My Worship Revolution

A couple times a year I give designing a shot of my own.  We’re handing out a flyer at Caroling On The Wharf to advertise our Christmas Eve service as well as our New Years Series.  Used the same design as last year for our Christmas Eve candlelight service, but threw together a design for our January/February series using some background images Ed had grabbed for the branding.

I think it actually came out alright.  Better than some in the past in my opinion.  Take a look:

Any tips from you hot designers out there to make it better next time?

As a sidenote about that series, one of the things I’m really looking forward to is bring our friends Rex and Eve Johnson up here to do a marriage seminar at our church on Valentines weekend.  Unfortunately I might not be able to take part cause we should have a new baby that week, but if you are in Santa Cruz you wanna make it over for this.  They’re great!

I have a good excuse.

I was petty stoked about a creative element we added this past week.  We talked about advertising and the stock that it holds in todays consumeristic culture.  During the message, Rae Albrecht covered the cross with a collage of advertisements.  We pointed out that this is what our culture has done at Christmas, covered the cross of Jesus with consumerism and advertisements.  During the worship time after the message, we invited people to respond y removing the ads from the cross as a commitment to uncover the cross during this advent season.  It went really well and there were lots of people who responded that I don’t typically see get out of their seat to respond.

Thanks again to the brother-in-law Joel for designing a sweet mailer for our Caroling On The Wharf event.  Check it out:

This morning my wife is at a Secret Sister brunch while I watch Caleb and our youth pastor's daughter.

I love those 2 signs next to each other.  Crackin me up.
As Ryan said, only in Santa Cruz!

Sunday night we hosted a screening of the movie What Would Jesus Buy as a kickoff to our Advent Conspiracy series.  It is not a “Christian” movie.  It is a docu-comedy about reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a protest tour to save Christmas from the shopocalypse.

We made the screening free, and invited people to give toward Africa Oasis Project instead, one of our projects for this Advent Conspiracy.  The turnout, wasn’t huge, but it was decent with probably around 100 people showing up.   Nobody got an official count.  The biggest win was the percentage of people with no connection at all to our church.  It was cool to make a contact with a bunch of people from our community and to make available to them some brochures about Advent Conspiracy.  We also managed to raise almost $200 toward the building of wells in Africa.

Now for the non-win part.  You wanna keep reading for this part.  Although consider this the parental advisory warning.  If you are a youngin, stop reading. 

I bought the movie a few months back to watch and see if we thought it would be a good idea to screen.  Rachel and I watched the movie together, and while there were some issues presented that we might not particularly choose to push, it definitely reflected some positive values that are particularly important to people in our community.  It brought some issues to the forefront, and like any good piece of art, forces you to really think about them.  Some of the depictions were a bit of a stretch perhaps for our people, but we felt it was appropriate to show.  There was a “crap” and a “damn” in there which we figured we could handle.

Fast forward to the screening.  The company we licensed the movie from has sent our theatrical DVD, it is working well, and we are in business.  I’m sitting down into my seat after checking on something in the lobby part way into the movie.  As I’m sitting down we are at a scene where Rev. Billy is inside a Starbucks protesting.  All of a sudden I hear from one of the patrons in the Starbucks,

(Feel free to read that sentence again, but yes, you probably read it correctly the first time!)

My heart instantly sunk like a rock in my chest.  I don’t know if it really happened, but I swear I heard an audible reaction from the audience and I felt a physical reaction in my chest that lasted a good 10 minutes at least.  The thoughts in my head:

• I do NOT remember hearing that either of the 2 times I watched this movie!
• This movie is rated PG.  How in the world could it have that word in it?
• I can already see our email inbox filling up.

Well, luckily Ed and Julie were awesome about it and totally understanding.  He just said, “Don’t worry.  We’ll get through it.”

I went home afterward and immediately went to that part of the movie in my my copy.  Sure enough, the word is edited out in the copy they released on DVD.  You can tell what he says, but the word is definitely dropped out.

Well, the happy ending (I hope it’s the ending anyway!) is this.  First of all, no emails.  Not a single one.  Second, I personally emailed everyone I could think if who had kids there to apologize for the mishap and explain what happened.  I got a response from a couple of the people and it was really positive.  The overall consensus seemed to be, yeah we were surprised by that.  But unfortunately my kids have heard that word before, and they really came away from the movie made aware of some important issues.  One parent shared that they had some conversations since then that they never would have had and they were glad we had showed the film.

So there ya have it.  I thought there was really no need to watch the whole movie a third time.  But apparently I was wrong.  I was definitely mortified to hear that happen, but even with that, I think it turned out to be a positive experience with some good themes, some good connection, and some money given to make a difference in Africa.

But let’s please not have a repeat of that faux pas ever again!

I've said for a while now that there are two things that I pretty much hate the existence of today.
Divorce and cancer.  I've seen friends and family seriously thrashed by both, and I believe they grieve God.

Some of you may have already heard the story about Randy Miller, the drummer for a band called The Myriad.
If not check out this short video:

Randy is close friend of my friend Rich.
It's one thing to hear about some guy in a band with cancer.  It's another to be separated by 2 degrees and to have a friend who is way close to this family sharing with me the things they are going through.  Rich flew up to Redding today to be with Randy's family for a while.

So you are now only separated by 3 degrees.  That's way better than your seven degrees to Kevin Bacon.  Hopefully it's enough to make you care just a little bit more.

This Christmas there are plenty of "causes" to give to, and to care about.  Some that I'll be posting here on this blog.  Consider this one in the mix.  If nothing else, let's be praying for Randy.  He is a father and a husband.  This is something that could happen to any of us.  Kinda sobering.

I'm not really the greatest at setting aside the time I should to pray for others and to pray for issues.  I'm going to commit to remembering to pray for Randy and his family at the start of every day this holiday season.  Even if you can't contribute financially, you can make a huge difference by praying for the guy.

Will you pray for him with me?

OK, blog catch up week.
My Worship Revolution needs some serious love and attention, and I’m gonna try and make it happen this week.  though it may be hard as we put together this years Caroling On The Wharf event.
But it will all begin with a recap of Sunday.  Have slacked off on the confessionals, so I’ll ease back in with text to start.

Also, when you’re done here, swing by “Sunday Setlists” to see what some other worship leaders are playing.

This weekend we kicked off Advent Conspiracy.
We really wanted to mix things up and get back in the swing of some creativity with this series, so as you can see, we totally switched up our seating.  The pic is from when we were setting up.  I didn’t manage to get any shots during the gathering.  Maybe next week.  We set up all the chairs in more of a semi-circle with the cross standing right in the front in the center.  I love sitting in a more intimate arrangement where we can actually see each other, and I also love that with the band behind the cross it seems to take a little focus off of us being center stage and puts it where it belongs.

We also hung and 8’x8′ panel with the AC logo on it up on the stage.  Came out great!  We set up some dividers at the back of the room to close it in some, draped them in red fabric, put the communion stations back there, and threw up some panels with another version of the logo oversprayed on them.  The last thing we added was a little visual to remind us as we enter this series what we have done to Christmas.  At the foot of the cross was a manger and in it were boxes for a Wii and an X-box 360.

Family was up for T.G. so my brother-in-law Tim joined me on electric guitar.  love having him!  We opened up with Fee’s new version of Joy To The World called All Creation Sing.  I hate Christmas music, so I love when we can get a new spin on it.  This is a good one.  Check it out.  We went into a special kids time where Ed read them some of The Grinch before they went to Sunday School.  That was kinda the theme for the morning.  As greeting came to a close we did a quick rendition of Sixpence’s “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”  Lori did a great job singing it.  Check out the rest of the setlist below:

All Creation Sing – Steve Fee [free download here]

You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch – Sixpence None The Richer

How He Loves Us
Come Let Us Adore Him (just the chorus with a kinda drone underneath)
The Wonderful Cross
Our God Saves
My Savior Lives

Reflections: It was a fun service to open up the series.  The storytime with the kids didn’t go quite as well as we expected I think, but that will happen on occasion when you take a risk and do something different.  I have to say, for me, the worship time was pretty freaking awesome.  Seeing people really respond, stepping up to the cross, and really engaging moved me to tears.  It was a place I haven’t personally been in worship in a while, and that felt pretty good.  Also, How He Loves Us is just a powerful freaking song and I love it!

Be sure to come back tomorrow for the Movie Confessional.  Sunday night we screened What Would Jesus Buy.  I questioned whether or not to share about that one, but I will.
You don’t wanna miss that story.

How was your Sunday?

Family just arrived a few hours ago for the weekend.

For those of you that missed the Twitter updates, I was unable to participate in the San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island a few weeks ago cause my back was too jacked up.
We had already paid for a hotel room in Frisco, so we took the night away and stopped by the triathlon to see Dan and to pick up my bag including t-shirt.
Thus, here is the t-shirt that cost me about $145:

I went to the Dr. afterward and was prescribed physical therapy.
So I basically get my own personal trainer for the next month at COAST rehab.
Kinda nice.
The goal is to strengthen my core to prevent further injury.

We did get an x-ray done which I went over with the Dr. the other day.
There’s a lot of “bony growth” in my lower back.
In his words, more than he would expect for a 29 year old.
Consistent with a facet issue which doc thinks it is, rather than a disc.
So I guess my back has some extra years on me!

That’s it.  Random post to share my t-shirt, my back, and the weakness of my core.
And now I’m itchin to do my first triathlon of the next season!

A little behind on blogs this week.  Saw this video this morning at Los' blog and MMI and I had to repost it.
So true!  And I was laughing so loud!
Everyone need to take 4 minutes and 12 seconds and check this out:

What is the most ridiculous thing you've heard someone complain about recently?