Good Friday reflection

Now that Good Friday has come and gone, I have to admit, I'm a little shocked that all of our rehearsals and our overall set went off without a hitch! There was a huge difference in the atmosphere of the service this year in comparison to last year. I'm glad our praise team had something to do with that.

I think my mom (the pastor of our church) was the most happy that things went very well. She was proud that we did a good job. She commented that I/we were anointed. However, after listening to the iLead Escape call last night, it got me thinking.

Pastor Sheryl Brady stated that "music cannot create a worshiping heart." She went on to say that music can make you think that you're worshiping, but it can be a foil. This really resonated with me because we sing to tracks every Sunday and I don't think anyone has ever really commented on our anointing before Friday night. The only difference I can note is that we had live music.

So are we anointed when we sing with live music, but not tracks? I didn't do anything differently Good Friday that I don't already do every Sunday.

Are we anointed some times and not others? Was it because we really rehearsed and everything was in order? Was it because I had prayed a bit more fervently that things would go well? Or does live music really sway people's perception of how P&W is going?

I don't know the answer to these questions. Sometimes it's hard to know because I wasn't in the audience so my perspective is quite different.

This is "What I Think I Know About Worship" is all about. Sometimes we think we know much when there's plenty left to be understood.

Blessings!

Not around here we won't

Our first of 3 rehearsals for Good Friday went really well, however, we almost had a bucket boy. The drummer came and didn't realize we don't have a drum set. What we did have was a bucket, which my dad tried to encourage him to use.

Uh-uhn! Does this look like 79th and the Dan Ryan?

Zero to 100

It's about to get real interesting for our P&W team. We were asked to lead P&W at our district Good Friday service this year and I agreed like a dummy team player. :)

Our church doesn't have a musician so we typically sing to tracks. However, my brother (a dope keyboard/organist) can attend so he's going to play for us. But wait... there's more. The district music director is going to play keys for us too. I'm a little worried that 2 people on the same instrument might not go over so well. My brother can be a bit of a fire cracker, but I guess everyone loves fireworks. We're getting a drummer and my brother is gonna get somebody on bass. Can you believe it? We're gonna go from tracks to a whole band.

The other thing is, as I mentioned on a previous post, last year's Good Friday P&W was a fail. I guess the pressure is on since I had a lot to say about that. I keep telling my self there's no where to go but up. We have 3 rehearsals starting this Saturday. I will def follow up with more posts on our quest to upgrade the P&W experience at our district service. Stay tuned.

Easter P&W

Happy Belated Easter Weekend!

If you are like me, then you were in church a lot this past weekend. My organization belongs to a larger organization so all of the churches in the Midwest District met for Good Friday service. Usually we do a corporate praise team, of which I'm sometimes a member. This time, for whatever reason, they decided to let one church's praise team take charge.

While, I'm not a huge fan of the selections of songs for the corporate praise team, I have to admit that this time, they sounded good. I actually knew the songs! This is one of the problems that I usually have singing corporately - there's not a lot of say in what we sing. They tend to pick these dreary sounding, dead songs that no one (meaning I) have never heard. I don't think a district meeting is a good time for songs that aren't in the top 40, IMHO. I'd rather sing an oldie but goodie that everyone knows than the latest random off of a new artists' LP. That's just me. But I digress. The song selection and sound was pretty good.

Sunday followed suit. I did my best Israel imitation and tried to talk a little more between the songs. It went well. This is definitely not my forte, but I'm trying. Guess I got inspired by Resurrection Sunday. But now I have bigger fish to fry. My praise team has not rehearsed in probably at least a month. We've got to get back on task.

I ordered about 4 tracks for us to sing and we've only sung 2. Of those 2, we've only sung them once. Which means no one probably remembers the words or their parts. So we've got to start over. My goal is to build our arsenal of songs by at least 5 this year. I'll let you know how that goes...

All in all, Easter weekend was pretty good for P&W at the services I attended. At least no one fell backwards off of the stage, as was the case at my mother-in-law's church. (I know I'm wrong for laughing, but if you knew how big their stage is, you'd wonder how could anyone manage to fall.)

Good Friday Play List
You are the Living Word
Lord You're Mighty
(I'm drawing a blank on the others. I wonder if that means it wasn't as good as I remember. lol)

Easter Play List
High Praise
How Great is Our God
Lord I Lift Your Name on High
Emmanuel (We worship you)