Chris from Canada

New site, new feed, new look - lots of new!!

2007-08-23T10:24:00.000-05:00

You RSS subscribers may not notice the new look but if you DO subscribe you're going to need to update your feed. This will be the last post that will come through on this feed.

New site - http://www.chrisfromcanada.com

New feed - http://www.chrisfromcanada.com/?feed=rss2

New look - you'll see that I've moved from Blogger to my own hosted WordPress. I like some of the things that WP does differently and generally like how feeds show up in my reader when they're coming from WP blogs rather than Blogger. Hopefully the transition is smooth and everything works like it's supposed to!

How would you respond to this?

2007-08-10T11:39:00.000-05:00

On Sunday mornings we encourage people to use our "Welcome Pad" - basically a little black folder where visitors can include their info, regular attenders can give us change of address info or prayer needs can be communicated to our staff and elders. Naturally, the WP becomes the easiest way for anonymous "helpful input" to our worship team.

In my time here I've received a few doses of helpful input such as:

We really should do more of the traditional hymns.
Why do we repeat the verses so many times? I've talked to other people and they have the same concern.
Must someone always be playing while people are speaking or praying on stage? I'm hard of hearing!

Generally it is fairly harmless stuff but unless it's a significant issue that has already been recognized in our worship ministry, we don't really give it much thought. We put lots of work, thought and prayer (not necessarily in that order) into our content and presentation of Sunday morning and we don't expect it to make everyone happy.

This week was a little different. I did get some "helpful input" but this time it wasn't anonymous. The person (a first-time visitor from out of town) left us this comment in the WP:

Is this a concert or a church service?

To be clear, we pass the WP during our announcements, so this would have been
after our first two songs in the service which were fairly upbeat, good volume,
lots of energy.

So - how would you respond? Ignore it? Thank him for the input? Call or email
and explain the vision for the worship ministry and the Sunday service gathering
as a whole?

What would you do?

Worship Text-fessional - Sunday, August 5, 2007

2007-08-10T11:18:00.001-05:00

My blog-friend Victor tipped me off to a new way of describing my recap posts. Lots of people are doing worship confessionals and I felt kind of lame calling mine the same thing because they're all high tech and fancy with their videos but I feel hip and satisfied by calling these posts worship text-fessionals, so that's what they're going to be.

On Sunday we started a new series looking at the life of David in 1 & 2 Samuel that we're calling "After God's Own Heart." The basic premise is to take 5 snapshots of David's life and look at the constant contrast in those stories between who David was and who the other characters are. We started this week by telling the story of Saul.

Sunday, August 5, 2007 - "After God's Own Heart"
1 Samuel ch. 8-15
Beautiful One - Tim Hughes
Because Of Your Love - Paul Baloche
Announcements/Offering/Prayer
Doxology (Praise God From Whom...) - Traditional
Everlasting God - Brenton Brown
In Christ Alone - Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Message
Step By Step - Rich Mullins

Our congregation is loving "Everlasting God" right now - they sing it loud, they really get in to the lyrics and the words seem to really express a place that our congregation is at right now. It's also a song where our band can crank it up a little bit so they enjoy that. I had our piano player do more of the lead on the verses and pre-chorus and I just filled in little rhythmic things on my guitar - made for a nice arrangement and a good contrast for when we went full out on the chorus.

"Because Of Your Love" is a song that we've been doing for a while here and for the first time we dropped the key from G to F. I've been finding that the chorus (which hangs on a high D in the melody line) has been a bit high and I was wondering if it was holding the congregation back. So we dropped down a key to stay in that golden "C to shining C" range for our people and it really seemed to help.

I'm excited about the rest of this series and digging in to the life of David some more. One of the things we'll be doing with the worship side of our services is pulling from the Psalms which parallel different parts of the David story. Right now I'm working on a song taken from Psalm 51 that we'll be using in a couple weeks and we've got a few other ideas we're throwing around.

Krazee Arts Camp Recap Video!

2007-08-03T09:27:00.001-05:00

We put this video together and showed it to the kids and their parents, neighbours, friends, neighbours' friends, friends' parents, dog's friends' parents' neighbours and everyone else that came to our Friday night Variety Show!

Sunday, July 29 Recap

2007-08-01T09:33:00.000-05:00

Sunday was good. We've finished our "Like This" series in 1 Thessalonians and we'll be starting our new series looking at the life of David this coming week. On Sunday we had a guest come and preach. Darryl Dash is the senior pastor at Richview Baptist Church in Toronto and is a good friend of ours. He came and preached a message on "Restoring Worship" from Ezra 3.

The service planning process was a little different - mostly over email and with less interaction between me and the speaker, obviously. Normally over the course of planning a service I will meet with our pastor several times to make sure that we're on the same page for Sunday morning. I'm planning on doing a post soon about our service planning process and will be looking for some feedback from other people who have insight in that area.

Anyways, here's what we put together.

Sunday, July 29, 2007 - "Restoring Worship"
Ezra 3:1-11
Ancient of Days - Gary Sadler & Jamie Harvill
Forever - Chris Tomlin

What the Lord Has Done - Reuben Morgan
Be Thou My Vision - Dennis & Nan Allen
Heart of Worship - Matt Redman

Message

Give Us Clean Hands - Charlie Hall

"Heart of Worship" isn't a song that we'd typically do on a Sunday morning (in fact I don't think we've done it in the almost-two years that I've been here) but it made alot of sense as the first bookend, if you will, to the message. Our worship leader set the song up really nicely to encourage people to think about the song as we were preparing for the message - just the idea that worship is more than singing and we may occasionally need to rethink how and why we are worshipping.

"Give Us Clean Hands" was a really nice closer to the service and provided another good bookend to Darryl's message.

At the end of our service we did a little Q&A and prayed for a team of 4 students and 2 adults who are leaving today (their plane takes off in about 2 1/2 hours) for Japan where they will be partnering with some missionaries we support over there. It's been neat to have missionaries either visiting or being sent from our church interviewed durng our service the past four Sundays - a missionary we support in Rome, one in Central America, a family from our church going to Pakistan and now this team going to Japan.

Planning Centre

2007-07-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

I'm Canadian so I call it "centre" :)

If you're a worship pastor or in any sort of church administration role and you're not using Planning Centre Online, you should be. The power, flexibility and ease-of-use of this thing has blown me away the past few months. I can put together service outlines so quickly now and everything I need - charts, mp3's, worship team email addresses, schedules - is right where I need it to be.

Here are some links to check out for more info but you should really do yourself a favour and try it out -
Planning Centre FAQ
Planning Centre Features
Planning Centre Video Tutorials

AND..

Jeff, the guy who put this whole thing together, is super accessible and VERY willing to make this program work to the best of its ability for those who actually use it.

Sunday, July 22 Recap

2007-07-25T13:55:00.000-05:00

Well last week was amazing. We ran our Krazee Arts Camp for the first time ever and from all reports it was a HUGE success. Lots of photos on my blog.

Hilights from last week -
>Having a peacock in the building
>Telling kids every day that God created them, God loves them, God wants a relationship with them
>Hearing them sing LOUD at the Variety Show on Friday night
>Working with amazing volunteers to pull off an incredible week

Our service on Sunday morning was another good one. We closed our "Like This" series by taking two of Paul's "final instruction" verses and building a section of teaching around each verse. It went something like this -

Sunday, July 22, 2007 - "Like This"
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
Let Everything That Has Breath - Matt Redman
Open The Eyes - Paul Baloche

Teaching - v.23 - "A Prayer"
Communion
The Wonderful Cross - Trad., Tomlin & Reeves
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) - Trad., Tomlin & Giglio

Teaching - v.24 - "A Promise"
Faithful One - Brian Doerksen
Never Let Go - Matt & Beth Redman

Two really neat things from this service -
I felt like for the first time "Let Everything" really worked in a service here. Right tempo, right groove, right placement. It just worked.
The other really great thing was "Never Let Go". This song rocks. I said to my team this week that the song feels like an epilogue to "Blessed Be Your Name". Same authors, same theme, same conviction, same range separation from verse to chorus. Anyways - the congregation ate it up. It is definitely going in our regular rotation and we'll for sure pull it out during our next series on David.

Krazee Arts Camp - Day 4

2007-07-19T16:05:00.000-05:00

Krazee Arts Camp - Day 3

2007-07-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

Krazee Arts Camp - Day 2

2007-07-17T15:30:00.000-05:00

Krazee Arts Camp - Day 1

2007-07-17T15:20:00.000-05:00

Recap - Sunday, July 15, 2007

2007-07-15T21:09:00.000-05:00

This morning, my friend John led worship. He's been on one of our worship teams for about a year and a half and has been helping give leadership to our youth worship stuff since the winter. I was excited to have him lead our Sunday morning for the first time this week.

And he KILLED it!! Seriously, he hit it out of the park. It was awesome. This morning was all about song flow, integration with the message and thematic consistency.

Here's our list -

Sunday, July 15, 2007 - "Like This"
1 Thessalonians 5:16-21
Your Love Is Amazing - Brian Doerksen & Brenton Brown
Holy Is The Lord - Chris Tomlin
Filled With Your Glory - Tim & John Neufeld

Indescribable - Chris Tomlin
Famous One - Chris Tomlin & Jesse Reeves
Blessed Be Your Name - Matt & Beth Redman

You're Worthy Of My Praise - David Ruis

Dudes - the flow from the end of the chorus of "Holy Is The Lord" to the chorus of "Filled With Your Glory" was amazing!!

Go read the passage that we used for the service and you'll know why we used this as a congregational reading during the second set -

Because we believe in and know the goodness of God,
we will always be joyful.
Because we believe and know that God hears us,
we will pray continually.
Because we believe and know that God is faithful,
we will give thanks in all circumstances.
We believe and know that this is God's will for us in Christ Jesus.

Krazee Arts Camp

2007-07-15T20:54:00.000-05:00

Alright readers - time to ask for prayer.

In exactly 9 hours we will begin seeing kids arrive for our first EVER Krazee Arts Camp. If you want an idea of what this camp is all about, here's a little visual game.

+

+

=

That's right. Skydancers plus peacocks plus children equals Krazee Arts Camp.

Needless to say, I need you to pray. About 75% of the kids coming to this camp are from families who have little or no connection whatsoever to our church. They just responded to well-designed marketing and some nice-looking promotional material!! Hopefully we've designed a camp that will blow their socks off and will encourage them to check out some of our other programs. And hopefully the FREE STARBUCKS comin' their way when they get here tomorrow will be a nice little treat.

Pray for me as I do the talks each day to tell these kids three things they need to hear - God created you, God loves you, God wants a relationship with you.

We are pumped up!!

Recap - Sunday, July 8, 2007

2007-07-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

Alright, so I suck at this blogging thing. In my recent comings-and-goings I've failed to be consistent in my blogging behaviour. Hopefully the three of you who read this will forgive me.

Here's a recap of what we did this past Sunday - we're in the middle of a really great series in 1 Thessalonians that we're calling "Like This." Our Director of Youth Ministries, Kevin Van Dyken, had the unique opportunity of telling our congregation that one of the things they can do to keep our church healthy is to "respect and esteem" the leaders of our church. Not an easy task so I'm sure that our Senior Pastor wasn't too upset that he was away on holidays and didn't have to preach this message :)

Sunday, July 8, 2007 - "Like This"
1 Thessalonians 5:12-14
Your Grace Is Enough - Chris Tomlin version
There Is No One Else Like You - Robin Mark

That's Why We Praise Him - Tommy Walker
Holy, Holy, Holy - Traditional

May The Words Of My Mouth - Tim Hughes

As a response to Kevin's message we took communion together. Normally communion is done one of two ways - we pass the trays down each row OR we set up stations and people are served commuion. Because of the passage that Kevin was preaching this week and the focus on developing healthy community we thought we'd do something a little different.

We set up six communion stations around our auditorium and at each station we had communion trays which had both the bread and juice (we're Baptists but not Baptist enough to use wine!) on the same tray. As people left their seats and went to one of the stations, there was someone their to serve communion to the first person in line. After this first person ate and drank, they took the tray from the person who served them and served the NEXT person in line. When that person ate and drank, they took the tray and served the next person. And on and on.

We had several positive comments from people that this was a good visual for them to immediately put in to practice what they had just been hearing from God's word. Our hope, of course, is that the memory will stick with them and will continue to inspire them to serve and help the idle, the fainthearted and the weak.

Did I explain that okay?

Hey Willow Arts folks!

2007-06-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

A bunch of you are ending up here via the Willow Creek Arts Conference blog. Great to have you!

You might see that I've been out of the blog routine for a while. Read through some posts and you'll get the sense that this blog is just to re-cap service ideas and let people know about some resources and tools that make my job a little easier.

What do/did you think of the conference? Best part? Biggest thing you'd change?

Emerson's First Day

2007-05-17T15:04:00.000-05:00

2007-05-17T14:57:00.000-05:00

You'll see that I've got a whole bunch of new blog links over on the right hand side. This is a list of blogs inspired by Randy Elrod who I had the pleasure of meeting earlier this spring at re:create. Have a look through those blogs and get to know some folks over there - they're good people!

Sunday, May 13 Recap

2007-05-15T10:35:00.000-05:00

After missing a couple of Sundays for some family time I was excited about being back at the church this week and to lead worship on Sunday. We had a really solid team (including a new keyboard player!), the song flow worked really well and our second service included a bunch of child dedications so we had a whole whack of visitors with us, too.

Every year we take a week and focus on our global outreach efforts. For the second year in a row we brought our friend Justus Miwanda from Uganda to come and speak to us. He was around all week spending time in our various ministries and then preached on Sunday morning. We had asked him to tell the North American church what it needed to hear from an African. Justus preached from the parable of the good Samaritan and focused mostly on the fact that the Samaritan went to him - how we must be willing to GO to those who need to be helped.

Sunday, May 13 - "Beyond Our Four Walls"
"He Went To Him"
Ancient of Days - Gary Sadler & Jamie Harvill
Holy Is The Lord - Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio
Because Of Your Love - Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown

You Are - Mark Roach
Shout To The Lord - Darlene Zschech

Give Us Clean Hands - Charlie Hall

Two real highlights for me this week - we had done "You Are" once before as a presentation song on Celebration Sunday at the end of our Beyond initiative but we dropped the key to F and did it as a congregational this week. The response was awesome! This is definitely getting added to our regular repertoire. The second really cool thing was just the great energy the congregation had at the second service in response to the child dedications. Anytime you put babies on stage people are going to think it's awesome!

New & Old

2007-05-11T14:22:00.000-05:00

So I think I'm going to start a new blog feature - New & Old. I'll link you to a blog that I've been reading for a while (the "old") and a blog that I've just discovered and am enjoying (the "new"). See - we like to keep things simple up here in Canada!

The New - I'll go with the newest for this first one! I was visiting Rich's blog yesterday and ended up at The Wonderful Noise the blog home of Victor Estrada. Like me, Victor is a worship pastor and, also like me, is the father of a new baby girl.

The Old - I'll stick with the theme and go with the oldest! The first blog I ever started reading belongs to Jordon Cooper. I had the opportunity to meet Jordon a couple years ago but was too chicken to tell him that I read his blog. Jordon has a very keen sense of the goings-on in "underground Christianity" in Canada and is not afraid to take significant steps to help make things better. Plus, he's Canadian and that makes him worth reading.

Both of these guys are linked in my bloglist so check them out if you're looking for some more reading.

Now go find your own guitar-playing, singing goat and send me a snapshot!

Doing what I love.

2007-05-11T10:04:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning to the gentle cries of my 13-day old baby. Then I heard my 18-month old calling me. Then my wife rolled over and said "Good morning." I love it.

Came in to the office and saw people getting ready to open the doors for our women's ministry, Overflow. Had quick update chats with some people in the office. Took care of some little details as we get ready for Sunday.

Sat down at my desk, checked some emails, listening to messages, put on some tunes, read the blogs.

I love doing this.

Here's something that made me laugh out loud this morning -

Come on! That is funny stuff!

Here's some context - http://billcarroll.typepad.com/multisite_arts/2007/05/something_you_d.html

Emerson Paige Vacher

2007-05-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

What a grand and glorious event - God has given us another beautiful, healthy baby girl to raise and encourage.

Emerson Paige Vacher was born Saturday, April 28 at 8:42pm and weighed 8lbs 12oz. Although most of you who read the blog haven't met my wife, let me just say that her pushing out an almost-nine-pound anything is quite a feat! I've said this several times this week but my wife is the man!!

Behance Action Book

2007-04-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

So remember how I posted a while ago about being a little obsessed with productivity toosl and I was excited about the Behance Action Book I ordered? Well it arrived a couple weeks ago and I figured it was about time to do a little update.

I actually ordered 8 of the books and gave one to our senior pastor (he's pretty creative and I thought he'd appreciate trying out the book too) and I'm planning on giving them to some ministry volunteers too. So when they arrived there was a little drool that came out of the corner of my mouth when I opened the box.

So what do I think of the thing? So far, so good! It is pretty much as advertised. The cover is indeed "suede-to-the-touch" (I know you were wondering, Rich!) and the pages are set up well for me to take notes freely during a meeting and be able to direct my thoughts to certain locations on the pages.

The only downside so far is that I find the the grids on the pages to be just about the wrong size - they're too close together for me to write on every "line" (although there are no actual lines on the page) but too far apart to use every other line. So as guidelines for writing, they're pretty useless.

The orange "Action Steps" boxes on the right are super handy and I'm having lots of fun keeping my on-going checklists in one spot.

All in all, if you're looking for a nice looking way to keep your thoughts organized and want to go a little low tech, this thing is definitely a great option. And if you come up here and lead one of our ministry teams, you might end up with one for free! :)

We are counting down the days!

2007-04-24T11:31:00.000-05:00

Sonya was due yesterday and our doctor has scheduled inducing for Saturday. So it won't be long now!

Sunday, April 22 Recap

2007-04-24T11:24:00.000-05:00

Another great week in a series that I'm really enjoying. This week was all about security - "Will everything be okay?" In light of Virginia Tech we decided to switch weeks and talk about security on Sunday and push our discussion on significance to next week. It's good to be flexible.

Sunday, April 22 - "Dear God, I Have A Question"
"Will everything be okay?" - Matthew 11
Your Name Is Holy - Brian Doerksen
Forever - Chris Tomlin
That's Why We Praise Him - Tommy Walker

Faithful One - Brian Doerksen
Everything Cries Holy - Robin Mark

Rescue - Jared Anderson

Great morning. The songs flowed really well and our worship leader did a great job. We closed the service with "Rescue" as a presentation song and the band hit it out of the park!

During the service we also prayed together as a congregation through Psalm 62. It went something like this:

My soul finds rest in You alone; my salvation comes from You.
You alone are my rock and my salvation;
You are my fortress, I will never be shaken.
Our Father, we declare today that our confidence and our trust is in You.
You are our rock - You are steady and a strong foundation.
You are our fortress - You protect and guard us.
We will never be shaken. We know that You are faithful and unchanging. We place our confidence in You.
My salvation and my honour depend on You, God;
You are my mighty rock, my refuge.
O God, we trust in You at all times;
We pour out our hearts to You, for You are our refuge.
Our Father, we declare today that our dependence is upon You.
We place our hope and our faith in You and we know that You are mighty.
When we come to You, You hear. When we pour out our hearts, You listen.
So we do this now, together. We stop and take time to bring our prayers before You and we ask that You would hear as we pour out our hearts.
One thing You have spoken, two things I have heard:
That You, O God, are strong, and that You, O Lord, are loving.
Our Father, we declare today that Your love for us, Your children,
is without condition.
You are strong and You are loving.
You are mighty and You are tender.
You are the conquering King and you are the gentle Shepherd.
Thank You, Father, for Your love, Your strength, Your faithfulness.
You alone are our rock and our salvation.
Amen.

Some consumer good news

2007-04-21T06:52:00.000-05:00

Okay so usually people rant about awful customer service and, to be honest, in the past few months I've had my own opportunities to complain about poor service from UPS and Rogers Cable.

But today I want to celebrate great customer service and remind consumers and companies out there that greatness can be achieved!

Here's what happened, a mere 24 hours ago.

10:30AM - walk to the basement and discover a small water leak in our hot water tank.
10:45AM - Call Direct Energy to report the problem.
11:45AM - Direct Energy technician arrives, says rental tank needs to be replaced.
1:30PM - Replacement tank arrives.
2:15PM - New tank installed at no charge to us, technicians leave.

WOW!! Great work Direct Energy! Two gold stars for you!

Sunday, April 15 Recap

2007-04-19T13:39:00.000-05:00

Seems like it's been a while since we've had a "normal" Sunday. After running three major events over the course of 7 days at the beginning of April it's nice to get back into the groove of things.

Of course, that won't last long since my wife is due to have our second daughter in 4 days.

Sunday, April 15 - "Dear God, I Have A Question"
"Is this all there is to life?" - John 10
Because of Your Love - Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown
Your Grace Is Enough - Matt Maher

Yesterday, Today & Forever - Vicky Beeching
Jesus, Lamb of God - Dennis Jernigan
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) - John Newton, Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio

Reign In Me - Brenton Brown

The message on Sunday focused on the idea of "life to the full" but Earl also talked about this notion that following Christ (the shepherd) is in the coming in and going out - it's in the routine, the day-to-day. Not the mundane, boring and trivial but in the faithful, steady life of the believer who follows Christ each day.

It's an exciting time for us as we design this series specifically for those who are not followers of Christ, as we think about every word we use, every communication piece, every component that goes into the service - trying to see it through the eyes of those who are not there to worship while at the same time creating a space that inspires them to worship.

Having said that, I need a rest. We have been go! go! go! for so long and I am looking forward to some time off but I know that the time off will only come when my new 8 lb. bundle of joy comes roaring in to my life!

Easter Sunday - April 8

2007-04-11T14:34:00.000-05:00

What a day! What a celebration! How could you not be pumped on a day when you know that a whole whack of people will be in your building and this is probably one of maybe two times that they'll step in to a church this year?!!?

Knowing this, we did something different and decided to begin a series on Easter Sunday. Over the past couple months our staff has been talking to people in our community - friends, neighbours, waitresses, mechanics - and asking them what they really - like rrrrreeeeally - want out of life. We got lots of answers - happiness, money, vacation, etc - but we were able to boil the answers down to four basic categories - love, purpose, significance and security.

So we launched the series on Sunday titled "Dear God, I have a question" and began with "Does anybody really love me?"

Producing a service that was focused on celebrating the resurrection as well as building around this idea of the need for love was a really great challenge and I think we pulled it off very well. We were video-heavy this week and the band pulled the songs off 100%!

Here's our list -
Video - Easter Drawing
Everlasting God - Brenton Brown & Ken Riley
Christ The Lord Is Risen Today - Charles Wesley
In Christ Alone - Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Our God Reigns ("up from the grave" verse & choruses) - Leonard Smith

Video - I Am Loved
Your Love Is Amazing - Brenton Brown & Brian Doerksen
Because of Your Love - Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown

God So Loved - Reuben Morgan

In the middle of that first set I read a couple of verses of 1 Corinthians 15. The "In Christ Alone"/"Our God Reigns" package was incredible - the response from the congregation during the last half was amazing. People's hands were raised, their voices were going full blast - we really were in the presence of God singing His praise and just celebrating the fact that He is victorious and conquering.

Good Friday - April 6

2007-04-11T14:22:00.000-05:00

One of the really cool things about being on staff at this church is that all of our churches gather together on Good Friday for a regional service. So on Friday morning we all jammed into our gym/overflow and packed the place out. One of the other pastors in town led worship and we brought in a speaker to talk about the power of the cross and how it restores our relationship with God and also with each other.

Here's our setlist -

Video - That's My King
Crown Him With Many Crowns - George Job Elvey, Godfrey Thring & Matthew Bridges
What The Lord Has Done In Me - Reuben Morgan
When I Survey The Wondrous Cross - Isaac Watts & Isaac B. Woodbury

Power of the Cross - Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Nails In Your Hands - Richard Cimino
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus - Helen Lemmel
Worthy Is The Lamb - Darlene Zschech

The Wonder of Your Cross - Robin Mark
Lion of Judah - Robin Mark

The hilight of this service was definitely communion - we've got to figure out how to make this service more and more about focusing on the cross of Christ and the implication that sacrifice has on every day of our lives.

Celebration Sunday - April 1

2007-04-11T14:03:00.000-05:00

Alright, so I've got some catching up to do. Although I'm quite excited for that purely Canadian national ritual of the first game of the NHL playoffs (Go Sens Go!) I will take some time to re-cap three major events that happened in the life of our church in the past 10 days.

Two Sundays ago we threw a huge party to celebrate the end of our BEYOND fundraising initiative. We wanted to do a service that would celebrate the past, present and future of our church and what God has done in the past 145 years here. We also wanted to give an opportunity to thank our children, students and adults for committing to supporting the BEYOND campaign - including an expansion to our building, financing some new regional ministries and partnering with a ministry in Uganda.

Normally on a Sunday morning we run two identical services. Because of wanting this to be a celebration event we thought it would make more sense to run a single service and then give people an opportunity to be together afterwards. To make this happen, we had to go off-site - so on Saturday we had about 30 volunteers move 700 chairs, all of our sound equipment, nursery supplies, rocking chairs, ministry displays - lots of stuff! - across town to one of the high schools.

On Sunday morning we met and the energy was very cool. We brought in a guest artist to paint for us and the whole thing was a huge success. Our time of bringing commitments forward was really moving and the image of children giving their money to buy doors in the new building will stick in my mind for a long time.

Here's the songs we did -
Hosanna - Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown
Blessed Be Your Name - Matt & Beth Redman

How Great Is Our God - Chris Tomlin
How Great Thou Art (chorus) - Stuart Wesley Keene Hine
Great Is Thy Faithfulness - Thomas Obediah Chisholm & William Marion Runyan

There were some very cool historical tie-ins with this service. We found a book that someone had kept in the 1940's and '50's at our church. Every week they would write some notes about what they did that Sunday. On April 1, 1940 - exactly 67 years before our Celebration Sunday - our church gathered and read Psalm 46 together, so we included that in the service. We also showed some pictures of the life of our church dating back to the 1920's - including a picture of T.T. Shields baptising some early members of our church.

Mark - I'd love to talk more with you about what we did (and didn't!) do for this service. Fire me an email or give me a call.

I know, I know, I know!

2007-04-10T15:46:00.000-05:00

I said I'd get photos and details from our Celebration Sunday service online very soon - and I will!

I'll also pass on all the info from our Good Friday & Easter Sunday services but let me just say that this past week has definitely been one of the most stretching, inspiring, nerve-wracking, joyful weeks of my life. Serving God and our congregation with the other people on staff here at OBC really is an honour.

What a day!

2007-04-03T13:31:00.000-05:00

So I don't have the full recap yet (mostly because I want to gather some photos to show you what an amazing thing our volunteers pulled off this week!) but let me say that Sunday was pretty much one of the greatest corporate worship times I've ever been a part of.

To see kids, students and families pledging their commitment to the vision God has given us as a church and agreeing to support that vision with their time, their talents and their treasure for the next several years was a pretty emotional experience. To have the honour of leading people in praise and worship of our great and glorious God on that day was something that I hope I never take for granted.

One of the hilights of the service was definitely Marc Eckel who came all the way from Indiana to be with us. His painting was beautiful and the presentation really was an act of worship which inspired an amazing response from the congregation.

I will post later this week with a full re-cap of the service and why it was so memorable.

Mark Roach

2007-03-29T11:26:00.000-05:00

My copy of Worship Leader magazine came in the mail yesterday and I was pleased to see fellow re:create-er Mark Roach featured on the compilation CD. "As Long As I Have You" isn't my favourite song of his ("You Are" wins that fight) but it is definitely a solid congregational song.

I couldn't find Mark on iTunes but that doesn't mean he's not there - I've been having issues with it since I decided to upgrade to 7.1.1. Silly Canadian.

Sunday, March 25 Recap

2007-03-29T11:12:00.000-05:00

The last week of our "Generous Living" series. The last service before our Celebration Sunday on April 1. Two weeks before Good Friday & Easter Sunday. Three or four weeks before my daughter comes.

Needless to say, I am going b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

Here's what we did this past Sunday. Sorry I don't have any deep thoughts or wisdom to pass along. God is so good and we were honoured to be in His presence on Sunday morning and sing praises to Him.

Sunday, March 25, 2007 - "Generous Living"
Proverbs 3:5-6
Beautiful One - Tim Hughes
Lord Reign In Me - Brenton Brown

All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises - Paul Baloche
Open The Eyes Of My Heart - Paul Baloche
Step By Step - Rich Mullins

Today - Brian Doerksen & Sandra Gage

Productivity helpers

2007-03-24T08:05:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I spent the weekend away with my family and some friends of ours up north. Yes, Americans, I already live up north - but we went up north-er! Since things at the church had been crazy busy for a little while, I decided that I would leave all tech gadgets - laptop, cell phone, PDA, etc - at home and "go dark" for a weekend - primarily because I've found that my degree of connectedness is not really related to my degree of productivity.

As an artist and a procrastinator, getting things done is a big challenge for me. I will naturally work on 5 or 6 projects at a time and do them piece by piece rather tha sit down and just focus on finishing one thing. It drives my wife crazy but for some reason that's how I work best.
I've developed a couple of my own systems for making sure that I DO get things done - with all these little things on the go, I'm notorious for forgetting things. At work I have little notes taped to the inside of my office door that remind me to check tomorrow's calendar before I go home. At home there's a little notepad where I write something down as soon as I remember that I need to do it.

I'm also big on finding productivity tools - this year I bought an HP iPaq and that has really been a big help for me because I have my calendar with me wherever I go. It has wifi so if I'm on the road I'm able to check email and sync it with my office Outlook - pretty cool.

Here's my latest in my quest for productivity - https://www.behance.com/Outfitter/Products/Action-Book/4

The Action Book was designed by the Behance team and is based on the Action
Method. The four distinct zones on each page provide a flexible template to get
the most out of meetings and everyday brainstorm sessions (see usage guidelines
below).
Your Passion is your work, treat it well. The Action Book's cover is
a unique suede-to-the-touch hard cover. The pages are made of 80lb Premium Blend
paper with a subtle texture (30% post-consumer recycled), printed full bleed,
double perforated, and three-hole punched between both perforations for maximum
flexibility.
The Action Book is part of Behance's Action Method product
line, the first in a series of Behance projects to help creative professionals
boost productivity and make ideas happen. The Action Method was designed to help
us push projects forward by organizing our ideas and focusing on action steps.
An accordion-style pamphlet on how to practice the Action Method accompanies
every product.

I've ordered one and I'll report back when it arrives.. But I'm pretty excited about trying it out.

Anyone else have productivity tools or tips that they use?

Sunday, March 18 Recap

2007-03-20T14:48:00.000-05:00

We run two services on Sunday morning at OBC and generally both are identical in content. We sometimes will end up running things a little different - an extra chorus here, longer intro there, etc - but normally things seem to flow pretty much the same during both the 9:00 & 11:00 services.

This was not the case on Sunday morning.

After our first service we thought we needed to add an additional song before Earl came to speak. We had a package of two songs and then had planned to do another closing song ("Hear Our Praises") at the end of the service. We decided to move that song and join it in with the pre-message packge.

I'm not sure why or how or what even happened but at a point during "Lord I Give You My Heart" I opened my eyes and people everywhere - from the front to the back, as they say - had their hands raised, eyes closed and were genuinely engaged in worship. I had one of those little "oh, this is going to be fun" giggly moments and kept going through the song. The last bit of that chorus is so powerful - "Every breath that I take/Every moment I'm awake/Lord, have Your way in me" - great lyric! so powerful! so scary to sing it and actually mean it!

And then we began slowly in to "Hear Our Praises" and as we went from the verse to the chorus and then back to the top again, the place just erupted. It was incredible. In my time at OBC I have never heard people sing so loud. I backed away from the mic (which I often do - it's good for people to hear each other singing) and just let the congregation carry the song. We did the chorus at the end a couple of times and all of a sudden the congregation broke out in applause. I got chills. The song was over and I just sort of stood there, a little bit stunned. I wasn't sure what to say - but that's fine, cause we had already just said it. We had entered in to the presence of God and had sung and spoken words of praise and honour to Him. And I got to be there to witness it. What a moment!

Sunday, March 18, 2007 - "Generous Living"
2 Corinthians 8&9
Ancient of Days - Jamie Harvill & Gary Sadler
Forever - Chris Tomlin
Doxology & additional chorus - Traditional & Chris Vacher

You're Worthy Of My Praise - David Ruis
Lord I Give You My Heart - Reuben Morgan
Hear Our Praises - Reuben Morgan

Today's a good day.

2007-03-15T09:37:00.000-05:00

First thing I see when I come in to my office every day -

God saved us and called us to a holy calling,
not because of our works but because of His own purpose and grace,
which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
2 Timothy 1:9

Wow.

Sunday, March 11 Recap

2007-03-13T15:12:00.000-05:00

So I mentioned last week that I was excited about what we were doing on Sunday morning but didn't give too many details. I don't get excited like Perry Noble does, but that's okay - God made us all different.

As we've been working through this series of Generous Living I've been really challenged to think about my motivation for giving - do I give because I have lots? do I give because I expect God to reward me? do I give because I want other people to enjoy what I've got too? Earl's message on Sunday was basically this - we give because we are gripped by the grace of God. Simple. Awesome. Life-changing, no?

So as a picture of this grace being at the centre of what we do, we wanted to set up our auditorium in a way that people would recognize this in our service on Sunday. At OBC we typically share communion on the second Sunday of each month so it perfect with our service this week.

Normally our auditorium looks like this - pretty typical audience/stage setup:

Here's a few pictures of how we did things on Sunday -

Basically we centred the whole room around our communion table. Looking at these pictures it makes me realize that we must be good Baptist - doesn't matter how you set the chairs up, nobody will ever sit in the front row :)

We had our musicians - keys, guitar, drums, bass, one vocalist - on the front part of our stage (you can see me playing keys in the second photo) and then three additional vocalists in with the congregation basically between each section of chairs. I was really impressed with how well our musicians pulled it off - it isn't very easy to be separated like this and be able to maintain a consistent sound throughout the whole service but I thought it went great. Having the vocalists in with the congregation allowed everyone who was seated to have someone to look at.

Instead of using our normal projection, we printed songsheets with lyrics for all of the songs. This made some of our people happy cause they thought it was a step closer to going back to hymnals :)

Here's our songlist -

Sunday, Marh 11, 2007 - "Generous Living"
2 Corinthians 8:1-5
Holy Is The Lord - Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio
Holy, Holy, Holy - John Dykes & Reginald Heber

There Is No One Else Like You - Robin Mark
Shout To The Lord - Darlene Zschech

Offering - Paul Baloche
May The Words Of My Mouth - Tim Hughes & Rob Hill

Kinder Egg Surprise Stargate Commercial

2007-03-08T13:15:00.001-05:00

This one's for my focus-challenged friend Rich from California..

Sunday, March 4 Recap

2007-03-07T15:50:00.000-05:00

Sunday, February 25, 2007 - "Generous Living"
Matthew 6:19-24
Filled With Your Glory - Tim Neufeld
Yesterday, Today & Forever - Vicky Beeching

Everyday - Joel Houston
Better Is One Day - Matt Redman

Blessed Be Your Name - Matt & Beth Redman

I thought our service on Sunday morning was great! I found things to be a bit of a challenge trying to design a service around the idea of investing in things that have eternal significance - treasures in heaven - rather than things that will just disappear and waste away - treasures on earth. One of the things we tried to do with this service was to contrast our daily commitment to Christ while at the same time expressing that desire we have to be with God in heaven for eternity.

We did something a little different this week and included a drama in our service this week. We don't do that very often but as part of our BEYOND segment we used a drama to emphasize the importance of prayer in our lives individually as well as corporately.

The drama was pulled off well and the point was made but we did have a quick little discussion afterwards about how much work went in to preparing something and whether it was worth the impact. We definitely want the impact but we also have to be very mindful of how much time we're asking people to invest in a short segment of a single service. I'd be much more willing to see those hours invested on an on-going basis in one of the ministries of our church.

On another note, I'm really excited about this Sunday - I will try and take pictures and explain as best as I can why we are choosing to do what we are doing this week.

Real Canadians!!

2007-03-01T16:52:00.000-05:00

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

2007-03-01T15:56:00.001-05:00

So we've got this really great thing in Canada called Tim Horton's. For those of you who live in southern Canada (Buffalo, Cleveland, Seattle) you're probably familiar with this incredible cultural institution.

A couple of times a year Tim Horton's unleashed the "Roll Up The Rim" promotion where they give away tons of stuff - and Canadians go bananas for it!!

The CORRECT way to pronounce it - as demonstrated in this video - is to roll the r's. So it's actually "Rrrrrrroll Up The Rrrrim".

We Canadians like being entertained.

New stuff on the side

2007-02-27T14:22:00.000-05:00

I've added some new stuff on the sidebar -

*TheBlogstar.com - Chad Jarnigan is a blogging worship pastor from Tennessee and has some good insight in the whole world of the creation of an arts culture.

Google Reader shared items - Every day I'll run through my Google Reader and share items that are interesting to me. They may not be interesting to you but it's my blog and I'll do what I want.

Sunday, February 25 Recap

2007-02-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

On Sunday we launched BEYOND - a 6-week stewardship emphasis where we will be focusing on how we manage and invest our time, our talent and our treasure. At the end of this 6-week period everyone at our church will be asked to make a pledge in each of those areas of their lives.

I'm really excited about our Celebration Sunday in April when we'll see kids, students and families coming together to commit to financially supporting our "Transform our Region, Transform our World" vision for the next three years. This is an exciting time in the life of OBC and I really do feel privileged to be a part of it.

So here's what we did on Sunday -

Sunday, February 25, 2007 - "Generous Living"
Matthew 25:14-30
Your Grace Is Enough - Matt Maher (we do the Chris Tomlin version)
That's Why We Praise Him - Tommy Walker

Everlasting God - Brenton Brown & Ken Riley
Awesome God (chorus only) - Rich Mullins
Your Love Oh Lord - Third Day
How Awesome Is Our God - Chris Vacher

Be My Everything - Tim Hughes

One of the things we're looking to explore here is the whole idea of "indigenous worship expression" - basically a fancy way of saying that we're going to be encouraging our own people to write music, create artwork, tell stories, etc which all tell the story of God and encourage our church to worship Him.

This will be a long process - it certainly does not happen overnight! One of the small steps in this process is me putting myself and my songs out there first. "How Awesome Is Our God" is a song that I wrote this year which we've used a couple of times. Right now it's just a chorus - and I've done some tweaking to make it a better chorus - and I'm currently working on developing the rest of the song.

Writing is not a natural process for me. It is a discipline. Songs do not just pour out of my guitar. As this whole idea of indigenous worship expression becomes more and more important here, the discipline of creating artwork will become more ingrained in our culture.

Link - How Canadians Can Save the American Church

2007-02-19T11:21:00.000-05:00

From Monday Morning Insight - link

Definitely an interesting post and the beginnings of some interesting discussion. Hey Mark - maybe our conversation was a little prophetic?

The American church is desperately in need of help if we are going to have any reasonable chance to do mission among Pre, Post, and Semi Christians in emerging culture. Some of that assistance might just come from north of the border.

Sunday, February 18 Recap

2007-02-18T23:13:00.000-05:00

This morning we finished up our 3-week series "Revive Us" with a service focused on seeking God's face.. I thought Earl's message was so bang on with the idea of seeking God's face and turning from wicked ways being directions rather than destinations..

Sunday, February 18, 2007 - "Revive Us"
2 Chronicles 7:14
Let Everything That Has Breath - Matt Redman
Indescribable - Laura Story (recorded by Chris Tomlin)

Hosanna - Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown
Famous One - Chris Tomlin & Jesse Reeves

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus - Helen H. Lemmel
How Marvelous (chorus only) - Charles H. Gabriel

Audience of One - Mike Weaver

Give Us Clean Hands - Charlie Hall

Today was a great example of not being afraid of changing what you're doing when it's not working. In our first service, there were a couple of elements that made the service feel very choppy - you'll see that we didn't have any one extended worship package so we were already playing a little short-handed. The Hosanna/Famous One combo led in to communion and the Turn Your Eyes/How Marvelous combo was played as communion was served, so that was really our longest package of music during the service.

As I said in my recap last week, our two services are identical in content and although we certainly don't think of our 9:00 service as a dress rehearsal, it does allow us to see if there are any kinks that need to be worked out before our 11:00 service. This week we had two kinks.

The first was that our worship leader* prayed after the first set of two songs. After praying, we did our typical "meet & greet" and then moved in to our announcements/offering/prayer section. Having her pray after two pretty driving songs caused us to lose a bit of momentum early in the service. Don't criticize me because we prayed less in our 11:00 service - there was still a good chunk of prayer that we included later on. :)

The second change we made was right at the end of the announcements. We usually have one of our staff members come and give our announcements (I'll do another post someday about our announcement selection process) and while that is happening our ushers take up our offering. Because we only had a couple things to announce this week, the offering was still going when the worship team came back in with "Hosanna". In our service planning, we had asked our announcements guy to ask the congregation to stand when he was finished - and you can imagine what happened next.

People were standing. The offering was only half-done. The band is playing and asking people to sing. People aren't sure if they should sing, pass the plate, give their offering or just stop. They were pretty confused. But the moment passed - and thankfully it always does! :)

So there you go. Two small changes we made after our 9:00 service that really helped the flow of our service and helped people to focus on the worship, on the fellowship and on the word.

*We have three worship teams at our church who play on a rotation basis and each team has a different leader although I play on all three teams - I lead one, play piano on a second and guitar on the third. The leaders of the other two teams also sing on a second team.

Does it look Canadian?

2007-02-14T11:19:00.000-05:00

Okay.. So I realize that my little blog space looks very.. boring.. Very Canadian, if you will.. It's a little plain..

Anyone out there with some design skills want to help out a brother?

By the way, if you're wondering what the weather is like up here today, here's a link to a webcam on Parliament Hill in Ottawa..

Sunday, February 11 Recap

2007-02-13T15:25:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking that the majority of the posts here will simply be a recap of the previous Sunday's service and me giving a little bit more insight into why we chose these specific elements or why the service was structured a certain way..

I know that when I'm looking at putting a service together I'm always looking to see how other people have used certain songs, so hopefully this can be helpful for people.. I think it will also be helpful for the worship ministry volunteers here at the church to hear from me about why we choose to do things the way we do them..

We have two services at OBC - 9:00 and 11:00 - and both of them are identical except for the rare occasion when we have baptisms or child dedications in only one service..

Sunday, February 11, 2007 - "Revive Us"
2 Chronicles 7:14
Forever - Chris Tomlin
Holy Is The Lord - Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio
Reign In Me - Brenton Brown

Come Now Is The Time To Worship - Brian Doerksen
All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises - Paul Baloche
When I Survey The Wondrous Cross - Isaac Watts
The Power Of The Cross - Keith Getty & Stuart Townend

In Christ Alone - Keith Getty & Stuart Townend

Using two songs by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend was not intentional - we weren't trying to increase our UK content!! Earl's message this week focused on the "pray" section of 2 Chr 7:14 and coming out of the humility focus last week we spent a lot of time talking about the confession aspect of prayer and how important it is to acknowledge sin and deal with it. So to bookend the message with a song about the cross and a song about the faith we place in Christ alone made a lot of sense.

"The Power Of The Cross" is a new song that I learned at a conference that went over pretty well - we'll probably add it to our on-going repertoire.. The lyrics are so full of great stuff.. I love it..

Introductions and all that..

2007-02-13T15:02:00.000-05:00

So here we go.. I've attempted this blog thing a few times before and it's never worked - I think mostly because I never really knew what I wanted to do with the stupid thing.. But after giving this some thought I think I've come to a good spot about jumping on the blog-wagon..

A little about me..

I'm 29.. Married for almost 4 years.. I've got one daughter and another one on the way in a few monhts.. My house is becoming overrun by females.. I'm afraid of what that means for me 15 years from now.. I'm on staff at a church in Orangeville, Ontario as the worship director.. I was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario and love going back there to visit friends - although it doesn't happen as often as I'd like..

I'm a big fan of music and get very excited about discovering a new artist before anyone else does.. John Mayer, Jason Mraz and Matt Wertz were in my CD player before any of my friends had heard of them.. I have not had any recent discoveries but mostly that's because I'm old and I don't listen to the radio..

I don't think I own a CD player anymore - except for the one in my minivan.. Yes, I own a minivan.. Cue the laughing now.. It's actually a very masculine minivan.. A man-ivan, if you will..

I'm hopeless when it comes to remembering things - especially names, appointments and significant dates.. It is for this reason that I have a computer to run my life.. If I don't write something down immediately it is forgotten before I take my next breath.. Honestly, I'm hopeless..

Funn thing, though, is that if I meet someone I can tell them when we met, who they were with, sometimes what they were wearing, what we were doing, what we were eating, what we talked about - but there is ZERO chance that I will remember their name.. I've learned to just confess my ineptitude right up front and the conversation usually goes much better from there!

I play guitar - acoustic almost exclusively.. I've got a nice little collection which drives my wife more than a little bit crazy.. I'm hoping to condense the guitar population in the house this summer and come out the other side with just one guitar that will bring me joy and happiness and lucky charms the rest of my life.. Guitars can do that, can't they??

I also play piano.. I did the whole classical training thing growing up and actually spent a year at university in the piano performance program.. One year was enough of that.. So I switched my major to religion & culture and life was much better after that.. University is also where I met my wife, attended my first (and only) Toronto Raptors game and spent some good time honing my Playstation skills..

So that should be a good chunk of stuff to chew on.. I'm actually going to post again right now with the first of what will be the standard type of thing I use this site for - just recapping the past Sunday morning and talking a little about why we did what we did..