Immersion Worship

I’m speaking at The Summit in a few weeks, and I was searching for a good video to help illustrate one of my points. I came across this excellent video and thought I would share it.

Hahaha!

Brilliant.

Pre-Service
1. As Long As I Have You (Mark Roach)

Set 1
1. Salvation Is Here (Hillsong United)
2. Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
3. Because of Your Love (Paul Baloche)

Set 2
1. Hungry (Kathryn Scott)
2. You Never Let Go (Matt Redman)

Thoughts
By all accounts, it was one of those mornings that made me appreciate that what we do is hard, but with the right team of people and with God at the center, the work can get done,

Setup was a bit of a drag. There was really only two of us to start with (me our pastor) loading in, then Joe came a few others came, and we finally got back on track. Soundcheck and run through started a bit late, but it was productive. We had to cancel rehearsal this week because of some of the band facing evacuation from their home due to the fires, but everyone brought it this morning and it was sounding tight.

We played ‘As Long As I Have You’ (a kicking song by Mark Roach) as our pre-service opener. This was brand new to everyone, so I was especially pleased with the way the band had learned it and practiced it before this morning. A few time through and it was ready to go. And it rocked. We’ll be doing it as part of the first set next week.

Speaking of first sets, today’s was really good. We did ‘Salvation Is Here’ for the first time in months, and it had a real freshness and renewed energy about it. The rest of the set kept the momentum going and the church was just jumping right from the get go (and actually jumping in a few cases dotted around the room…really good to see).

Scott’s message today was geared towards getting more people volunteering at The Summit. It was a really unique take on the feeding of the 5000 miracle that spoke about God taking what little we had and turning it in to a lot. We’d put some volunteer sign-up sheets in each bulletin, and got loads filled in returned. It’s great to see people catching the passion and fire that is evident at The Summit; it’s pretty contagious.

Subsequently, the second set felt very intense. After the challenging message, there really seemed to be a feeling of an immediate response. The two songs worked really well, and I have to say it; Joe’s face-melting guitar solo on Hungry was just awesome.

It seems that a good chunk of the worshipg community are Mac users, myself included. Perhaps it’s the artistic, creative side in us. Or perhaps it’s that we just know quality when we come across it.

So, for whatever it’s worth, here are my first impressions…

Install.
Easy peasy. Put the DVD in, hit ‘Continue’ a couple of times, restart, and let it do it’s thing. Took about an hour on a MacBook 2.16Ghz Core2Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD. When Install had finished, I was greeted by a ‘Welcome’ video and then System Updater kicked in and downloaded some updates for a few applications. That done, time to explore.

Desktop.
The new dock is stunning. I love the reflective 3D base, and the new Stacks function is just awesome. The blue arrow that indicated active applications has been replaced by a subtle, glowing star that floats under the respective icon. It’s all very smooth. And at the top of the screen, the menu bar has been made opaque, so it takes on the colour qualities of whatever the background image is. Very nice indeed.

Spaces.
Possibly the tool that I will use the most. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a bucket load of applications open and not being able to find the one you want on the desktop. Spaces’ ability to logically organize the applications across multiple desktops and switch between them in a single keystroke is just phenomenal. It’s this kind of thinking that sets Apple light years ahead of Microsoft; innovation with the users’ experience being the focus, rather than innovation for innovation’s sake.

Mail & Safari.
The enhancements to Mail and Safari are what I’ve been waiting for Apple to do, and now I can leave Entourage and Firefox behind. Plus, Safari is lightning fast; launch to displaying my homepage in less than a couple of second. Brilliant.

Time Machine.
A few of my Pro-Windows friends have tried to tell me that it’s just a backup tool, and Windows has had one of those for a decade. Not like this it hasn’t. There are two things that set Time Machine apart from pretty much any other backup tool I’ve ever seen. The first is how easy it is: one click. For life. That’s it. One click to get Time Machine backing up, and you never have to set it or launch it again; everything is automatic. The second is how intuitive it is. Locating and restoring a file from any point in the past is ridiculously easy. Plus it’s finished with the same slick look and feel as the rest of Leopard.

Now, this is where I introduce my one and only complaint. When I checked the OS X website a couple of weeks ago, Apple were pimping Time Machine’s ability to backup to an external drive attached to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (which I use). Then last week, that text disappeared. You see, you can’t do that after all. Which really negates the point of being able to attach an external drive to the AirPort. Still, the fact that they originally said it could be done suggests that they’ll send out a firmware update to the AirPort to introduce that functionality. Until then, I just have to connect it directly to the MacBook.

Conclusion.
What other conclusion can I come to? Leopard rocks.

In response to Alex’s post about funny videos, I thought I’d post this little snippet for your amusement.

Now, I’d like to add a disclaimer here that, yes, I’m laughing at someone else’s misfortune. I’m a jar of clay, get over it. But I’d also like to point at that possibly the individual concerned shouldn’t really be driving, because not only does he look up and see that his car has gone, yet not make any reaction whatsoever, but when the gathering crowd finally convince him that his car just disappeared in to a ditch, he throws the pump hose on to the ground.

One of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a while…

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Those of you who listen to the podcast and have heard the most recent episode will have heard our announcement about REVEAL’s worship night that we’re holding on November 18th. For those of you who don’t listen, you should, but you can read on as well…

Christian and I were talking recently about a common thread running through various conversations we’ve had separately with other worship leaders and pastors in and around So Cal; that God is doing good things in and through our churches. So we couldn’t help but ask the question “If God is moving and working through all these separate churches, how much more would He move if the boy of Christ came together just to worship Him, celebrate Him, exalt Him, and petition Him for breakthrough?” And when this question gets put to other worship leaders and pastors, the response is normally “yeah…someone should do that!”.

That someone is you and us. Me, you, and Christian. That’s right.

Our friends at The Village Church in Irvine have offered to host the event and be a part of it. And Christian and I will be assembling a sort of ’super band’ and embarking on a journey of worship celebrates God from creation to the cross to completion of His perfect plans.

And this, my friend, is an open invitation to you. If you are in the Southern California area on November 18th, get yourself to Irvine that evening; we’re meeting with God. Together. One body, many parts.

When: Sunday, November 18th, 6pm
Where: The Village Church of Irvine
Info: james[at]immersionworship[dot]com

We rock some Delirious?, my monitor stops working, and I don’t want to put God on my schedule…here’s number a dozen.

Thought I’d start a new feature, in a vain attempt to come up with some decent blog content.

My top ten most recent played songs in iTunes:

1. ‘Maiden Voyage’ by Herbie Hancock
2. ‘Turpentine’ by Brandi Carlile
3. ‘Dark Road’ by Annie Lennox
4. ‘You Picked Me’ by A Fine Frenzy
5. ‘Looking for Elvis’ by Patti Scialfa
6. ‘Roda’ by Céu
7. ‘Moon’ by Emily King
8. ‘Happy Being Me’ by Angie Stone
9. ‘Lake Michigan’ by Rogue Wave
10. ‘I Told You So’ by Keith Urban

There’s a prize for the first person who can tell me the connection between all those songs.