Well, I’m excited!  This will definitely be the biggest show that I have played at in a while.  I will have the privilege of playing with some awesome guys on May 8: A pretty Rockin Band on the BEC Recording label called Falling Up—You may have heard of them ;  ).  Also, my brother Josiah and my buddies from The REEL will be playing.  Curtis, my friend that got married 2 posts ago is one of those guys.  

So, pretty great right!?  I’m looking forward to it.  So come on out Nor-Cal Friends!  

I guess they’re selling tickets online at Club Retro if you are interested in seeing the show.  6:30, May 8th, Club Retro, in Orangevale, CA.  It should be pretty great.

What a great Sunday. It started out with a great time of worship at Bayside. That evening, heading back to Rocklin, we kicked off the first night of Origin at It’s A Grind coffee. And it was amazing! I have no words. It was definitely a God night and He is going to do amazing things there. Can’t wait to see what happens. If you can remember to pray for us that would be rad. I will post more as the weeks go on. For now, here are the songs I lead today. Cheers!

Bayside Set

Everlasting God – Brenton Brown
Your Love is Deeper – Phil Wickham
At the Foot of the Cross – Kathryn Scott
Salvation is Here – Joel Houston

Origin Set

1st Set
As We Gather – Mike Fay & Tom Coomes
Where We Belong-Reuben Morgan
Blessed Be the Name – Matt Redman
Mighty to Save – Reuben Morgan

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Everlasting God – Brenton Brown

2nd Set
Remedy – David Crowder
Nails – Richard Cimino
Take My Heart – Sean Cimino & Phil Wickham

Bringing Glory to the name of Jesus is a ridiculously great thing that we get to do as the Church.  We live in a broken world.  People all around us are meant to be worshiping God and they aren’t.  John Piper said in the Opening lines of a book called “Let the Nations be Glad” that, “Missions exist because worship doesn’t.”  In other words, the reason why the church is on mission is so that—by God’s Grace—he will use us to draw everyone to worship the true and living God.  When we meet as the Body of Christ, we are engaging in a redeeming act in our City because we are making such a clear proclamation with our loud voices (hopefully they are loud!) that the name of Jesus is great.  When people see us doing what we were meant to do it is a chance that they too might come to do what they were created for as well.  And thus, we worshiped, and these were the tunes that we sang:

Bayside:

Happy Day—Tim Hughes

Blessed Be the Name—Matt Redman

From the Inside Out—Joel Houston/Hillsong United

Majestic—Lincoln Brewster

Hosanna—Brooke Faser/Hillsong United

Origin:

1^st Set

Jesus Draw Me Close—Rick Founds

Because of Your Cross—Phil Wickham

The Stand—Joel Houston/Hillsong United

Hallelujah Jesus—Evan Wickham

2^nd Set

Where We Belong—Reuben Morgan/Hillsong

Blessed Be Your Name—Matt Redman

Take My Life—Phil Wickham/Sean Cimino 

   

iPhone pic of Curtis & Emily, originally uploaded by Elijah Stephen crematory fly ep mp3 .

You: How was your weekend?

Me: It was lovely… Thanks for asking : )

Me: It was long though!

You: Oh really?  Why was it long?

Me:  Well, let me tell you:

It began Friday night. Apparently Friday night was stinking amazing because I didn’t end it until about 4:00AM when I finally let myself go to bed. Ok, I lied. I hung out with my friends, ate some frozen yogurt, and went home around 11:45 where I intended to fall asleep immediately and couldn’t. 7:00AM came up very quickly (actually, it took exactly 3 hours to get there, but you know what I mean).

I got 3 hours of sleep and then Celest and I headed to Emily and Curtis’ wedding (Rad people and friends for sure). We did the photography. It was great! But it was long. We shot from 8:30 in the morning until 8:30 that night. All told we captured about 1000 images. A lot of shooting!

I slept really ridiculously well that night.

Today was Sunday and we worshiped with our fellow believers in Placerville and Rocklin and were blessed for sure. A thanks to Nate Kannady for drumming with me today—he was fantastic.

So there it is! That’s pretty much my whole weekend in a few big chunks. How was your weekend? I told you about mine; tell me about yours. Any excitement?

    

Worship, originally uploaded by Celestial Photography.

Hmm… what to say? Right now, I could blog about American Idol and how I really like Adam but wish that he modernized his amazing 80’s goodness. I could also blog about a really terrific conversation that I had with a barista who told me way more than I needed to know about the eccentric variety of customers that she gets in a given day. Apparently, there are some fascinating people that come through coffee shops. Or I could tell you all about how cute my son is and how even though he is sick, he is sweet and affectionate and even surprisingly energetic (much bigger story attached to that last part). But none of that was most important or impacting today.

Actually, the thing that stood out most in my day was a little passage of familiarity in the Gospel of John. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all day—even though I have read it 100 times before.

You remember the story. A follower of Jesus named Mary (Martha and Lazarus’ sister) is so in awe of Jesus that she takes a bottle of fragrance that is worth a years salary and pours it on Jesus’ feet and wipes it with her hair. A massive act of worship! Could you imagine? And, you remember, the disciples (specifically Judas) were upset about it. But Jesus was not, and so Mary’s worship continued.

The details of this story are beautiful. I love that it’s a fragrance that Mary offers. The Bible depicts the prayers of the Saints as sweet smelling incense. The scent filled the room. The scent lingered in the room. Not only did it linger in the room, it lingered on Jesus as he went from that place. But the most interesting thing to me is that, as Mary moved from that moment the worship that she had offered went with her as she went about her day. She was potent. From place to place she could have gone, and as she moved from one room to the next what she had done would have been detected by all who she passed by. That’s what real worship does!

There is something different about one that worships—at least there should be. You can’t have an authentic encounter with the savior without getting some of what you’ve given on yourself. That’s where I want to live. May we all live there, walking with the sweet smell of worship stuck to our every interaction and encounter so that we can also be a blessing to the world.  Is it On You?

I hate exercising!  It’s annoying.  I want the pounds on my body to mysteriously vanish, and the muscles to magically get bigger.  But I want this to happen without aggravating exertion.  Do you know what I’m talking about?! 

Strangely enough, some of you don’t know what I’m talking about.  You know who you are—you lovers of fitness.  You people with your sleeveless t-shirts showing off what you have accomplished in the upper-arm-region.  Whatever.

Not-the-less, I have started trying to be so disciplined.

I love being a parent because it means that I get to utilize the childcare feature of my gym.  It means that I get to take 4 to 6 months off of gym-going and then get completely busted when I sign my kids in and the attendant recalls the file: “Hmm… October 2008 was your last visit.  I see we have taken a little bit of time off have we?”  I have no response.  I feign something about busyness just before wishing that I had made something up about how I had been out of town on a massive vacation where I had so much activity that the gym wasn’t even necessary.  I was wearing a big sweater so she wouldn’t even notice that I had no muscle tone to back up my claims.  But busyness is where it stayed.

So now I am back.  I’m giving the old work out routine another go.  I have to prove to the childcare person that I’m not a slacker.  ;  )  I will be super awesomely in no time.  What about you?  Fit and with it, or vacationing?

Hmm… I just noticed striking similarities between my exercising and blogging habits.  Weird!

Well today was beautiful.  Obviously it was Easter and that is beautiful.  But it was also beautiful because I had the privilege of leading 4 services at 3 different churches in corporate worship with 100’s of people that love Jesus. 

It began with a sunrise service at Calvary Chapel of Auburn with Pastor Greg Denham.  With a 5:15 AM!!! sound-check, it was definitely the earliest service that I have ever been to—let alone played at!  And it was freezing!  My 3 layers might as well have been a swimsuit because I was an ice block.  Not-the-less!  The time of worship was completely blessed and it was quite a sight to see so many people outside, besting the cold, to worship the risen Savior at Placer High School Stadium in Auburn.  We Sang:

How Great is Our God—Chris Tomlin

Mighty To Save—Reuben Morgan

Lord I Give You My Heart—Reuben Morgan     

Next I was off to Placerville to play at and 9:00 and 10:45 service at Bayside Church.  First order of Business was to pick up the drummer (I find that picking up drummers and driving them yourself is the best way to insure that they are at sound-check at the same time that you are).  Wayne Hamilton—my broseph-n-law—drummed with us in Placerville today and he was stinkn fantastic.  Both services were wonderful.  We sang:

All Because of Jesus—Steve Fee

Salvation is Here—Joel Houston/Hillsong United

Mighty To Save—Reuben Morgan

Everlasting God—Brenton Brown

True Love—Phil Wickham      

Next, I was heading back to Rocklin for Origin.  This was Origin’s first Easter service.  We weren’t quite sure what to expect out of an Easter service on a Sunday night but we had a pretty packed night.  Actually, all the services today were very well attended.  As were yours I’m sure.  Apparently people are into this Easter thing.  Before I tell you what we sang I want to preface it by telling you that Origin didn’t have a Good Friday service so Pastor Mark decided to begin the service with the crucifixion in order to build into the resurrection in the second half.  The night began with the reading of the crucifixion account, 2 songs, followed by the reading of the resurrection account.  The moment was felt for sure.  The normal Origin flow continued after Pastor Mark’s comments on the reading with community time and his message.  We ended with about 25 minutes of worship.  We sang:

True Love—Phil Wickham

Nails—Richard Cimino

Amazing Grace—John Newton/Chris Tomlin

Mighty To Save—Reuben Morgan

Amazing Love—Bill Foote

The Stand—Joel Houston/Hillsong United

Mighty To Save (Chorus only)—Reuben Morgan

So that was my Easter this year: one of the busiest days of my life.  It ended with my wife and I getting Blue Nami Sushi take-out at 10:00PM.  The Super Lion King roll is one of the best things I’ve ever had in my life.  So tasty.  I wonder if Jesus ate Sushi?

Well—again—I’m a little behind on my blogging.  Not-the-less, lets catch up shal we.  Life’s been busy but good.  I have been playing a lot more shows lately than I was last year, so that’s awesome and fun.  Youth groups, coffee shops, a Beach-Hut Deli, a bar, some venues and churchs, oh yeah, and one little tiny Hot Topic retail store in the mall have all been the lay of the land for the past couple months.  Can you say diverse?  It’s been a challenge at times to adjust but it’s worked out quite alright thus far. 

Getting used to Rocklin.  5 minutes from Wal-Mart, Costco, and the Mall (It used to be 30):  Need I say more about our delight?  Not to mention being across the street from really yummy coffee.  Digging the fragments tonight apparently.   

Also, still loving the Photography class.  I’m learning so much all the time.  I’m still not good with a Camera but I’m totally better informed and thinking that I’m getting a much better grasp of the concepts.  We’ll see what my professor has to say with his grade book.  Do teachers still use grade books?  Grade program?

Family is doing great.  My daughter is rockin the reading like a champ and my son is breaking stuff less and less… they’re both getting cuter everyday.  My wonderful wife is blowing my mind a little bit more all the time with the stuff that she keeps coming up with in graphic design and photography.  Lovin it.

Oh and apparently I am going to graduate in 8 months with a second BA.  Apparently, I will have a BA in Biblical studies in addition to my BS in psychology.  It sounds pretty legit for sure.

And the CD still progresses :  )

So that’s a quick catch up on me.  I know!  Those were really broad brush strokes… But, it’s time for bed so the details must wait.  Thanks so much for checking in my friends!  What’s new for you?