Hello again!  I apologize for being off schedule, but vacation and a crazy week does that to you sometimes.  I am hoping to be consistent and back on schedule from now on.  That said, on to the recap!

Pastor John is back from PLI (Pastoral Leadership Institute) with a fire that I haven’t seen in him for awhile.  It’s exciting to see where God is going to be leading us through him.

The songs we did yesterday were:

Beautiful One (Hughes)
Lord, Reign in Me (Brown)
You are the One (Baloche/Brewster)
Be Still My Soul
How Deep the Father’s Love For Us (Townend)
Lord, Most High (Harris/Sadler)
How Could You Love Me So Much (Zhender)

Out of everything that took place in worship yesterday, the one thing that struck me the most was a question John posed to the congregation during the sermon.  He asked, “If Lord of Life suddenly vanished from the corner of 33rd and Sycamore, would anybody even notice?”

I think that these words are desperately needed at our church (or any church) right now.  What are we doing to reach the neighborhood to let them know of the love and grace of Jesus Christ?  What are we doing to impact our city for Him?  The single most imporant mission we have as Christians is to “go and make disciples of all nations.”  Let’s get out and do it.

I was a bit nervous about this past Sunday, since it was the first Sunday in quite a while without a drummer.  However, I actually found it as a very pleasant respite from a very predominant problem we’ve been facing.  Here’s why it was a respite:

We could actually hear the mix!

This is by all means not a comment against any drummers that play with us, but a comment against the room’s acoustics.  It is so hard in our multi-purpose sanctuary to get a clean mix when a drummer is playing, because the sound gets so muddy.  It was really nice to have a bit of a breather!

With that said, here was the song list:

Rise Up and Praise Him – Baloche
Faithful One – Doerkson
God Bless Our Native Land
Enough – Tomlin
I’m Forever Grateful – Marks
Receive the Glory – Kauflin

Now, onto the real subject of the day!  So often, we as Christians, we as humans, get comfortable.  We get comfortable with routine.  We get comfortable with things going the way we expect them to go.  This can lead to two things happening: 1) When something changes from the routine, we pay more attention and are much more alert. 2) When something changes from the routine, we either get frustrated because we didn’t expect it, or we just plain don’t pay attention.

Unfortunately for me, being honest, when we had a guest pastor yesterday, I fell into #2.  I was used to Pastor John being here and I spaced out, therefore hindering my job as a worship leader.  However, this can hinder many things for anybody.

If you hit the #2 category, ask youself why?  Is it because you have been placing your whole basis on coming to church or listening to a sermon on Pastor John?  This is scary.  We should be listening to God’s Word being preached because it’s God Word being preached, no matter who is the messenger, unless of course, the messenger is speaking against God’s Word.  Then we pray that God would help us to know to challenge the messenger, or to get out of there as fast as possible.

If you hit the #2 category, was it because you were bored or distracted?  This is also scary.  We need to all pray that God would give us a desire to be connected with Him and not bored with the elements of the worship service.

I truly hope that most people fell into the crowd of being more alert with a guest pastor, and I ask that God would help me and any others not to fall into the #2 crowd.

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!

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!

Yesterday was another fantastic time of worship where God’s Word was proclaimed and Christ’s body given for us.  Pastor John spoke to us about the fact that everyone, everywhere has a breaking point, but that God would not let that breaking point destroy us.  John shared from 2 Corinthians 4 the amazing limits that God puts on our breaking points.

“We are hard pressed on every side, BUT not crushed.  We are perplexed, BUT not in despair.  We are persecuted, BUT not abandoned.  We are struck down, BUT not destroyed.”  This is reason to worship God!

The music came together very well.  In light of Bob Kauflin’s recent post on how important it is to have skill within a worship team, I was very excited that Pat, our drummer, nailed the tricky celtic rhythm for the song “His Forever.”  It was awesome!  Thanks for practicing, Pat!

One glitch however, leads me to the title of this post.  Our music ministry has been around for a long time, but the tech teams have only just recently started.  We have not gotten into an established routine of what to do every Sunday morning which caused a bit of a problem.  Last week, we had a guest pastor who must have used a different belt pack than Pastor John, which caused the label on the sound board to get moved.  It didn’t get moved back to Pastor John’s original channel.

Now, John hadn’t used his microphone until prayer time in the service as the elders are now doing announcements.  I started to strum a bit on the guitar while John was praying and realized very quickly that his microphone was not on.  I started playing as softly as possible (and thankfully our sanctuary is small, so that he could be heard by most of the congregation.)  John’s gain was down too low for any signal to register on the board, and the sound tech wasn’t sure which channel John should be on.  It eventually got fixed, but not until close to the end of the prayers.

This is why it is so important that we always do a sound check on every microphone, especially the pastor’s!  The most important thing about our worship services is that the message of God’s love and grace which leads us to a more Godly life be proclaimed and proclaimed so that it is heard. Paul puts it so well when he says,

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!…Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” Romans 10:14-15; 17

Earlier I said that thankfully our sanctuary is small, so that he could be heard by most of the congregation.  That’s not good enough.  The Gospel message must be heard by ALL.  We’ll try to consistently do microphone checks for the pastor.  Will you?