Come have fun with us in JTown!

Maybe this is a good way to break back in…some light-hearted Idol chatter. As a matter of fact, it was Idol that got me started blogging years ago in the first place. 

Anyway…hello friends! I’ve missed you.

Here are my favorites from tonight’s Idol, along with some thoughts…

1. Joshua – Crazy Little Thing Called Love – this was one crazygood performance. Everything about it. It’s hard to make a repetitive, up-beat, extremely well-known song sound amazing and completely vocally impressive. But he did it. Just like he did with Runaway Baby a couple of weeks ago. This is his sweet spot. Good grief. Ang and I stood slack-jawed through the whole thing.

2. Joshua – Ready For Love – the run he did on the last “ready-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y for love” was the best run I think I’ve ever heard on Idol ever. He gets my #2 spot tonight for that alone. The whole song was well-paced, to me. He showed restraint in the beginning, which I liked. 

3. Jessica – Dance With My Father Again – this girl’s voice kills me. Such a big voice. And she has so much maturity in the way she shapes her phrases and in the choices she makes with her pacing. She’s so good. And on top of that, I think she has the most potential for success in today’s pop market. We still go back to the recording of a couple of weeks ago and listen to her sing Stuttering. I thought it was perfect. 

4. Elise – I don’t know the name of the song, but they referred to it as the Jimmy Hendrix song – I thought she sounded incredible. The judges disagreed with one another, and I actually agreed with all of them. Like Steven said, I don’t think the song is well-known enough to be memorable to the audience. And like Randy said, she was definitely pretty heavy-handed with it. Lots of big, active singing on a song that seems as if it would be much less like that in its original state. But, like JLo said, she killed it. Her runs were amazing. Her vocal styling was spot on. She attacked it in an energetic, fun and convincing way. She was relaxed and having fun. And I totally bought it. 

I thought all 6 contestants were stellar tonight. But these four were my favorites. I still don’t have a feel as to who is going to make the finale. It’s less clear that it’s ever been in years before, in my opinion. If Phillip can survive this off night, I think he might be the closest thing to a shoe-in for the finale. And for what it’s worth, I think he’s really great. His tone in the center of his range is just awesome. It reminds me of Sting’s tone. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I have never listened to Dave Matthews. My only Dave Matthews experience is seeing him in Because of Winn Dixie. Did I just admit that? Seriously? Anyway, since I never listened to Dave, I don’t join the common refrain of folks who say Phillip is too much like him. 

I thought Skylar and Hollie had great nights, too. Hollie has been strong two weeks running. And I think Skylar has made the most improvement of any of them throughout the competition. Her first song tonight was my favorite of hers of the season.

I’m gonna guess that Elise and Hollie will be in the bottom two tomorrow night, and Hollie will go home. We’ll see. 

Who was your favorite? Who do you think is heading home this week?

Yep. I’m raisin’ this one. She has mine and Angela’s blood surging through her. And yet, sometimes I look at her and think to myself, “Where in the world did you come from?”

Like this moment. On a ride with some friends at Disneyland. The Tower of Terror. It drops you what seems like a million stories. Then it shoots you back up to the top story. Then plummets you back down. Then back up. You get the drift.

At some point during the near-death experience, they have the nerve to snap your picture. You never know when that picture’s gonna happen. All you know is that you’re going to look ridiculous in said picture, no matter when it’s taken.

Lily Kate? She didn’t know about the picture. All she knew was that she was going to love the ride. And she threw her hands in the air with NO FEAR. She threw caution to the wind. Literally. I was freaking out and nervously laughing at stun-volume (to hide my total freaked-outness), while she jumped into the moment with full force. Check her out:

That’s Lily Kate. That’s the way she lives. She’s going to use that God-given tenacity to take in every moment. Sometimes that tenacity wears me out. But mostly it makes me love her so much it hurts.

I want to live like that. I want to trust God in every moment…and trust that He will keep me on track even when I feel like I’m going to go flying off of this ride. And trust that even when the force of my circumstances dare me to think that I might go plummeting down so hard that He can’t catch me, He, in fact, will.

And when I look back at the snap shots of my life, I may be holding on tightly sometimes. A lot of times. And that will be ok. But I hope there will be a few moments frozen in time where I have thrown my hands into the sky, thrown my head back, and with a smile a mile wide on my face, said to the One I trust the most -

I TRUST YOU! BRING IT ON!

I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
John 10:10 (The Message)

God is our refuge and strength. Our very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear.
Psalm 46:1-2 (NIV)

WE WILL NOT FEAR.

This is a pretty diverse list you’ve come up with here. Not everything will work for everybody. Keep speaking the musical language of the people you lead, and don’t let anyone else’s list make you think you need to do any differently. Rather, let these ideas encourage you as you move on in the way God has called you to lead!

 I’m looking forward to diving into this list for some new tunes for 2012. Let me know what works for you.

(PS – The hardest part of this blog post? Putting these songs in dadgum alphabetical order. )

Again I Say Rejoice (Israel Houghton)

All Because of Jesus (Fee)

All My Fountains (Tomlin)

All The Saints Join In

The Anthem (Jesus Culture)

At Your Name (Phil Wickham)

Awesome God (Cape First Worship)

Bless The Lord (Andre Henry)

Bless The Lord (redtiemusic.com)

Counting On God (Desperation Band)

Dance

Deep Cries Out (Bethel)

Father of Lights (Jesus Culture)

Father Spirit Jesus (Casting Crowns)

For All You’ve Done (Hillsong)

Forever Reign (One Sonic Society)

Glorious (Jesus Culture)

Glory to God (Fee)

Go (Hillsong United)

God Is Alive (Fee)

God is Great (Hillsong)

God of our Salvation (Phil Wickham)

Happy Day (Tim Hughes)

Heaven Fall Down (Phil Wickham)

Here For You (Matt Redman)

Holding Onto You (Paul Colman)

How Great Thou Art (Baloche)

How To Worship A King (Gateway)

I Am Forgiven (Ricardo Sanchez)

I Am Free (New Life Worship)

I’m Changed (City of Life Worship)

Isn’t He Wonderful (John Ragsdale)

Joyful (The One Who Saves) (Brenton Brown)

Like A Lion (David Crowder)

The Lord Reigns (Gateway)

Love Came Down (Bethel Live)

Mighty King (Ben Donnelly Band)

My Savior Lives (Desperation Band)

Nothing Compares (Freddy Rodriguez)

O God Our Help (redtiemusic.com)

On My Lips (Ross Parsley)

One Way (Hillsong United)

Our Father (BJ Putnam)

Our God (Tomlin)

Our God is Love (Hillsong)

Rain Down

Rise And Sing (Fee)

Salvation is Here (Hillsong United)

Saved By Grace (Israel Houghton / New Breed)

Say So (Israel Houghton)

See His Love (Jesus Culture)

Set Free (Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman)

Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin)

Today Is the Day (Lincoln Brewster)

Victory In Jesus (Travis Cottrell)

We Are The Free (Matt Redman)

We Cry Out (Jeremy Camp)

We Cry Out (Jesus Culture)

We Praise Your Name (Trent Cory)

You Are Good (Israel and New Breed)

You, You are God (Gateway)

Your Arrival (Phil Wickham)

Your Love Is Better Than Life (Fee)

Ten things I want to do (or do better) in 2012:

1. Be unplugged at home. Phones and laptops away after work until the kids are in bed. We tend to complain that our kids want to be on computers, phones and video games more than they should. I wonder where they got it from???

2. Go to bed earlier and get up earlier.

3. Pray out loud with my wife, kids and friends more.

4. Write and blog more intentionally. This means both my private and not-so-private writing.

5.  Let people who offend me off the hook more quickly (this is a broad statement and a lifetime work…nevertheless, it’s on the list).

6. Write letters and cards weekly. As in – handwritten, not emailed or facebooked. I love getting cards in the mail. Love it. I think everyone does, don’t they? I want to be the guy thoughtful enough to send an encouraging and thankful card every now and then.

7. See movies. Sounds weird, I know. I never, ever see movies. Name a classic….I most likely have not seen it. I love a good movie. I just never take the time to see them.

(The broader discussion here is that I need more margin. More sitting time. More time for recreational, mindless, room-to-breathe activity. I’m on it.)

8. Memorize a book of the bible. 

9. Lead worship playing the guitar. Not all of the time…especially being that I don’t know how to play the guitar. But I really want to learn. So get ready. It’s gonna happen in 2012. At least once. In front of at least one person.

10. Refresh and grow my knowledge of the history of church music. Again, this is a broad statement and a lifetime work. But I desire to be more knowledgeable of roots, routes and roads of the Church before us. Starting with worship in the Word. 

(Speaking of musicians, I am loving doing David: 90 Days With A Heart Like His by Beth Moore again. This is a great daily devotional, attainable and doable no matter how weird your schedule may be. Guys too! Only occasionally is there gender-oriented verbiage. And even those rare times are easy to navigate through. If you are still looking for a good devo this year, try one of Beth’s ’90 Days’ series.)

Make your own list. Give it to a friend. Have check up discussions every couple of weeks. Stay on it. Stay accountable. Stay focused. 

Want to share your list here? Bring it on!

1. We had three bags of Golden Flake Sweet Heat potato chips this morning. We have no bags of Golden Flake Sweet Heat potato chips tonight. 

2. I’m concerned about the future of Peyton Manning with the Colts. It doesn’t sit well with me that Irsay fired the Polians without telling Peyton. I hate it when a team doesn’t respect what a franchise player brings to a team for so many years. I recognize that they have to look to the future. But for crying out loud, this dude brought them more than a decade of wins. COME ON. It doesn’t look good, and I don’t like it. #Manningfan

3. I’ve never despised my age. I like my age. But today I don’t like my age. You know why? Because I WANT TO BE AT PASSION 2012. That’s why. 

Seriously, I’ve been preoccupied all day praying for students I love who are at Passion. And for my wonderful boss Beth, who was bringing the Word today. I’m praying these students come back to Jackson with passion for Jesus that will alter the way we worship, study and respond to God. Honest…I’m expecting them to SHAKE IT UP.

4. I’m sad that my kids start back to school tomorrow. And by ‘sad’ I mean ‘ecstatic.’ Oh, yeah baby. I’m going to be a much better parent with them in school a little while.

In all seriousness, it’s been a sweet Christmas break with the kiddos. Fun ages to do lots of things together we all enjoy. Still, yea for school. 

5. Speaking of kids, random phone pic of the day:

This kid of mine cracks me up. As he sees me pulling my phone out to take a pic, he says, “Hold on. Let me look like I don’t know you’re taking a picture.” Yeah. ‘Cause that’s a normal pose. Funny guy.

6. The oatmeal at Starbucks is muy delicioso. I could eat it every day.

7. My wife made biscuits and chocolate gravy and eggs and sausage for the kids today for breakfast. While I was at work. And did not tell me about it until after it was too late. Should I be angry about this?

8. I can’t believe how much better the NFC is than the AFC this year. The past few years it’s just been the opposite. But this year, I’d say there are 4 or 5 NFC teams better than the best AFC team.

My disdain for the Patriots may or may not have affected that last statement. 

That’s all the random for today. I’m sorry you can never get these two minutes of your life back.  See you soon.

What are some up-tempo, high energy worship songs that are connecting with your people these days? I’m on the hunt for some fresh fast songs. Seriously, I’d be embarrassed if you saw how not-up-tempo my options are!

I hope you all had a meaningful and peaceful Christmas holiday. Ours was mostly meaningful, mostly peaceful, mostly fun and mostly restful. Restful, except for the part where we moved 11 days before Christmas day. But even that, although a bit scattered and hectic, would be a stretch to be seen as anything but a blessing. After renting a place since we moved to Jackson 19 months ago, we finally found a place to settle into and call home. We’re still in lots of boxes and a bunch of mess. You know, the kind of mess where there are small piles of random things scattered about in every room. Stuff you don’t know what to do with. Stuff you could probably part with, but for some reason can’t bring yourself to. Lots of that stuff. But we are getting there.

We were blessed with so much help in our move. Our church family jumped in by the car loads to help us get moved quickly. There were people here helping us practically every day for the first week. Community can overwhelm the heart with gratitude when it operates to bless. And we were blessed. Being a pastor has its perks.

So after our church Christmas programs and our move, we had Christmas here in Jackson. Then on Christmas day, we hit the road to visit some of Angela’s Tennessee family and then my North Carolina family. We were away for 6 days. I look back on those days and realize that we didn’t do a single thing but eat, sleep and fellowship. And we did lots of all three. 

I like to work and I like to stay busy. The past two years have been the busiest of my life. So it isn’t without notice from me that on night 1 of our Christmas travels – night 1 of vacation from any work, any computer, any singing or worship planning – I slept 10 hours. 10 HOURS. I haven’t done that since before having kids. And to top it off, I fell asleep on a couch in the middle of a family Christmas party. This old man was t-i-r-e-d. 

The rest of the nights followed suit. Got lots of much needed sleep and deep rest. Ahhhhh. It was nice. 

As nice as it was, it is indeed good to be back home, and getting ready for routine to settle in. I love routine. My expectations are high for this week. I’m ready to be intentional about my days…my tasks…my assignments…my encounters…my relationships…my yes’s and no’s. I have so much I want to align and do better this year. Don’t you?

And I want to be more intentional about my blog this year, too. It seems I’ve lost my writing voice since our move here to Jackson. Not completely. But I definitely have not only been lax in how frequently (or infrequently) I’ve written, but also with what I’ve written. I’ve used this as a place to throw up ministry announcements and video recaps and the like. And those things are necessary and good. But I haven’t really said anything on here in a good while. It’s not like I’m a theologian or breaking any literary ground with this wee little blog. But I do like to dialogue with you all about the things of life and ministry and music and worship and family and the walking out of our faith in this generation. 

Part of my silence is obviously due to the fact that our move and my new calling here at Englewood re-distributed the margin of my life. It didn’t completely take away what margin I had. But it did bring so much more “must do’s” into my days that I rarely had any time to sit down and write. And when I did have some time, I would be so exhausted I couldn’t put two sentences together. 

There has been this other weird thing about me these past couple of years that I can’t really define. It’s been a fear, maybe? No, not fear, really. Well, maybe a little. But it’s been what I guess I would call a hyper-sensitivity to peoples’ perception of what I say or do. Yeah, I guess that would be a fear of sorts. Fear of man. It’s always been something I’ve dealt with (and often times not dealt with). Does that make sense? I’ve crawled into this hole of not saying much of anything, because I’ve let the fear of what people would think or how they would respond cause me to just keep my big mouth shut. And I guess in some regard that can be a good thing. An ‘accountability’ thing. But I have failed to take those moments to step out and dialogue about the things of ministry and life that aren’t as easily segmented into black and white. I’m not exactly sure why. It seems in this blogging / facebooking / tweeting generation, a sense of hyper-criticism has set into our tones. And everything that anybody says is held under such a critical light, it has made me shy away from saying much of anything at all. And before you think I mean that I have not fallen prey to this critical spirit myself, let me say that I have, and that is why I have seen it so clearly. Do people just annoy you sometimes because of what they blog or tweet or say in print somewhere, and you just kind of develop a question in your mind of their character and motives? Yeah, me too. I’ve annoyed myself a thousand times. And I have feared people perceiving me that same way, and so I’ve sort of just shut down.

But shutting down in fear of man is not ever in the plan of God for our lives. Not in any regard. We can be careful, methodical and sensitive with what we say, without neglecting the things God has called us to say, and the personality He’s given us with which to say it. And without letting criticism dictate our tone. 

All of that to say…I do want to be intentional, purposeful and obedient with the voice God has given me. And I want you to, too. There’s something about that flip of the calendar that gives us that little push we need to do something different…to do something better. Take this moment in time, and ask the Lord to use your voice to really speak like He’s called you to. With intention. With conviction. With purpose. With consideration. With hope. But without fear. And without a critical spirit.

You in? I’m in.

I’m laying here in bed mouth breathing and about to fall over into a dead sleep. But I wanted to A) say hello, and 2) invite you to our program this weekend.

Our church’s Christmas program, This Is Our God, is this weekend (how many times can I use the word ‘weekend’ in one post?), December 10 and 11, at 6:30pm both nights. If you are in the area, we’d love for you to come.

I love my church family so much. Moments like these – the learning, the preparing, the rehearsing, the growing, the laughing, the anticipating, the praying – doing these things with family – it makes me so happy. Even in sheer exhaustion. I love these days. We’re singing some of my favorite Christmas songs this weekend. I hope you can join us. This weekend.

Blessings to you fine people. This (and every) weekend.

It has been one of my favorite LPL years ever. These places left indelible marks on my spiritual journey…Tacoma, WA / Fresno, CA / Little Rock, AR / Minneapolis, MN / Lincoln, NE / Charlotte, NC / Columbus, OH / Salt Lake City, UT / Lubbock, TX / Baltimore, MD / Casper, WY / Pensacola, FL. Thank you to everyone who came…and listened…and worshipped…and responded…and allowed the Holy Spirit of God and His Word to change and encourage and grow us all.

Thank you, LifeWay, for another great year ministering together. I am grateful that you would allow me to serve with you!

There’s no one else like you, Mrs. Beth Moore. We, as your team and fellow servants are blessed and honored to serve alongside you. Thank you for your faithfulness!

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Don’t miss the fun event team / crew pics at the end!)