Some of you may have seen the parody videos of amazing guitarists with the sound slightly altered. Well this one is of Lincoln Brewster and the creator has done a genius job of hacking away in beautiful garageband mediocrity (to put it nicely). Phil Sillas and I have been playing this at least once a day to get "inspired." Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
I have uploaded a ton of pictures from the conference (taken by myself and our mighty art director, Mark Reid) to our Flickr site. If you are interested, take a look here. And we don't mind if you download a couple, just keepin' it real =)
A couple of people have asked about the words Matt Redman added to the song "Everlasting God" at the pre-conference. I happened to video it, so you can check it for yourself. It's at the end and it totally amplifies the message in Brenton's song. nice little addition.
Where I lead worship, you can ask just about any of the
members what their favorite part of any activity is, about 90 percent of the
time the answer is music. Yay me. You gotta love that. And the classic part is
that I’m about as hacky as they come on the guitar. The group I play for is
made up of a mixture of college-aged-kids and young adults with disabilities.
And if you want to see “Blessed Be Your Name” sung the way God intended it,
come on out for a visit some Monday night.
This past week I had a couple days away from the magazine
business and headed up to Shaver lake (which is in the middle of California)
with my group. And there is this one guy who is a pretty good friend of mine.
He calls into question the popular use of the term lead worshiper. Actually,
because of the nature of my group, I’ve always kinda had a problem with that
one. It just seems so arrogant. To stand in front of a group and say that I am
the lead worshiper. I just have such a hard time swallowing that. Especially
when I look around and see so many more people who are leading me—kids in wheel
chairs, kids with Down Syndrome, able-bodied young people with arms around the
core members. Any of these people might be the lead worshipers. Maybe the ones
sitting in silence the most.
Of course, I believe that there is a truth to the fact that,
as the leader, what you focus on, is what the congregation will focus on. If
you are standing like a nimrod, pointing to your ear because your in-ear isn’t
working, or if you completely stop playing and because your D string broke on
your Tayolor guitar, well you know what everyone else will be focused on. In
the same way, if you are focused on God… well you get it.
But, still I cant say I’m the lead worshiper.
I see it as a kind of worshiping with one eye open. You HAVE
to be aware of your surroundings when you are leading people. Because you are
not the only one who draws attention to and from God in a service of worship.
One of your roles is to help keep those distractions to a minimum, you do this
in
rehearsals, practice, sound checks, so much so that you are able to freely
worship in a service—you are the worship leader. So because of that, we can’t
just space out. Our role as the leader is to also keep in touch with the lead
worshipers. See where they are headed, be in touch with them. Let them help us
discern the spirit of the moment.
Any way, I asked my friend who uses a wheelchair to get up
and lead with me for one of the songs during a service at camp because he
doesn’t get “on stage” that often (no ramp). The rest of the week all he could
ask anyone was, “Remember when I was leading?” In my mind my response was, “Of
course I remember. How could I forget: you lead me every week.”
David James Duncan: The Brothers K Yes the reference to Dostoevsky is intentional. And this is the first time I ever cared about baseball. Duncan is deep writer whose words fill your senses. (*****)