friday at the cfni worship conference

if i could have klause kuehn lead worship to start off my day, every day of my life, i’d sign up for it.  really, it just continued the mood from the day before.  kari jobe was also singing, which didn’t hurt.  glorious!

roger hodges spoke about being real in ministry.  he said a lot of good, i’d have added some to it (but then, of course, we’d have gone over the time limit).

bob sorge did the next general session.  i’d heard of him, but didn’t really remember him.  actually, i think i’d heard him somewhere, or maybe an audio or video of him.  i don’t have time to do him justice, suffice it to say i’m going to buy all his books from his merch table!

lunch now and on to some breakout sessions.  i bumped into my daughter emily in the morning session and my wife as she was headed to lunch.  laurie is here teaching a children’s teaching session with connie mckenzie.  have i mentioned that god is awesome?

conference catch-up

i intended to blog the rest of yesterday after i got home last night.  ha!  i had two things interfere with that.  one was that i was dead tired.  the second was that ups delivered my new phone, and ubercool att fuze / htc touch pro.  toys feel neglected if they’re not played with.

so for yesterday, the first breakout session i was at was with gabe allred, the current (as of this semester) worship leader from cfni.  my friend tim hoover is on the worship team and he’s been very excited to work with gabe, so i was looking forward to hearing him.  no disappointment.  ok, i could mention that gabe isn’t yet a “great speaker”.  it didn’t really matter.  everything he said was so close to the heart of god that he could have mumbled and we’d have been blessed.  in fact, before he started he said “let’s pray”, and we did, just each one of us quietly.  i’ve seldom felt god’s presence so strongly.

after that denis campos and kari jobe did a session on songwriting.  it was good.  kari’s a nut, but a very sweet nut.

the night of worship, led by kari jobe was beyond words.  quite literally i don’t know what to say about it.   what do you say about being in god’s throneroom and seeing and hearing things that can’t be described in human language?  on a more human note, daystar filmed the thing and my smiling (or possibly crying) face might be on a small screen near you.

rita springer

just being painfully honest, i haven’t ever really listened to that much of rita springer’s music.  i don’t know why.  it just hasn’t come to my attention that much.  at this moment, however, i have a tremendous admiration and respect for the woman.

she spoke in the second general session at the cfni worship conference.  i cried through half of it.  she was whatever is the opposite of “showy”.  she read almost all of john 11 about lazarus; then just spoke her heart.  she just told about her life and her walk with god.  i loved it.  one of the most inspirational things i’ve heard in a while.  some highlights (quotes are rough):

“sometimes leading worship is like a staring contest with people” (i laughed out loud)

“my job as a worship leader is to make people jealous for what i’ve got”

“when jesus wept [about lazarus] it was in preparation.  he knew the next stone that would be rolled away would be his”

“[a day is coming when the world will say to the church] give us that sound or else we die”

this wasn’t directly from something she said, but the lord was saying it to me as she was speaking:  “what god is calling people to is to go beyond what we think of as the point of no return.  it’s the call he gave to lazarus, to die so that god can be glorified in his resurrection (john 11:4)”

cfni worship conference

i’m at the annual christ for the nations worship conference today (thursday) through saturday.  our first speaker, robert madu, was stinkin awsome!  it was from romans 12 about “who you’re plugged in to”.  he’s an excellent preacher, fun to listen to and solid word.  so looking forward to the rest of the day.

igniting rowlette

i played with the aaron valentine band at the rowlette high school fca’s “ignite” meeting last night.  they (the fca folks) were great!  first, i had more guys being genuinely helpful than any load-in ever!  i was supplying the sound system, and this can be a 2 hour setup job, but  we had everything in place in about 20 minutes.  anthony mossier was the nicest guy to work with and had obviously spend a lot of time organizing the event.  then the whole group was a blast to play for.

ok, the down side.  our lead guitar guy brent forgot about the show.  and forgot to bring his cell phone.  and didn’t show up.  at all.  i can’t tell you how weird that was.  we’d get to part of a song where he’s supposed to be playing something and we’d just look at each other and go on.  i was a little stressed the first two songs, but relaxed after that.  scott, our sound guy, told me later i was playing way too loud.  my monitor mix was also way way too loud.  the dynamics are totally different w/o electric guitar.  somehow we made it through.  i was surprised at how relatively well it went.

sound system worked nicely.  i needed (and don’t have) a compressor on the mic used by the speaker.  he was good about keeping it close to his mouth, but punctuated his message with shouts that consistently peaked out my board.  so i’ll add a dbx 1046 compressor to my wish list, somewhere after the pair of jbl mrx515 tops.

brentabulous

spent last night (11:30 ’till almost 4:00) with brent tracking some electric guitar.  it’s for the aaron valentine band “find us here” project which should be out about the beginning of summer.  brent takes a different approach to guitar than i do and i always find it interesting. 

he did discover something interesting that i didn’t know either.  when you hold your foot on a boss delay pedal it layers what you’re playing on top of the previous “echo”.  kinda cool.

we ended up doing one piece in little chunks, so i’m going to spend some time tonight trying to glue it all together.

woulda, coulda

wish i’d been at the mxpx show.  wish i’d seen dismas last weekend.

worthy

my friend dwayne was playing bass at a christ for the nations prayer meeting last night.  it was after the chapel service and went from about 9:30 to almost 11:00 in the gordon lindsey prayer room.  tim, another friend, was leading on keyboard.  the music when on all the way through and from time to time someone came up with a prayer.  prayer was kind of general with some for the school and a some for holiness and christ-leading.

there was a girl singing, i think named megan (gak, i know almost as many megans as laurens, and there are altogether too many ways to spell meagan-megan-meaghan-meghan) who had a glorious voice.  i didn’t get to meet her (cfni students had to run as we finished because of 11:00 curfew), but she would be a great special guest sometime with the aaron valentine band.

anyway, they did the worthy chorus from alabaster jar for a long time and it was in my head the rest of the night (not a bad thing since we’ll be singing it for eternity).

find us here – long day

tracking from about 2 in the afternoon ’till 2 in the morning on the find us here project.  then ihop of course. 

got jordan’s drums on the 3 tunes that needed them, plus aaron’s guitar and vocals on all or most places we needed it.  need some brent time for electric guitar and i still need to do bass on a couple things. 

it’s getting close, and we’re all pretty excited cause it’s sounding great!  our tunes mostly run 5 or 6 minutes so it’ll be a 9 song cd with 45 minutes of music.  haven’t thought too much about a cd release party – i’d like to open for someone at live at mokah

we’re looking for weekend retreat gigs in north texas or oklahoma, btw

studio time

tomorrow with the aaron valentine band.  trying to wrap up as much tracking as possible for our “find us here” project.