Hey all, I will be taking another short break from blogging over Christmas and possibly until the new year.  I need to focus my attention on my new little girl and my wonderful wife and the rest of my family.

Since this last week’s series on music theory went so well, I’m going to continue posting on music theory when I’m back from the break.  We’ll look at things such as:

• The different types of 7 chords (maj7, min7, V7…there’s more..but I think that will be a good start)
•  Augmented and diminished chords
• The leading tone
• More…

Have yourself a very merry little Christmas and a fantastically happy new year!

Hey all!  Well, the shift to fatherhood is turning out to be fantastic.  There are some minor difficulties, of course, but the joy and amazement at watching a new person grow is absolutely amazing.

My posts will be hit and miss this week, but starting Monday I’ll be offering a series on music theory.  I know that sounds incredibly boring, but this series will be some of the most practical music theory tips a worship leader (as in, any musician involved on worship teams) will need to know.

Well, today my wife and I are scheduled to go to the hospital and be induced to have our first baby.  Please pray for safe delivery and strength for my wife especially, as it will be an overnight labor.  We are so excited to have a new member of our family, but know if will change our lives forever.

I more than likely will be taking a bit of a break from blogging for a while.  So look for me to come back after a time of rest and getting to enjoy the new adventures of fatherhood.

Warning – geeky material, but if you are a graphic or web designer, this is a must read! I promise that I will tie it in with worship, though, so no worries!

There might be several of you who have been asked by your churches to design a weekly email newsletter for them.  If you are a designer that holds fast to web standards, you know what a headache email newsletters can be.  There is not much standards support for CSS-based design so you have to make a choice:  design your email with CSS, keeping a prominent link to the html file so that those who can’t view it correctly can click there, or go old-school and design with ugly, bloated code using tables without current standards for design.

So the question is, why in the world do certain email clients not support CSS standards for emails?  If they did, html emails would be cleaned up, viewed correctly in each mail client, have much more accessability and many more benefits.

Enter email-standards.org. Campaign Monitor, probably the best service for sending html emails has been at the forefront of fighting a battle to get web standards in email.  I think with enough people speaking up and joining them in the fight this could happen.  Check out their new website and help spread the word.

So why does this matter for the church?  You’re probably thinking, “Okay, who cares, it’s an email!”  The only problem is, even emails have an effect on how people view the church.  Undoubtedly, churches are going to use html email newsletters.  We should learn all we can to be able to do them tastefully, in a way that will draw people to the church and not push them away.  Instead of not caring and producing either sloppy emails or emails that clients don’t support, we should lead the way in providing the smoothest way possible to get news to the people of the church.

Well, I’m blessed to be able to attend another men’s retreat.  This time it will take us a lot longer to get there as we’re going to IL for the retreat!  I have the privilege of leading worship and doing some teaching on leading a life of worship.  I’m excited (except for the part about meeting at 6:30 am to leave!)