i am an offering

Yesterday at Living Word was a bit different than usual.  Our pastor is on a much needed vacation, so I filled in with the teaching yesterday while the other two deacons helped to lead the service.  Will, Kelli and Robin did a fantastic job of leading worship, bringing back a few of my favorite hymns that I hadn’t sung for a while.  Songs for the morning:

• Praise to the Lord the Almighty (hymn)
• Blessed Assurance (hymn)
• Softly and Tenderly (hymn)
• Jesus, Thank You (Sovereign Grace)

One of the best parts of the day for me was a testimony from Hans, one of our youth who had just been to what’s called FLY BootCamp (Free Lutheran Youth Boot Camp), an intense time of training and encouragement for youth from the Free Lutheran Church around the country.  This year they focused on evangelism with some hands on training.  I must admit, when it comes to evangelism - especially on the street, everyday, talk to whoever you meet evangelism, I fall way short.  Hans challenged all of the adults in the congregation to be examples for the youth, because that’s where the youth get their inspiration and encouragement to keep going.  I was sure convicted!  What a great challenge for adults for every area of life as well.  People are watching, folks.

By the way, Fred McKinnon just started something pretty cool to get people seeing what other churches around the country are singing week to week.  This post is part of his ‘Sunday Setlists’ post. Check it out, especially if you’re interested in some new song ideas.

Tomorrow, I want to dive into a hard topic, one that I’ve been wrestling with this past weekend as some interesting things have happened with this blog - pride.  I’m going to be honest and raw and hope that some of our thinking might shift a little.  See you tomorrow.

One thing I should have mentioned at the beginning of the week, to do in all of these cases is pray.  Pray for these players to show up.  God will provide.

Here are some ideas for what to do when you don’t have a guitar player:

• Ask your youth leader.  More than likely one of the youth is learning how to play.  Invest time in that youth.  See if the church will help you financially invest in getting lessons for the youth.
• Teach your piano player to play rhythmically.  Often times piano players play only by note and play way too many notes.  Teach them to drive the music with the chords instead of the notes.  There are times when many notes are important, but with the faster songs that you would want a guitarist for, the piano player can drive the rhythm if taught how to do it.
• Don’t pick guitar-driven songs.  Songs such as “God of Wonders” and “Everlasting God” have a very distinct sound that is created by a specific strumming pattern from the guitar.  Avoid picking songs that have a definite and prominent guitar strum.  It is nearly impossible to re-create certain guitar strums on the piano.