Two Days and Counting

Just TWO DAYS until INNOVATE07!!!

In case you haven't seen it, or might still want to come, heck out the trailer here

As I've looked at everything from the packaging, to the programming, to the EXTRAS :-), I'm thinking that this is going to be the best conference we've ever put on. We're expecting around 1,000 people. If we do break the thousand mark, it'll be our first time. We are praying for all that God has in store for us and the attendees. I'm hopeful for a great time of learning and inspiration. Also great to hook up with some good friends again.

Weekend Recap

Series: Stand Alone Message
Topic: Let's Talk About Love
Speaker: Dr. Bob Laurent
Worship Leader: Trace Rorie
Check out the service HERE

The weekend was a "stand-alone" for us, a thing we haven't been doing lately. We used to do a lot more of 1 or 2 weeks in between series when we built more hard sets. When we did take the break, we used to see a reduction in momentum. A break is alway nice, though.

Prelude:
Who Do You Think I Was? - John Mayer - oh baby, this one gives Dave Taylor, one of our guitarists, a chance to explode! Very high energy. I'm glad Trace picks this prelude every so often.

Worship Songs:
God is Great - Reuben Morgan - A high energy starting song. It always seems to encourage clapping, adding to the energy. I love the way our drummer, Jeff Myers, plays this one.
Everlasting God - Lincoln Brewster version - A pretty straight forward version of this. Trace and I have spoken how we'd like to get a track going on this one that Lincoln uses.

Message:
A great reminder of "love busters" and "love builders". Dr. Bob's strength is always authenticity. His final story about forgiveness with his mother brought many tears to audience members (including me!)

Media:
Why Women Don't Marry? from Eagle Brook Church. Perfect illustration for Dr. Bob's point on getting too comfortable with your mate.

Special Song:
Always Love by Nada Surf - What a perfect set of lyrics to close out this service. A difficult song that Trace did a great job with.

I'm proud of our team. Even on an "off" week (not in a series), we still kept the excellence factor high. I'm looking forward to our Heroes series starting next week.

Creative Storytelling in Pix

Found this from the Collide Magazine site. Lovin' the Sigur Ros as well. Check it out.

Wisdom from Tim Stevens

Tim Stevens, is not only Granger's Executive Pastor and an accomplished author, he's now, a magazine columnist. Collide is a promising new magazine which will feature columns from Tim on the use of Pop Culture in Church, a passion of his.

Great quote from the debut issue:

"In recent years there have been a number of book that have been written to discuss the merging of faith and culture. It has been encouraging to see a segment of the Church wake up to the potential of leveraging the culture to reach our friends...

But these authors almost solely focus on our personal faith. Any metion of the local church is negative or absent. It's almost as if the authors are all saying that the Church is irrelevant. It's not even part of the conversation. If you want to have spiritual conversation with a friend, the Church will only get in the way...

I understand that, I do. I've seen more impotent churches than effective ones... but I've also seen churches that get it."

This is going to be Tim's focus for the column. Finding churches that "get it" and highlighting what they're doing. I'm looking forward to seeing what Tim finds.

Way to go, brother.

Across the Universe

Oh my! My wife told me about this one. If you are at all a Beatles fan, and if you like movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Moulin Rouge, you are gonna have to see this! Across the Universe looks amazing. Out Sept. 21st.

Get in "Sync" with new Ford Vehicles

Ford and Microsoft have gotten together to develop a pretty cool thing to help alleviate all the people of the world getting accidents while fiddling with their iPods or cellphones.

It's called SYNC. Hopefully, a wave of the future that people will actually use.



It seems to be getting some awards from CES and Popular Mechanics. 12 2008 models will have it standard, with all models in 2009.

Midweek Service Recap

Last night was a challenging night. We're still in the BIGGER THAN series for the New Community. Rob Wegner, my good friend, challenged us with a strong message based out of Psalm 72 about care for the "alien, the fatherless, and the widow."

Our setlist:

God of Justice - by Tim Hughes
I love this song. I love its lyrics. I love the melody. I love everything about it, except I don't love how I play it. I think this showed a bit last night. A little bumpy start musically, but I think God was still honored. (That is the goal right?)

Lay it Down - by Dave Lubben
Simple song with a simple message. I find it interesting that in the chorus "I surrender it all to You" is sung intwo different ways for the word "all". I think the song works well though. During this we vamped (hung out) on a chord for a while for a chance for our crowd to reflect on what their part might be in engaging the cause for "the alien, the fatherless, and the widow." I'm getting more comfortable doing this. I love for our people to have a chance to break away from the group and hear from God one on one for a moment. Jason Miller, my worship leader brother, is really good at this.

You are the Light - by Steve Fee
We did a direct transition into this from Lay it Down which I think was effective. Both songs are in G and in 6/8 time which worked well. Plus the lyrical content really helped us focus on the topic with words like "the hopeless, the broken, the poor, they will be hopeless and broken no more." Great melody. So singable.

Running with Your Heart - by Charlie Hall
This song has that 80's new wave (remember that term) feel. It has abrupt changes which can discourage clapping, but it's message is so strong with possibly some of the strongest commitment lyrics of the night "we wanna feel what You feel, love what You love, go where You go, that's what we want." Our team did a good job with it considering that our drummer Dustin Brown hadn't heard the song until 5:45pm that evening.

Offering - My Glorious - by Delirious
A pretty standard version of this. More of the Passion version that Chris Tomlin did than what Delirious does.

Just want to say that I love having a keyboard on when I'm leading from acoustic. It gives me so much more room to not have to play every minute to fill in sound. Leah, you rock.

Baptism at the Cove

What an awesome move of God yesterday! We had an incredible time with around 400 people getting baptized.

Highlights for me:
1. Herman - the first guy to get baptized at a young 90+ years of age. He's the
guy I wrote about in the Doors posting.
We thought his name was Homer back then, DOH! :)

2. A mother/daughter pair where I could just really sense the Holy Spirit's
presence as he helped these two confirm in their hearts that this following
Jesus thing is for real.

3. A young boy, Jordan, who is 8, giving his WHOLE life to Christ. I can only
look back and see how I squandered my first 22 years living for myself. This
boy has the rest and best of his life to give. Awesome.

4. What a great privilege to be part of this church. God seems to have His
hand on us. I pray that we are a faithful people. Faithful to the
responsibility with which He has entrusted us.

News story from the South Bend Tribune HERE.

The Divine Mentor

Reading a new book, The Divine Mentor, by Wayne Cordeiro. I learning some great things.

1. God's word contains "mentors" in the different characters (Moses, Joseph, Paul, Peter, David, Samson).

2. There are 2 primary teachers: wisdom and consequences. The cost of getting wisdom is an upfront cost. Seeking it takes time. The cost of consequences is delayed, but often much more painful. We learn, but it can really stink.

3. There are 2 primary kinds of pain: discipline and regret. Very much similar to the the teachers above.

Looking forward to digging into God's Word through some of ideas that Wayne presents in this book. So far, I would highly recommend this read.

Once in a Lifetime

Did anyone realize today that we passed a "time milestone"? Only once in our lives will we see the following date/time sequence:

9/8/07 6:54:32.1

What were you doing at that very moment?

I marked this moment at Sam's Club, eating pizza with my family. It was quite a celebration.

Wisdom to Worship Leaders

My brother Corey Mann hooked me up with this post from Perry Noble on worship leaders. I've been watching Lee McDerment on NewSpring's site as well as reading his blog. Good insights.

Check it out "Eight Things I Wish Every Worship Leader Would Know" here.

Weekend Recap

Speaker: Mark Waltz, Pastor of Connections

Series: The Office

Message: Balance: Myth or Reality?

Attendance: 4522
For a Labor Day weekend, we seemed to have pretty good attendance for this third installment of "The Office" series.

Prelude: We started completely RANDOM by doing Green Day's version of The Simpsons Theme that they performed for the movie. Very fun.

Worship
I picked two songs around the TRUST theme. As we deal with overload, we need to realize that our God is trustworthy to help us amp down our lives without everything falling apart.
Awesome is the Lord Most High by Chris Tomlin - we sing this in G instead of Chris' original A.
Let the Praises Ring by Lincoln Brewster - we've done this song for a while but this was the first time with the fun Irish jig-like solo that our guitarist, Dave Taylor (aka "Mr. Chops") completely rocked out.

Drama
The Brotherhood - a drama by Willowcreek that we've done before. It got a lot of good laughs but yet pointed out such great extremes that it allows people to see the truth of when we live out of bounds in our work life.

Song Special
9 to 5 by Dolly Parton - yeah, you read that right! We added my wife Lisa to the end of the drama as a secretary to make smooth segue between the drama and the song. BGVs by Laura Waltz (Mark's wife) and Courtney Helman added nice energy. If you listen online, you can't hear my piano (sorry about that), but an odd thing happened on our 7:30pm service where my keyboard somehow transposed itself a half step down. I was play F's while the rest of the band was playing F#'s. NOT GOOD in music! Luckily, both Dave and Brian Warrell (our bassist) adjusted by playing a key down ON THE SPOT! Nice work gents!!!

Message
Mark challenged us to rethink balance and the fact that it's not possible. It's what you value that has to find its way into your calendar.

Great quote: "There is more to life than increasing its speed." - Mahatma Ghandi

Also, great action points of fill in the blanks about putting our values into action.

Song Special
In the Middle of Me - by Todd Agnew
I tried out the grunge on my voice. Not so good feeling, but I think it came off pretty well. Luckily it wasn't too high! Fun, groovin' way to end the service. Nice job everyone. You all are amazing to serve beside!

A Blast (of hair) from the past

Okay, I found my old passport. Most people around me have never seen me with hair. Yes, I actually had some once. This is my wife's favorite picture of me. What do you think?

Summer Nights Lego Style

We did this song last year during our services. Check it out with LEGOS!

Okay, I skipped our Midweek Service...

Yeah, our family decided to take a little break from church.

Instead we went and saw the Notre Dame Marching Band do it's final rehearsal before the big opening game this Saturday. Our friends, the Collins family have done this for a while and we went along. The kids were so excited, they got dressed up in Notre Dame gear. It was fun to hear the announcements ahead of time (they record them to keep timing consistent).

The band sounded great. Highlight: a cool arrangement of "Swingtown" by The Steve Miller Band (included a band dance break in the middle where everyone puts down their instruments.) A fun, FREE time with our family.



Listen to the fight song!!!

Fabulous Fernwood

This past weekend, my friend Gene and I took our kids (his grandkid) to Fernwood Botanical Garden & Nature Preserve just over the border in Niles, MI. I hadn't done the nature walk thing with my kids EVER, sad to say. I think it was a big hit with the kids. Mom, got a break at home, and when they came back, it was like "O Mom, you've gotta see the waterfalls!" and "The mushrooms were cool!"

I captured this short video of the waterwheel which would be best if looped over and over. I think I could fall asleep just listening! I love the sound of running water. Anyone else?



A few other shots that were really fun.


Highly recommend this place to take your kids. No major bells or whistles, just a great day of being in God's creation!

My First Wedding

Okay, I'm already married. And I have done music at about 50 weddings in my life (along with my wife, Lisa). But this weekend was a first for me. I officiated my first wedding this weekend - Mr. and Mrs. Nate and Annie Sagarsee. You may know Kyle (Nate's older brother) and Jeanette Sagarsee.

It was a little nerve wracking being on the other side of the couple. Normally, I'm off in a corner playing piano or singing (stuff in my comfort zone). Now, I had to step out there and talk. I think it turned out well. And yes, I mailed in the license.

My advice to the couple was to begin with the end in mind (a la Stephen Covey). I had Nate and Annie set some goals for 20 years out. I'm hoping that they stick to these and work hard at keeping their marriage alive and well.

Best wishes to the couple!!!

Did Anyone Know that Rob Wegner is an Acclaimed Author?

A little known fact that our own Rob Wegner, is an acclaimed expert on famous Deerslayers of the past.

Check it out here.




Okay, maybe it COULD be a different Rob. But I think our Rob has the skills...

Weekend Recap

Our second week in "The Office" series.

Speaker: Rob Wegner

Topic: Whatever it Takes - Integrity in the Workplace
Attendance: 5,669

Encouraging to see growth from last week's attendance. Hoping to build momentum through this series.

We've had quite a few hits on the www.myofficesecrets.com site. Some moving stories as well.

The Arts:

Prelude: Typical by Mutemath - one of my new all time favorite guitar riffs at the beginning of this song. Incredible that they were here at GCC about a year and a half ago. Amazing band.

Worship
Let God Arise by Chris Tomlin
Salvation is Here by Hillsong United
Both pretty straight from the record arrangements. However, we shorten the Salvation is Here by cutting some of the bridge out. A great energy set of two songs that Trace chose.

Media
How to Be Lazy at the Office and Still Get Paid
This media was meant to show how we can not steward our time well at work. I love the creative treatment that Albert Martin (our young media man) did on the visual effects throughout. One thing I think we learned from this media was to make sure to do voiceovers prior and then shoot to that, rather than the other way around. Makes comic timing quite a bit easier.

Message
Rob reminded us of having integrity under pressure using the Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego form Daniel. A great re-telling of the story that brought it back to life for me. A few quotables:
- "Who do I trust more, and earthly king or my heavenly King?"
- "The question is what kind of world do you want to live in?"
Prayer - "God give us the wisdom to know what's right and give us the courage to do what's right no matter how hard it is."
Take away for me - My integrity is my witness.

Song Special
Be the One by Jeremy Camp
We keyed up this song from E to A for Angie Henry to sing. A good message to end the service with.

Nice job everyone! Looking forward to this coming weekend.

The Gift of Presence

Alright, I just got past my birthday and I did get a few sweet "presents", like some new kicks - Bullboxers. I likey.


And a new drum plug in for audio recording. EZ Drummer from Toontrack. Wicked awesome, realistic drum sounds for cheap!!!


I really likey!

But for all of that, I've learned something new this past few weeks.

The Gift of Presence.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were talking with someone, and you knew that they were there physically, but not tracking with you mentally? We've all been on both sides of this. I, too often, have been the one not, literally, PRESENT. I think that this is one of the greatest gifts that you can give someone. In a world of quick sound bytes, newsflashes, and IMs, it's really refreshing to have someone's undivided attention.

My challenge is to give this gift as often as I can. I think that's how Jesus was. When he was with someone, he was WITH SOMEONE. We catch glimpses of this every so often with people around us, and it is magical. Especially as a husband and dad, I want to give this gift to my family. So, I'll stop blogging now, and go give them my presence. Peace.