Reading Facedown

I recently finished my first read of Matt Redman's book Facedown. It is an exceptional book on worship. I did, however, realize that I raced through it and I need to read this book more than once. The fact that this is stated in the "afterward" is also comforting.

I do want to try an experiment. I noticed an interesting synopsis on each chapter as I was reading. The first paragraph sums up the content quite well so I am wondering how it will read if I transcribe the first paragraph of each chapter into a common document.

Too much time on my hands?

Coming into the Kitchen

I am still catching up on some of the PodCasts that I regularly listen to. Today, I listened to Liquid Church's message from January 8 called "Renovating the Kitchen". In it, the pastor builds a case for small groups meeting within the church, telling the listeners his plan to start them.

I related well to this as I avoided doing any sort of small group activities quite often until attending Northern Hills. Now, not only am I enjoying our small group (Northern Hills calls them Life Groups from "doing life together").

If you are wondering what in the world I am refering to or are wondering if you should try something like this, check out this message from Liquid Church or this message from Northern Hills.

A poser!

I was on a conference call at work one day with the headset on. Hearing noise behind me, I turned around and Janet, one of the people at Qwest who specify what products will be like, was drawing on the board.

She kept telling me to turn back around. After she was finished, I found the drawing you see here on the white board outside my cube. You can tell I was on a conference call because of the headset and microphone.

The Message

Although the title is a little pretentious, I have enjoyed reading through "The Message" version of The Bible.

Check out Genesis 1:1-2 for instance...

First this: God created the Heavens and Earth--all you see, all you don't see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.

I find this much more descriptive than the King James Version which reads

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

The "shameful confession", however, is that I failed in my quest to read through The Bible this year. Actually it was closer than it sounds from my prior sentence. I made it all the way to December 26 which left out Revelation.

I'll see if I can't clean up what is left sometime this year.

Video Find...

I was messing around with Google's Video Search and found an interesting video of a drama with Switchfoot's "Dare You To Move" as the background music.

Click here to watch.

Sound Thoughts

I did my first weekend alone (well 2 out of 3 services anyway) in the sound booth at church. There were some twists, turns and bumps but I heard a lot of compliments from those in charge.

Some thoughts about the differences in "Worship Arts" between sound and playing.

• On the whole, running sound is more stressful. You are always on, even between services.
• While on, playing can be more stressful. We are to memorize our music.
• There is a larger time commitment while playing.
  
• You need to remember more while playing.
• Musicians make some of the best sound people. They should already have an "ear" for what is going on. The technical end can be a little stressful for some however.
  

Which would I rather do? Play! Why? Not because I particularly enjoy being up front but it is where I feel I can participate in both corporate and personal worship of God best. I am committed, however, to serve. That means, where ever I am needed.

Audio Bloging

I found out this week that I could post audio blogs through my telephone, thanks to a partner of Blogger called AudioBlogger. What will they think of next!

Did you go to church this weekend?

The GodIPod blog points to an interesting video story on podcasting sermons done by WUSA, the CBS affiliate in Washington DC.

Did you go to church this weekend? Too busy you say ... with work, family obligations, that all too painful Redskins game?

Don’t fear, as Derek McGinty shows us, now you can get wired for worship through "Godcasting."

You can see the read the story or video here...

There are also claims (and of course counter claims) that podcasting is increasing church attendence

Baby Got Book!

It is fun to laugh! National Community Church's pastor Mark Batterson's Evotional blog has a post called "Big Bibles" which has a video of "Baby Got Book" that made both Kyle and I laugh.

The artist is Southpaw (White Boy DJ?) (or Dan Smith) and you can watch his "Baby Got Book" video at his website.

A lyric sample?

I like big Bibles I can not lie,
You Christian brothers can’t deny,
When a girl walks in with a KJV*
And a bookmark in proverbs, You get stoked.

It got a name in place,
you know this girl has been saved
It looks like one of those large ones,
With plenty of space in the margins,
Oh baby, I want to read it with you,
Because your Bible has got pictures,
My minister tried to consult me,
But the book you’ve got makes me so Holy.

The Wittenburg Door has the whole text of the song here.

This is a picture of our recent graduate and his teacher, Kitty (funny huh?). Since mid November, Rocky (and the rest of the family) have been attending dog training classes at Petsmart. Many people do not like their methods or maybe it is the mass marketing. I will say, the results for us were dramatic. Rocky is a much different dog than when he walked in.

We thought he scored pretty high marks also!

The privileges and blessings of playing bass

Every weekend that I get called upon to play my bass for the worship services at Northern Hills is a privilege. This is actually true at many levels. From the fact that I love playing with the people that I create music with to my belief that man's purpose on this earth is to Worship God (see Question 1 of the Westminster Larger Catechism).

This weekend is also quite a blessing. Wednesday, at practice, I met a guest musician. Dave Villano is amazing. He started playing guitar as a kid but also plays an electric violin, electric baratone violin and Irish flute. I have enjoyed the styling that he adds to songs that I have played along with many times.

I put links to Dave's website where you can listen to his music (and buy if you like it) as well as his violins.

The Bored-Again Christian does it again.

Yes, "The Bored-Again Christian" is a little different name but "Just Pete" puts on a great podcast directed at people who are "bored with Christian Music". During the last 16 shows (or chapters as he calls them, he has put together some very interesting shows of artists you wouldn't typically hear of.

I was listing to chapter 16, the latest in his anthology. There are one artist that stuck out to me. Mostly because of the "worship" and "enjoyment factor" of his music.

The "The Name" was performed by Jonathan Miller. I was pleased to find out he lives less than an hour away from where I grew up. It is a song that I find I can listen to over and over again. I find that the previews of the rest of the album are the same. This one will be going into my collection!

What are we doing wrong?

I recently stumbled across statistics about the "sexual health" of teens & adolescents. I originally saw statistics similar to these in USA Today about 10 years ago. The situation does not seem to have changed much.

According to Baby-Parenting.com on Teen Pregnancy Statistics, the United States has the second highest at 83.6 per 1000 (behind Russia at 101.7) number of pregnancies in girls 15 to 19 year old. Of those 83.6, 29.2 ended in an abortion. Another site, Advocates for Youth, site statistics, quite similar in results.

Baby-Parenting.com's page state that " It has been found that teens who have a good relationship with their parents are less likely to experience a pregnancy."

Proverbs 22:6 (The Message) Says: Point your kids in the right direction-- when they're old they won't be lost.

Sounds to me that we as parents need to wake up and start parenting our kids. If not, our kids suffer.

Hittin' the Bricks

If you are looking for a new way to illustrate the Bible, check out The Brick Testament. Here is a link to their "Birth of Jesus".

Disclaimer... I will not vouch for the accuracy of this site.