I think I have found a tune for the hymn "The Church of Christ in Every Age" VU601. The tune is MARYTON (VU560) and I think the congregation will find it easy to sing. As well, I have found another song for the singsong: "Bread of Life" which is a song I sang in the singsong for the last communion. I am not sure if I will sing "Go Light Your World"; I will have to get comfortable with playing and singing it before I do so. I am not yet happy with how I play it - I don't think it does the song justice just yet.

God Bless You!

This is going to be another week where my usual sources of possible music selections will not be of much help. It would appear that the two Bible readings we are focusing on this week did not inspire many songs. And the few that were written do not really appeal to me. Fortunately for me, this Sunday is also World wide Communion Sunday. Which means that I can select my songs from the many songs that have Communion as their theme. It would be nice, however, to have a song or two that pertain to the Bible readings. We will see how it goes.

One of my favourite songs right now is "Go Light Your World" by Chris Rice. It fit very well with the goals of Love [Your City]. Our minister was thinking about using it at some point during the church year (my tired brain cannot come up with the particular season she was talking about at the moment) which is one reason why I am linking to the lyrics.

God Bless You!

It was obvious to me last night at the meeting of the Discernment Committee that I had been focusing solely on the Love Esquimalt/Vic. West/View Royal over the last few days - I had not finished the reading assignment for the meeting and I must say I feel really badly about it. It also turns out that I had not been reading my daily devotional over the last few days either. I have to figure out how to not get so focused on one thing at the expense of the others. Of course LYC is now over for the time being so returning to the other things will be much easier.

The songs I had chosen to sing before the service seem to have been liked by the congregation - as well as the song we sang during the service "Agnus Dei. I guess now is the time to start thinking about songs for next week. The scriptures for this next week are: Deuteronomy 26:1-13a and Mark 6:34-44.

One song to which I particularly like the words (I do not know that tune tho') is "The Church of Christ in Every Age" VU601. I particularly like the 1st, 3rd, and last verses. I think they are pretty indicative of what our church is going through and trying to come to grips with these days.

God Bless You!

Today was a great day! The events for Love Esquimalt, Vic. West, View Royal took place between 10am and 2pm, with over 200 people from churches all over those cities joining to express the love of Jesus through practical acts of kindness -- no strings attached.

I was part of a team of people that handed out water at the local plaza here in town. I am not usually an outgoing person, but today I really enjoyed interacting with the people of the community. It was a great thing to be driving around the city in the latter part of the event and seeing, not only all the volunteers at work, but all the physical signs of our work spreading out throughout the community: families walking on the side streets with "Love Esq....." balloons, bottles of water, etc. You could feel how our simple acts of kindness were having a ripple effect through the community.

The evening service of celebration was one again a great event with songs, testimonials and even a video prepared from footage shot during the day to illustrate all the work that was done. It was just an awesome thing to behold.

I have finally come up with the songs for tomorrow morning:

"In His Time" Diane Ball TFWS2203
"Open the Eyes of my Heart" Paul Baloche
"You Are Mine" David Haas TFWS2218

The Paul Baloche song was sung at this evening's celebration service and I thought that since we had decided on another song for tomorrow's church service I would use it in the singing before the service.

God Bless You!

Tonight was the kick off worship service for Love Esquimalt/Vic. West/View Royal. It was great to see our church packed - something that, as someone mentioned, only happens for weddings, funerals, and Christmas! The service itself was great and the songs that were selected for worship really connected with the people there. Another proof that a song does not have to be new to be meaningful to younger people was the singing of "How Great Thou Art" by everyone; it was a moving experience.

I was able to finish the slide presentation for the Friday service thanks to the fact that I was able to take the afternoon off from work. I had been wondering how I was going to be able to complete the slides since I had to work everyday so imagine my surprise when the instructor said that he would be finished by noon. One more example that the Lord provides: "ask and you shall receive".

I have been trying to put Saturday's slide presentation together, but it turns out that I am missing the lyrics to one of the songs: "Surrender". I thought, no problem, I will look it up on the web. There are 3 different Christian songs by that name! I know that things will work out, but that does not stop me from worrying about them.

I better go to bed so I can be well rested for the main event on Saturday. You can go look at the Love [Your City] website to find out more about what this is all about.

God Bless You!

What would a project be without last minute changes? Love Esquimalt/Vic. West/View Royal is therefore not without its share of last minute changes. One of the main one is the rallying point for the teams of people from St.Paul and Esquimalt United who will be handing out water. We had planned to setup our meeting point behind the local arena; but since one of the local used car dealership is having a sale at the arena this weekend and using the very parking lot where we were going to set up this had to change. The meeting area is now at my church, Esquimalt United, which is about half a mile away from the original meeting point. This means that people might have to walk a little more, but I expect that the water will be delivered by car to the distribution points so it should not be too bad.

Another change that happened tonight (well not really a change but more like decision making) is that the order of the songs in the two services happening in relation to LE/VW/VR was finalized. This will now give me the opportunity to prepare the slides for the service. My afternoon on Friday has now become free so I will be able to get them ready in time. Alleluia! I will also be leading a (couple of the) song(s) so I probably should practice it a little.

God Bless You!

I always have doubts whenever I have to deviate from the tried and true method of selecting songs. I have moved from getting songs based on the Bible readings to getting songs based on y interpretation of the Bible reading. So I think I have found a couple of songs that might apply. They were listed under the topic of Guidance:

"In His Time" Diane Ball TFWS2203
"You are Mine" David Haas TFWS2218

There is still more searching to do.

The water has been ordered, the tags are cut, the elastic bands are ready, the forecast is for sunny skies; Love Esquimalt/Vic. West/View Royal is shaping up to be a great event. But how can it not be when all we are doing is trying to make more people aware of the love God has for them. Time to get excited all over again!

God Bless You!

I am only saying this because so far I am not having any luck finding songs (that I like) based on the Bible readings for this week: Exodus 5:20-21, 12:1-28, and 13:17-22. I am obviously going to have to search a little deeper.

On the good news side, the young adult I was referring to last night has agreed to take over making the presentation slides for the service. I am looking forward to see what new ideas she will bring to the plate.

It would appear that we did get a good deal on the water bottle front. Things are starting to fall into place - a good thing since there is less than three days before the Love Esquimalt/Vic. West/View Royal events begin.

God Bless You!

One of the youth of the church has volunteered to do the powerpoint slides for the church service. So I think that I will send her last week's slides with the outline of next week's service and ask her if she is ready to take it over. We shall see. Did I mention that we have a church member who is thinking of getting a remote control to allow the running of the powerpoint slides without having to be at the computer? He was watching me going from the laptop, to the choir and back and decided that a remote control would be a good idea. He is researching the idea right now.

Less than 4 days before the beginning of the events related to Love Esquimalt/Vic. West/View Royal. I can hardly wait!

God Bless You!

Well it certainly took long enough for the shipping of the new screen to be sorted out, but it has finally arrived. It was installed late last week and this Sunday was the first time it was used. It works very well and is certainly a big improvement from the white sheet over metal frame we had before.

It took a while to get the projector positioned properly since the screen is now higher and a little more forward than the sheet was. But the position was found - in the middle of the front aisle of course - but as it is said: baby steps.

I handed out most of the LYC t-shirts today - I think only 4 are left. I guess they will be handed out on Friday evening as was originally announced a couple of months ago. And of course a couple of more people would like a t-shirt now, I will have to go back to YWAM to see if they have any spares. I know some churches ordered an arbitrary number of shirts - so there could be some left over.

It certainly is getting close now - it will all be over by this time next week!

God Bless You!

Saturday evening and the PowerPoint slides have been done, both for the service and the singsong. I even sent the service slides to our minister so she can look them over. She is also thinking about trying her hand at making the slides and I have found that it is easier to do when you have somewhere to start from.

The following are the songs that I am planning on doing for the singsong (in the order they will be sung):

"Praise to the Lord" Ron Klusmeier - VU835, TFWS2029
"To Abraham and Sarah" Judith Fetter - VU634
"Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness" James K. Manley - VU375

On the Love Esquimalt/Vic.West/View Royal front, I picked up the T-shirts for the volunteers from our congregation. I also, since they were ready, picked up our share of the kindness cards we will be attaching to the water bottles we hand out during the events next Saturday. And since I had my cheque book with me, I also paid for them. And my wife was kind enough to cut them all so they are ready to go!

The only thing left to do is get the water bottles. This is currently in the hands of one of the members of St.Paul Anglican church as he is in the restaurant/wholesale business. I am just slightly worried since here it is 6 days before the event and I have not heard anything but I have to trust that, since they also are supposed to hand out water with us, they have things well in hand. Oh, I guess there is another thing: I think it is high time for me to prepare a short "How to" document for the volunteers of our church so that they will know what to say and do during the event.

God Bless You!

The worship meeting last night was two things: very interesting and long. I now feel quite naive to having said to the choir director that I expected the meeting to only last "about half an hour" as I fully expected to be able to go to the choir practice before it ended. But it was not to be; the worship meeting lasted much longer than choir practice. I guess I had expected that the person calling the meeting would have had a clear picture in his mind of how he expected the worship service to go and we were only going to make suggestions to specific areas of the service.

Of course, that is not what happened. Not having been to any of the Love [Your City] meetings, he was not really aware of what had been suggested so we were really starting from scratch. Which was not a bad thing. It gave me a very enlightening insight in the kind of thought process that goes into putting together a worship service. The other thing it brought out is that I am sadly lacking in deeper understanding of liturgy and/or theology. We did spend a lot of time coming up with music that would heighten the experience of the people coming to the service. And I got the clear impression that our minister had a picture in her mind of where she hoped the service would go.

Our minister and I had a chat about the music afterwards. I had been wondering how the different styles of music would be accepted by the people of different denominations; particularly the ones that are used to a more traditional type of music. We did talk as well about using more contemporary music in our church services; and she said that it does not really matter which style of music you use as long as it remains true to the United Church theology.

And that is where I felt that I had just jumped into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. I have attended church services at this very United church for almost 20 years and I am afraid that I would not be able to tell you what the United Church theology is. I think that I need to make myself much more aware of that aspect of the church if I want to be able to make informed decisions when I choose music. Still more to learn...

God Bless You!

We have been asked to bring 2 or 3 songs to the meeting where we will be shaping the worship service on the Friday night. So I had a quick look at songs that we sing at our church that would fit the theme of Love Esquimalt/Vic West/View Royal. And I think the following songs would be appropriate:

"Draw the Circle Wide" Gordon Light (MP3)
"Send Me, Lord" VU572
"Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ" VU468

We have music for all three of those songs. The first and last songs are upbeat and the other song could be termed contemplative.

God Bless You!

I am still thinking about the committee meeting. These are just things I am thinking - just random thoughts popping into my head. The main reason why the committee exists is that our church is slowly dying off. So the people on the committee want to revitalize the church to make it successful again. The membership model does not work so obviously the discipleship model is the way to go. (I'm also playing devil's advocate it would seem). But we will need to become missionaries otherwise how will the people know? This is where Love [Your City] becomes so important. And it cannot be just a once a year event. The church has to reach out continually (continuously?) into the community. I also have a lot of questions that I hope are answered in the new book. I will read the book first then ask my questions - assuming that there will be some left :)

I have started to look at songs for next Sunday. I have found a few based on the Genesis reading: "To Abraham and Sarah", "Spirit of Gentleness", "Praise to the Lord". I will give links to the words tomorrow as I am running out of time since I should have been in bed half an hour ago.

God Bless You!

As I mentioned yesterday, tonight was the first fall meeting of the Discernment committee. We talked about the difference about the membership and discipleship models, as well as the people's impressions of the churches they had visited during the summer. I want to say that I do not think that everyone really got the meaning of discipleship and how to recognize it, but that would assume that I know all about it - which would be presumptuous. I think that some equate a thriving church with a discipleship church. Although the former can be a result of the latter, I do not think that it is what we should be striving for.

We did decide that the discipleship model of church would be the one we wanted to go towards. So we have more reading to do about living the six marks of discipleship. We were given a book from the same author that wrote "Power Surge" the book we had been reading so far. The book is called "Real Faith for real life".

I have not had time to get started on the songs for next week's singsong. And that is partly because all I have to go by is the theme for September, "Made in the Image of God", and the theme Bible reading for this week: Genesis 12:1-9 "Get up and Go". I will start looking at songs tomorrow.

God Bless You!

I finished the service slide presentation last evening after having spent a good part of the day at church for the Sunday School Clean-up Day. I must confess to having been very tired last night. So it turns out that I forgot to enter one of the slides. I am sure I looked the slides over last night - but somehow I completely missed the fact that the song verse we were going to sing after communion was just missing. I can think of two lessons to learn from that: 1) do not work when you are tired; and 2) get somebody else to proofread the presentations.

Today's service was great and went reasonably well - if you ignore the missing slide and the feedback loop from the speakers during the service. My older daughter put together a slide presentation with pictures of people in the church - set to music. I must say that I really enjoyed her presentation and she did a great job. It has made me think about trying to make a presentation as well (this is probably another one of those "all talk no action" statements).

The Discernment committee meets again tomorrow night after the summer hiatus. Hopefully I can remember most of what I read in chapters 6 and 7 of "Power Surge". I guess I quick review on the bus tomorrow will help. One of the things we were supposed to do was visit other churches; I of course used the excuse that I had to be at our church every week to do the singsong and slide presentations to not go anywhere. I am eager to find out what the other members have to say - hopefully they are better at following directions than I am.

God Bless You!

Today was the Sunday school clean up day so we were at church from 9:30am to about 3pm. A lot was accomplished today - all the rooms were cleaned out, swept, mopped, and put back together again in their new capacities as theme rooms. We also got rid of a lot of old stuff that had been accumulating in the basement. So much stuff was thrown out that the outfit that came to haul it away had to make two trips! But one of the better things is that a couple that was passing by was able to get equipment that they otherwise probably would not have gotten by picking it out of our mountain of stuff we no longer needed. And we got a donation for the church as well.

Most of the evening was spent completing the slide presentations for tomorrow's singsong and the service. The songs that I have decided to sing for the singsong are as follows (in the order they will be sung):

"Come, share the Lord" TFWS2269 - VU469
"God of the Sparrow" VU229
"Bread of Life" Stephen Spencer

All that is left to do is to update the announcements in the presentation - we went to church to pick up a bulletin (since I forgot to do that this morning) so I have a copy of tomorrow's announcements.

God Bless You!

Today was a day where I did not do much church related. Well I did send a email reminder to all the member of the Discernment Committee as we are meeting again next Monday September 12th to start again after the summer hiatus. I do have an excuse for not doing much else: my older daughter was working on her slide presentation for this Sunday - so I did not have access to the computer. Fortunately for me I did get a head start :)

I did have a really good day however; if you are interested in the details you can always check my other blog, Chris' Musings (there is a link on the right for it). Yes, I am actually writing two different blogs: but I think I mentioned this quite a while ago. So far I am doing pretty good keeping up with entries in both of them.

God Bless You!

Tonight was the Love Esquimalt/Vic West/View Royal meeting, and as I mentioned previously we were giving out our personnel requirements. The Anglican church and our United church are joining together to hand out cookies and water. Looks like there will be 4 teams of 16 people with the United church people divided equally among them. The cards, which will be put on the cookies and water, have been ordered and both of our churches have agreed to share the costs of the water and cards to put on them. So the one cost we know for sure is for the cards: 1200 cards at 12 cards/sheet will cost $1/sheet for a total of $100; $50 for each church. As I mentioned as well, one of the parishioners of the Anglican church is looking at getting the water at wholesale prices. Chris V., who is doing the video for the event, apparently has a source of cheap water bottles and will let us know.

That's about it for tonight.

God Bless You!

We have received the final version of the service for this Sunday and this time I decide I was not going to wait until Saturday to prepare the slides. I have therefore begun to enter the information in the presentation. This way I should not feel so pressured when Saturday rolls around.

I have been giving the songs for the singsong some more thought. Since Sunday is also communion, there is a hymn that I have done once before and I liked (I guess that is obvious since I would not do a song I did not like) that is called "Bread of Life" by Stephen Spencer. That song was included in the "More Voices" songbook that was sent to churches for them to choose suitable hymns for the new hymn book supplement for the United Church.

Well I better be off to bed since I am trying to recover from a cold.

God Bless You!

I have heard back from the minister from the other church, and he has a parishioner who is looking into getting water at warehouse prices. I will take that to mean that we are a go. All that remains is to plan how to get 1200 bottles of water cold and into the hands of the public. Should be an interesting time.

Speaking of Love Esquimalt/Vic West/View Royal, I have received an email from them tonight reminding me about the meeting on Thursday night, September 8th, at 7pm. In the message it says that this is the last meeting before the Kindness Explosion on September 24th. Somehow I find this very hard to believe. They also want to know the name and contact number for each of our teams and how many people each of the teams will need. Getting names and contact numbers was not discussed in the last meeting - all they were interested then was the number of teams and the number of people in them. I hate it when people change requirements just before a meeting. Well all they are going to get is the original request.

I think I better stop here.

God Bless You!

I have finally sat down and figured out, to the best of my abilities, what the costs will be to hand out water at three locations in Esquimalt for Love Esquimalt/Vic West/View Royal. I know I had mentioned $140 before, but it would look like $200 is a more realistic figure (assuming again that the costs are shared between two churches). I have sent an email to the minister of the other church letting him know my findings - now all can be done is sit back and wait for his answer.

I have started looking at songs for the singsong next week. One song seems to be a unanimous selection (it was suggested for both Bible readings AND it is a communion hymn): "Come, Share the Lord". And it does not hurt that I like that song. Of course this is all preliminary as I have not yet seen the songs the minister will be choosing.

Another Bible reading we will be using this Sunday is Genesis 1:1-2:3 which is part of the Sunday school curriculum. Two songs that I have found, based on that reading, that I will probably consider for the singsong are: "God of the Sparrow" VU229 and "Out of Deep, Unordered Water" VU453.

God Bless You!

The songs I played today went over pretty well - I got a comment about including an old hymn (Shall We Gather at the River). While I like new(er) music, I am not adverse to using older hymns if they fit in the theme; this one absolutely did. I did not get to play "Be Thou My Vision" as the music director started playing it; I guess the part where I got to play it never made it to her. What I thought was really funny is that the music director played a little bit of "Be Thou My Vision" as part of the special music: I thought that the way she played it then was really prayerful. Certainly more prayerful than when she played for the hymn.

I think one of the reasons I was feeling a little overwhelmed last Friday was that I was looking at all that had to be done for Sunday. Of course that semi crisis was self inflicted; I could have started the slides for the church service long before Saturday as I received the material on Monday. Okay, so I was out of town for a couple of days, but I still could have gotten a good part of it, if not all, done before Saturday. After all, if I remember correctly, it really only took a couple of hours to do the slides. So the complaint that working on the slide presentations (singsong and service) is not really valid as they really should be done by then if I do not procrastinate.

However, it does bring up an interesting point. Either my daughters or I have been running the slide presentations during the service. But for the foreseeable future my daughters will be downstairs teaching Sunday school and I will be sitting with the choir. So there is no one left to run the presentation. I guess it is time to delegate that duty to someone else. I also happen to think that the church secretary should be putting the service slides together. But there are a couple of problems with that: the church does not have Microsoft PowerPoint (at least I do not think it does) and I am not really sure that the secretary has enough time to work on the slides considering the limited amount of time she is at the church every week and all the things that needs to be done every week.

Let's see if I can get things started a little earlier this week; after all Monday is a holiday so I have some extra time. The Bible readings this week are:

Matthew 22:1-10; and
1 Corinthians 11:23-34

So I will try to get started on my list of songs for the singsong tomorrow.

God Bless You!

I have spent a good part of today getting the slide presentations ready for tomorrow's church service. I also spent some time finalizing the song list for the singsong. The list as it stands right now is as follows (in the order they will be sung):

"Shall we gather at the river" UMH723
"I come with joy" VU477
"We are the body of Christ" David Hampton, Scott Wesley Brown

I have been thinking about Love [Esquimalt/Vic West/View Royal]. I have been, with my older daughter, the representative for my church. It is now time to make decisions that will cost the church money. Actually, I think that I have already made decisions that will cost the church monies that I do not think were in the cards. At first we were only going to help other churches with their projects, but now we are going to be handing out water at three locations in Esquimalt. How that came about is unclear to me. But, assuming that we share the costs with the Anglican church, we are looking at about $140 in costs that were not accounted for.

This is another thing that is being written about in "Power Surge". Basically teams are created to perform a task, they are given a budget and a clear mandate and are left to perform their work on their own. The team then disbands after its job has completed.

A lot to think about and not much time to do it in.

God Bless You!

Another long day at work which made for a late supper shortened the amount of time available to spend searching for songs. The suggested hymns in "Voices United" yielded a couple of possibilities: "Shall we gather at the river" and "I come with Joy" by Brian Wren (with the verses about communion removed).

Tomorrow will be a busy day. After finalizing the selection of songs for the singsong, I will prepare the slides for the church service and the announcements. As fall approaches, I am starting to think that maybe I have taken on more than I can handle: Discernment committee, Worship committee, Love [your city], singsong, choir, powerpoint presentations. I think it is time to take a good look at what it is I am doing and decide where my talents will best be used. Something to pray and meditate over for the next little while.

God Bless You!

After being away from home for two days it seems to like I am playing catch up. I have been looking at possible music for next Sunday's singsong; I have not looked everywhere but I have started with the web location where a good part of the songs I pick come from. A couple of songs have caught my attention: "Awesome God" by Rich Mullins [TFWS2040] (Chorus only as the verses would be quite hard to sing for the congregation I think), and "Spirit Song" by John Wimber [UMH347]. My wife and I have sung "Spirit Song" as a duet in church a few times. I am sure more songs will surface as I look around for them.

I should mention which Bible readings are the basis for this week's service:

Revelation 21:1-6
Revelation 22:1-5
1 Corinthians 10:14-17

As before, you can just copy and paste the readings above in the box at the bottom right of the page if you would like to read those Bible passages online.

God Bless You!