Hello All,
I'm writing from Nashville where myself and a few musically inclined friends came to play at a showcase for some industry reps. It went well even though the sound situation was something to be scoffed at for the most part. The venue was closed to the public which was a little uncomfortable for me seeing that I'm not accustomed to playing for an American Idol type of judging panel. All in all, it was good.
We headed down to the country music hall of fame today and walked through some incredible artifacts of music history. The hall is a must see for anyone who even remotely likes music. I think we determined that you can't really call yourself a musician until you catch a glimpse of what the history of music is like and where it all came from. For the most part music would have never made the mainstream tv crossover had it not been for the country music artists who made it happen. The Hank Williams, Johnny Cashs, Willie Nelsons, Waylon Jennings, Carter Family, and Dolly Partons of country music were writing and performing music for tv audiences years before any of us were ever thought of. Cool stuff to see. I love music history......well....I love everything about music for the most part so it was a fun experience for me. Tomorrow we hit a few more musical must sees like the Ryman Auditorium and such. Thanks for listening......later
Monday, August 18, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Learning Curve
Hello All,
Been a while I know. I'm not one to just blog when I don't have much to say. Not to mention I've had enough going on to just not think about it at all over the past month or so. We have completed 9 weeks of service at Woodlands Point and I can honestly say that I have loved every minute of every service I've been a part of.
I've been learning a lot about myself and about people involved in a church start up, and I've come to the conclusion that there are a multitude of learning curves that we as a church go through throughout the process of beginning on this kind of journey together.
First, there's the whole leadership aspect. Not talking about just the pastor specifically but all of us together. I've seen people step up to volunteer and help out in any way possible. Seen decisive action and people following through on what they say they will do that I never would have pictured being that type of person. People giving up full time salaries and their own comfort and security to pour into the lives of the people in our community. Some of the most notable learning goes on corporately as a body though I believe, which brings us to the second learning curve aspect. Our Worship. I think this has a lot to do with the culture we have become accustomed to as a part of the church in America, we've been trained to sit back and enjoy the show like we are watching a movie in a comfy chair at our favorite theater. The problem with that is that the corporate gathering of the church was never meant to be that. We were created to come together as part of a community to worship Christ and to celebrate what the Lord has been doing in our lives throughout the week. This in mind, we as a community at Woodlands Point have started the art of growing together in our worship of Christ and in the application of the word in our lives. It takes time. All of us are learning together that God is worthy of our outward expression of his glory in our lives. This seems to especially play itself out in our time of corporate worship (singing). Due to our cultural education we have become spectators for the most part during the "singing time" of our gatherings. Once again, this as well was never intended to be the case. The bible is VERY deliberate in it's description of outward congregational worship. We are to sing, shout, lift our hands, be silent, bow to our knees, cry, laugh, applaud, and generally speaking loose ourselves in the presence of the Lord. When we make up our mind to quit worrying about how long we've been standing up or that the gentleman behind us couldn't carry a note in a bucket even if we glued it in there for him. If we can take on the mindset that Christ our Savior is worthy of our fullest effort to worship him, the dynamic of that aspect multiplied by each person engaged in worship is so beautiful! The energy and excitement that accompanies our worship at that point just helps to spur us on in an exciting life that Christ offers us. I love that our community is embracing this and becoming a passionate, loud singing, don't care who's around worshiping church!
So what's the next learning curve? It's another big one. Even though it may not be as obvious the learning curve of education in the church is MASSIVE! Thanks again in part to our watch and critique mindset and of course our just general red blooded American laziness, we have decided that our advancement and knowledge of the word of God (the Bible) is no longer a necessity for living out a christian life. (insert expletive of your choice here to describe how incredibly incorrect this is). Watching this learning curve take place is really interesting. The fact that people are being encouraged to read and study the bible and to be equipped in their knowledge of who Christ is and how that applies to our lives as we live on mission for him is really taking some people by surprise I think. Christianity to most people has become something you drive thru for like your favorite burger and fries......."Jesus in a box would you like to try our Jesus makes everything wonderful value meal?" We pay for our Jesus and we go home never having had a face to face encounter with the manifest glory of God in our life and never having faced and dealt witht the sin and crap in our lives that was keeping us from him in the first place. I love the dynamic of this learning curve because people are beginning to latch onto it and to hunger for the word of God and by studying the word of God gain new revelation of how incredible he is which in turn feeds our longing to express worship and to live out the mission God has for us.
To say the least I love my community and I love serving Christ shoulder to shoulder with them on a daily basis. Every weekend I look forward to watching these learning curves play themselves out in a variety of ways and knowing that through it all we are growing closer to our savior and more excited about living on mission for him together.
Been a while I know. I'm not one to just blog when I don't have much to say. Not to mention I've had enough going on to just not think about it at all over the past month or so. We have completed 9 weeks of service at Woodlands Point and I can honestly say that I have loved every minute of every service I've been a part of.
I've been learning a lot about myself and about people involved in a church start up, and I've come to the conclusion that there are a multitude of learning curves that we as a church go through throughout the process of beginning on this kind of journey together.
First, there's the whole leadership aspect. Not talking about just the pastor specifically but all of us together. I've seen people step up to volunteer and help out in any way possible. Seen decisive action and people following through on what they say they will do that I never would have pictured being that type of person. People giving up full time salaries and their own comfort and security to pour into the lives of the people in our community. Some of the most notable learning goes on corporately as a body though I believe, which brings us to the second learning curve aspect. Our Worship. I think this has a lot to do with the culture we have become accustomed to as a part of the church in America, we've been trained to sit back and enjoy the show like we are watching a movie in a comfy chair at our favorite theater. The problem with that is that the corporate gathering of the church was never meant to be that. We were created to come together as part of a community to worship Christ and to celebrate what the Lord has been doing in our lives throughout the week. This in mind, we as a community at Woodlands Point have started the art of growing together in our worship of Christ and in the application of the word in our lives. It takes time. All of us are learning together that God is worthy of our outward expression of his glory in our lives. This seems to especially play itself out in our time of corporate worship (singing). Due to our cultural education we have become spectators for the most part during the "singing time" of our gatherings. Once again, this as well was never intended to be the case. The bible is VERY deliberate in it's description of outward congregational worship. We are to sing, shout, lift our hands, be silent, bow to our knees, cry, laugh, applaud, and generally speaking loose ourselves in the presence of the Lord. When we make up our mind to quit worrying about how long we've been standing up or that the gentleman behind us couldn't carry a note in a bucket even if we glued it in there for him. If we can take on the mindset that Christ our Savior is worthy of our fullest effort to worship him, the dynamic of that aspect multiplied by each person engaged in worship is so beautiful! The energy and excitement that accompanies our worship at that point just helps to spur us on in an exciting life that Christ offers us. I love that our community is embracing this and becoming a passionate, loud singing, don't care who's around worshiping church!
So what's the next learning curve? It's another big one. Even though it may not be as obvious the learning curve of education in the church is MASSIVE! Thanks again in part to our watch and critique mindset and of course our just general red blooded American laziness, we have decided that our advancement and knowledge of the word of God (the Bible) is no longer a necessity for living out a christian life. (insert expletive of your choice here to describe how incredibly incorrect this is). Watching this learning curve take place is really interesting. The fact that people are being encouraged to read and study the bible and to be equipped in their knowledge of who Christ is and how that applies to our lives as we live on mission for him is really taking some people by surprise I think. Christianity to most people has become something you drive thru for like your favorite burger and fries......."Jesus in a box would you like to try our Jesus makes everything wonderful value meal?" We pay for our Jesus and we go home never having had a face to face encounter with the manifest glory of God in our life and never having faced and dealt witht the sin and crap in our lives that was keeping us from him in the first place. I love the dynamic of this learning curve because people are beginning to latch onto it and to hunger for the word of God and by studying the word of God gain new revelation of how incredible he is which in turn feeds our longing to express worship and to live out the mission God has for us.
To say the least I love my community and I love serving Christ shoulder to shoulder with them on a daily basis. Every weekend I look forward to watching these learning curves play themselves out in a variety of ways and knowing that through it all we are growing closer to our savior and more excited about living on mission for him together.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
No, I Love YOU To The Sun!
So, although I'm not exactly sure how it started one of my favorite things my daughter and I do at various times during the day and specifically during bedtime preparation is a silly "I love you" game. If I were to script it here's what it would look like:
Daddy: "I love you"
Caitlyn: "I love YOU"
Daddy: "I love you too"
Caitlyn: "I love you to the moon"
Daddy: "I love you forever"
Caitlyn: "I love you to always"
Caitlyn: "I love you to the sun"
Daddy: "no, I love YOU to the sun"
Caitlyn: "no, I love YOU to the sun" (and we go on five or six times like this most of the time)
So now you are thinking....why in the world are you telling me this?
Two reasons. Number one, I just love that we do that all the time (as any daddy would). But secondly, for some reason tonight after she crawled off my lap to go to bed it hit me. Have you ever stopped to notice how much of our relationship with Christ is demonstrated in how we are with our kids? I've always heard it, and have had small moments here and there of semi consciousness to that fact. But, tonight was different. Tonight I wondered what my life would look like if I treated my relationship with Christ in reverse of the way that I live out my life as a father (or in this case a daddy). If through the way I live and pray and worship I truly saw myself crawling up in the lap of my daddy and having a "no, I love YOU to the sun" conversation with him. I'm not normally this kind of guy. I don't get incredibly mushy about seeing an almighty God as my daddy, which is a fault of mine. Although it is correct to see God the way I do most of the time as high and lifted up, Savior, Redeemer, Almighty, Holy....etc. I am at a place that I am realizing that I limit God when I think that way. Hard to believe right? Limit God by calling him almighty? No. I mean limit him by not allowing him to daddy me and tell me he loves me when I should.
It's my perception that women are generally better at this than men. What I mean is that men are raised to be....well....manly. I'm not saying we don't need a daddy, I'm just saying that women tend to long for and need the "I love you" and tender side of daddy more than men do. Where men see strong, all knowing, cool, coach, fishing buddy dad.....women see loving, tender, big lap to sit in, protector daddy.
So what am I trying to say. Nothing really, other than realizing that I have a shortcoming I need to work on as a man and understand that God wants this kind of a relationship with me as well to round out the rest of our relationship, and I need to be willing to allow him to be that way and be willing to love him back that way. Mushy? Absolutely not! The truth is that God IS this way whether I accept it or not. I don't want to miss out on any avenue of my relationship with him, so I want to fix it. So, remind yourself this week at some point to have a "No, I love YOU to the sun" talk with the creator of the universe.....because he wants to have that talk with you.
Thanks for listening.....
Saturday, May 17, 2008
No Sleep For The Weary
It's official....I suck at sleeping. As proof here I am typing away on a blog at six in the morning after being up since four. Now that I've knocked out about a pot of coffee myself before my wife even wakes up I'm a little antsy so forgive the ADD that will probably be included in the paragraphs provided below.
I know what you are thinking: dude, just take a sleep aid and go to bed! Been there tried that. In fact, I think I've never been as miserable in all my life as I was a morning a couple of days ago after i decided I needed to sleep and took a pill to help a bit. Chrissy left for work that morning after I had still not slept much and Caitlyn sat in the bed with me watching playhouse disney while I tried, at no avail, to dose a little more before she started jumping on my stomach repeatedly to get me out of the bed. I decided to try and take a shower to gradually start to wake myself from the drug induced haze. After 30 minutes of letting water run over me (hoping it would make the semi truck stop doing the same) I gave up and just went on with the day thinking, "what the heck, I'll just sleep better tonight". WHATEVER! Just for the record. They don't tell you on the box of sleeping pills that if you don't sleep when you have taken one of these that you will feel like it's not just one night of z's you missed out on but about 4 years! That should be an included disclaimer if you ask me.
I go through these spells from time to time. Maybe it's related to the stuff going on in my life. Don't know why I would be stressed other than, let's see: Starting a church, putting together new band for said church, wife is pregnant, there are crawling things in my attic, learning music for a different church every weekend (i'll be glad when that's over on June 15th!!!!!), don't have health insurance for maternity. Really other than that there's not much going on in my life to keep me up at night. Albeit the crawly things in the attic are about to make me go nuts and start shooting holes in the roof until something falls out of it. Seriously! You want to know what makes a serial killer snap.....don't let him sleep for a few days and put raccoons in his attic! BANG! Like pulling the trigger on a handgun without a safety.
Ok enough, I don't want you guys to think I'm losing it or anything cause I'm really not. Just venting over the net a little. Thanks for listening. Thank you Houston good night!!! (or morning)
Friday, May 16, 2008
ok,ok,ok!
I'll start blogging. Since it's this epidemic that is taking over the world, I guess I'll join the crowd. And yes, I would jump off a cliff if all my friends did it.....because I hate to be alone!
P.S. There will be no shortage of sarcasm in these blogs for the most part I figure.
Later
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