Sunday Recap – Church Plants Can Be Tricky plus Feedburner Subscriptions

Ryan Egan —  July 21, 2008 — Leave a comment

Sunday Recap

Yesterday was a great day – full of family times, which I really loved.  It was also a good, albeit, slightly stressful day at Living Word.

Our service starts at 9:20.  I had the day off from leading worship yesterday but of course, like most of you out there, I was still keeping an eye out for anything that might be amiss.  Well, 9:20 comes and I realize that no one is sitting at the projection computer.  I quick find Pastor Wade and ask if the person who usually sends the file for projection had sent it or if she was coming.  Minimal panic ensues.  When I say minimal, though, I really mean it – it was quite amazing how much peace I ended up feeling, even knowing that we might not have any words for the screen.

So, after a phone call and a few minutes we realize we have the words on Pastor’s laptop, but no jump drive.  He makes a transition into announcements and calmy asks if anyone has a jump drive.  Someone does and we’re able to get up and running with all of the lyrics with a few, but not many hiccups.  The worship service goes well and God was glorified.  However, He could be glorified even more with a little bit better planning and communication.  Moral of the story – always, ALWAYS have many people in the communication loop when you’re all at different locations.  I’m really looking forward to being in our building early next year so some of these problems will hopefully go away – but at the same time, we need to work harder to make them go away now, so that we don’t face the same problems in the building.

But God was good, and blessed us anyway with great music and great teaching on “You shall not Murder.”  We sang:

  • We are Called to Be God’s People
  • Bless That Wonderful Name
  • Knowing You
  • Thou Art Worthy,  CCLI  14789
  • The Wonder of it All

And Pastor Wade led us in two choruses of “I Have Decided” after hearing the pianist playing it as a music bed under the prayer time.

Subscribing to This Blog

Many of you are aware and many of you might not be that you can subscribe to this blog to get the content coming to you instead of remembering to visit every day.  Now it’s a little easier as I have added a link to subscribe at the top right corner of the blog.  Just click on the link and your browser or feed reader should automatically tell you what to do with the subscription.  If you don’t have a feedreader – you should get one.  Here is a good one for PC and here is a good one for Mac.

Also, if you happened to subscribe to this blog without using the feedburner link at the top right but used the default feed link, would you mind please resubscribing using the feedburner link at the top right that is now available?  It helps me keep track of visitors to the site and I would really appreciate it!  Thanks so much!

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Random Friday – The Worship Community and Gravatars

Ryan Egan —  July 18, 2008 — Leave a comment

Hello all!  Friday is here and the weekend is almost upon us!  I wanted to share a couple of random things:

Music Theory at The Worship Community

My first article at The Worship Community has been published.  Check it out, especially if you’re wondering why it’s important to know music theory as a worship leader.

Gravatars

Secondly – do you wonder how some people get cool little images next to there comments in the comments section and some don’t?  I wondered about that for a long time as I was visiting other blogs as well and as I was designing the new theme for this one I figured out the secret – Gravatar.com! What this site does is allow you to register email addresses and assign an image to them or, a globally recognized avatar.  Every time you sign in somewhere to post a comment or something similar, if the website is set up properly, it will automatically grab your gravatar and post your image.  Pretty nifty!

Have a great weekend!

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Five Questions on Worship

Ryan Egan —  July 17, 2008 — 1 Comment

Fred McKinnon just shared a link to his answers to five questions on worship he was asked by The Worship Journals and asked that we comment on his post with the answers to our questions.  I thought this would make a better blog post than a comment so here we go:

Five Questions on Worship

1. What does Worship Mean to You?

Worship means exalting something greater than we currently or previously have exalted it in our own mind.  We could worship a situation.  We could worship an experience.  We could worship a thing.  To me, I try above all else to worship God.  This means surrending myself, my thoughts, whatever I might be exalting at any given moment in time and exalting Him above it all.  This means letting myself decrease and Him increase.  This means letting God be the object of my worship every minute of each day.

2. What Causes You to Worship?

Ultimately – the Holy Spirit.  I can’t worship without the power of God prompting me to do so.  It’s impossible, so the Holy Spirit is what causes me to worship.  But as far as what the Holy Spirit uses to prompt me to worship:  music is a given for me.  So many types of music are used to prompt me to worship.  It helps immensely if the music directs my thoughts toward God and who He is, but I can also be prompted by the beauty and design of orchestral music or the spontaneity and skill of jazz music.  I can see the Creator’s hand in the creativity and complexity of both of these types of music.  I am also prompted by seeing people honor and glorify God in decisions they make and situations they’re in.  Mountains also prompt me to worship.  They show me how puny I am and how amazingly huge God is.  If the mountains are that majestic – how much more the One who Created them!

3. How is Worship Displayed in Your Life?

I hope that it is displayed in the way I live it.  I desire to live a life that exalts God every day and puts to death everything that doesn’t.  I want to offer my life as a living sacrifice to Him.  I hope that worship is displayed in my marriage, my relationship with my daughter, my relationship with my church and pastor, my relationship with my co-workers and through every interaction I have with people.

4. What is Your Favorite Song and Why?

Can it be the top 50? 🙂  I think at the moment the song that the Holy Spirit is using most to speak to me would be “Let Your Kingdom Come” by Sovereign Grace Music off of the Valley of Vision album. I keep coming back to it and it keeps replaying in my mind.  It is such a good declaration to lift God’s cause higher than our own and to get my priorities out of the way and make my life about His priorites.

How would you answer these four questions?  (You can be brief, if you like!)

In For Worship Leaders, How to be an Offering
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The Pitfalls of Teaching Piano Players to Play By Chord

Ryan Egan —  July 15, 2008 — 37 Comments

Hand playing piano keys.

For a long time I’ve subscribed to the school of thought that playing by chord off of lead sheets or chord sheets is a much better way to go for piano players than playing straight from the actual piano music.  You only have to have a couple of pages to turn through, you learn how to play chords just in case the piano music is unavailable, and you develop your ear.  However, there is a problem:  it’s much harder to lead if you don’t have experience.

Without Rhythm and Melody – Chords Don’t Go Anywhere

As I’ve begun to teach several piano players how to play by chords instead of by the piano music I’ve run into a problem that I completely didn’t expect.  Chords, without being driven by rhythm and melody, don’t really go anywhere. I can tell the piano player to “just play by the chords on this one” and it leads to a great fit when I’m leading from the guitar.  I can carry the rhythm from the guitar and let the piano color and accent the song.  But if I say, “I’d like to you lead this one on the piano,” many of the piano players are not quite sure what to do.  They can play the chords, but haven’t really been taught the rhythms to apply the chords to – so the song lacks movement.  They can play the chords, but haven’t really been taught how to break them up and use passing tones to create interest – so the song lacks character.

What to Do?

I guess that is my dilemma.  I can show the piano players what to do by saying, “Let me sit for a second and show you what I’d like.”  But then they’re just watching me do something instead of actually learning how to do it.  I would love to know what you’ve done to teach piano players how to play chords but play them rhythmically and melodically – able to lead a song well.  Some things I can think of might perhaps be:

  • Writing out piano parts for them for a while – then saying, “Okay – your turn to apply it – make up your own now.”
  • Having a workshop with piano players on how to do these things – which is something I’d like to do – I just lack the time at the moment.
  • Have the piano players listen and watch professionals to try and develop their ear and mimic what the professionals are doing
  • Create an online youtube / vimeo video to help train – another thing I’d love to do – again with a lack of time

Are there any other suggestions that could help?

In For Worship Leaders, Leadership, Music, Training
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Sunday Recap – Some Encouraging Things Happening

Ryan Egan —  July 14, 2008 — Leave a comment

As usual – a great day at Living Word yesterday.

We sang:

  • Rise Up O Church of God
  • Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
  • How Great is Our God (Tomlin)
  • Speak O Lord (Townend / Getty)
  • We Are Called to Be God’s People

We had a bit of a glitch with the final hymn – but those things happen.  I was so encouraged by several things yesterday:

  • The lady battling cancer continues to raise her hands in worship with a joyous smile on her face.
  • A visiting friend of a young teenager in our congregation closes her eyes in worship and I could see her mind exalting Jesus Christ through it.
  • A young man raises his hands to God during the Lord’s Prayer (I had to have my eyes open because I was holding my squirmy daughter 🙂 )
  • Finding out that two new regular visitors sing, play the bass and play the guitar

Wade preached a fantastic sermon on the 4th commandment – very convicting and encouraging.  We are able to bring our daughter to the zoo and thouroughly enjoy watching her “ooh” and “oh” and scream in delight at giraffes, squirrel monkeys and many other animals.  Ended the day with a movie with my wife and got to bed slightly early.  A great Sunday.

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