Sunday night I was leading worship at Origin.  I don’t use a music stand because I hate them—I hate having to look at a sheet of music while I’m worshiping.  I memorize it or I would prefer not play it (on occasion I use a music stand if I really need to do a song—but I’m never happy about it).  However, it would probably be better if I did use a stand because my memory is not so good.  I mess up words all the time, as many of you well know. 

We were singing “Where We Belong” Sunday night (some Hillsong goodness).  In the middle of the song, some lines that I completely was about to miss were coming up next.     But then they came to me by the strangest method—lip reading.  I almost laughed at myself mid song but we moved on.

We got to the chorus a moment later and I sang “We run to your throne where we belong…” and my mind went totally blank for the next line.  The lip reading thing happened again.  Weird!  Throughout the rest of the worship set, the same craziness kept going—totally distracting me every time. 

Now, I’m just trying to figure out how long I have been doing it and why nobody has ever freaked out at me for checking out their mouth through a whole worship set!  But see, I have said it many times, God intended corporate worship for a reason.  We need eachother!  That’s good biblical stuff and proof for it!  It’s also further affirmation that you need to sing… or that I need to get a music stand.  Something like that.  Thanks for being there for me.  Don’t you dare start covering your mouth during the worship service.  

Alright worship leaders, don’t try to steal my technique and teach it at worship conferences like it’s your own idea.  I know you want to, but I will hunt you down.  Just kidding.  But seriously.

This cracked me up.  It reminded me of that Demetri Martin

Joke:”Graffiti’s the most passionate literature there is, you
know? It’s always like ‘Bush sucks!’ … ‘U2 Rocks!’ … I want to make
indifferent graffiti. ‘Toy Story 2 was okay’ … ‘I like Sheryl as a
friend, but I’m not sure about taking things further’ … ‘This is a
bridge’.

Oh and BTW, “Toy Story 2 was ok” has been tagged on buildings and bridges all over the country over the last 2 years.  Thank you Demetri for your positive influence.

Celestial captured a good moment with this pic.  ”Hey, what about me!”  We have all had that feeling at one time or another.

What about you?  You have probably felt left on the shore at a time or two, right?  Or, have you been in the boat?

SOOO The funniest thing happened today and I wanted to share for the purpose of informing all of you that: There is a reason for who we are. NO I mean: There is a reason for EVERYTHING.

OK so today Eli led worship at Avonlea’s school and (surprise, surprise) he locked his keys in the car. We only have one car so this is extremely inconvenient. Oh, and due to the fact that Eli used our insurance coverage for stuff like this too many times we dont have any roadside coverage. ANYWAYS So I started to think about something I’d read a couple months ago in the school bulletin about someone leaving their keys behind. At the time I wondered if it was me simply because I’m the only one I know that would do something like that but I didn’t remember losing my keys so I dismissed the thought. Fast forward to today… I told Eli to check with the office and see if any one had claimed those lost keys. I suppose you can guess that they were my keys. Yep so in absentmindedness I left a set of keys two months before Eli would need them due to his absentmindedness. True story. We laughed pretty hard. -Celestial

Christian conferences are nifty things. A bunch of people who care about the same stuff get together. That’s kind of cool in and of it self. The other neato aspect of the conference is that people are paid to share the secret about how they became really great and how others can as well. There is huge energy and excitement as conference goers go from one class to another to find these secrets.

This weekend, Bayside Placerville, (a church that I lead worship at) gave me a couple of tickets and sent me to just such an event. It was the Christian Musicians Summit at Bayside of Granite Bay (Lincoln Brewster’s Home Church).

The funniest thing that I experienced while I was there was a session that I happened into by accident. I stepped into a room of 500 people, a band that was rocking. An 80’s guy stopped the bands play and moved the musicians to different parts of the stage. Turns out the session was called how to better communicate with your audience and that 85% of communication is what people see rather than hear. The session focused on the visual component of performance, the value of movement on stage, and tips like, move side to side rather than forward and back—it gathers attention better.

It got really great when Mr. 80’s spotted the pretty girl on stage and realized that she would look much better at the head of the stage. He physically guided her to the front of the stage after commenting on her beauty at which point her husband (who was not the 80’s guy) quickly identified the ring on her finger (we all laughed).

It got better still when he had the band sing through the bridge of the song again, this time instructing Miss Pretty (Mrs.) to face the worship leader while she sang her echo line and look into his eyes—evidently, this builds tension. This didn’t do it for him so he had her take a few steps toward the worship leader after she sang her echo. More tension. At the end of the bridge the worship leader and the girl were face to face.

I couldn’t control my laughter through the whole event because it was like I was watching a spoof on church production but it was actually the real deal. I was at the concert that night, the girl that was on stage sat behind me. I got a chance to talk to her about it and we had a great laugh over the whole thing. And just for the record, not all the sessions were silly and inappropriate at this conference…only some.