My Worship Revolution

I finally got myself a library card this morning at Cerritos library. If you have never been here you have to check out this website. It is what they refer to as an "experience library." My favorite part is the childrens library, believe it or not. When you walk in the door the first thing you see is the childrens library with a 15,000 gallon salt water tank. The inside is just as amazing with a T-rex, a lighthouse, and some really cool decor.
  

I have been here  (
at the library, not necessarily the childrens section) all morning working on some ministry planning for production and creative arts for the first half of ’06. I’m actually pretty stoked about the future and some of the things I feel like God is puting on my heart. I love to come here on occasion when I’m woking on something like that cauce it really seems to inspire me. I feel like God just kinda helps the creativity flow a bit when I’m here. A good friend and pastor of mine, Boomer Reiff, introduced me to it. The library – odd place to go to find God I guess – but hey, whatever works.

Church
This was definaitely the best week yet when it come to the setup process over at Artesia High School. Each week we’ve been working on getting everything setup as quick as possible. There is lot to do with the amount of lighting we’re running now, the sound system, and the 2 big screens. It is so worth it for the atmosphere we’re able to create though. There’s always room for people to help on the production team with both setup and teardown!!
Chili & Games
Sunday night it was all about eating Chili and playing some games. I’ve been known to be pretty competitive, so I had to watch myself. It was such a fun night though. Apples to Apples is still one of the best games ever. Jerry Stout was cracking me up with the 9 cup putting course he set up in the room. And the Planet Rev 50" plasma case rocks for playing video games!

My current class that I’m attending for this five week period at Vanguard in "Research Methods for the Study of Christian Organizations." As part of our homework in qualitative research this week, we were to be a participant observer at a church service or meeting unfamiliar to us. Since I am taking this class to study the multisite movement in the church (which I’ll definitely share more about in the weeks to come) I wanted to try going to one for this assignment. I actually hope to visit several in the weeks to come, just to learn, and I’ll update y’all as it comes.

Being that I couldn’t do a Sunday, I decided to visit Saddleback’s onsite service called Ohana – "Get away to the islands for a time of worship, complete with hula and island-style music." As is the case with many mutisite venues, the message is video cast to the room and the worship is live.

Unfortunately, Rachel and I were about 25 minutes late after taking the wrong freeway, turning around, finding that the connection to our other freeway was closed and taking the detour, stopping to pay the toll we didn’t know we would pass through, taking the wrong exit, turning around and getting back on the freeway (and paying the toll again in the process) and then finally getting there. Here are some of the good and bad that I noticed once we got there:

It was a bit hard to park with no direction, but that is kinda understandable considering how late we arrived. This was my first time at the Saddleback campus – WOW! It’s pretty amazing. Huge campus, very clean, well lit, sweet architecture. My favorite building was definitely the Children’s ministry building complete with multiple saltwater fish tanks. Very cool!

It was very hard to find the service we were attending. There was one sign we saw that publicized it along with all their other services, but there was no signage to get us there. We aasked some youth who directed us to some mobile buildings off to the side. Once we entered, there was some fun stuff inside. It was decorated with a Hawaiian flare – grass on the lights, thatch style signs that said Ohana, etc.

The worship team all wore matching Hawaiian shirts. It was made up of 2 ukuleles, 2 acoustic guitars, a bass, congas, a djimbe and 2 additional singers. I love Ukes! I enjoyed the feel of the laid back music, but the people in the service didn’t seem into worship at all. Only a few people were singing, and the rest just kinda sat and watched.

Once the band finished they sat down on the stage and up came Rick Warren on the side walls where the lyrics had been. I have often wondered about this aspect of a multisite church. How can people really "connect" with a pastor that isn’t even there? Isn’t it weird to just watch a screen the whole time? Oddly enough, this seemed to be the most enjoyable part for the people there. They were very engaged in the message and laugh, clapped, and responded, as if he were in the room.

The message took a little over an hour with a song in the middle. I’m pretty sure the song we sang was different than the main service, and it didn’t seem to connect at all. All of a sudden the video turned off the band stepped up and sang, and back on came Rick. After the message there was one final worship song along with some hula dancers. That was actually pretty cool. Finally there were some announcements and the service was over.

At the end of the service, I probably spent 15 minutes standing there looking lost and no one acknowledged me at all. I was pretty surprised by this. Being a mega church some might expect that, but this particular service only had about 65 people in the room with the worship team included! They seemed to be a friendly community among each other, though. Many people stayed and talked and complimented the worship team and the dancers. As we walked out the door, there were two people standing right there who began talking to each other as we approached. Bummer.

So that was my first trip to Saddleback and my first trip to a multisite venue. It was a fun experience, but probably not a service I would want to attend regularly. The funny part is, none of the negatives for me had anything to do with the multisite part, ie. the video cast message. That part actually worked out better than I imagined it would. I look forward to seeing a few other examples in addition to reading some articles and doing some more research.

Check out my blog cloud. Visit this website and you can put in your web info and it creates this cloud of words that are used commonly on your site. Kinda fun. You can tweak it and change words, but i just left mine as it came up. Interesting to see the words that popped up! A couple of people got on there (good thing "wife" and "rachel" were among them) along with some other significant words like "community", "learnings" and of course "worship." Have fun making your own!
[via Ben]

So you may notice that I’ve updated the page some, and I hope to update it some more in the coming weeks or months.  I know there are some things I’d like to add – idea’s I’ve gotten from other blogs I’ve viewed – but at this point I don’t know how to do half of them.  I guess I’ll just need to take some time to learn.  Unfortunately that time usually comes in the late hours of the night when I’d probably be better off sleeping.
One thing I have finally done, though, includes the addition of a page, or in this case a link on my blog.  Since I began this site, I mentioned that one of my desires was to try and provide resources, both for the Revolution worship community as well as for others who are doing creative ministry.  One of the ways that I have been encouraged and gotten ideas for ministry is by looking at some things that other people have done and posted on sites.  Watching videos others have made have always inspired me and stirred creativity.
Being that videos are something that we have been doing more and more often at Revolution as time has gone on, and being something that I am continually learning more about (and hopefully getting better at), I thought it would be fun and hopefully beneficial to have a page to download and view videos that we have made for services and for fun.  I finally got that page created and up and running after taking time here and there to slowly get it built.  Hopefully it can serve 2 purposes: (1) as I mentioned, to give ideas and resources to other ministers, and (2) for people at Revolution who just enjoy seeing some of the things we’ve done again.
Unfortunately, a lot of the videos aren’t great quality the way I’ve exported them, but if anyone really wanted to use something, I do have them in format to put on DVD with better quality.  There are still some more videos I can get up there, and the page in general is a work in progress.  So, there is now a link on the sidebar to visit the page, or for now you can click here.  Enjoy!

*UPDATE – this page no longer exists.  Instead all of my videos are hosted at my site at YouTube.  username: bobbymarchessault

So I guess it’s feast or famine over there at inbubblewrap.com. After months of entering and never winning, I win a second time like a week later! This book, Satisfaction, actually looks quite a bit more interesting to me than the last one. We’ll see if I ever find the time to read either. I guess I’m in the club now, eh Will?

For many months now I have been visiting www.inbubblewrap.com and entering to win a book to know avail. It is a website that daily gives away business related books. I have entered faithfully everyday without winning as I’ve watched one friend win 3 books and another win 5! But I continued to persist and finally I won today!!
I opened my email this afternoon and literally yelled for joy when I saw a winner confirmation from inbubblewrap. I’m not sure I’m really all that excited about the book I won, but it’s just nice to win!
When you sign up for the offer each day, you answer 2 questions. many months ago, the question was, what would cause you to tell others about inbubblewrap.com? My answer: win a stinkin book! So now I’m making good on my answer. Go check it out!

So, this past Monday, Rachel and I had our first doctors appointment. Most of the people who come by here already know this, but Rachel and I recently found out that we are going to be parents! We found out our due date is set to be September 24, 2006. We even got to see a sonogram already! Check it out -


At this point, it really just looks like a blob…kinda Jaba the Hut-esque.  The sonogram showed us to be at 7 weeks 3 days, and even that early we could see a heartbeat…wow!
It seems even more real now.  It’s definitely a big shift in lifestyle for us as it is for everyone when they have their first kid.  I am totally excited to see where this journey takes us.  I know that the two things that God has called me to be above all else is a good husband and a good father.  Please continue to pray that Rachel and the baby would stay healthy as we go through this pregnancy.  Thanks all!

So once again it’s been a long while since I’ve taken the time to blog, so I’ll just have to bang a couple out today.  A big part of the reason for my absence has been the time that went into getting ready for our grand reopening at Revolution Church. 
For any friends reading here who aren’t a part of Revolution, this past Sunday was our first Sunday in a new facility.  We are now setting up and tearing down every week at Artesia High School in the city of Lakewood.  A lot of work went into making things happen by everyone around Revolution and it was a HUGE success!  It was so fun at 9:00 when the doors opened to see people just flooding through the doors.  We ended up having 565 adults and 135 kids for our first day!!
I am really looking forward to this next Sunday and the one’s that follow.  For a little more info about the specifics of the grand reopening, check out Dave’s blog.

Hey everyone!  Just wanted to let everyone know that Adam Rose and his band are playing this Thursday night at Aura Night Club in Studio City at 8:30 P.M.  You do have to be 18 or older to get in (sorry kids).  Click here to get in for $8, otherwise I think it’s $10 at the door.  So if you can, have a night out and support one of our worship artists from Revolution.  Have good show Adam!