Hello to all of you and Happy New Year! There are so many things to say. I wrestled with the idea of doing a “end of the year recap” or whatever, but I decided that I’m not that cool. Instead, I decided that I was going to use this first blog of the year to say goodbye to the old and introduce the new. Thanks to all of you who have been reading my blog, even though it has been highly inconsistent as the year ended. Part of the reason for the sloppiness on my part was lack of vision. I’ve been working hard on creating a vision for this blog and for worship180. Well, I hope to be able to share all of that with you in the upcoming days, weeks, whatever. Anyway, here’s a preview of what’s to come.

First things first, the format of the blog will be changing greatly, which is a good thing. Part of it is an idea I took from my friend, Alisha. Her blog has always had a couple sections, and I loved reading it. So in sort of a stolen sort of way but not really, I’m going to do something similar. It will look like this:

Worship As Life- This blog is meant to be about my life as a worship leader. I want to be able to help people understand what it’s like to live this life. Also, I want to be able to hopefullly say some things that other worship leaders and worshipers want and need to hear. So that is what the first section will be about.

If My Mood Was a Chord…-I’m excited about this one because I get to let out some of my music nerd. To some people music is just music. But to us music nerds, music is a way of life and we relate music to everything. So my goal with this is 2 fold. 1, I want to be able to share with my fellow musicians how I feel with music. 2, I want to be educational to those of you who may not think this way. You may not start thinking like this, but you’ll at least get an understanding of what I mean. Maybe…or you could just think that I’m really weird.

Live Out Loud- If I’m going to be sharing this life with others, I should at least give you tools to share yours as well. This section will be designed to share ways for you to use the worship180 concept in everyday life.

As if that wasn’t enough, I will also be launching a facebook fan page for worship180 as well. It has already been created and is up and running. I haven’t officially launched it yet, but it’s definitely there. If you are a facebook user, the link is here: Worship180 on Facebook You should be able to click that and become a fan. I’m excited to start this new year off on the right foot. Come with me. And invite some others for the ride. Help me get worship180 out to the world this year.

I can’t believe just how busy this weekend has been. I haven’t been going a whole lot, or at least I don’t think I have. But with this weekend, I have spent time with my family, which is always good. I wrote a song on yesterday, which is something I haven’t done in a long while. I will debut it soon, once I think it’s ready. If you wanna hear it, you may want to find yourself at one of my concerts coming up within the next month. They are going to be fun. Today was really cool because I actually got to go to church today. I’ve been going to church, but I haven’t been able to go to my church. Even better, I got to go to church with my family. We rode together and things were good. I’m thankful for the weekend that God has given me.

So what’s coming up this week? Well, who knows. Each week holds something different for us these days. There are some things that definitely need prayer that I hope to share with you all soon. Before I forget, pray for the Cornwell family as my friend, Rob was diagnosed with colon cancer. I love this guy and I love how he is handling this. I mean, cancer is cancer, but he is ready for the fight. Pray that he can continue to fight with the Lord’s help.

I will be preparing for an upcoming church retreat I’ve been asked to lead worship for in Joliet, Il. I will be leaving Friday and coming back Sunday. Then it’s prep time for the Sunday morning concert at Waypoint Church in St. Peters.

OH! OH! OH! Before I forget, my brother in law is getting married! I alsmost forgot that. I told you, even though I didn’t go a whole bunch of places, a lot happened this weekend. Did I mention that he was getting married in a month? I gotta get busy preparing for this…

What else am I forgetting? Oh yeah!!!! Big news, but I’ll save that for later this week. You’ll just have to come back and read what I’ve got to say. This is BIIIIIIIG news…

So I’ve been thinking about this a for a little while now. I’ve decided that I’m not a huge fan of the word ‘blended’.  The other thing that I have decided is that there is so much emphasis put on this style of worship because people seem to think this is the answer to the problems within the church.  The thought is that you can do newer songs without losing some of the older songs that people have come to know and love. I believe that this is a key element in leading the church in worship. Songs have meaning and they generally mean different things to different people at different times. This makes it difficult as a worship leader to choose songs because you want to keep current without leaving people behind. So how current is TOO current? How far back do you reach?

A few years ago before he died, Robert Webber begun calling this style “Converged”. I think this is a good name for it, and I believe that this is a little more than just semantics. Robert Webber was an amazing thinker and always took many things into consideration. I believe that this type of approach is the one that needs to be taken in order for this style of worship to actually work.  Bringing different styles and different eras together on a weekly basis may be the hardest thing to do. I applaud those who do that weekly (I have been one of them for a while). There has to be a continued reach toward fine tuning this idea. Who’s going to step up?

Even as I’m sitting here writing this sentence, I can’t believe that I’m writing it. I love this idea and am slightly overwhelmed by it at the same time.  As I was getting ready to sit down and really think about this idea, I was having an awesome conversation with a very good friend of mine, Charlie. He was sharing some excerpts from a book that talked about how we must realize that the circumstances around us are put there by God and if he had something different for us that would work better he would use them. I look at the circumstances that have happened in my life and I realize that if it weren’t for the people that God has placed in my life I wouldn’t be where I am today. I won’t even begin to name people because I’ll forget someone and they’ll be the person to read this   Here are some of my thoughts though…

We as a people are so enthralled by the idea of doing things on our own. There’s something about being able to say that I did something myself or I made it somewhere without any help. But in reality, we weren’t even designed to do things on our own. We are built to help each other and be helped by each other. God loved us enough to put people in our lives so we wouldn’t have to try to be independent. Why do we run away from what God has for us?

I am so thankful for all the people in my life that help me get through this crazy life. Even though I have so many people in my life that want to be there for me, I find ways to try to be independent as well. What am I doing? I have a guide that shares all kinds of way for me to depend on Christ and the people that he puts in my life. No where does it mention me being a loner or trying to handle this life by myself. However, I try to do it all the time. It gets even harder when, like me, you’re married with a family. Now I have people closer to me all the time and instead of embracing that fact, I work harder to try to be independent. We are weirdos sometimes…

What am I saying? I guess what I’m trying to say is Christians are called to help each other. We aren’t doing anyone a favor when we don’t lend a hand to help or we don’t make ourselves available for our brothers and sisters. One day we will realize this. Who knows how much of an impact the body can have when we decide to finally work together in the ways that God planned…

⁹ Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:

¹⁰ If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!

¹¹ Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?

¹² Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12