Billy Chia

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Wednesday I pushed the power button on my computer and nothing happened.

I pushed it again.

Nada.

Zip.

The network was down and to add insult to injury my computer dies. Blah.

Well after many days of toil I found out that many of the problems were caused when ATT upgraded our account and switched us from a single static IP configuration to a multiple static IPs configuration. The network is now up and running and everyone else can get on it except for me. Because my computer is dead.

So I show up to band practice wildly unprepared. The server room dust still clung to the lenses of my glasses as I attempted to apologize to my band as to why their music wasn’t in the right key.

On a “normal” work week one of the things I do is transpose the songs into the right keys. I’m getting better at transposing on the fly in my head, but for some songs I only have them in G or D so that I can capo. I make an extra copy for the band transposed into the real key the song is in. We wasted a lot of time at practice writing in the chords.

Then the cool thing.

My bass player says, “Can you email me the chord charts and I’ll transpose them?”

So I sent them from my home computer and he transposed them and sent them out to the rest of the band. A very rockin’ thing to do.

Some times we have no idea what we are capable of doing until technology breaks and we’re forced to learn something new. (Like configuring a network.)

Sometimes we have no idea what others are capable of doing until technology breaks and we’re forced to rely on them. (Like transposing chord sheets.)

Hmm… I wonder what else I can break?!

This weekend the internet went down at the church building. Technically speaking, “System Administrator” is not in my job description, but I’m not one to punk out on my friends. I spent the day messing with modems, routers, and hubs. It still doesn’t work, but I’m a lot closer.

Sometimes worship stuff has to wait.

This is only one example of the zillions of little extra things that have come my way in the last few months. Our church has been in a crazy transition for the last year. Tons of people have left leaving tons of gaps in the ministry to be filled. I’m digging in my heals and relying on the Holy Spirit to make it all come together.

Hopefully at some point in the future we’ll reach an equilibrium where ministry vacancies will be covered and I’ll have some time to to blog about it all.

In the meantime, does anyone out there know anything about Linksys 24 port hubs?

Man, sometimes everything just goes right.

I’ve got my awesome family with me again.

I had an eye-opening voice lesson today and feel about 1000% more confident with my vocals.

I had a great lesson today with one of my guitar students - he’s working hard and almost has “One” by Metallica nailed.

We had the flippin’ sweetest band practice since I’ve been here. I’m way excited for Sunday.

I worship the best God around.

I just doesn’t get any better than this.

I received an email today from my sister-in-law who is teaching English and sharing Jesus in Hong Kong. Over the last months their church has not has a permanent place to call home. Each week the meeting place changed depending on what was available. Those who really wanted to worship the Lord with other Christians had to check the website to find out where they would meet that week.

The praise is that in May they are scheduled to have a permanent building to meet in which will open avenues for ministry that were previously closed due to their transient nature.

The whole story made me think about how dedicated someone has to be to attend a church gathering that shifts locations each week. It also made me wonder what they heck they were doing to worship God that was so intriguing that people were compelled to seek out the new location each week.

Here church is easy. We have a big building with a large sign on a major road. Parking is ample. We make coffee for you. We have people hold the door for you and pass out a folder that explains how everything works to alleviate any feelings of mystery or anxiety. We put all the words on a screen in large, readable font and often the worship leader even shouts the words out to you to encourage singing. We make every effort to keep things attractive, accessible, and amiable. Very little effort is required on your part to participate.

While I believe keeping things friendly and understandable says, “We value our guests,” sometimes I also feel like making church “too easy” says, “We don’t value dedicated Christianity.”

Is church too easy?

This weekend I moved my family down to Alabama. It rocks.

The move was relatively painless. We had many people helping us out. Even the weather seemed to cooporate. Torrential amounts of rain mysteriously seemed to stop at just the right time when we needed to load or unload the truck.

The fun part happened when we showed up to the apartment and signed our lease. We got our keys and went out to meet the small army gathered near the Uhaul that had shown up to help us move in.  We put the key in the lock, turned it, and nothing happened. We had like 20 people standing around and no access to the apartment. My resourceful buddy Tim broke in through an unlatched window and the rest of the unloading went off with out a hitch We got a new working key the next day.

I love having my family down with me. Man, I missed those girls like crazy.

Schedule’s change - it’s unavoidable.

I love when the people on my worship team call or email to let me know if they will be late or if they can’t make it to practice.

Keeping your worship pastor in the loop creates an environment of trust.

I just got back from small group.

We touched briefly on 1st John and spoke at length about writing college papers.

I absolutely loved it

Last night I played Guitar Hero III on Hard.

The other 2 times I played I couldn’t move past medium.

Thanks for the coaching Jake.

I’ve been to plead guilty to number 3 on Perry’s list. It been a long time since I’ve actually taken a day off.

I wrote this yesterday and set it to post today.

Right now I’m drinking coffee somewhere reading my Bible.

This week for Creative Chaos I’m talking about the redesign we did on our worship folder.

Tony Morgan blogged earlier this week about branding your series in front of your church. This is exactly the direction we are heading with our new design.

Note that we print all of our bulletins in house and choose to use gray scale as a means to better steward our resources. I make several versions of the graphic - color for our  large screen, website homepage, other print, etc… and black and white for the worship folder.

Old Bulletin Cover (Church Brand - Same cover used every week.)

New Bulletin Cover (Series Brand - cover will change with each series. Our current series is simply titled, “New.”)

Thank you to everyone who left comments on this post! They were very helpful. I’ve started to move past the question

Should worship be remarkable?

and started to ask

What makes a worship service remarkable?

(Although you are still welcome to add your comments here.)

As I’ve thought, conversed and prayed over this I’ve realized that in the last year there have been 2 Sunday morning experiences that I tend to talk about all the time. I asked myself, “What was different about these experiences that caused me to tell the story over and over again?”

When the answer came to me I realized that both of these services were remarkable for 2 very different reasons. I’ll tell you why in my upcoming posts.

For now,

What do you think makes worship remarkable?

These are some of the funnier April fools jokes I’ve seen across this internet:

• Tim Ferris isn’t real! - My wife mentions this possibility every time I talk about Tim Ferris. Because of the believability I totally fell for it at first. This was the best crafted of all the 4/1 jokes I’ve seen.
• Send your email back in time. This was so hilarious. “Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality”
• PayPerTweet - I don’t even twitter and this had me rolling.
• Chris from Canada Bay - This was totally original. Chris really committed on this one as well and went into a whole speal about it. I almost coughed up a lung laughing so hard when I read:
  

  “There are lots of beautiful places we could decide to live but the only choice we had - outside of the country of Canada - was Canada Bay, if I wanted to maintain my ChrisFromCanada.com branding”

• Consuming Food - Jeff took the opposite approach and ditched his branding in favor of something new.
• So did Los. I thought J-Rocka’s comment was pretty funny. “god” was just downright mean.

Did you see any other funny 4/1 jokes?

Here is my Worship Text-fessional for March 30, 2008

Set list for Chase Valley Church

• God of Wonders - Mark Byrd and Steve Hindalong
• Beautiful One - Tim Hughes
• Light the Fire Again - Brian Doerksen
• Hungry -Kathryn Scott
• Evermore - Joel Houston

Highlights/Lowlights

One of our singers brought in a Newspaper today dated 8 years ago. She had forgotten about this news clip and just found it today by happenstance. It was from the first day Chase Valley Church worshiped in this building when it was newly constructed. There was an article about CVC and large picture taken during the worship service. The lyrics on the screen in the photo were

Clothe me in white so I won’t be ashamed. Lord light the Fire again.

Also by random chance I chose Light the Fire Again as a song for today. It was awesome to do that song and feel that deep connection to the past.

Practice was amazing this week. I had high hopes for today. I was a bit disappointed. Our execution was decent but not exceptional.

I have a deep longing to worship God in a way that is remarkable. Read: I want things to be done in a way that they are worth remarking on. I want people talk about worshiping God to their friends. I’m not sure that right now people are so excited about our worship service that they are compelled to talk about it. I’m wrestling with the notion that God could be calling me to simply be faithful and not worry about being remarkable.

Evermore. Great song. I love my predecessor. She was in love with Hillsong and as a result the congregation knows TONS of Hillsong songs. I’ve never done Evermore before this week, but chose to learn it based on the church’s familiarity. I love this song. All week long I was singing these lyrics into my heart:

Even if my world falls I will say, ‘Above all I live for Your glory.’

For that matter I love both my predecessors. I’m Worship Pastor #3 for Chase. It’s a big honor to follow in their footsteps.

What do you think?

“Being remarkable” should or should not be a goal within the worship ministry?

Why?

Well I’m a Dad and I’m pretty cool. My wife is the best mother on the planet. I love doing parenting with her. (I know “best” usually only means “one” but it’s ok if you think your wife is the best mother on the planet too.)

My parents are awesome. They just celebrated 38 years of marriage. I am a Worship Pastor today because they have always encouraged my musical and spiritual journey.

But when I talk about rockin’ parents I’m really thinking about Sarah’s mom and dad. Because of the rigmarole involved with selling our house we are in a crazy time crunch to get moved down to Huntsville. My parents-in-law are really bending over backwards to get us packed up, moved out of Evansville and moved down to Huntsville. (Tom and Margie thank you!!)

The cool news is that because of this I’ll get to move my family down next Thursday!

I’m stoked.

My neighbor passed away on Easter and I went the funeral today. Even though I’d only met Ken a few times I felt a special connection to him because he spent his life as a church musician. I have to say I feel pretty sad as I’m mourning this loss. My heart also hurts for the family of such a great guy.

I celebrated Easter at my Children’s Pastor’s house (as my family’s not in town.) We ate an Italian feast and played Guitar Hero until we were silly. I drove home pretty late. When I pulled into the parking lot I saw a bunch of cars and knew something was wrong.

I knocked on the door. Mike, Ken’s son, broke the news and invited me in. We all talked for about an hour. Ken’s wife shared with me that she felt like Easter was such a great day to die. The day we celebrate the eternal life that comes through the resurrection of our Lord is the day that Ken entered into eternal life. I can’t even explain the enormous comfort I felt in that moment knowing where Ken’s eternal destiny lie.

The funeral was very close to how I’d like my funeral to be. There was a lot of singing and laugher over stories shared.

Today is sadness and happiness altogether.

Here’s a goofy/sleep depravity induced worship confessional for Easter:

Watch the video now - check back later for updates to this post.

Email and RSS Subscribers, click here to visit my website and see the video.

Yes, praise the sweet Lord Alimighty!!

This afternoon we finally closed on our house. After having our closing postponed three times the papers are finally signed and the deal it done.

My goal is to move the girls down to Huntsville the first week in April.

This is a great Friday!

Necessity fathers invention. Today my post is about thinking inside the box. Various limitations are imposed on each of us from physical space limitations, to human resources, to a very real limit on money. Rather than getting upset about these limitations we can get creative. Los and Wade have inspired me to get creative by thinking inside the box and using my existing situation and existing resources to do something new.

The Dilemma

We have major gaps in our Sunday morning sound. Our worship center was built without an adequate sound system. We have one main array in the middle the blows out the center seating section with sound while the side areas sit in dead spots. It kinda looks like this:

|||||||||||||||| Main Array |||||||||||||||

Dead area |||| Too Loud |||| Dead area

To compensate the former worship pastor used some addition PA speakers to distribute sound around the room:

||| Speaker ||||| Main Array ||||| Speaker |||
Good Sound |||| Good Sound |||| Good Sound

The issue I face is that those speakers were the personal property of the former worship leader so they took them down when they left - leaving me with big dead spots again.

The Creative Solution

I didn’t have any spare PA speaker sitting around but I did have some extra floor monitor wedges. I did some adjustments to the output on the power amp and played around a bit with our crossover. I tipped the floor wedges on their side and now they are kicking out some extra sound to fill our worship space. It’s not a permanent solution, or even a very good one -but it will make a huge difference for Easter vs. having the dead spots.

||| Wedge ||||| Main Array ||||| Wedge |||

Ok Sound |||| Good Sound |||| Ok Sound

Get creative by using what you’ve got in a unique way.

Thanks Matt and Joseph for all your help on this project!

I’ve been having tons of back pain with that feeling like my ribs are out of place. It’s really hard to get a full breath and so it’s difficult to sing.

I went to the chiropractor today because the pain was just getting ridiculous. He took some x-rays and told me I have whiplash from the auto accident I was in. My neck, which is supposed to have a curve in it is pretty kinked and twisted. As a result my back is out of whack because it’s trying to align with a crooked neck. It’s going to take a few weeks of treatment to get me back to normal.

I’m a little bummed as I was hoping to be on my game for Easter.

But, Christ’s power is made perfect in our weakness right?

For most of us who work in the church Holy Week can be busy enough to drive you mad. Extra prep for Easter as well as additional services can shoot the stress levels through the roof. It can be maddening to keep up with everything, but by simplifying you can work smarter and not harder to pull off an awesome celebration of our awesome Lord’s resurrection.

Here’s how I’m keeping things simple to lower the stress and maintain the sane for Holy Week:

Ditch the Band: For our Thursday and Friday services this week I’m going acoustic. Thursday will be a solo show, and I’ll have some additional singers for Friday. It’s more work for me but it frees up the band to focus all their time and energy on perfecting the music for Easter rather than dividing their effort across multiple unique services.

Extra Rehearsals: Our team normally holds one rehearsal a week, but this week we are doing two. Again it’s a little more work for everyone involved but extra rehearsal time ensures that we can nail down difficult elements and go into the weekend services feeling confident and stress-free about our leading.

Leverage your team: I schedule the same singers for Good Friday and Easter. We have enough singers that I could’ve put separate vocalists on each service - but more teams equals more separate scheduled rehearsals. Rather than having two rehearsals for two teams we’re doing two rehearsals for one team. It’s fewer people to coordinate and communicate with throughout the week and the end result should be less confusion and a tighter sound.

Leverage your music: We’ll be singing “Were you there” on both Good Friday and Easter. Not only does it fit thematically with the mood and flow we are trying to accomplish for each service (It’ll close Good Friday and open Easter) but it means that time the singers spend practicing this piece gets to pay off double with two opportunities to lead the same song.

Do less music: A standard week around here includes 6 songs. Because I’ll be opening Easter acoustically with 2 songs this leaves 4 songs for the band to learn. 4 songs means more time focused on each song.

Any thoughts? How do you maintain your sanity during Holy Week?

I found this great site that has a bunch of PDFs of tabbed out hillsong songs:

http://www.playguitar.com.au/Hillsong.html

They are very helpful for learning the lead parts on various songs. (I’ve used these tabs for Hosanna and Mighty to Save.) Sometimes Hillsong and Hillsong United will use 3 or more different guitar parts and he’s got them all tabbed out.

Enjoy.

Set List for Chase Valley Church for Sunday, March 16

• The Happy Song - Martin Smith
• Hosanna - Paul Baloche
• Everlasting God - Brenton Brown
• We Humble Ourselves - Paul Baloche
• Hosanna - Brooke Fraser
• Holy is the Lord - Chris Tomlin

Highlights/Lowlights

Singing with the children - for the last 3 weeks I’ve skipped out on the sermon to hang with the kiddos and teach them Hosanna by Paul Baloche. All the kids from k - 5th grade came walked in with palms and then came up front to lead this song. We had them piled on each side of the stage and they did sign language for the chorus. It rocked.

Simple Band - We scaled down to one vocalist (besides me), and only one guitar, bass and drums. It worked AWESOME.  The music was tight and we reached a new level today musically.

My voice didn’t quite “wake up.” It was tough to sing the whole set. We did Holy is the Lord as a response song after the sermon. Then as people are leaving we sing the chorus again. My voice finally felt ready to start as we were singing that final chorus.

2 Hosannas - Yeah it’s Palm Sunday, of course we’re gonna sing multiple versions of “Hosanna in the Highest.” They both went great.

Electric - I played my electric on the Fraser Hosanna. (I played acoustic on everything else.) I wanted to get the delay and cool riffs into the song. The bass carried a lot with out the acoustic so it still sounded pretty good with only one guitar.

Today worship was awesome!

Set List for Chase Valley Church March 9th, 2008

• No One Like You - David Crowder
• King of Majesty - Marty Sampson
• Made to Worship - Chris Tomlin
• Wholly Yours - David Crowder
• Hear I am to Worship - Tim Hughes
• Psalm 103 - Billy and Sarah Chia
• The Heart of Worship - Matt Redman

We had a lot of music today.

Highlights & Lowlights

• The hour time difference threw lots of people off. Half the team showed up late. Really late.
• The Choir sounded phenomenal! (More on that below)
• The band was super tight. Everyone worked hard on the music this week and it really showed.
• I put so much into it I was pretty drippy with sweat when I got off stage.
• No One Like You rocked. This is a brand new song for the congregation. It’s also a tricky one to learn in typical Crowder fashion. We did it pretty close to the CD version so there was a lot of nuances the people had to pick up on. Everyone worked hard and we nailed it.
• King of Majesty - Not my favorite song, although a lot of people around here like it so we may be doing it again. I’m not a fan of lyrics like “These words are from my heart, these words are not made up.” They’re just a little trite for me, but I know some of the songs I like lyrically are too convoluted for some people. Being a worship pastor is not all about picking only the songs you like.
• Made to Worship - tough song to sing. I even brought it down to A and it was still hard. I liked being able to play a lead line on this one.
• Wholly Yours - I totally messed this one up. This song has a progression. The lyrics take you through a story of being broken and then finally giving your all to God. Well I showed up today ready to worship. I didn’t want to wait through the whole song. When we should’ve gone into the bridge with says, “But the harder I try the more clearly can I feel the depth of our fall and the weight of it all.” I shouted out “So here I am” and tried to go into “here I am finally all of me everything!” Apparently I was too excited and didn’t want to have to wade through “depth of the fall” to get to “all of me wholly yours.” Fortunately the choir was rock steady and went the bridge when they were supposed to. I fumbled a few chords and got back on track thanks to the choir.
• Here I am to Worship - went well the first time.
• Psalm 103 - I didn’t plan on doing this song. We front loaded a lot of music today and then band sat down and we went into offering. Normally the congregation sings a full song during offering, I haven’t really done “special music.” I came back up and started finger picking to give some back ground music while the offering was being collected. When I looked at my pastor to give him the cue that offering was done and he could come back up, he simply had his head bowed in prayer just vibing a spirit of worship so I started singing. It felt well received.
• Hear I am to Worship (take 2) - I finished Psalm 103 and Fred gave me the cue to do another song. So we sang another verse and a few choruses of Hear I am to Worship. (The theme for today’s sermon was “Worship.”) I stopped playing guitar, and while the crowd sang acapella I put down my guitar and left the stage then joined the crowd to sing. So we sang with no one on stage but God. I didn’t plan this but I was hoping to underscore the notion that worship is not about the music or the band but it’s all about God.
• The Heart of Worship. Didn’t quite have the punch I thought it would. Fred told Redman’s story of how worship had gotten stale and routine and that his church stopped using a band for a season to focus on what worship was really supposed to be. During this season Redman wrote Heart of Worship. I thought after the message this would really hit home, but perhaps the fact that this song is so oversung it may have felt like the stale, routine worship that Redman was trying to avoid the first place. (I’m just speculating at this point, really the whole day was amazing and I heard tons of great comments about both the music and the message today. Really every other song went spectacular and this one was not bad, but simply average.)

How to Rock the Choir

We don’t do choir the same old way at Chase Valley. Instead of a feature act, the choir sings once a month as the “back up” singers. They learn all the worship songs that we do for the day and sing on each one. They sing mostly melody but throw in a good mix of harmony as well. It has several benefits:

• Having 10 - 15 extra people on stage leading really helps to draw people into worship.
• The sound is really full because we use condenser mics and run them through the mains
• They stay on track when I don’t!
• There are tons more that maybe I’ll do a post on in the future.

I love doing Choir this way. It has it’s challenges and perhaps in the future we’ll do some special music but today I was really excited to being doing choir this way.

So there’s a lot there to comment on. Let’s keep a conversation going on this post (or other past ones) next week while I lighten the blogging and celebrate the best 2 years of my life.

I was planning on surprising Sarah by driving home Tuesday for our anniversary. (We’ll be married two years on March 11th.) Tonight while we were talking on the phone I couldn’t hold it in and just told her I was planning on coming home. She was so bummed about not spending our anniversary together. I didn’t want her to spend two more days all down about it. Now she’ll have two days of excitment looking forward to being with me.

I can’t wait to see her again.

In his letter to the Romans Paul talks about Abraham. He says:

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed

(NIV Rom 4:18)

With Jesus there is always hope.

Carlos is pulling out a new blogging community idea called “Creative Chaos.” The general idea is for church types to share creative elements they use within worship or large group settings on our blogs so that we can all benefit from each other’s creativity. (You can see the post for all official rules.)

I’m calling my contribution for this week “subtlleness”

Here’s the idea -

The sermon theme for Sunday is actually “Worship.” We’re singing a lot of songs specifically about worship and we’re using a sermon spice video called The Gift of Worship. The video challenges many modern preconceptions about worship. One of the lines in the video says “Worship is not about whether or not the guitar is too loud.”

Now “too loud” is a subjective thing - meaning what one person believes to be “too loud” another thinks is really “too quite.” I personally never want the guitars to be “too” loud because that would mean they are overpowering everything else and we’d have a bad mix.

However, my educated guess is that my electric guitar at it’s “normal” volume is going to be “too loud” for some. So purposefully, intentionally - we will will have loud guitar with the distortion pedal on in worship on Sunday. It’s subtle, apart from this blog post, no one’s gonna say anything about it or point it out.

I’m not gonna make the guitar louder than I normally would. That might be too obvious and our goal here subtleness. I rotate between leading from acoustic and electric, and I tend to use my acoustic more often, but I believe being intentional about doing electric this week will subtly underscore the video.

So there you have it. Nothing too overt. Just a nuanced creative element.

Today I hung out with the local high school choir director to get some vocal coaching. It was an awesome time. He actually has a background in church music and worship leading. When he talked about the goal we’d be shooting for in terms of getting a clear tone that people can follow on Sunday it was exactly what I was looking for. He gave me some goofy stuff to try out and we’re getting together next week. I’m excited. I feel like my voice is decent, but that God deserves the best I can offer.

for Sarah

Set list for Chase Valley Church:

• O Praise Him - David Crowder
• Everyday - Joel Houston
• Famous One - Chris Tomlin
• Beautiful One - Tim Hughes
• Be Unto Your Name - Lyn DeShazo and Gary Sadler
• We Humble Ourselves - Paul Baloche

it’s close to 11pm and youtube is still uploading. I’ve trying recompressing to a smaller file size. Maybe I’ll get a video up tomorrow. 

Right now I’m living in a temporary apartment until my house sells and I can move my family down. If all goes on plan we’ll close on the house March 14th. I’m looking at apartments for my family tomorrow.

So in the apartment I’m in now I have these elderly neighbors. They are awesome. I haven’t had much chance to talk to them but today they invited me in today for some coffee and I actually got to hang out a bit. I found out that the husband used to play organ and direct music in a baptist church.

When I got to the office everyone was talking about where you get the best coffee in town and which one’s are the worst. We talked about everything from Starbucks to McD’s to the indie places in Huntsville. This place has some tremendous coffee.

I think the best cup of coffee I’ve had in a long time was the one I shared with my neighbors.

Worship pretty much rocked today.

Worship set list for Chase Valley Church February 24th, 2008:

• We Humble Ourselves - Paul Baloche
• Awesome God (Majesty and Mystery) - Vicky Beeching
• Adonai - Raymond Badham, Mia Fieldes
• Wholly Yours - David Crowder
• Mighty to Save - Reuben Morgan, Ben Fielding
• Open the Eyes of My Heart - Paul Baloche

Highlights/Lowlights

• This was a great set - the songs worked well in the slot they were in
• The band sounded great - we had keyboards/synth for the first time since I’ve been on staff and it made a huge difference.
• Our sound/media tech was on point
• We Humble Ourselves - This is a new song for the church and people picked up on it really well. The harmonies were stellar on this one.
• Awesome God (Majesty and Mystery) - One of our female vocalist led this one and nailed it. This is a pretty rocked out tune and we did it pretty low key - without any lead guitar using simply acoustic, bass and synth. It gave a more tender feel to the song - which I felt was more appropriate given the lyrics: “Your arms are, the arms that surround me in a warm embrace.”
• Adonai - this is a great song. This was our 2nd time doing this one and the congregation has really responded to it. I started jumping during one of the music interludes and my in-ear monitor receiver unclipped from my pocket and fell on the stage. I had to stop playing guitar to get my monitor going again. The same thing actually happened at the same point in the song during sound check. I must need some duct tape or something - this song’s got some great energy.
• Mighty to Save - everyone started cheering spontaneously after singing “Jesus conquered the grave” in the first chorus. The Spirit was moving today.

This is what’s kinda been in my head as of late…

When everything starts gong wrong you start asking lots of questions.

Did I mess up and God is punishing me?

Is Satan attacking me because I’m following God passionately?

Does this really have nothing to do with spiritual warfare and sometimes lousy days just happen?

When will things get better?

When will something go right?

Do I really have it that bad?

Could things be worse?

Should I really feel so stressed out at my small stupid problems when other people go through more difficulty and with more class?

Should I really be comparing myself to others?

Should I really feel so guilty for not being as strong and I think I should be?

Should I stop shoulding on myself?

If I start feeling better is it because in some strive forward toward maturity I’ve gained an objective outlook or have I just given up and lost hope?

Can I be full of hope and absent of hope at the same time?

What would a mature Christian do in this situation?

How should I be responding?

If I bottle it up and pretend nothings wrong is that fake?

Will there be deeper consequences to pay down the road if I don’t deal with these emotions now?

If I spew hurt and “feel sorry for me” on to everyone else is that the right thing to do?

What’s the right, true and proper way to respond to hardship?

Is there such a thing?

Am I being spiritually mature and humble by admiting that I don’t have it all together and I still need Jesus?

Am I being spiritually immature and prideful because I’m letting the world get to me and I should really rely on Jesus?

Have I been asking too many questions?

Seriously. The sheer number of random terrible things that have happened makes it almost funny. I brought my family back down with me from Evansville so Sarah could go apartment shopping. She lost her wallet and people won’t let her look at the apartments without an ID.

To top it all off we got rear-ended last night while waiting at a red light. Everyone is safe. The van is not. We’re going to have to pack creatively for our trip back to Indiana.

Blah.

A large group of bloggers headed off to Uganda this week to blog about getting children sponsored through Compassion International. The stories they’ve put up have been encouraging, humbling, and challenging to my faith.

Here are some that have spoken to me the most:

• Shaun Groves on being small enough. (The stories and photos will hit you - I’ve read this post over several times.)
• Carlos Whittaker talking about his changed heart. (Los, thanks for being real enough to admit to having a calloused heart. I have one too.)
• Anne Jackson speaking to $9 rent. (This one really struck me as my family is currently in the process of trying to find an apartment to rent in Huntsville. I’ll just say that range we are looking in is not $9 a month.)

My blogging’s been minimal this week since I’ve spent as much time with my girls and I can , but this was worth putting up.

I’m headed out to Indiana this week! Man, I’m excited.

Man it’s been one of those days. Tons of stuff awesome about this morning. Tons of stuff I’m just pulling my hair out over. I don’t even feel like doing a confessional or taking the time to post a set list.

I know for a fact that the standards I have set for myself are to high. I am most likely trying to please people and not God and that is stressing me out.
A friend of mine told me a great story today about how he had patience and God worked everything out in the end.

That’s kinda what I’d like right now.

Permission for things to be messy. Permission to not have it all together. Permission to BE stressed out while I figure out how not to be. I know God is working things out. Permission to wait on God.

I did a CCLI Song Select Search for “fasting.”

The Result:

No one’s ever written a song about Christian fasting? Ever? Really?

I saw this one going around and wondered when it would head back my way.

Amanda tagged me up.

1. I have the Chinese word for “star” tattooed on my right shoulder. Every other day I love and then hate that I have that tattoo.

2. I have an affinity for the 32 oz. plastic cups you get at gas stations.

3. Crunchy peanut butter…mmmmm

4. The first song I learned to play on guitar was Plush by Stone Temple Pilots.

5. Once in Jr. high, while playing with gasoline in my backyard things got so out of hand I caught my pool on fire.

6. Snowboarding in one of the best things ever. I haven’t been in about 5 years.

7. I have played Sweet Home Alabama about 247 times since moving to Alabama. I still haven’t figured out all the licks in it.

Drop a comment. Get a tag.

Tagged:

• Alex McClean
• Russ

Travis posted some great questions in Pursuing Excellence: Where do you draw the line?

Here’s my response:

If the church grows shouldn’t the opportunities grow as well? There are more places to use artistic gifts than simply the Sunday morning large community experience.

If someone is really passionate about music are they playing in local clubs? We need Christians doing that. How can the local church help to facilitate it happening? Are we stopping short at saving orphans in Uganda, which totally rocks, or are we also impacting the culture of our cities positively at the grass roots level?

Are are these Christians artists recording their stuff and putting their music up on myspace?

If they are really passionate about worship are they willing to lead worship for a smaller venues. (Small Group Bible Studies, Men’s groups, Celebrate Recovery, etc…)

Those who are called and gifted to lead worship for large community gatherings are few. I’ve been in churches of 100 that had only 10 in the band and churches of 3000 that had only 30. I think that’s ok. Not everyone is called the Sunday Stage. Because of the temptation for pride involved in such a visual place of ministry it is the extremely few who can approach that ministry with a humble attitude. I would be skeptical about anyone who wanted to get up stage in front of 300 people but wasn’t willing to clean the kitchen or serve in children’s church.

With that said, local church leaders do have a responsibility to help people explore their gifting, discern their calling, and equip their ministry.

There’s been a stack of CDs sitting on my desk for three weeks that I haven’t had a chance to even look at. This week is the first time I’ve felt like I’ve been able to take a breath and start to catch up on tasks. I actually got to listen to some music today and think about songs for the next few weeks. As I listened I realized something.

There’s is tons of great worship music.

There’s really no excuse for doing bad music in church. Perhaps back in the day there was limited selection - but now that’s not the case.

A few that pop out as stellar:

• Mighty to Save - Hillsong
• Majesty - Matt Redman
• All Because of Jesus - Steve Fee
• Bring me to Life - Bebo Norman
• Be Thou My Vision - Some guy with mad skills on the acoustic guitar playing with a Celtic kinda vibe and a fluteish instrument accompanying (Just a random mp3 left on my computer - but it rocks.)
• Holy Ground - Christopher Beatty and Geron Davis (Oh yeah you know I love the old school stuff)

Google “Billy Chia” for images and here’s what you get:

You can make your own cool Google images montage.

HT (Mr. Conner Byrd)

Last night around 4am the loudest, most annoying sound woke me up. Since I’ve been known to ignore severe weather warnings in the past I was hoping to simply go back to sleep. The incessant blast didn’t allow this.

I huddled near an interior wall listening to the radio station. It was nerve racking trying to figure out how close this thing was as I have no knowledge of Alabama geography. The the announcer mentioned that funnel clouds were spotted near Red Stone Arsenal and Jordan Lane. That’s about 2 blocks from my house.

It got kinda freaky and I thought maybe I should take this stuff more seriously. On Monday I hung out with Jeff, who’s church was torn apart by a tornado in the 90’s, and my pal Darren’s church had a tornado cut right through the sanctuary about 2 years ago.

Around 4:30 I heard the strom was heading northeast and thought I was in the clear. Then they mentioned the only other loction I’m familar with -Winchester Road, where my church is.

I was happy to show up this morning to find nothing had touched down in Huntsville and our building was in one piece. I’m praying for the families of those who lost life in the surrounding counties.

Heck of a game last night.

The Set List for Chase Valley Church February 3, 2008:

• All Creatures of Our God and King - David Crowder
• Forever - Chris Tomlin
• Hosanna - Paul Baloche
• Here I am to Worship - Tim Hughes
• At the Cross - Darlene Zschech, Reuben Morgan

Highlights/Lowlights:

• My goal this week was to start the set out slow and mellow with All Creatures instead of the routine upbeat opener. (Jesus preached a lot against routine for the sake of routine.) It kinda went ok. Our crowd has some people who grew up with hymns, some that listen to worship CDs and knew it as a Crowder song, and the rest. The words are so good and it’s such a great invocational song to open worship. When we got to the “alleluia” part people started singing along.
• After that the energy in the room today was intense.
•  I did not get as much personal rehearsal time this week as I really wanted. I felt kinda naked going out on stage. Every thing’s been busy and difficult because I’m new. Last week was just ridiculous with several events going on on top of the newness factor. This week I’m hoping to get some good practice time in. I can’t really expect my vocalists and instrumentalists to be working hard enough to improve their skills if I’m not doing the same thing right?
• At the Cross is such a great song. I did the bridge like 80 times it was so good.
• All in all I felt really great about the morning.

Josh Wilson has got impressive chops on the acoustic guitar. Armed with a Boss RC-20XL loop station, DD-20 Giga Delay and a Taylor he brought and assault of rhythmic harmony and catchy vocal hooks to Shea’s Express in Huntsville tonight. The groove between Josh’s flying fingers layered against his tap-dancing feet on the pedal board was a sight to behold. Imagine Dave Matthews meets Sammy Davis Jr. and you know what I’m talking about.

(btw - If Renown keeps bringing in the stellar Nashville musicians I might have to make this a weekly post.)

The crowd was into it - clapping their hands and whistling along to the likes of Stevie Wonder covers and Josh’s original material. Seriously, check out Breakthrough on Josh’s myspace page. And buy his CD.

For you tech/guitar geeks out there Josh’s board was tight. Along with loop/delay he ran a 2 Boss EQs and an Electro-Harmonix Micro POG (For shifting down an octave adding bass gutiar to the loop.) His pedals were actually stacked on top of a 2 channel rack compressor running into an a/b box and his own in-ear monitor before running out to FOH. Essentially this allows him to self-mix guitar and vocal with the a/b allowing him to send either signal to the looper.

After the show Josh told me he often plays with a band but simplifies to just himself and the pedal board for more intimate shows. I say leave the band at home - the one man show rocks.

One of the most exciting elements of being the new Worship Arts Pastor at Chase has been the opportunity I’ve already had to see our worship ministry grow. It’s been a privilege to interact with so many people interested in music, media and technology. Some are greatly accomplished in their areas and others are brand new with a simple desire to learn.

When a person comes to me and asks, “I’d like to serve God. Can you help me out?” My goal is to always say, “Yes.” I may not be able to say, “Yes” to an accordion solo next week during our Sunday morning worship, but I make it a point to always have opportunities available for people to serve God and grow in their faith. Even if I’m not currently aware of how someone can plug into the team I love helping people discern their gifts and getting creative about ways to plug in.

Recently, Jordan, a friend of mine who is a worship pastor in another church, held an audition with a potential vocalist. It was clear that her gifts would not best be used on the vocal team. Instead of simply saying, “No, there is no place for you here.” Jordan said, “No, this is not your primary area of gifting. We will help you find it.” He essentially said “Yes” to serving God, even if he had to say “No” to a specific situation. After some time it was discovered that this woman held some unused administrative talent. As a result she was able to take a key role in a children’s outreach program. After the event this woman thanked Jordan. She made it a point to say that if she had committed to the worship team she would have been too busy for the outreach. Instead she was able to serve God and feel great about how she was serving because she was serving in her primary area of giftedness.

I love being at Chase because of our team environment. I’ll tell you guys straight up, I don’t simply recruit for my own ministries, but I always keep an ear out for how someone might fit in the larger team - even if it’s in an area I’m not personally involved. Next to worship, my highest passion is seeing people sold out for Jesus, serving Him with all they’ve got. I love seeing people not only serving God, but also being successful and feeling great about their ministry because they are serving in an area where they are called and equipped.

What are your areas of passion or ability?

Are you using those gifts for God’s glory?

Let’s have a conversation about it. I’m not very interested in simply filling slots. I’ve am extremely interested in seeing you serving God in an area you feel great about and I’d love to help see you get there.

Please send me an email (private conversation) or leave a comment (public conversation).

God bless, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

*originally published in my church’s newsletter

Candlefuse adds equal parts adrenaline shot and overdrive pedal to come up with an inspiring take on an old classic:

More like “Smacked in the face with a wall of distortion and passed out on my knees.”