Open for Business

It's official... The Firehouse is open.  We still have a good amount of work to do to be ready for the video venue element, but this week and next include live preaching from Tevis.  Yesterday's message was on properly using our time.  This has honestly been difficult for me the last few weeks, since we have had to put in so much time at the firehouse just to be ready in time for the firehouse launch, but that is the nature of opening a new site--there is alot to do and it is very difficult to know ahead of time how long it will take.

Luckily, we are up and running.  There's a lot to do still do be functioning 100% but it feels really good to have the majority of it done.  I feel like I haven't been a worship leader for a few months now, so I'm excited to be back into leading worship regularly.

Molly is getting really big... she took a few steps forward today... completely on her own.  It's exciting and scary at the same time.  I put together a video today with some video we have of Molly.  I'll try to get it posted soon.

Today is a good day.

It feels very good to be a part of a large project and see it get off the ground, especially when you work very hard at it and maybe even experience some stress over it.  The day after is great, especially when there is no alarm clock and the eight month old in the other room doesn't start to cry until almost 9am.

So, yesterday was the first worship celebration at the Firehouse.  It was a soft opening, so it only included those families that will be serving in ministries at the Firehouse.  Overall, I thought it went pretty well.  I must give props to Adam Deiner for all the time he put in.  He was there later than I was every night and spent every one of his past three or four days off there.  The sound was very good, and I know it will get better as we tweak it and get the drive rack programmed.  (For those of you who don't know what that is, think of it as a brain to the sound system that compensates for any weaknesses in the acoustics of the room)

I'm really excited for the creative potential for the music at the Firehouse.  It has been made very clear that we are a venue that is to be unique from the typical contemporary church band (which is done incredibly well at the Williams Street location).  Yesterday's band consisted of an Acoustic Guitar, a D`jembe, and an Electric guitar.  I'm trying to use the electric guitar more like a keyboard would be, but it is going to take some getting used to.  I'm not looking for alot of melodic leads or chunky powerchords, but for more chimey chords and some rhythmic or bluesy leads.  After playing acoustic for the past four years, I have to retrain myself to not chunk away at chords all the time.

Once I feel like we have that kind of band down, I'll start to introduce Reason software that will run MIDI tracks.  Try not to think about MIDI as an old school cell phone ringer playing dixie, but more like the kinds of synth sounds that are most prominent in hip hop or much of today's top40 pop.  We will try to marry that produced MIDI feel with a coffee shop acoustic groove and will hopefully find a great deal of variety in a small setting with a small number of bend members.

As far as family goes, Molly is doing great, although she is being a bit more fussy today than normal.  She is in the 50th percentile for the circumference of her head--I thought about buying her a plaque to let her know how proud I am of her--but she is in the 10th percentile for her height and weight...

In other words, if you lined up 100 eight month old heads by size, she'd be dead center, but when they all stood up, she'd disappear.

Molly

I thought I'd post some pictures from when Molly was first born. This was when she was about a minute old--the first picture ever taken of her.

This was the next day in the hopsital room.

She wasn't happy about this picture.

And even less happy about this one.

Firehouse Pictures

Here are some pictures of the firehouse. This is the cafe area and the outside. I'm sure I'll try to post more soon.

Coming Soon: The Firehouse

Well, we are getting pretty close to the Firehouse launch.  The past few weeks have been relaxing not having the responsibility to lead worship every week, but they have also remained pretty busy.  So far, I have ordered about half of what we will need to get going, but I'm about done doing all the research.   My goal is to have everything ordered by the end of this week.

For those of you interested in gear talk, here's what the Firehouse look like:

Instruments:

Percussion--Remo Klong Yao, Zildjian Splash, LP Soft Shaker, and LP Tambourine

Bass--Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI (we have some killer subs)

MIDI--M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 running Reason 4.0 on a 2.4 GHz Macbook sending audio out of an M-Audio Firewire 410 Interface.  Also, a YounFX aBility footcontroller

We will rely on whoever plays to bring a Bass, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, although I will probably have my gear there all the time.

Here's my gear:

Fender American Standard Stratocaster>TIM Overdrive>tc electronic Nova Delay>Limited Edition Tweed Blues Jr.

Martin 000C-16GTE

I'm still using a stock Ibanez TS9 for now, but my TIM should be ready soon.

The sound system looks like this:

Soundraft GB4 mixer>DBX DriveRack 480 Signal Processor>Crown XTi 2000 power Amps>EV QRX 115/75 speakers with EV QRX 218s Subwoofer.

So, if you know sound, you know this is a good sound system.  I'm so thankful for the resources to do quality worship ministry.  God has blessed our church with the ability to do things well, which in the end will lead more people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.  I'm humbled that they have trusted me to lead this area of ministry, and also very excited to get started.

Post Two

Well, I got Molly to bed, so maybe now I can type up a post.  I'm reminded this weekend just how valuable my family is to me.  My wife is so wonderful to me and my daughter is active and healthy, although as I write this I hear her grunt through the monitor... sometimes she isn't a huge fan of going to bed.  I specifically reminded of how blessed I am to have a Christian family.  When times are difficult, we not only rely on each other, but we both rely on God.  It is an enormous blessing to see my wife worshipping God with so much of her energy and soul put forth to express her love for Him.  She loves Him more than she loves me, which makes it that much more beautiful.  I know that because She loves God so much, that she loves me more than she would be able to if she put me first.

I tried doing the whole "mobile blogger" thing via text, but I never received a reply to direct me how to link my texts to my blog... so we'll see if I can figure that one out.

I'm also very thankful for my calling.  I count it such a blessing to be called as a Worship Leader.  It is a heavy calling, with a great deal of responsibility, but it also includes a great deal of freedom--in the right church with the right leadership.

Newark Naz, for those of you who don't know, have what they call their "3Cs".  This is really our strategy to live out our vision to "lead people to a growing relationship with Jesus Christ."  The strategy is that each of our people will be involved in three areas: Celebration, Community, and Call.

I'm honored to know that my church places such a high importance on Celebration, with using the arts--especially music--to express our heart to God.  This means that they understand the need for the resources necessary to be culturally relevant in our communication and to produce a Celebration time that will attract people--churched and unchurched--to join together and experience God's Word.

What is worship?  According to Dr. Sanders at MVNU, the Biblical context defines it as this: "Worship is a trusting, obedient response to the Word of God."

Let's clarify that:

1. What does the Bible say about the Word?

The Word was God's vert first action.  When God decided to bring together the created order, He spoke it into being.  "Let there be light--it was good."  Later, mankind communicated through words that became the spoken tradition of the Hebrew people.  Eventually, the Word was made flesh and came to Earth as Jesus.  As the church grew, a Bible was put together that contains text that was "God-breathed."  So everything that God does is done through His word.  Even when we stop to appreciate creation we are stopping to respond to God's word.

2. Obedient?

When God created the world, everything in creation responded obedently to Him.  We don't have any record of God saying, "Let there be livestock" and the stuff that became a cow decided to become a chicken.  The only creations that have the power to disobey in the Bible are angels and humanity.  Both have the ability to have a relationship with God.  I'm not sure how to articulate the biblical differences between angels and humans, so I guess I need to ask a theology prof to get me up to speed.  But what I do know is that we have the choice to obey or disobey, and if we are to respond to God's word in a form of worship, our response must be obedient.

3. Trusting?

We can also respond obediently out of a sense of commitment or duty, and such a response leads to religion independent of faith.  Our response must be one of continual trust.

Well, I gotta go, so maybe more later.

Post One

Well, this is the first post of what I hope to be a moderately active blog.  I'm not sure I have enough to type about to interest anyone who might stumble on it, but I guess time will tell.  Perhaps this won't fizzle out like my Xanga and other similar things have.

Unfortunately, I'm already out of time to post further, so maybe I'll get back to it soon.