My Worship Revolution

This past week at church, we started our new series, "a.k.a. God: Discovering God Through His Names."  For the new decor we decided we wanted to do a graffiti art sort of look.  So I called up an old friend Jerry who I used to attend church with.  He brought his friend Robin from his crew, and they did an amazing job. 

Here’s some shots of them and the art for those of you that haven’t had the opportunity to see it yet.

A huge thanks goes out to those guys for helping us create another awesome atmosphere to worship in.  The decor will change again in a few weeks, and we always welcome people helping to make it happen, so if you’re interested, you know who to talk to!

Made a character of myself, see what you think:

I showed it to Rachel and the first thing she said was, "You aren’t that skinny."  Thanks babe!  I guess someone’s gotta keep me humble.

Go make one of yourself!
[via Los]

Here’s a slideshow of pics from the first 3 years at our church.  We showed this at our 1096 worship night and album recording.  Lots of great memories from a lot of important events over the past 3 years.

Sunday morning at 6am I got the call from my brother in law that my sister was in labor.  They had gone into the hospital at midnight and ended up having Ryan Michael Farmer at 11:06 a.m. by c-section.

Last night, Rachel and I cruised down to San Diego after our first Sunday night service so we could visit and see the baby.  Unfortunately, Megan was still recovering from a very rough labor and operation, but she was feeling a lot better by the time we left in the afternoon.  Please keep her in your prayers as she continues to recover over the next couple days.  (P.S. – she got a bit bored at home during pregnancy and started her own blog – check it out here.  I love it – now my family is converting to blogging!)

The baby is absolutely beautiful!!  I’m such a proud uncle!  And it was so fun to see Tim so excited about being a dad.  Here’s some pics from our visit.

Their pastor – also mine and Megan’s old youth pastor – John Rose, put it well in a card he gave them:

September 17th, 2006 was a great day in San Diego sports history.  The Padres won 4-1 over the Dodgers to take first place, the Chargers won 40-7 over the Titans, and Ryan Michael Farmer entered the world.

Congratulations Megan and Tim!!!

Hopefully we won’t be far behind!  Rachel is due on Sunday (September 24), but we are definitely on baby watch this week, hoping for an early arrival.  To weigh in on when you think he’ll come, visit Rachel’s blog.  My vote is for tomorrow.

That’s how long Revolution Church has existed.  I guess today would be 1097 days of ministry.  We celebrated last night with our first live recording for an album titled 1096.

Dave has an amazing post on his blog outlining a number of his learnings through 3 years of church planting.  Make sure you go by and read it here.

On Sunday morning David and the lead team shared our vision at the church through our 10 year birthday.  By the year 2013, Revolution Church will be one church with 8 locations in the communities surrounding Long Beach.  We’re joining the multi-site revolution!  This brings on lots of challenges accompanied by lots more exciting opportunities to reach people with Good News of Jesus Christ. 

The target sites: Lakewood (already there), Bellflower (launching ’07), North Long Beach, Downtown Long Beach, Belmont Shore, Compton, Carson, San Pedro.  I’m excited to see the great things that God is going to do through us in the next 7 years.  Check out this video we showed on Sunday morning of those areas and the people we hope to reach.

Saw this today…

…get it?

1096 – the number of days we’re celebrating being a church this coming Sunday.  There are 1095 days in 3 years, and it just so happens there’s also been a leap year in the last three.

This Sunday we will celebrate our third birthday as a church with a worship night that will be recorded for our first ever live worship album – or worship album of any sort actually.  Don’t miss out on this night of worship and celebration.  Even if you don’t attend church at Revolution, we’d love for you to come and worship with us as we thank God for everything he’s done in our community over the past 3 years. 

It’s happening at Artesis high school at 5 and 7pm.  Childcare is provided.  For more info, click here.  See ya there!

While up in the mountains this past weekend, the different arts groups created something to share on the final morning.  I was grouped up with 2 others and we wrote a song.  Nineva is the title we came up with.  The idea: have you ever been in a place where you didn’t understand why God had you where he did, or perhaps you didn’t want to be there?  One of those seasons where you have stayed in a situation only because it seemed that God had you there, but you didn’t want to be?  It seems like most everyone has been there at some point, and that’s what we chose to write about.  We related it to Jonah and the idea of being sent somewhere you didn’t fully understand and maybe didn’t want to be, yet desiring to do God’s will.  What is or has been your Nineva?

Here’s the words as well as a recording from when we performed it on Monday morning.  the recording is bad, but it gives you the idea, and at least it’s somethin to hold on to.

Nineveh
lyrics by: Natalie Nicole Gilbert
music by: Collin Downing and Bobby Marchessault

V1
This wasn’t what I expected
Comfort became a foreign word
I don’t wanna let pride get in the way this time
But I’d rather wait another day

Ch
    I don’t want to be here
    I don’t want to do this
    They won’t listen anyway
    This isn’t worth my time
    Do you really want me in Nineveh?

V2
Just let me walk away, make my own way
Why do You care f the fig tree withers?
Don’t make me move, don’t make me speak
I’ll keep this to myself for someone more worthy

Br
What You want, not what I want
The right place isn’t easy, but I know You are with me
What You want, not what I want
The right words don’t come easy, but still You’ve brought me here

It’s been a crazy week and I still haven’t had time since getting home on Monay afternoon to post about my weekend in the mountains with Mosaic.  It was an amazing weekend and I’ll post a couple of things this week.  Here’s a few highlights from the week:

• Tons of fun hangin with a whole lot of creative people all weekend long.  Everyone was awesome!  Really friendly and great attitudes.
• Great staff, too.  Loved getting to know them and learn from them.
• During the week we broke up into teams based on disciplines and created during the time there.  I was grouped up with a few others to write a song.  That’s a stretching experience for me and I look forward to sharing what we cme up with later this week.
• Getting a chance to experience and learn some new arts.  One of the sessions the first day we were encouraged to try something new in a session where it was being taught.  Here’s a pic of Matt Schatz (DeeJay Jigowatt) scratchin and mixin on the turntables:                         

The most impactful part of the weekend for all of us was hashing through the idea of creating prophetic art.  1 Corinthians 14 says that when people prophecy, it will cause non-believers to fall down and say "Surely God is in this place!"  Through our own convictions, are our lives and our art causing others to say "Truly God is in this place"?  What does it look like to use art in expressing ourselves to really change people and make a difference in their lives?

This was such a great reminder and a great focus for why we do what we do.  In the art I’ve experienced in our community as well as in "secular" art (whatever that means I know I’ve experienced prophetic art that really moves me and others as well as "non-prophetic art."  I’ve experienced both of those in both settings.  What was the last piece of art that you saw that you would consider "prophetic?"  Perhaps a film, a painting, a play, or a song.  What does it practically look like to be prophetic in our artforms?  Questions to continue to ponder.  Any thoughts?

Headin out this morning with four other people from the Revolution artists community to join Mosaic church for their annual arts retreat.  David Arcos, their creative arts pastor, invited me to join them in order to learn some from them and their arts ministries and philosophies.

I’m excited to see what the weekend ha in store and what great ideas and concepts we get for the Fall and beyond, as well as idea on what it would look like for us to provide something like this in the future.  So while it will be a little bit of a relaxing retreat, it will also be a weekend of gleaning everything I can from the.  Don’t know if I’ll have WiFi up there in the mountains, so if not, I’ll hopefully be able to fill you in when I get back.