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

Lessons Learned…

Okay, so this post is going to both the Lifepoint Worship blog, (Check it out if you haven’t yet) and my personal blog (Which again, I would encourage you to checkout if you haven’t seen it yet).

But as this past week we did an acoustic worship set there are few lesson’s I’ve learned as music director that I’d like to pass along to you.

Point number one: It’s really important to be off stage and evaluating worship on a regular basis. (Ironically Reid just talked about this on North Point’s music blog, the same day I talked to Pick about the issue).

Point number two: Acoustic sets, are well recieved by the people attending the service (at least the few we’ve done have been), however, they are much harder on the music team.

Point number three: When you normally have a male worship leader, and switch to a female lead do not forget that every song will need to be re-keyed, and allow lead time for this to happen rather than wait for practice to role around.

We’ve had other churches come to see how we do things at Lifepoint and one person commented that it seemed like we had it all figured out, well we don’t but we’re always learning how to do things better, (hmm this gives me an idea for another post),

Basics….

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that they best of homes always begins with a strong foundation. And even when we know that it occasionally takes a reminder that even a foundation needs to be maintained.

Case in point, myself.

My reminder came from an article I was reading about Bassist John Myung (Of Dream Theater) where some of his bandmates mentioned that he was one of the only person they knew who warmed DOWN after a show.

Which brought my back to my drum corp days were we both warmed up and warmed down after practices, (but not always after performances) which then took me to the fall I worked as an Drum adviser for a marching band. I came in about halfway through the season on a request from a friend to give them a hand, the kids (I thought of them as kids even then, and I was only a couple years out of high school myself, at the time) were decent, but had no drum instructor to build their foundation and thus were floundering.

Instead of jumping on the music (which is why I was asked to come in the first place, to help them learn their parts better) I jumped on their fundamentals (Discipline! Rudiments! and Warm-ups!) It wasn’t that they didn’t know their part, quite the opposite actually, it’s that they had problems on the performance aspect of it.

Now a part of me wishes I could say after a few weeks with me they turned into a whole new drumline that went on to win a bunch of awards at competitions, sadly that is not the case.

However I did come to find out that my time spent working on their fundamentals wasn’t wasted as that helped them And I quote this from someone who had seen their early shows) “They looked and sounded like a real drumline”

So why did I just say all this? Well my point is I know about basics and fundamentals, but like so many of us, after playing set for a while I’ve slacked off on most (Nearly all) of said basics. So yesterday I began a regiment for getting this drummer’s fundamentals back up to par.

So what does that entail?
1) Ear training, (this is the one part of my fundamentals that I can honestly say that I haven’t stopped doing ever.
2) Arm strength/power/endurance, Jojo Mayer covers this one on his dvd but this is a delicate balance, because of the nature of the human body, build up more power, and you won’t be able to access higher speeds.
3) Foot training, for those funky syncopated kick patterns (not something you normally run into in worship music, but you never know!)
4) Coordination/limb interdependence, the abilty to play different beats with different limbs (arms, legs, etc) at the same time. Sounds easy? here’s a simple warm-up. Try tapping triplets with your left hand, eighth notes with your right foot, quarters with your left foot, and sixteenths with your right hand. (Try it slow, if you manage that, try speeding it up).
5) Warm-up/Cool-down routine, if I had professional drum instructions I’d probably have a slew of fancy exercises, (well maybe, shrug, it’s not something I’ve had the luxury of having), I do have my rudimental listings and a handful of exercises for that, having played quads in drumline I’m used to adapting said exercises, of course my favorite exercise? (This sounds odd, I know) is eight on a hand, (plus the adaptations 1-xx on a hand, countdown on a hand etc).

So that’s it, getting back to basics all around, remember that the house you live in is only as strong as it’s foundations, (Read Matthew Chapter 7).

Lifepoint Resources

One of the joys of being the Musical Director for the Lifepoint campus of Lifepoint Church (as we are currently a two campus church, with a Lifepoint Downtown campus as well) is getting introduced to a plethora (oooh big word for me) of new worship music on a semi-regular basis, as well as delving (wow two in one post!) through a slew (yes, I did get a thesaurus) of all types of music to review for performance songs.

As far as Performance songs go, I’m working on a post for the Lifepoint Worship Blog (this past week’s set listing post is up) regarding those, so check back there later, but as far as programming worship goes I wanted to share a few thoughts out there.

First off for programming a service let me recommend the amazing planning center online it’s a service that helps you build your service and setup your people for their services that they can service…. sorry… Basically you can setup your service add your worship plans, schedule your people, and time everything. they have different paid plans for what your need, our let’s me store our lead-sheets online and when I apply a song to the service it automatically builds a package of all the lead sheets (as long as I have them pre-uploaded) for the musicians and vocalists. (and the drummers, mustn’t forget the drummers).

CCLI, not only a great site for keeping worship “legal” (CCLI license required) but also a great place to get charts, and to see new worship music. We use the Song select service which is awesome when I need to find a chart for a worship song… not always perfect (some songs/charts aren’t available, some songs searches return a million [ok, not literally] results) but still a very good service.

Itunes (I’m not putting a link for this here, you should have it by now). I also use Amazon MP3 (Again no link here) to obtain most of my music selections. I can browse and preview thousands of worship songs without having to borrow a cd player and stand in the middle of an aisle with earphones. Not only that but I’m a huge fan of Podcasts, (the 8 gigs of space currently dedicated to storage of such would agree with that statement) and some churches (namely lifechurch.tv have made available, not only their sermons, but also their worship sets, it’s cool to hear what other churches are doing).

North Point Music: (You can also find this one off the North Point Music Blog) – If you’ve got a subscription to the service then you can watch video tutorials on numerous subjects from how they run practices to how to play one of their worship songs, also has numerous Multi-Tracks and Core Packages available for purchase.

Numerous other blogs: Such as North Points, Elevations, (Wade Joy’s who’s the worship pastor for them), to name a few (There are others, so many others). It’s a simple way to see what other ministries and/or churches are doing to reach their communities, along the lines I know Josh participates in the creative chaos blogs hosted by `Los. It’s an “event” that takes place every Thursday where people from all across the country post something creative they’ve done in regards to their services.

These are just a few of the many resources I look to when it comes time to program the worship for the service…

Lessons learned…

Well Weds. night (last week) the worship team (well, most of us) were at Camile’s (And I’m pretty sure I spelled that wrong) for the FCA powercamp concert…

And we learned a lot.

1) We learned that when fudi (aka me) is frustrated/aggravated/and annoyed my normally, extremely (is that pushing it?) consistent tempo goes out the window, (though in my defense with absolutely no monitors I was kind of guessing what the tempo Jeremy set was anyway).

2) We learned that when planning a worship set for an outdoor event do one of the following.
Either A) Pick songs that don’t have click tracks/loops
or B) Have a backup set list in case your click tracks/loops won’t run on your sound system.

3) We learned that even under extremely adverse technological conditions, when it comes to Worship our God is ALWAYS good.

4) I learned that playing in live events like that while they can be extremely frustrating are very fun!

5) I learned that after being out in the heat and performing, water, no matter how hot it’s been after sitting in my trunk taste great!

6) I learned not to leave my wallet on my desk. (oops!)

7) I learned that I can climb around like Willy when I need to dig a keyboard out of the back of our box truck.

I learned that I work with an amazing group of people who’ll rock it out, even when they don’t have a clue what’s going on (as we changed set lists on the fly).

9) I learned that O’Charlies (sp?) has amazing bread, (of course the fact that I was about starving might have something to do with it.)

10) I learned that I can cram an entire drumset into my alero, (including kick, toms, snare, cymbals and hardware!)

Head full of good thoughts, belly full of grub…

So I’ve got a few more detail in the lifepoint worship blog, but before I begin… does anyone recognize the title of this post? (Family not allowed to compete!) The first person who can tell me where it’s from will get… bragging rights to all their friends about how much a geek you are.

So we did a “country” by which I mean “Bluegrass” song this week. If you’ve seen the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” then you’d probably remember Man of constant sorrows.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t able to put together a full bluegrass band, our worship team rocked the song. And I got to play washboard, (a first for me)… and why is it every time I’ve got some weird I-need-my-percussionist-for-some-special-odd-type-instrument-thing, she’s on vacation!

I’m not kidding, I’m planning to make sure to schedule our next acoustic worship set for after she get’s back.

Anyway I’ve got more details about this last week’s worship set including the performance song on the Lifepoint worship blog.

Open the box…

So the title of the post really has two meanings. In our Volunteer Team meetings Jeremy’s got us reading the (In my humble… no scratch that in this case, in my wildly unapologetic overinflated opinion, at least in this case…) Book the Houdini Solution, thinking INSIDE the box.

As he, or anyone else who’s a part of this meeting will tell you I’ve been fighting this book from day one. It’s not to say that I haven’t come away with a lot of information, it’s just something about the book rubs me the wrong way… and as the team knows I will argue the semantics of how the book is subtitled until they want to strangle me.

Actually I’ve started to use the book in creative planning, instead of responding negatively to an idea… or arguing it and pounding the table as we have been instructed to do I just whip out my copy of the book and bang THAT on the table.

Really and truly though I HAVE taken away some good ideas from the book so it hasn’t been for naught but I don’t know… I’ll post more when I get a bit further in it.

Now the REAL reason for this post (congrats for sticking around long enough to get to this point, I could make a sarcastic yet witty jab about your needing a life (all in love though, really and truly!), but then I’m the one writing this so I have no room to talk now do I?) oh did I type that out loud?

AHEM. Back to the point. Pandora. (as in Pandora’s box) No NOT the Greek Mythological figure, although that is the reference for the post title, no I’m talking about the website. I’ve managed to get two people (At least two that I’m aware of) addicted to it so I’m going for more.

What is it? Well to put it basically it’s online radio station that where YOU create your own radio station. Just try it. You know the old saying “What do you have on your ipod?” well try “What stations do you have programmed on your Pandora?”

And while I’m on the subject of addicting online radio, I’ve found this little gem a while ago, not as… effective? (In my now humble opinion) as Pandora at song selection it’s fun to play around with, and it does have a nice selection.

Open the box…

So the title of the post really has two meanings. In our Volunteer Team meetings Jeremy’s got us reading the (In my humble… no scratch that in this case, in my wildly unapologetic overinflated opinion, at least in this case…) Book the Houdini Solution, thinking INSIDE the box.

As he, or anyone else who’s a part of this meeting will tell you I’ve been fighting this book from day one. It’s not to say that I haven’t come away with a lot of information, it’s just something about the book rubs me the wrong way… and as the team knows I will argue the semantics of how the book is subtitled until they want to strangle me.

Actually I’ve started to use the book in creative planning, instead of responding negatively to an idea… or arguing it and pounding the table as we have been instructed to do I just whip out my copy of the book and bang THAT on the table.

Really and truly though I HAVE taken away some good ideas from the book so it hasn’t been for naught but I don’t know… I’ll post more when I get a bit further in it.

Now the REAL reason for this post (congrats for sticking around long enough to get to this point, I could make a sarcastic yet witty jab about your needing a life (all in love though, really and truly!), but then I’m the one writing this so I have no room to talk now do I?) oh did I type that out loud?

AHEM. Back to the point. Pandora. (as in Pandora’s box) No NOT the Greek Mythological figure, although that is the reference for the post title, no I’m talking about the website. I’ve managed to get two people (At least two that I’m aware of) addicted to it so I’m going for more.

What is it? Well to put it basically it’s online radio station that where YOU create your own radio station. Just try it. You know the old saying “What do you have on your ipod?” well try “What stations do you have programmed on your Pandora?”

And while I’m on the subject of addicting online radio, I’ve found this little gem a while ago, not as… effective? (In my now humble opinion) as Pandora at song selection it’s fun to play around with, and it does have a nice selection.

Worship Set

I’ve really got to back into the habit of posting these, even if it’s just for reference purposes.

First off we had Tammie and Mia (switching off) Leading worship this week, our set list was

Blessed Be Your Name (The tree63 version)
How he loves (Jesus Culture)
You Alone (Jesus Culture)
We Cry Out (Jesus Culture)

How he loves was amazingly done, but I’m not sure if it’s as congregational-y singable as we initially thought. (The Chorus is, the verses are a bit… odd?)

We cry out though was amazing. It was rocking, it was connecting, it started off as a performance song, but half way through became a worship song. I’ve gotten so much positive feedback about this set as a whole!

This Sunday our Downtown Campus Praise team is coming in. They’re got a different vibe than my team does, (I mean they’ll demographic that they’re reaching is different) but I know it’s gonna be an awesome experience. Hopefully I’ll be able to post from Drive, I can’t believe that it’s only… 3 days away!!!!

Oh and I want to try this, it sounds like an awesome worship experience.

Worship Set

I’ve really got to back into the habit of posting these, even if it’s just for reference purposes.

First off we had Tammie and Mia (switching off) Leading worship this week, our set list was

Blessed Be Your Name (The tree63 version)
How he loves (Jesus Culture)
You Alone (Jesus Culture)
We Cry Out (Jesus Culture)

How he loves was amazingly done, but I’m not sure if it’s as congregational-y singable as we initially thought. (The Chorus is, the verses are a bit… odd?)

We cry out though was amazing. It was rocking, it was connecting, it started off as a performance song, but half way through became a worship song. I’ve gotten so much positive feedback about this set as a whole!

This Sunday our Downtown Campus Praise team is coming in. They’re got a different vibe than my team does, (I mean they’ll demographic that they’re reaching is different) but I know it’s gonna be an awesome experience. Hopefully I’ll be able to post from Drive, I can’t believe that it’s only… 3 days away!!!!

Oh and I want to try this, it sounds like an awesome worship experience.