified through song writing. He has inspired me over the past few months in my song writing sit downs and watching him lead at www.722.org gives me a small glimpse of what passion looks like from the platform. Like Kristian writes in his blog, "what's next today God?" I find myself in that same place. I have a bunch of dreams and desires and ideas, but when it comes to the end of the day, I just want what God has in store, not what I have in store. I've added Stanfill to my prayer list and hope our song writing paths cross someday. Kristian just started blogging, the link to it, in the right column.

IGNITE is filling up~

The IGNITE conference is less than a month away and its filling up with young adults from both Canada and the U.S.

If you're just hearing about it than what are you waiting for? REGISTER NOW!

This conference is specifically for young adults who want more of Jesus, and desire to meet with him while sharing in fellowship with other like minded believers. Our musically guest is Jeremy Riddle from California. Check out his video below!

I love my job // weekend review

Just finished the last set of the weekend. It's been one of those weekends when you just don't want it to end because you really can feel the spirit of God here. Our music package moved well from a "gathering" to "reflective". I really love my job and love leading people into the presences of God

Here the music package

G Unchanging (Tomlin)
G Our King is Here (Seller & Maust)
D Before the Throne/ Alleluia (Shane and Shane)
Bb Lord of All (Stanfill)

Prayer/Offering

Knowing You (on the saturday night service we did "faithful" by Steve Fee but after doing it, it just didnt work in the service so we pulled it. After seeing where the sermon was going, we really just needed a song that everyone knew and could just sit in there seat and sing. So we started brainstorming songs and "knowing you" was what we came up with. It speaks volumes if you can sing it and mean the words. I had the band exit the stage and I just did it with the piano.)

Sermon: Pastor Robbie Symons: Daniel 2. 1-23
All three services our pastor started the service on his knees before the Lord in prayer. Seeking that God's words would be heard and not his. Broken before the Lord, Pastor Robbie spoke a powerful message that God has the authority over EVERYTHING.

Close:
E Lord Most High

who likes transposing music?

I am forever thankful for my assistant to tackles the chord charts each week and get them all nice and neat ready for the weekend service and the band and sometimes I have to ask her to change the key of the song (for a capo chart) or just because the original recording is too high to sing a song corporately. Though I am a big believe in making charts on your own instead of just cutting and pasting from a website (usually they're wrong charts and they take up value rehearsal time) but sometimes you want to know you have a resource to take whatever you have and transpose it automatically. I always wondered when someone would make this and here it is

http://logue.net/xp/index.htm

This website allows you to paste your existing key, select what new key you want the song in, and then print it off in that key in a matter of seconds. So simple and easy to use.

Let me know if you find it helpful!

just saw Narnia II

We just got back from Narnia: Prince Caspian.
It was a great follow up to the first movie.
Lots of biblical references and imagery.
And it wasn't even that long.

New Music

Just met with a friend who introduced me to John Mark McMillian. Eddie Kirkland covers one of his songs on his record called "How He Loves" which is so powerful. Trust me when I say it will be the perfect by for the summer music collection. Check it out on itunes HERE

ever wondered what happened the day you were born?

Got this email from my mom today! This is what happened 27 years ago.

Just know that today 27 years ago, I was blessed with a beautiful 8 pound 4
oz baby boy, who came into the world with blonde curly hair and big blue
eyes. He had his little arms stretched out wide, and his legs strait out.
You were ready for the world as you were 3 weeks over due.
27 years ago, Grandpa and Grandma Core spent the night at Grandpa and
Grandma Walters house and they were all there to see you in your incubator.
You were born after 8 in the morning, and you were the most beautiful baby I
had ever seen. My thing was that everyone saw you first before I did.
I had to have an anesethic for my C-Section so didn't know what I had had,
a boy or girl. I can remember in the recovery room asking the nurses, and
they said, I'm not sure, did she have a boy or girl......then they asked
again.
I got into my room and Grandma Core told me that I had a little son, that
was so cute, and perfect. She was crying, Grandpa was so proud, Grandma and
Grandpa Walters were happy, your Dad was happy, and I was very excited, yet
anxious.
I remember the night of your birth. The nurse brought you in to my room,
and I was in a semi private room. I was by the window, so I had the curtain
pulled around my bed. I was in pain because of the surgery, yet when they
brought you to me in your little blue and white stripped blanket, I held you
with wonder and awe that you were in me for 9 mths and now you were
breathing on your own, and were eating as well. It all hit me that I was a
Mom, and that you were now the most important thing in the world to me. God
gave you to me to guide, protect, nourish, love and cherish until the day I
die. I have never stopped loving you, and never will. You see you are a
borrowed gift from God, and he had entrusted you to me.
For some reason, you are my son. Your life is your own, and now as you are
living with your wife, and with the Lord as your Heavenly Father, I have
had to learn to give you up.
I love the fact that no matter what, you are always a part of me. You will
always be the most special son in the world, as you are perfect to me.
God's wonderful Gift, a beautiful healthy son, one that I have had the
privledge to watch grow, get into trouble, get out of trouble, be on TV, be
a student, give an Speach at your High School, sing on a CD, become totally
dependant on the Lord, do parking ministry, get a job doing what God created
you to do. Sing for His Honor and Glory, get married to your sweet-heart,
and now record for the Lord in Chicago.
Joshua, you have had quite a life these past 27 years, enjoy today,
remember that your life is just starting, there are so many things yet to
experience, and someday when you have your own son, and God allows you to
experience that in His time, you will know the pride that wells up inside as
you hold him.
God is totally awesome, and I thank Him today for your life, your ministry,
and your talents and abilities. Wow you have been a blessing to
me.........thanks for being you.
Happy Birthday Honey,
Love
Mom xoxoxoxooxoxxo

In the Press

Check out this article that our church was featured in HERE

Today was a good day

Here's why:

• I woke up
• I woke up next to my super hot wife
• I finished all my assignments before the due date (tomorrow)
• I scored my first goal EVER tonight in our hockey league
• I listened to the entire Meredith Andrews CD....again.
• Andy and I installed a new G5 in our Video Suite for Pro presenter and it actually worked
• I cleaned my office and realized I use 22 inputs of electrical power (I don't know what that means)
• I read my Bible and found myself grateful to know the Lord
• I read another chapter in "Worship Matters" by Bob Kauflin
  
• I planned a service for the weekend and am excited
• I found out a lot of people have been registering for our young adults conference "IGNITE"
• A 750GB Hard Drive came in the mail addressed to me
• I talked to Joe, this cool dude my wife and I met in Cuba, who is coming to our church on Saturday
• I just had a shower with hot water (and the water doesn't smell like pennies)
• I get to go get in my bed
• I get to go get in bed with my sweet wife (she's sleeping).
  

Pro Presenter

Up until today we have ran Easy worship but now.. (drum roll please) we are running Pro Presenter in our weekend worship services. We just finished the switcher-roo and ran some video backgrounds and it looks SWEET!
A few cautions though:

• Just because your lyric system can run video doesn't mean you need to with every new song
• Video backgrounds can add AND take away from the worship service

I can't think of anything else right now why you shouldn't use moving backgrounds...

Comment:
What's your favorite website or program for moving backgrounds?

www.worshiphousemedia.com
www.sermonspice.com
www.renewedvision.com

Weekend Review

Just hanging out in the green room between the 2nd and 3rd service. Its a new series weekend and its always exciting. This weekend's message was stressing the faithfulness of our God and our responsibility to stand up for Christ when its so unpopular to do so. I've got a huge paper to write when I get home so I'm hoping this next service goes long!

G Hosanna (Baloche)
A Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
A Lord Reign in me (Brenton Brown)

Announcements/Mother's Day prayer

C Love Poured Out (Seller)
B Your Name (Baloche)
C None but Jesus (United)

Sermon: New Series: Real Fear, Real Fire, Real Faith

D Faithful One (Doerksen)
D Great is thy Faithfulness (Hymn)

You're invited

The Harvest LIVE worship album website is up and running.
Check it out and learn the new songs.

Attention guy or girl who stole the churches stuff

Check out this story; One weekend in early March, the trailer containing about 75% of Kinetic Church’s equipment was stolen; leaving the portable church with virtually nothing.

Over the past few weeks, the church would work hard to recover from this difficult event. And yet, they still wonder about the people who stole their gear.

The “church trailer” billboard and web campaign was their intentional attempt to make contact with the people who took our church’s stuff. "Our hopes of recovering our stolen property have faded but our dream of meeting our offenders has not."



What would you do? Feel free to comment

Love Poured Out Live

This past weekend we introduced a new song I wrote called "love poured out" from Romans 5. The idea "Love Poured out" doesn't come up until the very end of the original song, and the video cuts it off, but the idea is that we have this freedom, this gift of salvation only because of the sacrifice Christ made for us. The idea of his love being poured out for us as his blood poured out really stuck with me while writing it. We're going to try it again this weekend in our normal worship package and see how the response goes.
So for the record, I'm not some major song writer guy posting this exclusive live performance of something- I just want God to use it in whatever way He so desires. Hope it's a blessing.

new series weekend

Pastor Robbie is kicking off a new sermon series this weekend called "real fear, real fire, real FAITH!", looking at the book of Daniel. Excited for what God has in store!
We're working on going to video podcasts as well every weekend so the plan is to be up and running by this weekend (we'll probably throw it up on the site Tuesday following the weekend service)...stay tuned for more on that.
This week already is going to be insane, one of those weeks on the calender you've been looking at as it gets closer and closer. I have a lot to get threw this week and praying its all done in the Lord's strength and not my own!

Out of shape

To prepare for my hockey debut with the Luchadors I've decided to run. Tonight was my first attempt at it. After 5:34 seconds (the first track on my ipod) I was really hurting. by the 3rd song I was back at the house sitting on my front porch. Im going to keep at it, but if I puke at any point during this thing called "exercise" its over.

Weekend Review

Almost finished the last 3rd service and am just hanging out with the guys. This weekend was a great time and I personally felt the congregation was ready to worship from the start. Praise the Lord for people who want to worship! Our piano player, Dave Lammers lead the communion song which was cool for me because I love seeing other people with leadership skills using them. He did great! We introduced my lastest song called "Love poured out" and I thought it was really powerful with what the band did with it.

Psalm 34:1-5
A Blessed be Your Name
C All because of Jesus
C I surrender all
C From the inside out

Announcements/Prayer
Special: Love Poured Out

Message: Pastor Ted Duncan (Matt 17:1-13)
Communion:
D When I survery the wonderful Cross

Close:
A Days of Elijah

Live Worship Album

I've got some pretty exciting news to share with you; Wednesday June 4th at 7pm in Elgin, IL. myself, along with some other amazing harvest worship leaders are going to be apart of a live worship CD and DVD for Harvest songs. We have been busy writing new songs and re-working some of our older material to brings something that we pray will be used to lead people to throne of God. My good friend Andi is the brains behind all of this and has given me the opportunity to use one of my songs on the record. All I want from this is people to love Jesus more and sing songs that can tell him just that. Im so humbled for this opportunity and thankful to be apart of such an exciting event. What else is exciting is that Carl Albrecht (from the Paul Baloche band) and Brian Whitman (from Audio Adrenaline) will be sharing the stage for the record.

Oh yeah- if you live near chicago and want to be apart of the LIVE recording then visit www.harvestliveworship.org for more information!

.

The Luchadors

This summer some of the staff and members of HBC are playing hockey in a non-Christian men's hockey league.
Our team is called "The Luchadors" and we're pretty much are the best.
We just went and picked up our jerseys and they look awesome. I picked number #13 for no reason at all. If you want to become a fan of our team, and follow all the scoring stats click on the link below.

The Luchador's Fan Club

Extreme Makeover: Video Suite

Next up is our video room. It really was a closet that got turned into a video room but was too small and hot (temperature) that it made it uncomfortable for our volunteers to volunteer. But the problem was if we expanded it we would cut space out of the worship green room. After some floor plan brainstorming sessions we decided to know the wall out to expand the room by 12 feet. The green room shrunk but now that it's done, no one really notices. After knocking out the wall came a fresh coat of dark paint and lights. Then we built a riser for our director to sit and clearly see our cameras and video previews. We put the producer (lyrics, videos, lowerthirds) directly in front of him on the floor. The audio comes in through a set of speakers mounted on the ghost wall (the wall where all the monitors hang). Behind the wall we put the video rack to keep it out of the way and ventilated. More equipment meant hotter room so after visiting another local church we learned of a single air conditioning unit that can be set to cool the entire room.
We run a software based video switching unit called a VT5. We haven't had any problems with it since we had it installed and its endless in options and very user friendly (good for volunteers). The room looks cool, so volunteers like to be back there and its a lot easier now with the space and floor layout for them to actually do what they are asked to do. Audio/Video stresses on a weekend can kill an attitude of worship so quickly and really put a wrench in the order of worship if something that is suppose to be on the screen to assist people in worshiping isn't. These upgrades have really helped both our team, and congregation worship with out distraction. Here's some pictures of before and after.

Extreme Makeover: Overflow

Here's the story; Our church inherited a previous church building when it planted 4 years ago. In that time we have had a lot of good problems. One of the problems is that we have no more room to put people. We now have 3 identical services but have had to turn the gymnasium into a 2nd worship center to accommodate. (Our main worship center holds about 500).
The gym was ugly, cold, not inviting, especially for people to come worship in. So we had to make some changes. On top of that it had a 12 second echo and the acoustics were terrible. To save money, and keep the budget for what we needed we decided to research what the acoustical treatments are made of, buy the stuff, and make them ourselves. This worked out great and saved us over 20,000.00 dollars. Total cost for the acoustical treatment materials was around 1500.00 bucks. Then, to warm it up we had it painted and the ceiling painted flat black along with new pot lights. Next, we ran a 2 video feeds from our Audio Video room to the gym along with 16 channels of audio to be sub-mixed in the gym for a separate mix. Three screens and three projectors power the visual. the Center screen is the live band and our pastor and the side screens are the words to the songs and the sermon notes. We brought in a company to hang some 3way powered speakers in the corners and moved our mixer from the main worship center over to the gym for the sub-mix. The sound is amazing in there and the echo is gone, thanks for the acoustical treatments.




Overall, its still tight on weekends, but it has been a huge advantage for other ministries in the church to have as 2nd worship center for other functions, plus, the nets are still up and the floor is still the same for any sports or youth events. The investment has allowed so many more people to hear the gospel and make Harvest their home.