'WIDE OPEN' CONCERT EVENT!

Hey all... wanted to take a moment to let everyone know about an event I'm involved in that's taking place in a few weeks. It's a concert, yes, but it's more than that... in addition to the concert involving myself, Monty Hobson and Christopher Kai, artists Renee Scott, Kathee Biaggne & Bert Vandermark will be joining us as well to add media, photography, and visual art touches.

Why?

We believe that art has the ability to fuel conversation. The artists involved in Wide Open want to create events where music, media and art are catalysts for dialogue. What's more, we want to create artistic experiences that inspire our community to serve those in need. For this reason, we've decided to use proceeds from this first Wide Open event to benefit flood relief.

What exactly is Wide Open? Great question. I could pontificate for pages here on this blog or just simply point you all to a site that's way more articulate than I am... check out www.wideopen.cc for more info, samples from artists involved, etc. and you can even buy your tickets online there!

Hope to see every at Morning Star Church on Nov. 14, 2008 @7:30pm!

worship confessional (10.26.08)

hey all. I'm not even going to mention my lack of punctuality on the confessional front as I know you've all come to expect such behavior from me... crud, I just mentioned it. nevermind.

Let's switch things up and start with the setlist:

Transformed - (M. Roach, Matthew West)
Give It All Away - (Aaron Shust)
Here I Am, Lord - (Dan Schutte)

feature tune - Give Me Your Eyes (Brandon Heath)

How Can I Keep from Singing - (Tomlin & Co.)

yeah, so the first tune is a crazy upbeat tune I wrote with Matthew West a while ago... most of you have never heard it--it's one of those tunes that people in the congregation ask for a decent amount, which always communicates strength in terms of resonance. I'm excited to let the world hear that one on my next release. the shust tune is great, I've recommended it before and will again. there's an adlib-type bridge on the record we don't do, but the tag he adds to the chorus toward the end functions like a bridge in our version. very congregational. Here I am, Lord is an old hymn... we sang it a ton back when I was a kid in Catholic church actually. It's funny, I call it old, but it was actually written in 1981--so it's younger than I am. anyway, we totally twist that one up into a mid-tempo 6/8 groove and it actually works really well. this weekend's message was on missions so the Isaiah 6:8 reference fit perfectly. hmmm... now that I type that, I guess the time signature fits nicely, too. :)

the brandon heath tune was also a perfect fit thematically for our discussion, which was risk-taking mission. the lyrics to this tune are honest and poignant--great first line or two - Looked down from a broken sky traced out by the city lights | My world from a mile high... best seat in the house tonight. yeah, that's good stuff. anyway, I made kind of a break beat loop that we played with, handclaps and all, loop in the verses and real kit in the rest... it was a blast to play. I actually love making loops. I wish I had a way to give 'em to other churches so they could use 'em, too... I've done a ton of 'em. anyway, good weekend, hope you all had the same.


(this post is also a part of Sunday Setlists)

worship confessional (10.19.08)

man, I'm terrible at getting these written... how do all of you other worship leaders do it? I completely ignored last week--and it was a great service and setlist, too--and now this week, I'm finally getting to it on Thursday night. whew....

ok, so I've been doing these 3 song sets at the beginning of service all through October, right? I've been doing that so I could assure ample time to allow the Spirit to move... to allow room for us to have 'moments' if you will. It's been great so far overall, although on at least one occasion I've felt that it limited our ability to really sink into His presence, you know? It has to be the right 3 songs, that's for sure.

Anyway, this past week, an altogether different blessing came from my prepared 3 song set--a 4th song. I didn't write one, and my pastor or Worship Design Team didn't come up with a last-minute "must-do" worship song... there's this tune by a friend of mine, Gary Durbin that I simply couldn't get out of my head. Literally, for a good straight week it was the only song that would stick in my head morning, noon & night. The song is called Beautiful Scene and it's truly a special tune... honestly, I felt like God was telling me that the congregation needed to hear this song. So, we slid it in to the setlist this week last minute since I had plenty of room for a 4th tune!

Oddly enough (yeah, right... I know better) it fit perfectly within a message about intentional faith development. It's a killer worship song, but it has another layer to it as well... it speaks of how beautiful a scene it is when it's only God and only me... an awesome lyric that doubles as the feeling of intimacy we are able to attain with God in spite of being in a room filled with others communicating with Him at the same time, and also the richness of the time we spend alone with God in prayer and in His Word. Anyway... special tune, people... go check it out.

Setlist went like this:

I Want To Know You (In the Secret) - (Andy Park)
Everlasting God - (Brenton Brown, Ken Riley)
Steps of Faith - (M. Roach)
Beautiful Scene - (Gary Durbin)

feature tune - Deeper (Deliriou5?)

Everyday - (Joel Houston)

this post is also a part of Sunday Setlists

worship confessional (10.05.08)

does anyone else feel like the very first service of the weekend comes off as more of a rehearsal than anything? we battled that for the longest time when we were a portable church--sometimes we were still making sure microphones were plugged in when the service was supposed to be starting--but we're battling it again. I think it's 'cause we're coming into church in the middle of the day on a Saturday, half a day of lawn-mowing, mall-walking, kid-feeding, game-playing already under our belts, you know? anyway, we prayed it all out this Saturday and grabbed on tight to our last fiber of focus as we headed out to the platform. Little mistakes everywhere in our polishing time and full run-through, but we pretty well nailed it in the service. love that. I firmly believe that mistakes, missed entrances, wrong notes, etc.--while they all will happen at some point--become obstacles in our worship services. (yeah, I know that conceit, performance, self-righteousness, smoke machines and worship leaders can too, but that's a whole 'nother Oprah) Anyway, it was nice this weekend to feel like we were able to honor God with our song set in equal measure for three services this weekend. My hope is to continue that trend from here on out. I'll keep you posted :)

setlist looked like this:

As Long As I Have You - (M. Roach)
The Wonderful Cross - (Tomlin and Co.)
Cannons - (Phil Wickham)

feature tune - Please Come by Nichole Nordeman

Here With You - (M. Roach)

I decided to take a moment during 'The Wonderful Cross' and talk about paradox. The title of that song has plenty of it, and the lyric follows suit. the hymn's poetry is astounding, especially in the second verse: See from His head, His hands, His feet | Sorrow and love flow mingled down ... come on, that's poetry. love it. anyway, this whole idea of something so horrific as the cross being described as wonderful, the idea of thorns forming so rich a crown as the one on Jesus' brow, the idea of dying that we may truly live, counting our riches gains as but losses... it goes all the way back to the King of Kings lying in a manger, doesn't it? we took some time to ingest that this weekend as we sang that tune. we bookended that one with a tune of mine 'As Long As I Have You', based on the 23rd Psalm, and an amazing tune called 'Cannons' by Phil Wickham. I'll say this again: if you haven't thrown that tune into your worship set, next week isn't early enough. Great song. I'm waiting for it to become a staple so I can play it instead of 'How Great is Our God' when I visit churches and youth groups... (nothing against the Tomlin tune... just sayin')

anyway, we ended with 'Here With You' again--we usually end with a song we sang two or three weeks before and that one fell in that slot. I'm really amped for you all (outside my church, of course) to hear that one. that's all I have for this week, so until the next... blessings!


this post is also a part of sunday setlists

worship confessional (9.28.08)

so I made a strange decision last week, after years of pushing for more music up front at our services, always lobbying to maintain our typical 4-song set whenever possible... I decided that I'm going to try something over the next month or so. 3 songs. 3 songs in the 20 minutes or so that I'm allotted in each service. why? well, lately I've felt... I don't know... trapped. constricted. have I really been allowing the Spirit to move in our sets? we've become much more polished in the last several years--especially after moving into our first facility. sure, I've been accused thousands of times of rambling during worship... but it never fails. those are the days when someone comes up to me and thanks me--not for the great music, great words, great band, but for my heart. something that I said, read, suggested, questioned even.

anyway, this past weekend was the first of those 3 song sets, and I did my share of rambling again... spoke a bit about the Trinity. I have a brand new song called 'Holy Lord' (that I'm so amped for all of you to hear, by the way) that focuses on the entities of the Trinity for a verse each. the bridge is one of those one-line repeating worship bridges and the chorus just shouts of the holiness of God. my hope is that I allowed--both musically and with what I said--a moment to happen. a moment where the music would culminate in a change--even ever so slight--in someone's heart, mind, soul...

anyway, I'd love to hear about how you all intentionally leave space for the movement of the Spirit... how many songs up front, etc. songset follows:

Beautiful One - (Tim Hughes)
Indescribable - (Laura Story)
Holy Lord - (M. Roach)

feature tune - Better Is One Day (Matt Redman)

we ended the service (and our entire series on 'Inheritance' actually) by singing 'Better Is One Day' together... I broke out the ol' bible on the platform and just read portions of Psalms 84 and 27, just two of the passages represented in the lyric. we used a loop that I created in the vain of the original Passion version's loop, so that was fun... and we triggered it with Ableton Live and were able to loop the fallout section as our Pastor came up to do the blessing and return to the full loop seemlessly into the end. I love using technology in that transparent sort of way, although we fell just short of mastering it this weekend. it worked out, though.

until next week...


this post is also a part of sunday setlists

worship confessional (9.21.08)

Wow... it's been a tough several weeks here at MSC as we had another untimely death in our congregation, this time a sister of one of the praise team members. To add to the discomfort, we're right in the middle of series called 'Inheritance' and were all set to discuss whether or not we would recognize our earthly relationships in heaven. Once again, I think we pulled through and honored the departed, her friends and family.... and God. Gotta be honest, though. We're hoping this is the last one for a long time.

We also broke out the whole texting thing again in service... are any of you all doing this? I know they are down at Church at Rock Creek, where I played a few months back, but I'd love to hear about your experiences. We're very new at it at this point, but it's been received well thus far. Basically, we are allowing--encouraging, really--people to text in questions during the message and, after being screened, they are forwarded to a screen in front of our Pastor. He answers those he's able to get to with the time allowed. Like I said, it's been well received by and large, although we did end up causing a bit of a stir online after our local paper published a story about us... hit the front page, too... click here for the article, and feel free to join the conversation!

Here was the setlist:

Filled With Your Glory - (Tim & Jon Neufeld)

Here With You - (M. Roach) - brand new tune, can't wait to play it for all of you!

May the Words of My Mouth - (Rob Hill, Tim Hughes)

feature tune: Tears in Heaven (Clapton)

2nd feature tune: Homesick (MercyMe)

Mighty to Save - (Ben Fielding, Reuben Morgan)


This post is also a part of Sunday Setlists

worship confessional (9.14.08) - from the road

Hey all... wow, what a week! This is sort of a strange confessional, as it comes from a string of small shows/services I did this week. My week started early on Saturday as I headed out to New Life Fellowship church in Topeka, IN. It's about 7 hours from my house in St. Charles, MO. I, of course, forgot about the 1 hour time difference and did my best to make some time up on the road. The first four hours went by extremely quickly as I listened to the audiobook version of a book I got from Thomas Nelson Publishing at re:create last year. The book is called The Same Kind of Different As Me and is truly inspiring and thought-provoking. What really gets you is when you're done with the book and you take a second look at the authors' names.

Anyway... I headed to the church, not arriving until just after 8pm their time, and we waited for the drummer to arrive so we could rehearse. It's always crazy leading worship with someone else's band entirely, but it was a cool experience as usual. Rehearsal lasted a while, made for an early morning, but all in all... let's just say that God showed up. Very cool. Setlist for the morning:

As Long As I Have You
Blessed Be Your Name (Redmans)
Beautiful One (Hughes)
The Least I Can Do
You Are

Then, after the morning service was over, the pastor told me that the parent church of NLF, called Nappanee Missionary Church, would love it if I'd play for their young adult service that night if I wasn't busy... all I had planned to do was head to Bethel and chill before the morning chapel I was to lead on Monday, so I obliged. It was very cool, had a great cup of coffee, sat and listened to the message... the music was set to end the service. I hadn't planned it, but from how the message wrapped up, I really felt like we needed to sing 'From the Inside Out' so I asked their presentation software guy if he had it in their system. I kinda sang it with my back to them half the time, 'cause I didn't have the words memorized, but it was very cool 'cause it was just the right song to sing right then.

The next morning I lead worship for the Monday morning Chapel service at Bethel College... they were uber flexible with what I wanted to do, so I just sang some songs, told a few stories and encouraged authentic worship in the room. They definitely are worshipers there, their voices were passionate and voluminous even while singing songs they weren't so familiar with. Of course, I try not to get discouraged by lack of participation--I know that God is able to move in enthusiastic and subdued congregations alike--but it sure is nice to hear His people praising Him alongside you...

worship confessional (9.07.08)

One thing that's been weird the last year or so for me while leading worship at church has been getting used to in-ear monitors. I like 'em a lot for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that (I think) my tuning improves with them as opposed wedges... the biggest flaw I've encountered is the lack of connection with a congregation--and really, I mean an emotional, internal connection rather than an outward, stage presence type connection. I think I've done a fine job in overcoming the awkwardness of in-ears in terms of whether or not the congregation still relates with me. But this week, while we sang 'Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)' at the last service of the weekend, something really cool happened...

I had taken one ear out, as I sometimes do, so that I could get a little more feel of the congregation singing 'Mighty to Save' which was our second tune... the transition came a little quick and when I put my guitar down and headed over to the piano to start 'Amazing Grace,' I didn't have a chance to put my right in-ear back in. As we started singing, I realized two things: first off, people just love to sing Amazing Grace, so I realized that the congregation was at that glorious point of no return in their worship experience, ready to pour out their voices to our Creator. Secondly, I realized that unlike my acoustic--which is panned pretty hard left (so that I can hear it really well even when I remove my right in-ear)--my piano was panned pretty hard right... so I really couldn't hear it all that well. As much as I love to hear the instrument I'm playing, just for tuning and preventing mistakes, etc. I began to hear the swell of voices--400 to 500 strong in our auditorium just filling the place with His praises. I wasn't about to put my right in-ear back in, and I just bathed in the sound of our voices lifted to Him. It was very cool, and I realized once again what I often miss having both of those suckers pluggin' up my ears.

But I digress... it was a great weekend, and our setlist looked like this:

A Thousand Hallelujahs - (M. Roach)
Mighty to Save - (Ben Fielding, Reuben Morgan)
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) - (Tomlin and Co.)

feature tune - I Can Only Imagine (MercyMe) - acoustic version

Hosanna - (Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown)


this post is also part of Sunday Setlists

worship confessional (8.31.08)

Man, I'm bad at doing these right after the weekend, huh? Gary Durbin's was practically up before our last service was over... :) oh, well... way to stay on top of things, Gary! :)

This weekend was one of those that started out brutally, but ended well. Ever have those? Well, mine was self-inflicted as I committed the cardinal sin of wireless in-ear usage on Saturday and neglected to change out my batteries before service. No idea where my head was... and I'm pretty sure those batteries were in the wireless pack since our rehearsal on Tuesday. That's right, that's exactly what happened, and it happened in the middle of the 2nd song of a 4 song set. Brutal. I fought through 2 1/2 songs with absolutely nothing in my in-ear monitors. In the spirit of authenticity, I'm pretty sure the first song and a half was spent going over what could have possibly just happened... and when I finally figured it out during the last tune, I was able to worship and pray that our set would somehow still please God and serve His purpose in worship. ouch.

Sunday was much better... we finally pulled out 'Hosanna' by Paul Baloche this past week. I'm behind most on that one, I know. I talked a bit about the intent behind the song as stated by Paul on his WorshipSource profile. Also, we revisited one of my own, 'All I Can Do is Surrender' which was kinda fun. Keep in mind, we'll sing originals of mine for months or years before they land on a record... we hadn't done that one in a while at MSC. Anyway, the setlist was:

You're Worthy of My Praise - David Ruis

Hosanna - Paul Baloche/Brenton Brown

All I Can Do is Surrender - M. Roach

You Gave Your Life Away - Paul Baloche/Kathryn Scott

Feature tune: Add to the Beauty by Sara Groves

Blessed Be Your Name - Matt/Beth Redman


Seriously, if you haven't already introduced 'You Gave...' to your congregation, don't wait any longer, it's truly an unbelievable congregational tune and you won't regret it. I blogged about it a while back as well...


This confessional is also a part of the ever-growing Sunday Setlists. Check out what other worship leaders around the country did this past weekend and/or post your own!

first time ever riding a bike...

ok, so this happened almost two months ago, so I'm a bit late in blogging about it. That said, I took some pretty funny video that day to go along with the story, and friends and family have been bugging me to get it up online, so...

Here's the thing... my son Conner had been riding this thing called a Rolli-Rider since summer of last year. It's an old-school looking, hand-made bicycle of sorts with no peddles aimed at teaching kids how to balance on two wheels. I didn't realize that the website claimed so plainly that "When old enough to ride a bicycle, training wheels will not be necessary." Anyway, so he'd gotten pretty good at the Rolli-Rider a few months ago when I started talking to him about learning how to ride a bike... "Conner, one of the most important things you need to know about learning to ride a bike is that you're gonna fall down. It's part of the process. You need to be able to pick yourself back up and try again until you learn..." I would say, relishing the life-lesson Daddy moment I was soon to experience and pass on to my son...

Well, in true Conner fashion, and in line with the claims by the Rolli-Rider folks, I was completely robbed of my dad moment with a phone call from my wife exclaiming that he was riding his bike. :) I had gotten home within about a half-hour, our camera being charged the whole time, and took the following footage, laced with my 4-year-olds casual bicycle riding and one-liners. Enjoy!