As you may remember from previous posts, Beth and I began attending Freshwater Community Church back in June.  One of the decisions we made when we started attending was to wait before plugging in anywhere.  This allowed us to spend time worshiping together as a family.  It  also allowed us to listen to where it was that God was calling us to plug in.

While we are still spending quite a bit of time praying about it we both began the process a bit this past weekend.  Beth spent the second hour volunteering in the nursery with Brooke (who absolutely loved it).  Brooke was like a kid on Christmas Eve Saturday night.  She just couldn’t want for the morning to get here – Heck, at around 8:50 she told me she was ready to go to bed!

As for me, I had been asked to help out with the kids program on a periodic basis.  I would be working on a team with four other people to do the large group time for the K-3 graders.  What this means is that once every five weeks I get to be as goofy as I want to be!  The curriculum that they are using provides a script for the 20-25 minutes that the kids are with me and it has some great stuff in there to ensure that the kids are learning solid biblical truths as well as being engaged in what is going on.

So – this past week I got to play Respect Inspector Jeff!  I decided to take it down a bit of a …. nerdy route as you can see here.

Luckily I hadn’t gotten my hair cut in a while and so was able to use a bit of gel to get that special “finger in the light socket” look!

For Beth’s sake I didn’t wear the tie or have my hair done this way when we got to church.  Once she saw me she didn’t seem to want to be seen beside me though – haha!  I can’t understand why!

I created my very own “respect detector” so that when the kids came in I was able to see how respectful they were being.  My respect detector consisted of an ipod touch, external speaker slung around my shoulder and a fake metal detector app – the kids loved it (and so did I).

The lesson was based around Romans 13:1-7 with the core idea for the kids to learn being that when you respect God by showing respect to people in charge.   I picked three kids from the group to play a game of Who\How\Why and then we closed with a catchy little song that I even made up some motions for.  It was  a lot of fun and reminded me of some of the stuff Beth and I did with the kids church we had started at Rittman.

I’ve also got to say the it felt really good to start to plug in again.  I truly believe that we are made to serve…it’s another way that we can worship God.  As I mentioned to a few people recently…God has definitely wired me to serve and when I don’t it really feels like something is missing.  I still don’t know where else he will call me, but I know that when he does I will answer.

How about you?  How are you plugging in and serving where God has placed you?  Either in your church, your school, your workplace?  Do you think that God calls just a few of us to serve or everyone?  Jump in on the comments here and let’s talk about it.

I know it was a week ago, but I am just now getting around to posting my thoughts on last weekend’s Walk to Emmaus that I was a part of.

All in all it was an absolutely amazing weekend with about 50 men full of music, prayer, incredible talks, amazing times of worship\communion and some awesome God moments.

One of the things that truly humbles me every time I have served is seeing how God works in the lives of men.  It is such a blessing to be able to see lives changed and hearts transformed by our Lord and Savior.

It is also such a blessing to be surrounded by incredible men of faith.  It seems like it is through these weekends that God brings men into my life that become great friends.  I know this time he did that as well for me and I am thankful for that.

As for my talk…well, God is so good.  You see, when I got there Thursday night I noticed a bit of a “tickle” in my throat.  I didn’t think too much of it.  By the time I woke up Friday morning my voice was about gone.  Yep, laryngitis nailed me as I was supposed to be facilitating discussions at my table.  Luckily, I was paired up with another great guy and between the two of us and the two guys at our table we had some great conversation.

So…I wasn’t able to talk much…which meant I wasn’t able to sing at all.  Now this is something that I knew was going to be a struggle for me because music is such an important part of the weekend.  I was a but frustrated by this but quickly realized I could sing as loudly as I wanted on the inside and God would be pleased by this.  I was able to spend the weekend worshiping through music in a way I never have before and I’ve got to say it was pretty cool (though I prefer actually singing).

When Sunday rolled around and I knew I had my talk coming up at 10:45 I was a bit worried.  The voice wasn’t back.  I had no idea how I was going to be able to squeak out what needed to be said over the course of 30 minutes.  Well, God is SO good!  I went down to the chapel before my talk for prayer.  My dad was there (as he was serving in the chapel as a prayer warrior for the weekend).  By the time I left there and got to the conference center my voice had returned and for the next 30 minutes I was able to speak and get the message out.  When I was done I was back to no voice.  My prayer was that God would speak through me – that my words would be his.  There is no doubt that I didn’t give that talk on Sunday, but that God used me and spoke through me – I love how God works!

All in all it was a fabulous week.  I will share that the laryngitis did turn into a full on nasty cold and other fun things by Tuesday and I missed a few days of work but I’m finally feeling better now.

Praise God in the good times and praise him in the bad times – at ALL times I will say blessed by YOUR name, Lord!

I am off to serve as a member of God’s team this weekend for the East Ohio Emmanuel Emmaus Walk (yes, that IS a mouthful).  I love serving with a group of guys that are all focused on God like this.

This is my third time to serve on team and this time I will be playing a new part.  In the past I’ve done music but this time I will be a table leader.  Facilitating discussion for the pilgrims at my table.  On Sunday morning I will also be giving a talk on the Body of Christ.

I’m excited and nervous about it all and would value your prayers for me, the rest of the team and those men that are making the walk.  My talk is on Sunday at approximately 10:45 am so any extra prayers for God to shine through me for about 30 minutes there would be really appreciated.

Blessings!

So, this will probably be my final reflections for a while (and my final for a while as part of the Sunday Setlists at TheWorshipCommunity.com).  As I mentioned previously this past Sunday was my final day to lead worship at the Rittman United Methodist Church.  I have resigned from my position as Director of Youth, Worship and Outreach effective June 15th.

It was a day of mixed emotions as it will be hard to leave some of the amazing people that God has placed in my family’s life there – however, Beth and I are also excited to see what God has in store for us next.

During the morning service the chair of SPPR made the announcement in the beginning of the service and I had an opportunity to say a few words myself.

The evening service was treated as normal as possible.  The advantage here was that most everyone there had already heard that I was stepping down so I wanted to just keep the focus on spending time worshiping our awesome creator.  The service looked like this:

Welcome
Mighty to Save (Fielding\Morgan)
Glory to God Forever (Fee\Beeching)
Prayer
Message
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
Jesus Paid It All (Grape\Hall\Nifong)
Marvelous Light (Hall)
All Because Of Jesus (Fee)

We then made the official announcement.  This was the one that I knew would be toughest as I was surrounded by the entire team.  What I didn’t know was that after the representative from SPPR made her announcement my team was going to step forward to say a few words.  I can not say enough how much these people have meant to me and how proud of each of them I am.  My drummer Andy (aka Animal) read from the Psalms and said a few words (which I will admit I missed a lot of as his son was not too happy about me leaving and was letting it be known – I love that kid).  They then presented Beth and I with a beautiful picture that couldn’t have been more perfect.

It’s perfect for a number of reasons.  Two special ones  though are:

One – It has Beth’s favorite verse,

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

Two, it is a picture of a quiet setting at the water’s edge…appropriate for this blog and very similar to the header on this blog.  It also reminds me a lot of the path and benches at edge of Lake Erie at Lakeside, OH where I really felt God speaking to me about my ministry a few years ago.  This was very unexpected and I am thankful to the team for doing this for me.

I then shared a few words and we closed with “You are the Light” be Fee.  I love this song.  As I said during those final moments – I pray that when people think back to the time spent together that they don’t look at me as just the youth leader or just the worship leader but as a child of God and that in all that I said and did that His Light was shining from me.  I pray that my ministry was never about me and all about what God was able to do through me.

I value the friendships and relationships that I have made while at RUMC and will always treasure them.  Here’s hoping that many of them continue.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a reflections.  It’s not that worship hasn’t been taking place…it most definitely has.  However, I haven’t been taking the time to really blog much at all with three kids in four sports, a wife going back to school and me doing worship\youth stuff at church.

The last month has seen some great moments in worship.  We’ve introduced a number of new songs in Rittman and God has been using some in a very powerful way.

A few weeks ago in our evening service we were blessed to have Kayla (the young lady that sings with me) sing Brooke Fraiser’s “Lead Me To The Cross” as we prepared for communion.  Not only was this a great time to prepare our minds and hearts for communion but Kayla did an incredible job with the song.  I’ve been stretching her a bit out of her comfort zone lately (which I’ll get to a bit more in a few) and God has given her the strength to rise to the challenge.

Another high point for me was our time of prayer a few weeks ago.  As we finished up the music set and headed into our prayer time I just felt led to have us spend a little more time in silent prayer.  I asked the congregation to focus on a specific need and to just spend time praying for each of these.  All too often our services can get bogged down with “activity” and we forget that God wants us to just be still and talk with him and listen for him.

I mentioned new music – some of the songs we’ve added recently have been:

Adoration – Brenton Brown
Glorious – Paul Baloche
God Is Alive – Steve Fee
Revelation Song – Jenni Riddle

One last thing I want to mention was last night’s service.  One thing I strongly believe is that as a worship leader one of my responsibilities is to encourage and train up my replacement.  I mentioned Kayla earlier.  She has a wonderful voice and even more – a heart on fire for God.  Last night I asked her to lead all of the songs while I just played guitar and added some harmony in selected places (which I love doing).  While she was a bit nervous, she did a beautiful job and I am so proud of her.  She will be doing it again in a few weeks when I am out for a week and I can’t wait to hear about how God uses her that night as well.

The last two weeks have also been an opportunity for some of the laity to preach God’s Word.  Last week I had the opportunity to preach again and last night Dave, a lay leader and my other guitar player, brought a great message filled with God’s Word and some insight from Francis Chan’s book, “Crazy Love”.

Tonight I had the opportunity to lead worship and deliver the message at our Good Friday service at the Rittman United Methodist Church

What an amazing night.  I am still in awe at how God worked tonight.  I can honestly say I am at a loss for words.

Our set list tonight looked like this:

Here I Am To Worship (Hughes)
Wonderful (Michale Farren)
The Wonderful Cross (Watts\Tomlin)
How Deep The Father’s Love For Us (Townend)
Jesus Messiah (Tomlin)

I then delivered my message which you can hear by clicking here.  It was a message reminding us that Jesus came as the ultimate sin offering and that we are still sinful people but that we can give it all to him and leave all the “junk” we are holding on to at the cross and we can be free.

I had one of our members make me a nine foot cross which I had laid down on the floor in the center aisle.  After my message I then invited people to pray about what it was that God was asking them to let go of and come forward and nail it to the cross.  While they did this I played Michael Farren’s “Jesus Died My Soul To Save” which is an amazing song followed by Baloche’s “To The Cross”.

I then stood the cross upright.  To see a nine foot tall cross completely covered with red pieces of paper that had been nailed to it was just….wow.  So much freedom. (After the service all of the papers were collected and taken outside and burnt while some of us watched our sins go up in smoke).

We ended the night with Kristian Stanfill’s version of “Jesus Paid It All” and about blew the windows out.  Very powerful worship.

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be used tonight by God and am even more thankful for all of those that were there and who left their sins on the cross.

Well today is Palm Sunday.  The beginning of Holy Week.  The time we remember the triumphant entry, suffering on the cross and ultimate victory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Tonight’s Palm Sunday service went pretty well.  I opened up with the reading  Matthew 21: 1-11 and then went straight into Paul Baloche’s “Hosanna”.  The rest of the opening set looked like this:

He Reigns (Furler\Taylor)
King of Glory (Tomlin)
Glorious One (Fee)

What I was really pleased about with this set was the flow between the first three songs.  Hosanna was in G, He Reigns was in F and King of Glory back to G.  Normally this would be a worship crash waiting to happen, however, I was able to hang on the C in Hosanna after singing the last word and use that as a transition to get me to the opening riff for He Reigns.  I did the same thing at the end of that with the G and it all flowed really smoothly.

After the message on suffering and communion we played Paul Baloche’s “Offering” and closed the service out with “Blessed Be Your Name” (Redman).  It was a nice closing as it tied in to his message as well as set us up for the remainder of Holy Week.

Pastor Chuck is doing a short Maundy Thursday service and then on Friday I will be putting the preaching hat back on for our 7:00 Good Friday service.  I’m really excited about how it’s all coming together.  We will be looking at the cross as both an instrument of pain and suffering and also as a place of hope and release.  The band will be playing the music and we’ll be doing a lot of new stuff.

We will then celebrate Christ’s victory over the grave on Sunday evening at 6:00.

If you don’t have a church to worship at on Friday or Sunday evening we’d love to see you at Rittman United Methodist.

This post is a part of the Sunday Setlists over at the WorshipCommunity – check the link if you want to see what others did in their services.

Just wanted to post about this past Sunday night’s service.  We were continuing in our “Journey to Hope” series with the focus tonight being on Work.  Pastor Chuck was bringing the message and we were celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

The set or the night looked like this:

More Love More Power (Hierro)
Everlasting God (Brown)
Your Grace Is Enough (Maher)

I then added in just the chorus of Sometimes By Step (Mullins).  That’s where the first Doh! of the night happened.  You know how you’ve seen those church bulletin bloopers.  Well, worship leaders have them too.  Mostly it’s when we mix up verses, forget the words, etc.  Well, Sunday night I started singing out, “Oh God You are my God and I will ever praise You.”   The only problem…I actually sang, “Oh God You are my God and I will ever change You.”  DOH!!!  I recovered quickly and sang it right the next few times but in my mind I couldn’t help but laugh.  Not sure if anyone else caught it.

After that was the prayer\offering where we did a portion of Tim Hughes’ “Everything”.  This went fairly well though a few distractions in the congregation did throw us off a couple times causing a few wrong chords to be played.

After Pastor Chuck’s message we went into Communion.  We played “You Are my King” as the communion song and then I had asked Pastor Chuck to pray following communion and we would close out the service with two more songs….problem was Pastor Chuck prayed after communion and then dismissed everyone.  DOH!

It all worked out fine and the congregation was none the wiser (though if any of them read this they know now).  The band all just looked at each other and smiled.   Just a reminder to us that where the Pastor goes…we go!

It was a good time of worship to our Lord and Savior.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to bring the message at both our morning and evening worship services in addition to my normal worship leading responsibilities.  I have to say, I really enjoy being stretched by God like this.  It also allows me to get a better understanding of if this is how God wants to use me in the future.

My message was on our self-esteem and our image of ourselves.  The idea being that too often we let the world and other people tell us who we are and try and define our image when we really need to be confident in the knowledge that our image is in Christ.  I’m hoping to post a follow-up with some more information.

If you would like to hear it you the message you can click HERE.

For both services I played and sang Casting Crowns’ “Who Am I”.  I’ve done this before but decided to do it this time with just the acoustic and really liked the way it came off. 

Here is the evening set if you are interested in that:

O Worship The King (Tomlin)
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
Holy Is The Lord (Tomlin)
How Great Is Our God (Tomlin)
Wonderful God (Baloche)
Amazing God (Brown)

The evening seemed to go pretty well (in spite of a few distractions that drew my attention from time to time).   It was a great time to worship our Lord.

It’s been a crazy day….but a great day.

It started off with Kidz church this morning.  Our memory verse for the lesson was 2 Chron 15:7 “But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.”  In honor of the big game tonight I used some football stories to help with this point including the “death crawl” scene from ‘Facing the Giants’.  Here at the end of the night I think the New Orleans Saints might just agree that staying strong is a good thing!

Of course, we know that our reward for staying strong is bigger than any football game….which is where our night started out at 6:00.  We had a great evening of worship tonight.  We celebrated Communion and raised the rafters with some wonderful worship.  The set tonight consisted of:

“Praise Adoni” (Baloche)
“Wonderful God” (Baloche)
“Jesus Messiah” (Tomlin)

We did Rich Mullins’ “Creed” following the message and then had Communion.

For communion we played “You Are My King” (Foote) and closed the service out with “I Am Free” (Egan).  This was a last minute (as in 30 minutes prior to service) addition and we used the iFlexx track to do it (with the intention being to learn it as a team in the future).  It went great and was a great way to end the service, be thankful for the gift that Jesus gave us and get us pumped up for some football.

After the service we all headed into the social hall to watch the big game and enjoy our chili cook-off.  We had 9 different chilis, 2 soups and a ton of other amazing food.  If there is one thing I have always said about Methodists….we love our pot lucks!  It was a great night of fellowship.  Oh…and the game was pretty darn good, too!!

The only question now is do I give away my winning chili recipe or turn it into a secret family recipe??  Decisions, decisions.

This blog post is a part of the Sunday Setlists over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com