I have been doing music stuff for most of my life, but lately things have really been going in a new direction. I must say, I’m liking the direction things are heading in. I just hope that I can keep up with them and do what I need to do to keep the ball rolling. Case in point…

Yesterday, I spent most of the morning at Shock City Studios in South City getting a chance to meet a producer and having them listen to my music. I was greatly surprised to hear that they really enjoyed what they were listening to and are ready to work with me. I need to find a band to play with me. As we were sitting in the control room (which is beautiful enough to make a grown man drool), the producer says to one of the other guys sitting there that we need to find a drummer who can really play one of my songs. The guy says that he knows a guy and it turns out to be the drummer from the Fundamental Elements. Now, if you read my blog about their concert, you know that I’m a huge fan and would love to have that whole band in my pocket so I can keep them with me at all times. So this was a dream that was coming true. We will see how that works out. In the mean time, I need to find some money so I can get this ball rolling. I think that we may be on the brink of some very cool things happening.

Later that day, I got to go to a rehearsal for one of the ministry groups that I will be working with during the year at Missouri Baptist University. It was great to be doing that and it was great to be working with this group. I think we are going to have a good time. I started working on a plan to help them succeed throughout the year. I am going to be sitting down with the kid who is leading this group one on one to help him develop as a leader. He’s got some raw skills that can really get refined and brought out if someone comes alongside him and draw them out. That’s going to be my goal.

I’m also announcing that there will be some dates coming up where you can come worship with me. I will be posting them in the Upcoming Dates section of the website soon. One of them I will mention right from here though. Because we are struggling so much financially right now, my wife got some people together to create a chili dinner with a concert. It’s going to be fun. You can come for all you can eat chili and hear some music from me and a couple of friends (if I can get them to play some stuff). I don’t know how much it will cost because my wife hasn’t told me yet. I do know that the date is Friday, September 18th at Redeemer Evangelical Church. There will be more details, and when I get them I’ll pass them on to you. Until then, keep praying for us that God will keep sustaining us and putting people around us that can help us keep going. I am now off to the living room to set up the Motif and get to sequencing…

This Sunday was week 2 since the decision to choose a church home that had nothing to do with where I was leading worship. I will say this…there are definitely pluses and minuses. Plus, I didn’t have to get up early to get to church for sound checks and stuff like that. I even got to church a little “after” the service started. Haven’t done that in about 15 years! Anyway, being able to sit back and listen to others lead and see that others have a heart for the same thing was good. Great job, Gina. You rocked this morning!

Minus, I REALLY love doing what I do. There’s a part of me that likes to sit back and listen. There’s an even larger part of me that loves to lead and be on stage. It is not because I need to be in front of people, but I know that’s what God has called me to do and I love being able to use that gift. Minus, I haven’t practiced or listened to any music in the past couple weeks. So there is a little bit of both on either side. But I am learning to enjoy where God has placed me right now. I’m still praying that God would lead us to a place to serve Him, but in the mean time we are serving God the best way we know how where we are. Where are we, you ask? Well currently  we are a part of the Quest Service at E-Free.

Something else that has happened this past week that was really cool. I have been given the opportunity to do something really special this year. I was asked to help out at my Alma Mater (which I just got a couple months ago), Missouri Baptist University. Since I started, the number of ministry groups have grown from 3 to 6. The number of ministry group leaders has grown from 2 to 2. Which means they need some help leading these other groups. That’s where I come in. I get to help a couple groups with their instrumental stuff as well as some vocals. I also get the chance to help develop some worship leaders. I am so pumped. For those of you that have been praying, this is not a paying thing right now, but it’s a great opportunity and I’m so excited about it. I will keep you posted on how things work our over the course of the year.

Lastly, I’m going to stop punking out and get back at working on my own music this week. This is my plan for myself. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes as well. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. and to my friends that start school tomorrow, good luck and let God bless you as you start this year off right!

This past weekend I celebrated 7 years of marriage with my wife. We were completely blessed to have been given the whole weekend to ourselves. We were able to reconnect and spend time just being us. Once you have kids, you lose a lot of that and it’s harder to make time for it. Anyway, I learned quite a few things about myself this weekend. Some of them were things I actually rediscovered. Here they are…

1. I love reading mystery novels. I love mysteries and thrillers and didn’t remember. We went to Borders a couple times this weekend (see #2) and I starting reading a book that I couldn’t put down so I ordered it at Amazon.com. I’m so excited to get this book and read. I’ll probably write about it when I’m done.

2. I love Borders. I don’t know if there’s a difference between all the bookstores in the world, but Borders has a more inviting feel to me. I love the colors on the inside and I felt compelled to stay and read. Eva and I love reading books and we love spending time together in that way.

3. There is a lot of good music in St. Louis, MO. I love this town. It’s home for me, but as I grow older I’m finding out things that I didn’t know when I was little. There is good music here that isn’t always on the radio. We went to a GREAT concert Friday night (see Concert Review) and I’m sure that I’m missing so much good music here.

4. I have amazing friends. The more time we get to spend with them the more I realize that God has really blessed us with some great people. I can’t wait to see what God does over the next few months as we get to know them better.

5. I must really be growing up. Eva and I went to a couple movies this weekend and one of the movies we saw was profanity laced. It did nothing for me and sort of took away from the story of the movie. There was a time in my life where I didn’t care and would watch anything. That’s not the case anymore.

6. Jim and Jeremiah may quite possibly be the perfect storm of public embarrassment. They may also be the perfect storm of straight fun in many forms as well. There’s not much else to say about that.

7. I will, always have, always will, love ice cream. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

8. I don’t write new music because I’m lazy and can find many things to do besides sitting and writing.
8a. I really want to start a music group. That has been my dream and it won’t go away. I’ve done all I can to turn away from this idea, but it keeps putting itself in my line of vision.

9. I adore my children. I loved having the time away where I could connect with Eva, but I was quite happy when my kids came home last night.

10. I cannot live without my wife. Period.

11. God is amazing! He continues to bless me in ways that I KNOW I don’t deserve. I’m not sure why He keeps it up, but I’m so glad He does. Thanks be to God for everything I learned this weekend. I also pray that I keep learning things. If I stop learning, I’m dead.

So, I’m really excited about my friends. I have been hanging out with some of the coolest people in the world lately and I’ve been loving it! God is continuing to work during this ‘down time’ between jobs. I’m so glad that God has been giving me some real support during this time. So, this may not be my longest or deepest post, but it means something to me because of what God has done and is doing. Thank you God for friends. Thanks for Jim, Jeremiah and Mark. I had a blast with you guys last night. Great friends, great music…

I will be the first to say that it’s been too long since I’ve written one of these. However, to my defense (if I have any), there has been a lot going on. For instance, if you notice, the blog is brand new and updated. It’s now it’s own website. Thanks to my buddy Charlie, the switch has been made!!! So I’ve been trying to make the transition in my own mind in the mean time. So that’s one thing. Besides that, I’ve been working hard running from church to church this month. God has been good, but the struggle is still real. To make up for it, I’m going to write 2 blogs today. That’s right, 2!

The first one has to be dedicated to last Sunday night. What an amazing evening I had! I was blessed with an opportunity to go to the Futures Game and Baseball Legends and Celebrity Softball Game as a part of All Star Week at Busch Stadium last weekend. I couldn’t believe that I was able to participate in the festivities. It was simply amazing! Stars were everywhere and people were really just enjoying the fact that St. Louis was the host for such an event. It was a great time to be a baseball fan. Anyway, here’s why it was especially cool for me and a couple friends.

First things first, we were sitting in amazing seats! 15-20 rows back from a dugout makes baseball soooo much better. After that, a new friend of mine Jeremiah, decided that it would be cool for us to be on the JumboTron. He said, “all we have to do is look for Harry’s lime green shirt…” No sooner than he could get that out, my lime green shirt showed up on the big screen. We were PUMPED!!! Some time passed and Jeremiah said, “I hope we catch a foul ball since we are sitting THIS close to the field!” It was true, we should have at least seen some action. Then the craziest thing happened…after the between inning warm ups, the left fielder threw the ball in the stands. Guess where it ended up?

You guessed it! We got a ball! This night was shaping up to be something AMAZING when Jeremiah said… “Man, I want a free shirt. They never give our section free shirts!” I couldn’t believe that it could happen three times. But the girls came out to shoot the shirts between innings and guess what? GOTCHA! We didn’t get one…but when we sat down completely bummed that we didn’t get a shirt, Jeremiah looked down to find a bag at his feet that had been there the whole time we were sitting there. Guess what was in it? You guessed it, a free shirt! Sorry to whoever spent the $30 bucks on that shirt, but we have it now!!! And if this night couldn’t have gone any better, Jim got Jenna Fisher, you know, Pam from The Office to sign his softball! He lost his ever-loving mind!!! All in all, it was one of the best nights ever!!! I promise to get back to more Jesus-y stuff later, but I had to write about this because it was so awesome. Check in later today for the other blog because it’s sure to be a good one as well. I’ll add some other pictures of the evening. Unfortunately, I was a stupid boy and forgot my camera. These are all taken with my phone. No zoom or cool stuff like that. Just overall shots. Hope you like them anyway…

I’d like to announce to you all that the beginnings of the new website are up! Yes, it’s true. Worship180.org is officially up and working! Thanks to my buddy, Charlie, who has been helping me get things up and running, there is a website to go to now. As of right now, you can find there what you see here, but the format is different and you can see the new logo/banner. There has been a lot of work put into this and even more to come, but I am excited about what has happened already. Things to look forward to: Once we start to put some things in place, there will be a page for tour dates and opportunities to worship together. I’m also doing what I can to get some more video and hopefully some audio up in the near future. I’m working on getting some recorded so maybe we can have some sneak peeks posted. Keep checking in.

There’s a lot of great things happening right now. I’m currently sitting in Kaldi’s Coffee in Chesterfield Valley getting myself prepared for rehearsal at Rockwood Baptist in a couple hours. I’m also putting some music together for tomorrow night’s rehearsal. That’s gonna be fun as well. OH! Something else I almost forgot. Me and a couple of my favorite guys, Daniel Meyer, Evan Pitchers and Tim Schafer are going to be playing at the Gateway House of Prayer Friday night from 10pm-12am. If you want to come and worship with us for a couple hours during the Watch for the Lord, come join us. While I’m sitting here, I think I’m going to put a quick page together with upcoming dates and stuff like that. I’m singing in a few different place over the next month.

Before I go, I want to just say that God can truly bless you even in an intense storm. I am totally speaking from current experience. Even when things seem so out of whack and we don’t know where money is coming from or what utilities we will be able to keep, God is still working in ways that continue to surprise me. As I sit here right now, I don’t know what you might be going through, but I do know that God can handle whatever that is. He has that kinda power. He is GOD! Just in case you were wondering…

So I thought I’d report on what’s going on since my last post. Once I decided to stop making excuses, I realized why I had been making excuses LOL! Once you start making plans for things and people get excited with you, then you have to keep moving and going forward because people are ready to go. I started talking to people about helping me make this whole CD project happen and I have gotten great response.  I’m excited. First rehearsal is this week.

Anyway, that’s not what this one is about. Yesterday, I got to spend some time with some dear friends at Timberridge Community Church yesterday. What an amazing time! We were going to have lunch together, and we did. However, the fellowship was so amazing that we ended up having dinner together as well. God really gave us all some rest. We kept talking about how cool it was to actually get some rest because we move so much and never really stop. I am so glad for friends and family and glad that we were able to have that time.

July is starting off fresh and I can’t wait to see what else God is going to do this month. I’ll keep writing if you keep reading…

Well, it seems like I’m starting off July with a bang! June was the my best blogging month ever and I have all of you my friends and family to thank. I thought I’d keep it going with something that happened last night. My wife and I and my good friend Brittany Howard and Smitty went to see Square Peg Alliance at Grace Community Chapel last night. Most of the gang was there. Ben Shive, Andrew Peterson, Andy Gullahorn, Jill Phillips, Andrew Osenga, Randall Goodgame, Jeremy Casella and Eric Peters. If you don’t know who these people are, and you like great songwriting, click on the name of the group. That was the best 2 hours I had spent in a while. I even got to meet Ben Shive and Andrew Peterson after the concert was over.

If you’re not familiar with SPA, they are singer/songwriters from the Nashville area that have created a community to write and they travel together and do these concerts. If any of you came to the Story:Song:Life concert back in February, that’s where we got the idea from. They shared stories and amazing music throughout the night. At the end of the night, they all stood on the stage and we sang ‘It Is Well’ together sort of in memory of Rich Mullins. Peterson shared a story of a concert that he had gone to and he said that Rich Mullins would frequently end his concerts with that song and at the end would say “Now THAT’S Christian music!” So that’s what we did. What an awesome time!

So the second part of this dual blog came on the way home from the concert. My wife asked me what was my excuse for not following my dreams. We currently don’t have a job and can do whatever it is that we want. Also, Britt and I had worked to make SSL come together and our goal was to start a similar community and we just kinda left it at “Man, that was a fun concert!” But she hit me in the face with that question on the way home. What’s stopping you from following your dream? What’s stopping you from making a CD? What’s stopping you from creating a community of singers and songwriters? I realized that I make excuses for not doing the things that I want to do. We weren’t originally talking about our dreams, which was really funny. She had read an article about “What story is your fat telling you?” Some sort of way that’s where we ended up. Anyway, at the end of the conversation, I decided that I can’t continue to make excuses for not doing the things that know I’m supposed to do and want to do. So the first thing I am doing is writing this so all of you can keep me accountable for doing what I say I’m going to do. I will appreciate your prayers and even emails asking me am I doing what I say I’m going to do (you know, like accountability or something ). So that was my night and it took me a while to get to sleep, and now I’m up ready to get going. So I guess this means that I’m launching the writing recording process as well as currently (even as I write this) talking to Britt about getting Story:Song:Life rolling forward. Keep your eyes and ears open. This could start moving fast…thanks again, to my wife.

I can’t even begin to explain how good God is! When God is working, there’s nothing else that you can do but sit back and watch the show. This first month without a permanent job has been so much more than I thought it would be. I was just hoping to get by and do what I had to do. Instead, we met our neighbors and have started a great friendship with them. I met a radio celebrity (she’s probably gonna kill me for that one!), got to sing and lead worship with 2 amazing bands, and build connections that would have never happened otherwise…and that was all at one church! That doesn’t even include my trip to Godfrey at the beginning of the month which was totally awesome. I had such a great time riding with and leading worship with my friend, Erica DeVilbiss. I’ve also met people from a couple of churches who have shown interest in me. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have met any of these people had it not been for God’s working. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for next month.

If you are interested in where we’re going next, the month of July looks sort of like this…

July 5th I’ll be at TimberRidge Community Church. Still not sure if I’m leading there yet, but we’re going for a visit. Love the people down there.

July 12th I’ll be leading worship at Rockwood Baptist Church in Wildwood, MO. This is becoming one of my favorite places to go. There are some really nice people there and they love God. I love leading for churches that love God…

July 19th I will be leading worship with family at West Hills Community Church. There’s not much else to say about this one except for this is family. Pastor Gary and his wife Jenny are lovely people and it’s always good to go home.

So as I was saying, sometimes you have to look back and realize that things are happening in ways that only God can make them happen. OH! Before I forget, my expectations were really blown away this month. I set a goal for myself to have 200 visits to my blogsite here. I thought it would be a stretch, especially since last month netted about 50. Either way, I set my sights and went for it. That meant a lot of writing for me, and also a lot of praying. The last time I checked we were sitting at about 320 visits for this month alone! Thanks friends for continuing to check in a read what I have to say. I’ll keep writing if you keep reading. Have a blessed week. You’ll probably hear from me again.

So today was an amazing day. That’s how I start this post. I can’t believe how it all came together. So without any more delay, let me break this down.

So as I’ve said before, I was slated to lead worship this week and next for the Quest service (younger, contemporary) at First Evangelical Free Church is West County. I had been in talks with the director of this service all week making plans and getting things lined up. I got to the church this morning and ran into some of the band members and we were getting ready and talking through things and I finally met Alisha (the director) face to face. We begin talking through details and all that stuff and she asked was my wife there. I explained that she wasn’t because we only had one car and all these things. Well, she asked where I lived and I said south St. Louis. Then she said, “So do I.” As we continue to break down where we live we figure out that we share an alley and have been living across the alley from each other for over a year! We realized that we’ve crossed passed before and didn’t really know it. Her husband Jim, tried to run my wife over in the car last night (not really, but I’m messing with him). That was such an amazing connection and it set the tone for what ended being a simply marvelous day.

We ended up sharing with the congregation that it’s amazing what you find out once you step outside your door. We found a new set of friends. It was something that only God could have done. Now, I have no idea what God is doing or will do with today, but I do know that He’s working. And when God is working it’s best to stay out of the way and let Him do His thing. I’m glad that I met Jim and Alisha this morning. Only God knows what this relationship will lead to. I do know that we share an alley and we’ll be eating dinner together soon. Promise…