My Worship Revolution

So, clearly I have inundated you all with a whole lot of music the last several days.  if you are re:create attender, you’ve heard even more music over the last several days.  But since we already have the theme going, I figured I’d roll with the southern Christian rock thing and talk about an old friend, Nate Davis.

Nate lives in South Carolina.  He’s an old friend of mine from the Young American days.  When we hung out back then, neither of us were really Christ followers (I pretended and tried to convince myself I was).  Since that time, we’ve both given ourselves over to Christ.  Nate just recently released a CD and the few songs I have heard rock.  Please, head over here and check him out…and let him know you like him!  And let us know, what do ya think?

Whew…another day down and I am WIPED!  i have got to find some time to sleep.  i guess now would be good, but I can’t sacrifice the update, so I’ll just have to blaze through it. 

Food

All I can say about that is WOW…they know how to feed us well here!  I’ve pretty much been in a constant state of fullness since the first meal (see picture below).  Today was no different.  Big home cooked style southern meal and an old jail turned restaurant.  And by the way, I love being in the south for the sweet tea, too.

Dinner was at a really nice restaurant at a golf club.  Again…lots of good food!

Music

I think today it was a good idea having music right after lunch rather than a really mellow guy talking.  When we got back, a band called 33 Miles played.  I actually really enjoyed them.  They can definitely sing.  The back up singer/guitar player especially.  Check it out:

Tonight during dinner we heard some music from some songwriters at Lifeway Music Group, Jeremy and Mary Beth Johnson and Paul Marino.  Not bad, but probably not one of my favorites fom the weekend.  Then again, the musics been pretty mazing, so maybe it’s not fair to compare.

Sharing

We heard some great sharing from a guy by the name of Louis Marcos.  Just for the record, this guy has got to be one of the smartest Christians alive.  Dude is ridiculous.  And a great speaker too.  He’s a teacher and a writer with tons of knowledge in…well…tons of stuff.  Just read the bio.

I wan’t make too much of an attempt to really take you through everything he talked about cause I don’t know that I could if I wanted to.  The idea of his information was "The Slipperiness Of Words."  He started with comparing Saussure and his structuring of words and communication in the modern age to the development of Derrida and his deconstruction of language and the ushering in of a postmodern mindset, and then moved toward our stories and the mysteries of Jesus – fully God, fully human – and the meaning and beauty that gives to art for Christians because it is proof of the spiritual being able to inhabit the phsical.  I told you he was smart.  And it sounded a whole lot better and made a whole lot more sense when he communicated it.  you know, words are slippery.  Anyway, here’s a couple  (loose) quotables from Lou:

• Sometimes Christians are Muslims without realizing it.
  •    Iconoclasts – destroying any images under religious pretense.
  •    they act as if the bible is the scientific dictated word of God.  This is what Quran means – dictated.
  The complete and perfect word of God is Jesus.  The Bible points to Jesus.  We don’t believe in Jesus because we believe in the Bible, we believe in the Bible because we believe in Jesus.
• The Bible is like Jesus – 100% God and 100% human.  Fully inspired and fully human.
• God created three types of beings.  Angels – fully spiritual.  Animals – fully physical.  And humans are some sort of amphibian.  People are fully spiritual and fully physical.  You are not half soul and half body.

Have fun with that.  And oh yeah, here I am listening at the back of the room:

Connection

I think something really cicked in a good way for me tonight in the way of connecting.  truth is, as much as I have loved being here, I haven’t had as much opportunity to interact with others during the sessions as I had hoped.  i think that has been the case for a couple of reasons, but that’s not important now.  Also, even for a guy who’s number 1 strength is "woo," it can be slightly intimidating coming to something like this all alone, when most others have a spouse or a companion from their church along.  It’s been good though, in a way forcing me to connect even more.

Tonight I had several great conversations, really getting to hear some guys stories and learn bout them, their journeys, their souls, and some not so important but fun stuff too.  On the bus I was able to connect with Mark and pray together as well.  Then tonight I spent a couple hours in the bar connecting with several other worship leaders and learning their stories.  there are some great people around me and God is doing some great stuff in their lives. 

So that’s it for now.  Probably a bit disjointed cause it’s really late and I haven’t slept much.  And I don’t feel like proof reading it now either.  Day 4 is a-comin!  (Actually, it’s technically here I guess.)

Short clip, but enjoy.  I sure did!

Day two is over…here’s what it looked like:

Morning worship with Mark Roach

Dang it…i couldn’t get out of bed.  I’m sure it was great.

Dean Batali

Dean Batali hosted the first session this morning that lasted til lunch.  Dean is a writer in Hollywood who has worked on "That 70’s Show" and "Buffy" as well as some other shows.  Check out his bio to get more info.  As a Christian working on shows like these, you can see under his bio on the re:create blog that he catches some heat from Christians.  What was interesting is that he doesn’t fully disagree.  He says he doesn’t like these shows and in fact sees them as damaging to our culture, however he’d rather be there making some sort of difference rather than not. 

Dean is clearly very passionate about being a missionary in Hollywood as well as the need for us to reclaim the arts as Christians.  he points out that in order for us to make an impact in culture, we need to have somewhat of a voice in an industry that is responsible for shaping our culture.  We need to not throw out our televisions because there’s filth, rather we need to be knowledgeable about what others are watching.  And just about every story out there has a redeeming truth, although you may need to find your way past some of the crap to get to it.  The question becomes, "Where is the line of what is worth sifting through and what isn’t?"  (Great question, by the way.)

Before coming to Revolution I worked for a couple years in the entertainment industry.  Every time I have come to a crossroads in my life I have wrestled between a call to full time ministry and a passion to be a professional artist, rubbing shoulders with other artists who need Jesus, too.  I have several friends who work in Hollywood, many of who I now only have minimal My Space contact with.  Point it, I too have a strong desire to see Christ followers in the field more and nore, despite how difficult it can be, and much of what he had to say resonated deep with me.

Here’s a couple of good quotes from our conversation with Dean (keep in mind these are loose quotes cause I can only type so fast…and besides, I’m not a journalist.  You’ll get the point):

• Go to where the damage to the culture is being done and be a part of damaging that culture so that it may be redeemed or preserved.
• Salt is not meant to preserve or restore something, but rather to slow down the decay.
• “Compromise” is another word Christians need to reclaim.  It isn’t always such a dirty, horrible word.
• We seem to think that unless we’re getting these big victories we’re not being effective, but we can at least help to stop the decay.
• Where is the "Christian" Vagina monologues?  We need to go out into the culture and tell our stories in the arts.  (That one probably sounds a bit odd out of context, but I think you’ll get it.  If not, we can talk in the comments.)
• I like to ask groups, "How many people of you have watched something in the past month in TV or film that offended you?"  Then I’ll ask them, "How many of you prayed for Hollywood after seeing that?"

Good stuff.  Moving on.

Tim Hodge

Just in case you’re wondering, that isn’t him, it’s a picture he drew.  Tim Hodge is an illustrator who has worked with Disney and now with Big Idea.  He came to share with us the basics of storyboarding and how we could use that in our creative projects and meetings.

He had some interesting stuff and some good practical practices to share.  Unfortunately, he was right after lunch and a pretty mellow guy, and that combo made for a difficult time of sitting for a while.  Regardless though, i think I can come away with a couple of good rules to be thinking about in the future when we do video.

As a side note, I love modern technology!  Look at this picture and see how many computers you can find:

Correct answer is 6 (a few of them are tough to find, but they’re there.)  Of course, half of them are probably iChatting and e-mailing.

Dinner

Yup MORE food…and GOOD!!  We had dinner at a place called Saffire.  Cool vibe good food.

And here’s me and Bobby.  Yeah, B squared, Bobby to the second power, Boobbies, whatever.  (Partial credit for name ideas going to John Voelz.)

What’s even crazier?  He is the pastor of Revolution at The Crossing Church.  Coincidence?

Tonight there were two awesome worship artists that played.  Check out a quick clip of Bebo Norman:

After Bebo was Jon Abel.  Jon’s written some great stuff, at least one of which you may have heard Chris Tomlin play, Awesome Is The Lord.

One thing that listening to these guys worship has definitely done is once again inspired me to really want to try writing something again.  I’ve wanted to in the past, but never really written anything cause for some reason it scares me to death.  One way I know I’ve been listening to a great singer/songwriter is it makes me want to go home and pour my own heart out into a song.

Anyway…day two rocked!  now I’m gonna go iChat with my wife and kid, watch last nights episode of 24 online, and go to bed so I don’t miss out on Mac Powell tomorrow morning.

Good News:

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about losing weight.  I’ve even heard some questions and some complaints from some of you that I haven’t posted.  The good news is I’ve been planning on starting up with the dieting again, and I’ll definitely be filling you in.  The bad news…

Bad News:

is I don’t think I’ll be losing any weight this week.

I love the south!

I’ll recap the day later on.  In the meantime, check out the re:create list in the sidebar to see what some other people are sayin.

So tonight we had a great dinner here in town at a church and live music.  A bunch of artists played some new worship songs they’d written and we got CD’s with the songs and chord charts as well as a bunch of CD’s from Word label’s bands. 

There was a songwriters circle of guys playing their songs.  The guys up there were Mark Roach, Michael Farren (Pocket Full Of Rocks), Mike Weaver (Big Daddy Weave), Jason Roy (Building 429), and Adam Agee (Stellar Cart). 

They all did great jobs, but i gotta tell ya, Michael Farren: brotha has got a freakin voice!  loved his songs.  I’ve actually never heard of his band but I’m stoked to check em’ out now.

So I understand that surprises abound during the week at Re:create, and I knew there was a surprise artist tonight.  So the guy introducing talk about this girl who’s been on their label for a while who’s gonna take us back to some hymns.  "ladies and gentlemen, welcome Miss…"

I’m sure I probably broke some copyright law putting that up (based on our earlier copyright streaming seminar).  Please don’t tell on me.  K?

That’s right, "…Amy Grant."  The funny part is, I’m always making fun of Rachel for liking Amy Grant and now I’m sitting here watching her sing like 50 ft. away from me without Rachel.  She was pretty jealous.  I hesitantly admit, though, even as much as I joke about her, she was really good tonight.  I actually even got a bit choked up during some of her worship.  (Dave, I don’t wanna hear it.) 

Sittin in a blogging discussion here in Tennessee.  Got here a little after it started, cause of flight times and all, but stoked to be here!

UPDATE:  It’s over now, time to move on.

It’s been a really long week.  I leave my house in just over 2 hours to catch a plane for Tennessee in 4 hours.  I probably won’t sleep tonight.  hopefully it will help me sleep on the plane.

Ever wanna pretend you are as cool as Jack Bauer?  Wanna feel like you’re ready to bite someones throat, suffocate you brother with a bag, or just kick some serious terrorist butt?  Get everything you need to dress the part here.

I’m all about the "Jack-Pack."  He fits so many goodies in there!  It would be perfect for my laptop…and my gat and GPS satellite super phone, of course.

(Thanks Randy and Will!  now update your blog Randy!!)

I think I mentioned this recently, but life just feels kinda rough lately.  Sometimes I think you just go through those season’s when God doesn’t seem so close and everything feels like an uphill battle.  I hope I’m coming out of it soon, but I’ve definitely felt discouraged more than once in the past few weeks.  Luckily I have the greatest wife in the world (sorry guys, it’s true) to help me through it.

A few nights ago I had a late night at the office.  I got home and her and Caleb were already asleep.  As I get ready to slip into bed I notice a short letter laying in my spot.  I’m not gonna tell you exactly what it said cause it’s really none of your business.  The important part is how much she loves me and encourages me.  She expressed her continuing desire to support me through every season I go through…WE go through.  And best of all, she reminded me of who I am in Christ.  She reminded me of all the qualities she sees in me that reflect who God created me to be.  Man I’m lucky!

Thanks babe.  I love you.