I’ve always loved Rube Goldberg machines.

How cool is that?

You can see the story behind the making of this video HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

It seems like so long ago but in reality it has been just over a month since a devastating earthquake ravaged Haiti.  While there was a tremendous outpouring of help and support in the days and weeks following it there is still so much that needs to be done.

For the past month or so I have been reading about how Compassion International and Shaun Groves have been working to bring together an amazing line-up of artists for a benefit concert.  The event takes place tonight in Nashville, TN.  You can see some of the line-up above – in addition Jon Foreman of Switchfoot will also be performing.  In addition there is a live auction over HERE that will help as well.

While there are still tickets available if you live in the area I realize that most of the people that read this don’t live anywhere close to that.  That’s where the wonder of the internet comes in.

The entire event will be streamed live tonight at HELPHAITILIVE.COM at 8:30 pm EST- I encourage you to watch and support it through both your prayers and your gifts.

Fee’s second album shows that that have no fear of the dreaded “sophomore slump”.  Their years of leading worship for Northpoint Ministries and the Passion conferences comes through strongly.  With ‘Hope Rising’ Fee has put together album of highly energetic music that is also highly singable by most congregations.

One of the things that most impresses me about this album is the “vertical” focus of so many of the songs.  In a time when more and more of our worship songs are filled with “Me” and “I” a large number of these songs are focused on God and who he is.  When it does get personal there is more “Our” and “We” than many other offerings out there.  “Send Me Out” is probably the most individually focused song, but even that is on how I can do God’s work on Earth in His name.

As a worship leader one of the things that I appreciate the most is that musically these songs can be adapted to work with a full band or they can be just as effective with just a single acoustic guitar.  I’ve already added “Glory to God Forever” into our set in Rittman and can see adding in songs like “Greatly To Be Praised” and “Rise and Sing” in the near future.

Do yourself a favor and pick this one up.

So, I came home from work one night last week and Beth had a mischievous little smile on her face.

She said, “Guess what I got us today?”

She then told me that she got us floor seats for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert in Cleveland this December.  Yes, I was excited.

There are a few shows that I’ve always heard great things about…this is one of them.  Check out the promo below for a taste.

Is there a concert you’ve always wanted to see?

So, tonight was the Community Cookout/Corn-Hole Tournament/Concert at Rittman UMC.  This has occupied a large portion of my time over the last month and I really had no idea what to expect.

Thankfully the event went better than I could have hoped for.  We had a large number of people there from both the church and the community.  I met a few new people and had a chance to talk to some old friends as well.

We had 16 teams competing in the Corn-Hole Tournament and the winning team walked away with a pair of Brown’s tickets (which they then auctioned off and donated the proceeds to the Rittman UMC food pantry).

Josh the juggler performed for at least 30 minutes and entertained young and old while bringing the gospel message.  If you are looking for some fun for your next event I highly recommend him.

A group of the men – including current and former pastors – cooked a lot of hamburgers and hotdogs and we were all thankful as we ate a lot of good food.

There were games for the kids, face-painting and candy!

Finally, the Sunday Evening Connexions Praise Band had an opportunity to play for the first time – and they did great!  We have been working together as a team for the past month and tonight we did five songs during two sets.  The songs were:

“Come, Now Is The Time To Worship”
“Marvelous Light”
“All Because of Jesus”
“Holy Is the Lord”
“Open the Eyes of My Heart”.

I was so proud of them and how well they came together.  We definitely had our share of challenges today – from a guitar with a bad pick-up, a last minute Guitar Center run to pick up a cable, to a snapped string in the middle of the last song of the set (this is why I like to have two guitars).  In the end we made it through everything and I am looking forward to the new service kicking off on Sept. 20th with full confidence that they can handle the challenges of a weekly service.

Today was all about making Connexions with our Community and sharing the love of Christ with them – and I think we succeeded.  We shared food, fellowship and Christ with them and I hope to see them back in our doors at either our Sunday morning or Sunday evening services so we can continue to share the love and light of Christ with each of them.

I want to extend a huge thank you to all of the volunteers that helped out with games\cooking\clean-up\everything else today and especially to my amazing wife who helped out a ton and kept me sane.

Check out the other people’s reflections over at FredMcKinnon.com

In a few hours I’ll be hanging out with a few friends and listening to Red play at Musica in Akron.  I’m looking forward to it as I’ve really come to like their music – some great lyrics and killer music.  It’s a little…harder…than some of the stuff I typically listen to – but sometimes you just need to crank it up to 11!!

We saw them at Alive this year and they put on a great show.  Beth wasn’t a big fan of their style of music so she’ll be at the Beth Moore Simulcast while I’m rocking out.

What music would people be surprised that you listen to?

So, I haven’t been blogging much lately.  One of the main reasons is that I’ve been busy working to put together a big bash at the church this weekend.

This Sunday night, August 30th, from 4:00 until 8:00 the Rittman United Methodist Church will be hosting a Community Cookout at our pavilion in the back of the church.  Here are some of the cool things that are going to be there:

• Carnival style games with prizes for the kids including ring toss, balloon pop, duck pond and others.
• A Corn-Hole tournament with the winning team walking away with a pair of tickets to the October 25th Browns vs. Packers game.
• Live music by the Connexions Praise Band.
• Free hot-dogs, hamburgers, chips, cookies, lemonade.
• Face-painting.
• A performance by Josh the Juggler – Josh is a great guy who puts on a VERY entertaining show.

For all the details and directions click on the picture below and that will redirect you to our website with the schedule and directions.  I am looking forward to a great night with both our church community and the people of the local community as well.  The event is open to everyone so we’d love to see you there.

If you are planning on coming drop me a note so I will know to look for you!

Another good day of worship today.  We blended the worship a bit with Seth and I doing the prelude and the special music and Sandy doing the hymns on the organ.  This isn’t the first time that we’ve blended the worship – however, this is the first time that we’ve used electric guitars and a drum loop.

The day started out with a couple of announcements about two of the new ministries that we are starting up this fall – a Women’s Connexion’s programs and a Small Group Connexions program.  We are passing out surveys for people to fill out so that we can ensure that as we continue to plan for the fall we try to do our best to meet the needs of the congregation in both of these areas.  It is truly a blessing to see the way that God is beginning to work in this body of Christ.

For the prelude we did Fee’s “All Because of Jesus”.  Seth and I were both on electric for this one with me playing rhythm and Seth add the “flavor”  I used my Fender G-DEC 30  to add in a basic double-kick drum loop.  It worked pretty well with the exception of me forgetting to drop out at one point – it didn’t affect the song, it just didn’t allow it to grow like I wanted it to.

We then did two hymns on the organ, “Blessed Assurance” and “Nothing But the Blood” – both great powerful songs.

Chuck preached on Ephesians 1:3-14 (NIV).  The scripture reminds us that we are chosen by god and that it is in Christ that we are chosen, in him that we are redeemed.  So, based on that scripture and where Chuck took the message I felt it was only appropriate to do Big Daddy Weave’s “In Christ”.  This went really well – I was on the acoustic for this one and Seth added the electric in – no loops.

The service closed with “Victory in Jesus” on the organ.

All in all things went really well.  I received some positive feedback about the music we provided which was encouraging.  We didn’t have many of the “younger” crowd in the congregation this week so I was a little concerned.  The one thing that I love about this family is that while that type of music may now be their favorite they are not negative about it.  In all the time that I’ve been there the only negative comment I’ve received was that my guitar was too loud one time and overpowered the vocals (and he was absolutely right).  This congregation knows that in order to reach more people with the Gospel we have to do new things and so they support everything that we are doing.

This post is also a part of the “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at FredMcKinnon.Com – check it out for other worship leader’s reflections.

So, this week’s reflections is going to be a bit different – and a little long.

As I mentioned on Tuesday the family and I spent the past week in Canal Fulton at the Alive Music Festival.  Now that we are home and back to our routines I wanted to share my thoughts on the week.

First – MUD MUD MUD!!! So, we got there on Tuesday afternoon and had a great day.  We got the campsite set-up and went to the lake and just had a really nice time.

Then Wednesday came and with it so did the rain.  And boy did it rain!  I don’t remember most of the day…just the end of it.  During Bluetree’s set we finally decided that we’d had enough and headed back to camp, jumped in the van and drove home for our nice dry house.  Yes we were going to miss Tenth Avenue North and Skillet – but we saw some other great acts before that.  We did see an amazing rainbow though:

Now, I know what you’re thinking…Jeff, it’s camping – your going to get wet…and you are right.  However, getting wet and getting completely soaked to the bone and dealing with mud that was 6 inches deep in some places…not that much fun.  Add in the fact that we live 20 minutes away and – you get the picture.

I headed back early Thursday to check out the campsite and clean things up a little before the rest of the family got there.  Unfortunately I turned down the wrong road and almost got the van stuck and in need of a tow out of the mud which had gotten even deeper!  Luckily, I was able to get it out, got back to the site and got things cleaned up for when the family got there.

Thursday was a beautiful day and we had a chance to hear some great stuff.  We sat in on a Q&A session with a couple of the guys from RED, saw Anberlin over on the beach stage, and Vicky Beeching, Superchick and RED over on the mainstage.  The girls loved “rockin’ what they got” with Superchick.  Ally, Brooke and I went down to the field for this one and it was a blast.

RED closed out the night and put on an amazing show with lots of great loud music and amazing pyrotechnics (though I think Beth was glad when it was finally over – not exactly her kind of music)!  Comedian Brad Stine was the speaker and was absolutely hilarious.  My only complaint was that Vicky Beeching only had time to do four songs.  I would have loved for her to have had a longer time out there.

We woke up Friday morning to more rain and Beth had had enough so we literally threw everything into the van and decided to drive home after that night’s shows and commute on Saturday.  After we got the van loaded up it stopped raining and turned out to be a nice day.

We went and saw an illusionist and Taylor got to be part of the act.

Friday was probably the best day for the mainstage as the line-up consisted of Remedy Drive, Fireflight, Hawk Nelson, Connersvine, David Nassar (Speaker), David Crowder Band and Switchfoot.  Whew!  We did have a brief 15 minute cloudburst\lightning storm that stopped the show during Hawk Nelson and we had to go hide under some tents.

The show went on after than.  Crowder was absolutely amazing – talk about some amazing worship!!  The entire place was one their feet having a good time and worshipping God!  David Nassar’s talk was also amazing and it was so cool to see hundreds and hundreds of people heading to the prayer tent after his “challenge/altar call”.  THAT’S what Alive is about – saving souls!!

Finally, Saturday came and we ended up with some amazing music by Phil Keaggy who just blew me away with his skill on a guitar.

The night consisted of 33 Miles, Brit Nicole (who Brooke loved), Worth Dying For, The Afters and The Newsboys with Michael Tait up front (though there was a special appearance by Peter Furler).  Reggie Dabbs was the speaker – and he also challenged hundreds of people to head to the prayer tent…actually it was probably more like 1000 – I kid you not.  It brought tears to my eyes to see it.

It was an amazing week of fun, music, fellowship, rain and mud – lots of mud.  I’ve got one more post about something really cool that I got to witness with each of my kids but am saving that for later tonight.  Oh and sorry about the quality of the pics – they were all taken with my phone which is what I had with me.

That’s right!  It’s time for the 2009 Alive Christian Music Festival.  Starting later today the family and I will be pitching our tents and preparing for four days of some amazing music, worship, fun and relaxation!!  I am so excited!

There will be between 7 and 9 of us camping out in tents and sleeping bags at our campsite on the spacious grounds at Clay’s Park Resort in beautiful Canal Fulton, OH.  We’ve got a ton of food, drinks and snacks.  The kids are all excited…well, Brooke isn’t but we’re praying she’ll come around.

If you haven’t been to or heard of this festival it’s a great festival.  There are almost 80 different musicans that will be there including Switchfoot, Newsboys, Tenth Avenue North, Red, Vicky Beeching, the David Crowder Band and Taylor’s favorite – Hawk Nelson.  This will be our fourth (I think) year going and our second as a whole family.  The concerts run on three different stages throughout the day, they’ve got a lake for swimming, and inflatable sports zone, seminars for those of us that want to continue to learn or get to know the artists and family entertainment from juggling to snakes!

So – my next reflections on worship will be about our time together as a family.  Pray for good weather, little or no rain and plenty of relaxation and time with family and God.

See you all on Sunday!