The Cellhelmet business is confusing , I’ll say that. Are they selling me a super awesome protective case? That’s what I thought.. then it arrived. Since people are likely flocking to the website, I thought I’d explain how it works before everyone runs out and spends their $50… is it an amazing case.. or an insurance plan.. or both.. check it out below.. after you watch the video, if you are still interested you can buy one here and it’ll save you $10

Editors Note: iFixit.com has stated that the iPhone 5 is the harest iPhone to repair yet.. so this is actually going to make things VERY expensive for the cellhelmet guys as new models of the iPhone come out. I got out of the iPhone repair game, because they were just getting harder and harder to fix.

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Cue the LeadWorship Workship.. but I’m not going to tell you about it.. I’ll let Paul..

The LeadWorship Workshop is going to be awesome, and if you are a worship leader, you really need to be there. If there is someone who can teach you about how to be the best worship leader you can be, it Paul Baloche, as he’s celebrating 20 years as the worship pastor in his church. He has written more “hits” that you are singing in your church than I can possibly list here.. To list literally just a few.. “Your Name”, “Above All”, “The Same Love”, “Open The Eyes of My Heart”, “Glorious”.. and trust me.. this could go on and on.. but, I know Paul will read this, and he doesn’t want it to be about him.. he wants it to be about ya’ll.. because thats the kind of guy he is! The LeadWorship Workshop is also a place you can come, learn, and connect with many other great leaders.

All of the general sessions and workshops are designed to:

• Encourage and equip your entire worship team
• Deepen the spiritual life of each team member
• Be interactive, up-close and personal with each presenter
• Increase your passion for leading others in your local church

You’re encourage you to bring your entire worship team and take advantage of our group discount. Consider this event a 24-hour worship retreat that will inspire and strengthen your group and impact the congregations you serve.

Registration is super affordable so they can get as many people as possible out to the event. For groups of 4 or more, registration is only $49.00 per person. Individual registration is $59.00

The event is happening at Moncton Wesleyan on April 12-13 and on Friday night there will be a worship concert for anyone and everyone who wants to come out and worship with Paul Baloche and Band, and then Saturday will be the workshops for worship leaders.

Here is the actual promo for the event.

Not in the maritimes? Don’t worry, it’s coming to Oakville Ontario the next weekend April 19-20 and will be at Harvest Bible Chapel. You can register for that one here.

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1. Paul Baloche Has Done It Again
2. MBC – Songs From This Week
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What you are about to witness is the first ever music collaboration to take place between earth and outerspace! How cool is that… and it happened between The Canadian band, Barenaked Ladies front man Ed Robertson and the Canadian Commander Chris Hadfield of the International Space Station.

Their song, “Is Somebody Singing”(aka I.S.S.) , was officially commissioned by CBC Music and the Coalition for Music Education for the upcoming Music Monday celebrations, the annual initiative championing music education.

I have to be honest, when I first watched this video, I got a little choked up, not at the content of the song (though it is a touching song) but I was just amazed at what humans have been able to do, and it really did amaze me that we really can do so many amazing things, like create a music recording with no delay between outerspace and earth.

Of course the comic in me started to thing “why on earth can these guys do a beautiful music recording from hundred’s of thousands of miles away, but Rogers can’t provide quality cell service to me?” But thats besides the point. Is this not amazing? And for those teens involved in this, how cool would that be? I’m guessing though.. in regards to the actual video.. I’m guessing Chris’ feed isn’t actually “live” like they make it look.. it’s just not possible.. every video feed and audio feed we get from space has crazy delays.. and it’s HD.. so I’m assuming that Chris recorded this himself from the ISS, and had it sent down, and then it was played on the TV screen to make it look like he was playing live with BNL.. sorry if I just ruined that video with you.. but I guess there is a chance I’m wrong (but I doubt it)

You can read the whole story here, and I recommend you do. I haven’t found a link yet for where you can buy it.. but I’m sure it’ll be up soon.. and I’ll update when I do.

You can follow both BNL and Chris Hadfield on Twitter. Chris tweets out some amazing photos of his mission.. plus.. the dude is in space for crying out loud!!

I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t hit number 1 really fast all across Canada, just for the “pride” in Canada/

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1. First Music Video
2. The Giant Music Giveaway
3. In The Studio

Church Life – Part 3 – From Magic to Miracles – Acts 8:4-13 by Chriswtburke on Mixcloud

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Church Life – Part 1 – Building the Church – 1 Corinthians 14:1-12 by Chriswtburke on Mixcloud

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If you’re wondering what I use a WebDAV for, it allows me to save files from my iPad to my box.net cloud service, or you could pay for dropdav and save those files to dropbox. You see, I don’t have the latest version of Mac OS X on my MacBoom, and because of that, I can’t run iCloud on it, which means when I save files in Pages on my iPad, the only way to get them to my Mac is either to email them to myself (oldschool), or to use dropbox or box.net cloud services… But you can’t send files from pages (on your iPad) directly to these services.. This is why you need a WebDAV. In pages you can “share to WebDAV” just like you would share to email.

Because box.net allows you to do it for free, I’ll provide the server info for that, but if you want to use dropbox, and don’t mind paying a few dollars a month for dropdav, you can just put in their server address instead.

Assuming you have a box.net account open Pages on your iOS device then select the “plus” button in the document window.

Then select “copy from WebDAV”

The server address is “https://www.box.com/dav”

Put in your username and password, and your good to go.

You can now upload documents directly from Pages to your Box.net account. All you do when you’re done typing a document is press the wrench in the upper left corner, then press share and print:

Then press copy to WebDAV and select the folder you want it to go in and you’re done!

Pages also gives you the option to convert the document to PDF or Word format or keep it in Pages format when it copies it.

And if you’re like me and you had a folder on dropbox that you wanted to move over to box, so you could manage it all through WebDAV, check out “backup box” a free (up to 10gb) automatic file transfer service!

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My boys, Seth (4) and Micah (2) happened to be with me at the office the first time I listened to the CD, and because I tend to lead in “multi-generational” churches, I like to watch my boys and see how they are reacting when I’m trying out new music. When the very first track “Always Been About You” started playing, Seth looked at me, and smiled, and started jumping around and then came over to my chair and said “daddy, we need to have a dance party”. For me, that is always a good sign for a new song; if Seth wants to have a dance party, it’s a good song! So we started dancing around my office like crazy fools! When the song was over, he told me how much he like the song, and asked me if we could listen to it again!

This was the first album I’ve heard from Fellowship Creative. I have heard of them, but hadn’t bought any of their albums yet. In the sea of music I have (over 10,000 tacks on my iTunes library, they hadn’t made it yet. After listening to this album, I can say that I will certainly be keeping an eye out for them in the future. Many of the songs have that “high energy” feel that I love in music, but yet still have great gospel inspired lyrics. I have always been into the Hillsong United style of music, it’s what I first started listening to when I first became a Christian, and while I love all the new music coming out by groups such as Gungor and All Sons, I still need my fix of high energy straight up rock and roll, and I believe that Fellowship Creative has done a great job of that.

As with this style of music, it’s not going to be for every church. Maybe you don’t have the band for it, or your congregation can’t pull off some of these melodies.. but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your church. Not every church today can do all the newest latest music. I know my church wouldn’t be able to pull of many of these songs. the congregation is all 60 and up and we are just a guitar and piano for a worship team. Thats not saying that Fellowship Creative has done something bad, because they haven’t, I believe they did a fantastic job with this album, it’s just not going to be for every congregation, and thats A-OK.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I believe this album would be great for a multi-generational church. It has some of those fantastic “4 on the floor” type songs that everyone will want to tap their toes or clap along to (or have a dance party in their office!) But it also has some nice contemplative songs that I can see every enjoying too.

All in all, I believe they did a great job, I enjoy this album, and if I get into a church where I’ve got a bigger worship team with some talented musicians, I am totally going to be pulling out some of these songs.

You can find out more about Fellowship Creative and the new album here:

Web: www.fellowshipcreative.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/FellowshipCreative
Twitter: @FCCreative
Soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/fccreative

I’m giving away TWO copies of this album! You can enter just once, or multiple times, and some entries you can do each day.. you decide how you want to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Don’t Waste Your Worship Amos 5:18-27 by chriswtburke on Mixcloud

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We are certainly well settled into our new home here on “the Island” with my parents, and things have been going great. We had a fantastic Christmas with them. Christmas day was a blast, as the boys were both old enough this year to enjoy it! The looks on their faces were priceless as they opened gifts and just had a blast. We had 14 people over for Christmas dinner, which consisted of the regular turkey dinner, but also a maritime classic, jiggs dinner.. my friends in Ontario no doubt are drooling! When we first moved to Ontario, Jen and I had our whole church over to our place for jiggs dinner.. and even 7 years later people were talking about that “crazy young couple who invited the whole church into their home, even though they were a new couple in the community”. It was a great time with our family. We haven’t had a time like that in YEARS!

Jennifer is settled in her new job at the call center, and is actually up for a promotion! I figure within a few months she’ll be running that place! It’s a job I couldn’t do. She tells me about some of the calls that she gets, and I don’t think I could have the patience she has, because I think I would either hang up on the people calling, or just totally freak out at the customers for being so rude.. but shes doing great and already getting bonuses for the great work she is doing… but really, did we expect anything less.. shes one of the hardest workers I know, even when the job sucks, she gives it her all. As of last week her medical benefits kicked in, so we are VERY glad that is finally here.. it was a rough few months with my VERY expensive medications for my back.

The boys are doing great! They both started swimming lessons a couple weeks ago, and its been a bumpy start for Micah, while he loves the water, he’s not enjoying being told what he has to do while he’s in the water, but he’s still doing great. Seth is doing fantastic! In fact last week he was swimming in the deep end of the pool (with a life jacket of course!) We are very proud of both of the boys.

We are hoping for them to start going to a couple play groups very soon so they can make some friends that they might be able to play with on a regular basis. They have certainly been enjoying having grammie and grampie around, though as of tomorrow this will come to an end, as mum and dad are heading to the Dominican Republic until April.. it’s their regular winter time ritual. I don’t know how the boys will do with this, but we will find out soon I’m sure.

We’re super happy that Micah has finally started to use the potty (I hate the word).. but he has.. and it’s going fantastic!

in my last family update I wrote about how I was filling the pulpit at a local baptist church.. well in a crazy turn of events, the same church actually hired me as their pastor! I know.. crazy right? Chris Burke is the pastor of a church. It’s been really weird. and I won’t lie and say it’s been a breeze, it’s had it’s ups and downs. I’m praying hard during this time asking God what it is that he’s trying to teach me. The original agreement was that I would come on as a 3 month trial, and then I would let them know after that if I am willing to stay on beyond the 3 months. I officially started on December 9th, so that puts me at just over 1 month into the position. I need a lot of prayer, and so does the church, but what church doesn’t. On paper they have some great goals that they want to have happen.. It’s just finding people to help make those goals happen, because it’s only a part time position. The original agreement was that I would focus on teaching and worship, and that I would equip volunteers to do the other jobs they wanted to happen.. but I’m having a hard time finding those volunteers.. so pray that God will motivate people to step up and be the church. I’m mostly enjoying the challenge that God has put before me. It’s a neat growing experience!

Health wise, my back is still pretty crummy, and I still haven’t heard anything from dr. Mendez in Halifax, which is getting pretty irritating. I wish they would just call to let me know they have my papers from dr. Webb. As many of you know, I also applied for CPP disability, which Service Canada denied stating that my condition wasn’t “severe or prolonged enough. I am in the process of appealing their decision, submitting a 120 page letter to them with up to date reports from doctors which all state that they doctors believe that I am severe and I’ve been in this state for 6 years.. so I’m not sure what they consider to be prolonged . so we’ll see what happens.. I feel bad for the person who has to read all 120 pages, but, it’s not my fault they denied me! Please continue to pray for the state of my back, for the chance to get in to see dr. Mendez, and for my disability application, as all the doctors I’ve seen believe I should qualify for it, so we will see what happens.

On a random/personal note many of you know that I’ve been doing the 17 day diet since last June.. I’m now down 62 pounds.. which has me just thrilled! Also I had originally planned on really diving into my photography business when I got here, as a way to make some money, but because the ministry position came along, I really have been too busy to do it, though we did do a big portrait sale at Christmas time, which was a lot of fun. We had around 9 families in the studio during the sale! It allowed me to put a bit of money aside to go towards my new comput

Anyway, thats enough of an update for now. If you’d like to chat about whats going on with our family, or more in depth on the ministry stuff, please don’t hesitate to call or drop me an email with the contact form above!

Thanks for all your prayers!

The Burke Family

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