I have had to go to Vancouver for work for the last two days. And the free time that I thought I would have last night never materialized so I have basically lost two days of preparation for this week. Hopefully things will return to normal tomorrow and I can try and get caught up.

God Bless You!

I have spent most of my evening trying to get the music/guitar chords for a song our minister wants to do this Sunday: "House of our God" by Jim Manley. You can listen to a snippet of the song here. After listening to it, I knew I had heard the song before so I searched high and low in all the songbooks I have here but to no avail. I was complaining to the rest of the family that I just could not find the song that I just knew I had heard before and, when I mentioned the title, my older daughter whipped out the songbook "All God's Children Sing" that has the song in it! It turns out my daughter had tried to get me to sing this song in the singsong in the past which is why I had heard it before.

Another part of my evening was spent looking for the guitar chords for "Be Thou My Vision". It is a very nice hymn which is in our hymnal, "Voices United", but there are no chords there. Fortunately for me, I was able to find a couple of sites that have chords for it.

I have not had much time to look at the rest of the service. Hopefully I can do that while I am on the ferry tomorrow on my way to Vancouver. I expect that the hotel where we will be staying will have internet access so I can communicate with everyone while I am out of town.

God Bless You!

It turns out that I ended up being lay reader this morning. I tried to get one of my daughters to do it, but one had done it already and the other did not feel comfortable doing it. I think I did a decent job although I know that I flubbed a couple of words. I probably mispronounced a few as well. This was the last Sunday where we had a guest minister; Rev. Jerri is back next week. I enjoyed again the reflection (sermon) that Rev. Lavenne gave this morning. It was interesting to see the different angles that both ministers took in their reflection.

It was also celebration Sunday today. Every month, our church holds a get together after church to celebrate the significant events in our church family. We have tea, coffee, juice and goodies (usually cake and maybe cookies as well as donut holes). It is a time to share in the lives of the people in the congregation. I must confess that I am not really a big one for sharing. Although I may sound like I am outgoing during the singsong and when I am the lay reader I am really a private person that will not go out of his way to talk to people.

The fall season is now upon us at church and it is time to get back on the vision trail. The theme for the next couple of weeks is "Casting a vision". I have not yet really looked at the Bible readings so I will keep you posted during the next few days.

God Bless You!

I did not post anything last night as I just crashed when I finally got home after work. Which of course means that I did nothing else either. That left the final song picking for today. I already had two songs (the ones mentioned in a previous posting), but I spent a while today trying to pick the third song. I was not having much luck when I decided to listen to some music while I was searching. And one of the first songs that played was "He Knows My Name" by Tommy Walker. This song just appealed to me so I have decided to go ahead and do that song during the singsong.


So the songs for tomorrow are as follows (in the order they will be sung):

"Walk With Me" VU649
"We Will Glorify" TFWS2087
"He Knows My Name" Tommy Walker

God Bless You!

The one problem with using the Matthew reading from July 17th is that our minister and I have already used songs based on that reading for the July 17th service. And when I look at the songs for that Sunday, I do not really want to redo those songs. Fortunately, there are many songs to pick from so I am not limited to the songs I did back in July. A couple of songs I am looking at as possibilities are "We Will Glorify" and "Walk With Me".

God Bless You!

Just when you think you've got things figured out something happens that makes you wonder why you even try to predict things. I guess I feel like a weather forecaster; you use the best information available but you must remain flexible for the unexpected changes. All this to say that the Bible readings selected for this week's church service are not really what I expected. Contrary to what I had surmised in yesterday's entry, the Matthew reading for this week's service is not the one from the Lectionary: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 is actually one the Lectionary readings for July 17th - some song suggestions for this Matthew reading can be found here. The other Bible reading, Exodus 3:1-15 is from this week's readings out of the Lectionary. I guess sometimes it pays to procrastinate.

God Bless You!

I have to confess that I found excuses to not go to the Love [Your City] prayer meeting tonight. I had been thinking about going, but when it turned out that our computer had contracted a virus I jumped at the chance to work on the problem instead of going to the meeting. It is probably because I do not think that I would feel comfortable there. People in "charismatic" churches are more vocal about praying. I am not saying that it is wrong I as believe that any praying is good, but I am pretty much a private person who internalizes his prayers so being in the midst of people that are more vocal about their praying is unsettling for me. I am sure that whatever fears I have about going are unfounded and that I probably would find it an interesting experience. But for the moment it would appear that any occurrence that can be used as an excuse will keep me away from a prayer meeting. Hey, I'm not proud of it.

I have started to look at the song selections for next Sunday based on the assumption that we will be following the Lectionary. As I mentioned before, one of the places where I look for song is the United Methodist Church's General Board of Discipleship website. For example, if you look here you will see their hymn suggestions for this coming Sunday. The guest minister has been reading out of Matthew in his previous visits so I would expect he will do the same again. There are other sources, like one of the back sections of "Voices United", that I have not yet looked at that can also provide a source of songs. And once I have read the Bible readings I will be able to maybe look around for other songs.

God Bless You!

Well it turns out that my grand plan to get 396 bottles of water for about $60 has hit a small snag: namely the deposit and environmental fees. Those add about a dollar to each dozen bottle so it would mean about $93 for those 396 bottles. It is still the cheapest price I have seen for bottles for water so I will probably go ahead and get my share anyway. However it might be a little harder to convince other people now. It seems to me like $20 is sort of a magical number; anything under $20 and you tell yourself "Oh, it's not even $20". But when you get over $30 you start thinking "Um, that's a lot of money". Divide and conquer - that's the ticket. I will just have to get more people to go and buy some water.

Next week is the last week for a guest minister to take the service before our regular minister comes back from her month long vacation. As it is the same guest minister who took the two services prior to last week, I think it is safe to assume that we will be following the Lectionary once again. All I need to know is which reading he will be focusing on so I can do the same for the singsong.

Went back to reading chapters 6 and 7 of "Power Surge" which talks of mission, position, and vision statements; I was thinking this morning that "A New Creed" of the United Church of Canada does a good job of describing what our church believes in. Of course, having just said that, the United Church also as a "What We Believe" statement.

God Bless You!

I wanted to document what we have been using for a projection screen at church as it will be probably be gone in the next couple of weeks. It may be hard to tell but this is only a metal frame with a white sheet attached to it. One of the people at the church has purchased a new projection screen that he is donating to the church. He mentioned that it had been shipped over a week ago so it probably arrived late last week. Another person at the church is putting up a board so that new projection screen can hang from it.

The service itself went very well and I think that the singsong went well also. Only thing was that somehow today I was very talkative. Maybe that was not a bad thing since the songs I had were short, but I want the congregation to sing not listen to me ramble on about stuff. The service was done this week by a guest minister of sorts. Guest in the sense that our minister is still on vacation, but since the people running the service were long time members of the church does not really make them guests. They were a man and his granddaughter. They shared most of the duties, but the reflection (aka sermon) was done by the granddaughter.

God Bless You!

Today was the day to prepare the PowerPoint slides for tomorrow's singsong and church service. That went without to many problems, although there was some extra work to do once the presentations were copied onto the laptop. I should probably mention that I prepare the slides using Open Office running on my Linux workstation. Open Office has the ability to write PowerPoint files, that way I can work on the computer with the larger screen and then just transfer the files to the laptop (which runs WinXPpro). The transfer is not 100% though so there is usually a little touch up to be done.

The songs for the singsong are 3 of the 4 that were listed earlier in the week. The order I have decided to sing the songs is as follows:

"Come, Let Us Sing" VU 222
"The trees of the field" TFWS 2279, VU 884
"Drawn Together by His Love" Bill Cates

I should mention that "The trees of the field" is also known as "You shall go out with joy"; it is really a closing hymn, but it fit so well with the theme that I decided to do it anyway. All of these songs have been done in the singsong before so I do not expect any problem singing them. Hopefully they will resonate with people.

God Bless You!

I am still excited about Love Esquimalt/View Royal/Vic West since yesterday's meeting. I have been thinking about what we should do as a church - we had originally said that we would just go help other churches if they needed people to help, but I think now that there will be more people than jobs. And I think that the minister at the Anglican church (or is he a rector? I really don't know) is really keen on getting his church and mine to do something together. He keeps saying that we should talk and discuss what we could do together - actually what I think he said was that I should organize it as he is having trouble organizing his people. I don't know that I am too keen on being an organizer. Oh well. But I think that now we are considering handing out bottles of water as well as popcorn to people at three different locations: Country Grocer, the Rec. Centre, and the Town Square. I guess I better go have a look at the Town Square (there supposedly is a open air market every Saturday) to get a feel of how many people would be there.

The local Wal-Mart is having a sale on bottles of water; we could probably get 396 bottles of water for just a little over $60. But would that be enough? I really have no idea......

I have started reading the next chapter of "Power Surge" even though we are not really due to read it for a while. Unfortunately right now I could not tell you what the stuff I read was about. I guess I better reread the previous chapters so they really stick in my mind as it would appear that repetition is what is needed.

God Bless You!

Tonight was a meeting of the reps for the Love [Your City] ( I should probably start saying Esquimalt/View Royal/Vic West instead of Your city). The events that are being planned are starting to take shape. Tonight was the deadline (or so we were told) to hand in the orders for T-shirts for the September 24th event. It turns out that so far, the churches in the area are ordering over 200 T-shirts! Which means that over 200 people are willing to participate in the "Kindness Explosion". If that does not get you excited I do not know what will. We are now worried that we may not have enough events planned for all the people that are volunteering! What a problem to have! I am excited about the event all over again and cannot wait to try and spread the enthusiasm at my church. We still have a couple of chances to get more people involved as the deadline to finalize the T-shirt order has been extended by about 10 days.

Not much else to talk about as a good portion of the evening was spent at the meeting, and since work finished late I only had about 30 minutes at home between work and the meeting. Oh well, the songs are pretty well set anyway.

God Bless You!

I have not had any other song strike me as being appropriate for this Sunday's singsong so yesterday's list still stands. I did a little more research but nothing jumped out at me as far as being a good song for the singsong.

I have finished re-reading chapters 6 and 7 of "Power Surge". If you remember, those are the chapters that we had to read for the next meeting of the discernment committee - although now that I have read the chapters should I not really be a team member of the discernment team? Yes, I know, that is jumping the gun - we are not there yet. As a matter of fact, I do not think we have decided yet if there is where we want to go. And by there I mean being a discipleship model church (as opposed to a membership model church).

God Bless You!

I do have 4 possible songs for next Sunday's singsong:

"You who are thirsty" TFWS 2132
"Drawn together by His Love" Bill Cates
"The trees of the field" TFWS 2279
"Come, Let us sing" VU 222

I still have some more digging to do, but these are my favourite songs so far. Like last week, one of these songs came to me in the shower. I did not have all the lyrics then, but a Google search found it for me "Come, Let us sing" (That song is used as the Introit in the order of service web page).

I have read some more of the "Power Surge" on the bus this morning. I seem to remember coming up with a thought while I was reading it; however, I cannot remember what it is. I guess I will just have to re-read that section of the chapter.

Not much else to say so I will close.

God Bless You!

I have started to look for songs for next Sunday's singsong. As I mentioned on August 1st, the Bible reading for this Sunday is Psalm 81, which talks about community and community building. There are not a lot of songs based on Psalm 81, so I will have to go with the community building part. A couple of songs I am thinking about at the moment are "Drawn Together by His Love" and "The Trees of the Field". I will provide links later in the week if I do decide to go with those songs.

God Bless You!

PS: As I mentioned before, you can use the search field on the bottom right of the page to look up the Bible reading.

I am happy to say that the singsong went over fairly well. I was worried about "How Great is Our God" as I did not know if I could do the song justice. People seemed to enjoy it; the only comment was that it was too high. Not much I could do about that since the key I played it in is the only one I am really comfortable playing. I guess I will have to bring another guitar and tune it down a whole step so it is not too hard for people to sing.

The service went well. Our music director was back from vacation and, as usual, played all of the hymns on the organ. I am probably prejudiced as I play the hymns on a guitar for the singsong, but it seems to me that playing the organ is too "formal", "old school", or just "old"? I do not really have a word to describe it, but last week's guest musician did such an awesome job playing the hymns on the piano and I thought that it livened things up so much more and made things more enjoyable to sing. Now the piano is not our choir director's primary instrument - she is a flutist. But she has improved tremendously in her piano playing. So much so that I think she should play on the piano more than she does now. I think it would improve things. But hey, that's only my opinion.

Another thing that was weird is that the guest minister used the parable of "The Prodigal Son" for the children story. I say it is weird because that was not one of today's Bible readings and last week he had said to the children that they had to come to church this week to hear the rest of the Joseph story. His reflection (sermon), however, was very good. He spoke on the Matthew reading (Matthew 15:21-28 about the Canaanite woman) and I think he did a very good job.

God Bless You!

The repaired computer came back home by mid-afternoon so I was able to complete the PowerPoint presentations for tomorrow's church service.

The songs I have decided to do for the singsong are as follows:

"O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" VU 326 TUNE Azmon
"An Outcast Among Outcasts" TFWS 2104 TUNE Lancashire
"How Great is Our God" Chris Tomlin

As I mentioned before, you can listen to the tunes for the first two hymns at the ChristianTeens.net MIDI page. And, as I have also mentioned, the copyrighted words for "An Outcast Among Outcasts" are nowhere to be found on the web.

The slides for the service proper are also ready. This time if the congregation is involved, be it singing or speaking, the words are on a slide. I wrote how, last week, the slides were not consistent as some of the congregation participation was not on a slide and how it confused some people including the guest minister. I have tried to prevent that from happening this week. We will see how that goes.

(For those wondering, yes I did read the Devotional before coming down this morning.)

God Bless You!

As the computer is in the shop being repaired, there was no work done on any of the things that needs to be done for the Sunday service as well as for the singsong. So on Saturday I have to fit finding a third song for the singsong as well as getting both PowerPoint presentations ready for Sunday. A busy day ahead as the title indicates.

I remembered to read the Devotional this morning; that makes it 4 out of the 5 days that I have remembered. Hopefully soon it will be 5 out of 5 and I will no longer have to mention it as it will be part of the routine.

Interesting fact: yesterday I could not remember the tune or words to "How great is Our God" and I had no problems singing "Holy is the Lord". This morning in the shower it was the complete opposite. It would appear that I go back and forth between the two songs; one morning it will be one and the next morning the other. I think someone is trying to tell me that those songs should be sung. And it is very possible that one of them will be selected as the third song for the singsong.

God Bless You!

The computer I normally use to do all my searching and looking for music is currently misbehaving so I am without that very valuable source of information: my browser bookmarks. Without those it will take me 2 to 3 times as long to look anything up. Of course, while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to fix the computer I was not working on coming up with songs - so no progress was made on that front. And since that is the computer where I normally work on the PowerPoint presentations there was no progress on those either. Fortunately for me, tomorrow night is the weekend so I can take the office laptop home with me and use it to make the PowerPoint presentations. That will not help with the songs, but at least some of the stuff for Sunday will proceed more or less as planned.

I forgot to read my Devotional this morning before coming downstairs. I will read it before going to bed, but I much prefer having read it before the day gets going so I can think on it during the day if I so choose.

Anyway, I better close. God Bless You!

I had a picture of having no trouble finding songs for this week's singsong since the Bible readings are from the Lectionary. Well it turns out that there are a lot of songs to choose from; the problem is I do not like the majority of them. There is one that I do like: "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing". The link is to the Methodist hymnal version, which has more verses than the Voices United version; but the tune (MIDI at the bottom of the linked page) is the same. But right now, that is probably the only song I would not mind doing during the singsong.

I have had a song run through my head from time to time all this week. It comes and goes, and when it is gone I cannot quite remember what the song is. I do think, however, that it is "How Great is Our God" by Chris Tomlin. I think I could play and have the congregation sing that song during the singsong. I will have to pay more attention the next time the song comes :)

On the good news side, I heard today that the projection screen for the church has shipped and should arrive sometime next week. Blessings go to the church disciple who saw the need and decided to do something about it. That same person is talking about getting a remote for the PowerPoint laptop so that someone does not have to sit right next to the laptop (at the front of the church currently) to run the presentations. While I hated to discourage such generosity, I think we have come to an agreement that we should wait and see how things go with the new screen before getting the remote.

God Bless You!

As I mentioned yesterday, the bus trip to the office is a perfect time for me to read. I was able to finish chapter 7 of "Power Surge" this morning, which completed the reading assignment for the next Discernment committee meeting on September 12. I started rereading chapter 6 as I plan to keep reading those two chapters until the meeting. That way I should have a real good grasp of the material by meeting time.

I will mention again that I remembered to read the Devotional this morning before coming downstairs. Not news but I figure that if I keep mentioning it I will be less likely to forget....

The Bible readings for this week are from the Lectionary as I had surmised: Genesis 45:1-15 and Matthew 15:21-28. I have started looking at songs for the singsong and a song I mentioned for last week "An Outcast among Outcast" is a suggested hymn. It had fit perfectly with the 10 lepers parable, but it does fit somewhat with the Canaanite woman parable in Matthew this week. So I might use it although I am not as gung ho about it as I was originally for the lepers parable. Oh well, we will see.

By the way, since I mention Bible passages regularly in my entries, I though it would be nice for people to be able to look up those passages without leaving my web page. To that end I had added a look up box on the bottom right of the page that will allow you to look up a Bible reading in your favourite Bible version.

God Bless You!

I am happy to report that I actually read some of "Power Surge" today. I have finished chapter 6 and I am almost done chapter 7. It would appear that reading while on the bus on the way to work is the one time when I can concentrate on a book without being distracted. Which is great because the bus ride takes a lot less time that way (well it certainly appears to anyway).

Since this was my first day back to work, I have gone back to the routine of reading the Devotional before going downstairs; hopefully I can keep that up over the long haul.

I have not really looked at songs for next week yet; I think I will wait another day or so before starting on the hope that I will get an idea from the bulletin stuff my wife should receive from the guest minister. But since I have a pretty good idea that we will be following the Lectionary I will start looking tomorrow.

Good Bless You!

The Sunday singsong and service went very well. The guest minister enjoyed the singsong and the person that had asked for "Dare to be a Daniel" was thankful and enjoyed it as well. The service went well and the guest musician was very good. The guest minister used the story of Joseph and his brothers for the children's time (out of Genesis) and said that they had to come back next week to hear the rest of the story. Since the Lectionary reading for next week (Genesis 45:1-5) talks about Joseph revealing himself to his brothers I would surmise that we will be sticking with the Lectionary readings for next week as well. One good thing is that my wife will be working on the bulletin this week so I will know earlier than last week what exactly will be happening during the service.

An interesting thing happened with the PowerPoint presentation during the service. As per usual, all the hymns were in the presentation except for the Sung Blessing which is in the bulletin. However, the guest minister was expecting it to be on the screen and so was the guest musician. I guess we need to be consistent with what we do; I think from now on everything that the congregation participates in I will be putting in the presentation. This mostly because I think that you confuse and raise false expectations if everything is not consistent. This certainly was brought home to me by the reactions of the guests service leaders.

God Bless You!

Today was a day to get a lot of things done. First I had to pick a new hymn for the singsong; this turned out to be not so bad and I ended up selecting "I, the Lord of Sea and Sky", also known as "Here I Am, Lord". It is a hymn well known by the congregation and one I think they will enjoy singing. So the hymn order now is:

"I, the Lord of Sea and Sky" VU 509
"Dare to be a Daniel" Philip P. Bliss
"We Are One" VU 402 vs.1,2

A good portion of the rest of the day has been spent getting the slides for the PowerPoint presentations ready for tomorrow's church service. Fortunately for me, there was not as much stuff to put in the presentation so I could afford to have started a little later than usual. Of course, finding out yesterday that I had to change a hymn put me behind the 8-ball as I could not start typing the hymns until I knew which hymns and in what order they were going to be.

My thought of reading chapters 6 and 7 of "Power Surge" did not go as well as I have only read another page (if that) in the last week. The one time I tried the noise level in the room was such that I was not able to concentrate on what I was reading so I ended up giving up. And no, I did not make the effort to move. Fortunately for me, there are still almost 5 weeks before the next meeting.

I have not forgotten again to read the daily Devotional out of my Bible. Of course, I have all day to think about it and the Bible is right next to me all day so it is easy to just turn around and read. We will have to see how well I do once I go back to work next Monday.

God Bless You!

I just received a copy of the bulletin for this Sunday and it would appear that the guest minister did not receive a copy of the Bible readings that were scheduled for the month of August as the readings in the bulletin are the ones called for by the Lectionary. Which unfortunately means that the hymn "An Outcast Among Outcasts" is no longer appropriate as the Gospel reading is about Jesus walking on water.

Fortunately, "We Are One" is a suggested hymn for this week so I can keep it. So I only have to come up with one other hymn. It's running late so I will put more details in tomorrow's entry.

God Bless You!

Not a whole lot to talk about today as car problems pretty much cast a pall on most of the day.

Anyway, I have come up with a tune for the last hymn:

"An Outcast Among Outcasts" TFWS 2104 TUNE Lancashire

You can listen to that tune on the ChristianTeens.net MIDI page. All that remains to do, besides practicing the songs, is to prepare a lead sheet for the hymn above as I do not have a single page with both the words and the music. Normally that would not be a problem, but since I have to lead the congregation in a song that is somewhat unfamiliar to them (at least the words) I would help if I can sing and play at the same time.

You will have noticed that I only sing 3 out of the 4 verses of "You Are One". The reason verse 3 is not included is that it is a Communion verse.

God Bless You!

One of things I try to do now that I am writing a blog that speaks partly about my experiences in choosing songs is to point to the lyrics of the selected songs so you can also have an idea as to what those hymns convey and how they fit, hopefully, with the theme for the week. Unfortunately this week, it would appear that the only way you will get to read the lyrics is if you have access to the hymn books those songs are in. I could put the lyrics up in my blog, but I do not think that the license we have to use those songs would include me putting the lyrics online. In any case, the following are the songs I intend use and their order:

"Dare to be a Daniel" Philip P. Bliss
"We Are One" VU 402 vs.1,2,4
"An Outcast Among Outcasts" TFWS 2104

You will notice this week that I have not included tune names. In the case of "We Are One" the tune (of the same name of the hymn) is not available online, and in the case of "An Outcast Among Outcasts" I am still undecided about the tune. For the first song, clicking on the title will bring you to the words and there is a link at the bottom of the page where you can hear the tune if you click it.

Ever since I mentioned that I had gone a few days without reading the Devotional in the morning I have had trouble trying to read it every day. I have had trouble reading in the morning but I have made sure that the Bible is available where I spend most of the day so I can read the Devotional as soon as I think about it. So there is no routine, but at least I do read it every day. Not ideally where I would like to be, but it is better than not reading it.

God Bless You!

Yesterday I mentioned that I should be able to find healing hymns in the hymn books I have. I had hoped I would find a few - well in the 3 hymn books I have there are almost 100 hymns to choose from including one that speaks of the very Bible passage for this week: "An outcast among outcasts" from the United Methodist hymnal "The Faith We Sing" (TFWS). Unfortunately, I do not know the tune "LLANGLOFFAN" which you can listen to at ChristianTeens.net in their MIDI section. On the plus side, the meter of the song is 7676D which has many different tunes to choose from. So I will have to think about using this song. Another song which was suggested is Keith Green's "O Lord, You're beautiful" (also in TFWS) which I really like and have used before. I just have to keep in mind that this healing theme runs through all of August and I should not use all the best hymns in the first week. And I still have not looked at all the hymns about healing.

One of the things I would like to do while I am on vacation this week is finish reading the two chapters of "Power Surge" we have to read for the next Discernment committee meeting. I would like to be done early so I can reread those chapters when we get closer to the meeting and not feel rushed.

God Bless You!

I just found out that the August 21st Bible reading has been changed. I thought about just changing yesterday's entry but then I figured that there's nothing wrong with having an extra Bible passage to ponder. So the new information is as follows:

August 21: Psalm 81 (talks about community and building community)

I have started working on finding songs for next Sunday's singsong. As I mentioned before, I will be doing "Dare to be a Daniel", which was requested by a member of the church for me to do during the singsong. And since this may be a song that is new to the congregation (I certainly did not know it) this pretty much means that the other two songs I pick will have to be known songs as I do not want to use more than one new song per week in the singsong.

Finding songs is turning out to be a little more difficult than I thought: Luke 17:12-19 is not really used in the Lectionary so there are no suggestions for hymns on the 2 sites I usually use for inspiration. I did find out that the Luke passage is used by the United Methodist church for their US Thanksgiving service. Not that it helps me but I thought it was an interesting tidbit of information. I will next expand my search to songs about healing. Although I have yet to check, I am fairly certain that the hymn books will contain a section on Healing in their indices. More on this subject in the next few days.

God Bless you all!