i am an offering

As I mentioned Friday, I will be gone this week, so this is the last post you’ll see from me for a bit.

Today was a great service.  We had a lot of new people involved, including a couple youth who hadn’t been involved before and they did a great job.  Our high school (soon-to-be-college) guitar player did very well on a guitar lick for one of the songs.  The song list was:

Stir Up a Hunger - Baloche
You’re Worthy of My Praise - Ruis
Receive the Glory - Kauflin
At All Times - Beeching (I think)
It Is Well - Horatio Spafford
You Shine - Doerkson

Pastor John spoke about the fact that everything we think about our troubles, God contrasts our thoughts with His.  When we think our troubles are going to last forever, God lets us know that they are only temporary and will be gone before we know it.  When we think our burdens are extremely heavy, God lets us know that they are light, for He carries them.

What an extraordinary God we have!  A thought I had, though, was what do people consider “troubles” or “burdens?”  Do they consider not getting along with their manager at work a “trouble,” even though they might be the ones with a bad attitude towards the boss?  Do they consider being in debt “trouble,” even though they lack self-control that could have kept them out of debt?

My point is not to belittle those who might be in debt for a reason that really was a true burden, or those who might really have an extremely difficult supervisor, but to point out that sometimes the “troubles” we have come because we don’t think of consequences.  Those are not the kind of troubles that Paul was talking about in this passage from 2 Corinthians.

God takes away our true burdens, but we have a responsibility to worship Him by thinking about the consequences of our actions.

But the amazing thing about our God is that, even though we might have to face consequences because of bad choices, He still loves us and carries us!

Again, what an extraordinary God we have!

Yesterday I had lunch at the Pizza Ranch in Tea, and drove back roads to get there.  In the process, I past 57th and Western, where Bracco and many other new places have popped up, and 69th and Western, where there is also a lot of new developement going on.  Also, on the East side of town, groundbreaking for two huge “lifestyle center” projects is going to begin soon.  It really excites me to see our city growing, and see the building that is taking place.  But even though it’s exciting to have new options for shopping, eating and entertainment, these buildings won’t last.

Look at these words from 1 Corinthians chapter 3:9-17

“For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.  Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”

So often we tend to build kingdoms of our own.  We build bigger houses, we crave ambition for bigger business, sometimes we even hope to build bigger churches in the hope that we will be noticed.

But Paul clearly says that the building that we need to worry about is our own body.  We are God’s temple, the building which houses the Holy Spirit, and we need to depend upon the foundation of Jesus Christ.

What kinds of foundations for your life are you laying?  Are you building upon the foundation of Jesus, or upon a foundation that will crumble?

This is mainly a review that will be beneficial for worship planners and worship leaders, but if you are interested in part of the process of how I plan and keep track of administrative items with Lord of Life’s worship services, then read on.

A couple of years ago I happened upon an ad for Church Assist’s Worship Assistant software, and I must say, for an organizationally challenged guy like myself, it helps me immensely! (and no, I have not been paid to recommend the software)

The website describes the software as being “designed to help church worship leaders plan services and present song lyrics using a video projector.” I think this sentence doesn’t do the software justice. It really should read that the software is “designed to help church worship leaders plan services, track and store song usage and information, track and store worship team involvement and information, and track and store lists of every service. And that’s just the half of it!”

This software does it all. You can store all of your song information including author, copyright, CCLI#, theme, Scripture, key, tempo, last used, first used, chords used, how many times it’s been used, plus user-defined categories as well.

You can store all of your worship team member information, and email a member right from the program.

You can store service information including which songs are in the set, notes for the songs, copyright reporting information, worship team information and more.

On top of all of this, you can do endless reports, print out master lists of your songs, search songs for a particular word or phrase; you can even specify a location of sheet music or mp3’s for a certain song within that’s songs information window. So if you want to remind yourself of how the song sounds on the recording, you just hit the little play button and it’s automatically there.

The one drawback to this software is the projection side. I am a huge fan of software specfically made for projection, and I wish that Worship Assistant was specifically tailored just for database and administration purposes. That said, however, it is a great option for people who don’t have the budget for separate pieces of software for projection and for record storage.

I really have only recently begun to fully utilize this great piece of software, but I plan to continue to use it daily to help me become more organized, which is an area of my life that definitely needs more help. I highly recommend this software!

One of the greatest definitions of worship that I have heard is to “give something more worth than anything else.” In this way, we could worship money, by giving worth to ambition more than anything else. We could worship fame, by giving the desire to be known more worth than anything else. These are things we could worship, but we should not.

What we should worship, and give more worth to than anything else, is Jesus Christ our Savior. To be an offering, we give up what we want as humans and give our Savior more worth than our human desires.

Peter gives so much practical application in this chapter of his first letter that it would take me a whole week of posts to get through it. So, I’m going to break up the chapter each Wednesday, and give a little bit at a time.

“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” 1 Peter 2:1.

One sentence is all it takes to floor us. That’s how God’s Word works.

The term ‘malice’ (which Webster defines as “desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another”) is not a term we see every day, but Peter tells us to get rid of it. When we have thoughts of hurting others, we need to give more worth to Jesus and His compassion than the thoughts of hurting others.

We are called to get rid of deceit. We are called to give more worth to Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life than to deception that leads to personal gain.

We are called to rid ourselves of hypocrisy. This one is especially hard for people who publicly lead worship. If you are in front of a congregation and you have sin in your life that you are not confessing or letting God take care of, you are being hypocritcal. Of course, by our very nature, we all struggle with sin, and there is no way to be rid of it this side of Heaven, but if we are in front of a congregation calling for them to live a certain way, yet we are living the very way we are calling them out of and not asking God for His help, we are disobeying God’s Word. We are called to give more worth to Jesus and His integrity than living double lives.

We are called to get rid of all envy. This one is hitting me particularly hard lately. Sometimes, as worship leaders or members of a tech team, our work goes unnoticed or unthanked, and we get jealous of people who seem more appreciated. We are called to give more worth to Jesus than the approval of men.

And finally, we are called to get rid of slander of every kind. We are called to give more worth to Jesus and His love and grace than to discussing problems about people behind their back.

I know for a fact that I struggle with each one of these issues, and I am praying that God would continue to change me in these areas. Would you pray for me and yourselves as well?

I’m really hoping with these posts to be very practical to musicians who might not have much training.  I love the fact that there are resources out there that are meant to help train church musicians, but the only problem is that you get these powerhouse players for these resources that make everything look so easy and perhaps brush over some of the basics that people don’t think about.

So, that said, today I would like to look at the basics of creating a bassline.  Are you ready?

Step 1: Learn music theory (or at least the basics of it).  There is nothing more important than understanding how the musical structure of a song works.  If you can learn basic music theory (such as knowing the I, IV, V, and vii chords in every key), you will be way ahead of the game.  If you understand musical structure, you will be able to anticipate where your next note should go, know how to fill within a chord, and much more.

Step 2: Practice.

Step 3: After learning music theory, don’t only rely on the bass note of the chord.  If you see something like G/B, don’t skip over the G!  Yes, you must first of all be solid on knowing that you as the bassist are supposed to play the B, but if you don’t know what chord goes over the B, how can you fill and make your baselines more intersting?

Step 4: Practice again.

Step 5: Learn style.  This one can be tricky.  Where do you start?  The best way to do this is first of all, learn step 1, then secondly, find some drum grooves that are written out.  For those of you who go to Lord of Life, I have a poster of them in my office.  Learn where the kick drum and snare drum are written on these drum grooves and match them.  A great way to practice this is by going to the Jam Zone at CyberFret Bass, choosing a style, and just plain doing it.

Step 6: Practice more.  Are you sensing a trend here?

The best things to do when learning how to create bass lines are to know the foundations of music theory, and to know style.

Next time we’ll look at how the drums and bass work together, utilizing these same concepts.