I should have started this series of posts about a month ago when we went to see The Dan Band, but I didn’t.  Oh well.  So I will start it now on the second post!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI]

When we first moved to California my wife was looking through some job postings and found a position at ESPN as some sort of event coordinator.  Of course I really tried to talk her into interviewing, but she decided it wasn’t for her.  Are you kidding me?  Do you know how many free sporting events she could get me into?!  Well, that was selfish me talking and good husband me didn’t push it on her.  Then she got her job at the House Of Blues.  Awesome.  Now instead of all the sporting events, we get into a ton of concerts!  Sweet.

Last night we got to enjoy seeing and hearing OK Go (yes, Tatum, the band).  They were great.  We got there a little late so we didn’t get to get up front but that was fine because we found a great spot in the upstairs with a great view right behind a lady who thought it would be a great idea to bring her binoculars so she could see the band up REAL close.  That was a smart move because we were at least…well maybe 100 feet away from the stage.  But she was the real fan.  We were apparently just fakers because when the confetti started flying (which we were close enough to have land on us) the binocular lady was trying desperately to catch the pieces.  She did succeed catching a few and they went excitedly directly into her purse.  I really don’t know what you do with random pieces of confetti/strips of colorful paper.  Good times.  Guess I should have been trying to get as much as I could.

Highlights of the show – OK Go took a brief break between songs and loaded out a table and about 20 handbells.  They did a whole song with just the handbells and voices.  Outstanding.  Watch for their new album!  I liked the new stuff a lot!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbdbVhBGETQ]

As I write this I realize that it is pretty condemning of me, but its on my mind so I think I will write it anyway.  Today I did something that I don’t normally do.  After I did it, I realized how often (or more like how seldom) I do this.  I actually picked up the phone to call one of my best friends to see how he and his preggo wife are doing.  Yeah.  Unfortunately, I am a terrible friend and I don’t do that.  I don’t know why that is.  I really do wanna know what is going on, but for some stupid reason, I don’t just pick up the phone and call.  Like I said, I’m a awful friend.  I don’t call those that I care about near enough.  Yes I call my family (probably still not enough, but at least I do) but unless they call me, I tend to not call everyone else that I love.  

Wow.  Even as I write this I am realizing even more how bad this is.  But for some reason today I realized that I’m a complete tool and decided to break my streak of crappy friending.  So I called Taylor.  Got to talk to him for a good while.  Got to catch up on his wife and help them add up how many weeks along she is.  Got to hear the news about the family.  Got an accurate count on the number of wiener dogs that are running around his dad’s house.  Got caught up with his sisters and mom.  Good stuff.  Now I know how to pray for them better instead of waiting for him to call me.  It was good.

I don’t believe in New Years resolutions so I don’t do them.  Don’t get me wrong.  This isn’t one.  I just wanna get better at it.  If it was a NYr then I would have to wait until the beginning of next year to start it (don’t get me going on this).  Anyway, I had plans to call Jason (another one of my best friends) today as well, but my wife got home and I got distracted.  I always get distracted when she is around.  Makes it kinda hard to concentrate on things.  But that’s ok because I like that.  Back to what I was saying.  Jason is still next.  It may not be tomorrow, but it will be soon.  So, I wanna get into a better habit of keeping in touch with the ones that I care about.  Now, if I don’t call you, please don’t take that as me not caring about you.  I probably just dropped back into being a sucky friend again.  My apologies to all of you that I love so much and just don’t call enough!  I really do love you!

Just in case you happen to be curious, I am listening to Standing Outside Of A Broken Telephone – Primitive Radio Gods – Rocket.  No it actually has nothing to do with this post, but I thought it might be interesting to read back later on.  Wait.  It just changed to Shattered (Turn The Car Around) – O.A.R. – All Sides.

It’s crazy how good God is to us. I mean I was a part of LifeChurch.tv for probably 7 years and I don’t know how many times I said the “God is good all the time thing” and really believe it, but sometimes He just does more than we expect. We had great stuff going for a while in Fort Worth, but at the be change was needed! God knew that. He had something waaaaay better than Texas planned for us. I’m sure those of you that read my blog already know our story, but just in case you don’t, God prepared us and brought us out to sunny California! Pretty sweet right? Well He didn’t stop there. He put us in a great city and condo right by the beach, gave us some great new friends, provided us both with what seem to be great jobs, and keeps blowing us away.

I know. I’m sorry. I’m really not bragging. Just celebrating and thankful for the blessings that He has given us and for the season that we are in. He knows we needed it soooooo bad. I just started thinking about all this again this afternoon while I was out surfing and a pod of dolphins swam by. There had to be at least 10 of them! So freakin’ cool. Unfortunately I don’t have an iPhone yet and they haven’t invented the waterproof version (that I know of) so I didn’t get a picture to show you here or on Twitter, but still. You can imagine!

Anyway, thank you to all of you that know all the crazy details of the past couple years and have been so supportive an loving and have prayed for us! I am not sure we could ever tell you enough.

Well, I think I have officially moved to WordPress.  I know the site isn’t perfect and my page is busy/boring and I don’t have my cool palm trees anymore, but there are some other things that I can do here that I couldn’t before.  As you may have noticed I have a couple other pages at the top that you can choose to go to that have been more or less a dream of mine to do.  One of the things that I love to do is help others in their ministries.  Obviously, the music side of that is the easiest thing for me to help with, but still.  There is a church in Amarillo that I have had the chance to help with switching to multiple sites and using a click track and Pro Tools.  That stuff is a blast to me.  

So for those of you that are interested, I am hoping to continue using the other pages on this blog as a tool for other worship leaders.  The more input we have there the better it would be for all of us.  The page Setlists is a page that we can use to share the songs that we are doing and that we like (you don’t have to be a worship leader to give input).  The churches around me aren’t my competition they are my team.  Let’s work together and share some of the basic stuff!  The page Worship Resources at the moment is just a list of the songs that I could email out to someone that needs one of those songs chorded for them or is in a hurry.  I am not sure yet, but hopefully I can figure out a way to just upload stuff to the page itself and cut out the emailing.  But my vision for that page is that we can share some of the actual resources that way.  Maybe just a way of connecting us there.  Who knows.  But its all the start of a vision that I believe could make us better worship leaders and help us realize that we are a team and not competition.

As you may already know, I am a worship pastor.  One of my favorite things about working for LifeChurch.tv as a worship pastor is that I have the freedom to play what I want.  Of course, what songs go over well, songs that are rather new, songs that are singable, etc. goes into it as well, but I still get to choose.  That is great.  But one of the things that I think every church and worship pastor deals with is the question of how to get people to engage in the music we are doing.  Several of the things that I think help are songs that are singable, understandable, catchy, powerful, familiar as well as a band that believes what they are playing and singing.  Obviously as a worship pastor, this is something that we always strive for.  What are your thoughts?  

This will be a shorter post, but I really just wanted to brag on my band today.  I doubt that any of them read this, but I just wanted to say how awesome they are.  Not only are they awesome musicians, but they are studs too.  We just had a gig out at the Naval base for the 56th Brigade and the band rocked.  They signed on to this as a micro mission for the soldiers and their families and played in 105 degree Texas sun and heat with no shade whatsoever.  Not only that but they have been going at it since 8:00 this morning!  That’s really all I have.  They are amazing.  I love them.