Immersion Worship

Ten points to the first person to tell me what movie this post’s title comes from.

Anyway, last night was Cornerstone, and we rocked mightily. It wasn’t the biggest crowd on the planet, and frankly the sound on stage sucked (I actually couldn’t hear a thing that I was playing), but there aren’t many thing I enjoy more than just rocking out with a good band. Corey’s keyboard solo on ‘Rock of My Salvation’ was just awesome as well. I believe about 200 CDs were given away as well, so that’s cool. I feel very blessed to be able to play an instrument, and play alongside other incredibly talented musicians.

I’m playing again tonight at Canyon Hills, but right now I’m wiped. I have that ‘after gig’ feeling in my legs, like I’ve just run a marathon. Apparently leaping around on stage isn’t as kind to me at 29 as it was when was 19. Yikes. So this morning I’m vegging out on my sofa watching English Premier League soccer. And you know that there is no game more beautiful than soccer. But I was looking at a picture earlier this morning that we have stuck on our refridgerator; it’s a picture of the boy in Senegal that we sponsor. I feel very blessed to be able to take a day off each week and not have to walk a mile for water, but instead relax in my home and enjoy some creature comforts like watching footie on TV.

And so this morning, as I hear my amazing, incredible wife in the kitchen making breakfast, I feel blessed beyond measure. Thank you, God.

Three days late, but here it is. And no, I’m not drag racing the Hummer that’s next to me…

On any given day, I’m normally in bed by about 10:00pm, dead to the world and dreaming. However, this evening I had a few sips of a caffeinated drink, and for a man who lives a relatively caffeine-free life, it’s put me over the edge. It’s a little after midnight and I am wide awake. Yippeekaiyay.

This evening I headed south to Christian’s ‘hood to jam with him, Danny, Corey, and Joey. The five of us comprise The Christian Steffen Band (or as we like to call ourselves, Christian Steffen and The Dave Matthews Band), and we were rehearsing for an upcoming gig. Upcoming as in this Friday.

This Friday we are playing at the Cornerstone festival right here in OC. I guess this is a pretty big festival and has been going since forever in Chicago, and this year they’re trying out the west coast for some love. Anyway, we’re on at 5:30pm on Friday if you’re going. Come and say hi.

In other news, I found a bass player for this Sunday. Major shout out to Joe from Rock Community Church in Yorba Linda. Cheers Joe!

Right then…I guess I’d better go and find some way to be sleepy.

Disagreement in ministry is always a hard issue to tackle. However, thanks to my friend Taffy, I’ve learned the quickest, easiest, and fairest way of resolving conflict. Take a look:

Never again will I have to suffer the internal pain and anguish that go along with disagreement and conflict in my worship ministry. I can just grab my ankle, hop around on one leg, and it’s all dealt with peacefully.

By the way, does anybody have any clue what’s going on there?

David Crowder’s new offering is with us. And it’s awesome. You need to hear it. Now.

A few days ago I received the latest edition of Worship Leader Magazine in the mail. I always look forward to it for two reasons; the magazine is mostly full of good thoughts, articles, discussions and insights that I can usually draw something useful from, and the accompanying Song Discovery CD has been a fairly good resource for finding new music.

Not so this month.

I’ve sat and listened to the September 2007 CD a few times this morning and I’m disappointed at it’s content. It’s not that there isn’t good variation of style, or that it isn’t full of songs of truth; it’s just that it doesn’t have any good songs on it.

I’m not sure if this is the CD for which Christian sat on the selection panel for, but if the description he gave to me of how the selection experience was is accurate, then I think possibly it is.

I don’t wish to come across as complaining, but where are all the good songs? There are a couple of tracks that half-stand-out above the rest - namely ‘Our God Saves’ (Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown) and ‘Water’ (Pocket Full of Rocks). If this is the top 13, how bad were the rejects? Or, even more tragically, what if the rejects were excellent and were denied this excellent opportunity of being thrown to the masses?

Now that I’ve been negative, I’ll give Song Discovery two props:

Song Discovery #61 - “As Long As I Have You” by Mark Roach
Song Discovery #62 - “All Creation Sings” by Overflow

This video was shot a couple of weeks ago at church and played today to promote serving opportunities at The Summit. Just another reason why I’m in awe of our incredible tech team.




Go and check out Los’s Creative Chaos #9!

Set 1
1. Happy Day (Tim Hughes)
2. Because of Your Love (Paul Baloche)

Set 2
1. Whole World In His Hands (Tim Hughes)
2. All Of My Days (Christian Steffen)

Thoughts

As I noted in my post earlier today, it started off as a tough morning. Set Up was just brutal as we were undermanned. Then circumstances dictated that we’d have no band, so had to rewrite the set list and switch things up to use a stripped down set. Then God dealt with my attitude and, as always happens when I get out of the way let Him take control, the morning turned out awesome.

Between ‘Happy Day’ and ‘Because of Your Love’, I shared about God’s dealing with me just a couple of hours before service, and used Psalm 139 as an example of how God is interested in the state of our hearts, not who and what is on a stage, and it seemed to collectively encourage the congregation to see past the lack of band and production and all the other stuff that we normally have on a Sunday, and just lift an honest expression of worship to Him.

Scott preached an incredible message on dealing with broken dreams, and we followed it with ‘Whole World In His Hands’, which gave an incredible opportunity to respond in worship. Then we followed it with ‘All of My Days’ a song that my friend

It’s 9:01 on Sunday Morning. I would normally be about to start soundcheck and pre-service runthrough. Unfortunately, because of various vacations and illnesses, I’m without a band, so I’m having to make last minute changes to the set and get ready for a ’stripped down’ service - just me and Joel; one guitar and one djembe.

And I’m forcing this time out upon myself because I need to take a few minutes to get my attitude right. I’m reminded by way of a song I can hear playing in the background that none of the frills really matter anyway. The song playing is “All We Need Is You” from the Passion ‘06 CD. It’s true; all we need is Him.

However frustrated I get, it’s these moments in ministry that are the most shaping. They make me realize that without Jesus, none of this matters. I could have all the musicians in the world at my disposal, and it doesn’t mean jack without Jesus. However, with Jesus, all I need is a heart to worship and a desire to see Him lifted up. Everything else pales in comparison.

Time to go and tune my guitar. Catch you later…

So it looks like I made the move over to WordPress fairly successfully. Still got to port over my comments from Haloscan and get my links and blogroll in order, but otherwise it’s looking not too shabby.

My name is James and I am a WordPresser.

EDIT: I think I have my blogroll complete. If I’ve missed you, or if you link to me and I don’t yet link back, leave me a comment and I’ll take care of it.

Also, the RSS feed is up and running on the new server. If you were subscribed on the old feed, you’ll need to change to the new feed address.

Summit Team - You’ll see you have a login in the top right corner; all your resources, set lists, mp3s, and chord charts can be found there.