VB

No, not Vacation Bible…. but Volunteer Banquet, last night was Lifepoint’s first annual Volunteer Banquet it was an amazing time, the staff went all out in showing their appreciation for the volunteer and volunteer staff of the church. Guest speaker Jonathon Falwell gave a great talk, Birch and Z our guest musicians from Christ Fellowship in Miami were awesome, and the food!

If you volunteer at Lifepoint I hope you felt as appreciated as I did, and if you’re a staffer, thanks for an amazing night!

… and I’m off tomorrow I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself! And speaking of tomorrow, you do NOT want to miss tomorrow morning’s worship set, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.

on baited breath….

Tomorrow night is our Christmas Eve service at Lifepoint (Chancellor High School Auditorium, 6:30pm), not counting tomorrow itself here’s how many hour that has gone into it.

Planning: 50 man hours
Music Preparation: 67.75 man hours
Video/Tech preparation: 16 man hours (est)

And all this before the actual service tomorrow.
133.75 man hours or almost 17 working days of work straight, and like last year this is only counting the actual meeting times, this isn’t taking in countless hours that our staff and volunteers have exerted on their own. That number will easily triple tomorrow.

Why?

It’s simple really.

Tomorrow night people will arrive. Some of them may have been invited by a Lifepoint regular, some might have just seen one of our banner or road signs. some might be on the verge of divorce, some might be about to give up for good, some might be at a church service for the first time in their life, some might be there for the only chance they’re giving this thing called church, some might be hurting inside, some may have emotional scars, some may have a terminal disease, many will not know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

That is why Lifepoint exists, To reach people far from Christ, so they can experience God’s plan for their lives, and that’s we we joyfully pour the hours in for a night like tomorrow. Because they Christmas story is truly the joy story for us.

Nice….

Josh just posted the new bumper for Lifepoint’s series for Christmas, Adventus: The coming.

Watch it here

Stories and statistics

I couldn’t tell you where I stole this line from, but I’m fairly confident I didn’t come up with it myself… for now I’ll give credit to the unknown source, but eventually I’ll get to the point where I’ll take credit for this expression, but here it is.

Behind every statistic is a story

Looking at the church overall, and speaking from personal experience, I know that all too often people look at easily track-able numbers like attendance when it comes to looking at our statistics as a church to see “How we’re doing”. While this isn’t the case at Lifepoint, I do know at churches I have been to in the past the focus seemed to be on attendance, and in force of habit, on occasion I have found myself regressing to see how we did on a Sunday by attendance, instead of focusing on things like that are nowhere near as easy to track such as salvations, baptisms, and/or as how we like to put it, Life Change.

But if you look at it even with attendance, how often do we really pay attention to what those numbers actually mean?

Every one of those “numbers” is a person with a story, that person? you know the one who was number four hundred ninety nine, do you know their story? do you know that their family was in discord before they started coming to Church and that it’s made such a huge impact in their lives? What about person number four? They’re the one who didn’t want anything to do with God or church before a friend dragged them in (kicking and screaming) and now after encountering God their life has turned around and they’re not only here every week, but helping with setup and now, bringing their friends!

What about volunteer number 49? They’re the one who had been burned by “Religion” and was done with church, who never knew a church like this could exist, where the purpose is to reach people far from Christ, and now are back on fire for the Lord?

Or Kid number 87, who’s parents brought them to kidspoint for the first time, who finally was told the gospel in a way that made sense to a 3rd grader and changed their life forever…

Those kind of stories go WAY beyond simple numbers, and this post is more of a mental reminder to myself than to anyone else and really help to drive that point home, maybe you’re the Pastor of a Megachurch with over 3k in weekly attendance, or maybe your the choir director of a church that has more people in the choir then on the pews… is Life change happening at your church? What are the stories behind some of your statistics?

Healing to do healer…

I still distinctly remember how i felt when I first heard the song “Healer” by Mike Guglielmucci, I also (VERY distinctly) remember how disgusted I felt when I heard the truth behind the story. But, as Pick has pointed out to me on more than one occasion (mainly when I’m arguing about doing a performance song) is that Truth is truth, whether it’s coming from an old hymn or a Train song. And after a bit of consideration I’ve come to accept that regardless of the means of promoting the song, there is strong truth to it, and it’s an amazing worship song.

However, with far better words and scriptural backing allow me to share with you an email I received from one of our band members about using this song in worship, I’ve left out name references as i didn’t ask this person permission to share this on the blog, but as awesome as this email was I wanted to share it.

Man you sure know how to make a guy think…

When we were talking about this song at practice that night – about how the Hillsong guy Mike whatshisname lived a lie, promoted the song with his fake illness, the unbelieveable audacity of a very well-known Worship Leader to so distort everything related to the situation, I had no desire to ever do the song at all and said so that night. When I saw the Planning Center notification this morning, I “reviewed” the service to see what we were doing. I saw the song listed and the pit of stomach balled up in a humongous knot. I was getting ready to click the “Decline” button when something (had to be God) told me to wait. I then remembered something in Phillippians I had read before in my personal reading etc. Here’s the passage…

Phillipians 1:15-18 (NIV)
15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.[c] 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

I didn’t remember anything false in the lyrics, but I listened to them again to make sure and yes there is truth in the song.

I went to planning center again and clicked the accept button. I’m just thankful the Lord and the Holy Spirit kept the promise from John 14 about the Comforter (Holy Spirit) being with us to bring to our rememberance everything He has taught us.

The reason I’m spelling all this out for you is in case someone else has doubts about the song feel free to share how God helped me.

Just don’t expect to see the song on my “favorites” playlist

I personally felt “ministered” to by this email and if you’re a worship leader out there, or someone who’s job is to find new worship music and you’ve been struggling with this song as much as I have I hope this helps you out.

God bless,
~Matt

The Payout…

Recently (well a week-ish) ago I had the chance to talk to Pastor about the payout for volunteers. Looking at what was it that got our teams to do the amazing things that they do, looking at what they do is nothing short of phenomenal, but why?

Why would people give up their Sunday (Morning for some, whole day for a few others) why would they make time during their week doing things for free that would astonish most people. Why do a few put 20+ hours a week into this?

Submitted for your approval (Yes with the accent): a few reasons why our Volunteer army does what it does. This list isn’t all-inclusive in fact its quite short, and I’m sure that there are a lot of things that people would say that aren’t on this list… but I’m the one blogging here and this is what I managed to come up with.

Reason number one: Bigger than yourself, AKA wanting to belong to something. People join many organization, or volunteer for community services because they like to be a part of something that it bigger than just them.

Reason number two: Emotional beneficiary, AKA That warm fuzzy feeling. A lot of people get a warm and fuzzy feeling for doing things for others.

Reason number three (and this is the real one I told pastor that I thought the pay out was for our volunteers): Life change, AKA grabbing the net. Or I could say buying into the vision.

Lifepoint is about one thing, reaching people far from Christ so that they can experience God’s plan for their life.

That’s what I think most of our volunteers get as their payout, we get the humbling honor to see peoples lives change. The day we talked about this I realized that we’ve seen more people take a radical step of faith and forever change their eternal destination than we started this church with, THIS YEAR ALONE, and we’ve got 4 months to go before the year is over, I don’t think there is anything out there that compares to a payout like this, and I daresay that there isn’t a single core volunteer who would disagree with me.

Changing it up…

I’ve modified setup for the church drum kit a bit…
switched out the 13″ Tama for my personal 10″ Grestch (Tom)
Switched out the 13″ piccolo snare for the 14″ Tama with fat cat strands…. Let me say for the record that I LOVE what these new snare strands have done to my sound. It really makes the snare pop.
Cymbal setup it pretty much the same, but I added a clasped in place hi-hat, it makes it easier for me to hit a couple grooves when I don’t have to worry about the l/r cross factor… and it’s easier (I know cheap cop-out) than me trying to learn how to play open handed (which is on my list to do!)
I’ll have to post a picture when I get a chance to take one again.

Set List 08/03/08

Well yesterday was a different experience for me…

On occasion we’ll do an “Acoustic” Worship set everyone seems to like them, and it gives set-up & Tear-down teams (not to mention myself) a bit of a break.

The difference is this the first acoustic set that we’ve done where Elizabeth (our percussionist) was here to play. The last two acoustic sets ended with me being a big baby with bruised hands for a week or so. (Our percussionist had been on vacation for BOTH other times). The end result was I got to sit back and relax and enjoy the service… (Everyone in my department is now falling off their chairs and laughing as they all know full and well that I was not sitting back relaxing). Actually I did get to take part in most of the worship, and hear some of Pastor’s message which was a very nice change, but one thing that I was able to do, which is something that I really should be doing more often is that I was able to observe the service. Reid over at North Point’s Music Blog mentions this in his post this week, and I found it informative and convicting… now don’t get me wrong I love to play, but as I found myself evaluating the serivce (And later told Pick about this) I came to the conclusion that I need to be off at the minimum of once (preferably twice, perhaps even more) a month to evaluate worship and what’s going on the stage, as it’s part of my job to protect the environment.

Okay, enough of that, let me get to the worship set:

Setlist:

Everlasting God: (Chris Tomlin) – We normally do the Todd Fields/North Point Arrangement of this song, but as it was an acoustic set, I’m not sure how to label it.

Lift High: (Eddie Kirkland) – As amazing as this song is with the full band, I think it’s everybit as powerful, perhaps more so in an acoustic set.

My Romance: (Rick Pino – Jesus Culture Arrangement) – Generally I try not to introduce more than one song at any given week, but Mia (Who was leading Worship this week) brought this song to me asking if we could do it, after experiencing it on Sunday morning I’m so glad I said yes, this song was annointed!

God of this City: (Andrew McCann, Boyd Aaron, Ian Jordan, Peter Comfort, , Peter Kernaghan, Richard Bleakley… We did the Passion’08 arrangement of the song) Our “theme” worship song for this series.

Worship Team this week was: Mia (Worship Leader), Tammie (BGV), Tim (BGV), Bill (Bass), Justin (Acoustic Guitar), Ronnie (Acoustic Guitar), Dave (Piano) and Elizabeth (Percussion).

Matt’s busted gear list this week: None as I wasn’t playing.

We Interrupt this regulary scheduled blog to bring you…

As probably the most active (and unquestionably the most verbose) Blogger in the Lifepoint Staff, (Both Volunteer and paid staff) I also try to keep current on what other churches and ministries are up to. As such I follow many other blogs, only some of which I have in my blog list.

The results of the above are occasionally I link to another blog for information or insight, or something of that nature. Today, though I just wanted to share something that I thought was really flipping (and by use of the term “flipping” I am merely attempting to state that this goes way beyond the term awesome) awesome.

As perhaps not everyone at Lifepoint knows (But will if they read this post) we are part of a network of churches (Ground Level Network) The church spearheading this is Elevation Pastored by Pastor Furtick. They are hugely impacting their community and have invested a lot into Lifepoint Church.

So back to the reason for this post, I was reading Wade Joy’s Blog (Elevation’s Worhsip Pastor) and found THIS POST, and then went to Pastor Furticks Blog and Read THIS POST and I got excited. and I mean excited, why? Read and see for yourself!