I was leafing through the hymn books this evening looking for songs to use in the pre-service singing and I suddenly had a thought: Why isn't there a central location where I can look for songs without having to look in the hymnal index to find songs suggested for the Bible passage and then have to look in the hymnal to see what the song is? And so I started putting information in a Wiki. Having begun to put the information together, I can see that this will take a lot of work to have it be useful. You can look at the progress so far here (there isn't a lot there so far though).

I spent a little more time looking for pictures for the Good Friday service and I have put a link to some cute pictures in the entry prior to this one. The search will continue after the weekend as I need to concentrate in putting the pre-service singing together.

God Bless You!

I have found some more pictures on the concise Gospel webpage. I will include a picture about Jesus feeding the 5000 (which will be read this Sunday) as an example of the style of the pictures.

God Bless You!

"One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.'" -- Luke 11:1 [NIV]

I have just begun to have a look at the theme for next Sunday's church service. I have not yet had a chance to have a look at songs for the pre-service singing, but I did make one discovery: my favourite music website, CreativeWorship, is now GreatWorshipSongs. The site has a new design and a new name and now most of the music that was free for use now must be purchased. I have purchased music from there before, so I am not against paying for music; I just find it sad that something I could have downloaded for free last week now will need to be purchased. Oh well, I guess they have to make a living too.

I just realized something interesting: one of the things I used to dislike was singing all the verses to the hymns for Sunday during choir practice. But now I do not mind anymore, I quite enjoy it actually. I would say that Brooke is making his presence felt in more ways that one. His fresh approach to playing the hymns make them a lot more fun to sing. I think his playing is having the same effect on the congregation.

Another thing I am currently doing is looking for images for the Good Friday service. So far, I am thinking we might be able to use a couple of the pictures on this page. Of course, it is early yet, but I did not want to lose track of what I think are possible images.

God Bless You!

I have been thinking that I want to refresh the look of my blog so there was no blog entry last night as I was playing with different looks. I am currently thinking that I will make the change at Easter.

Tonight was the Worship committee meeting where we fleshed out the services for Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. I think the congregation will like what is being planned. I like the fact that the presentation of the subject matter changes from year to year; it gives everyone a chance to look at the meaning of this important part of the church year with new eyes, or at least from a different angle.

I do not have a lot else to say as I spent some of the evening after the meeting writing up the notes I have taken. Hopefully, with the help of the other members that were present, we can come up with a complete set of minutes.

God Bless You!

Tonight I went to the church for a meeting of the Official Board. Since what was discussed involves persons/groups outside of the church, I will not put any of the details of the meeting here; they should find out about the decisions of the Board through official channels rather than by reading my blog (although that is somewhat conceited of me to think that those people read my blog). Let's just say that the church is moving in a direction where I think it must go in order to enable it to put more resources in outreach of the community.

We (the Discernment committee) did unveil our Vision and Mission statements to people outside of the committee for the first time. I guess because I have so much invested in the writing of those statements it was a little disheartening to see the amount of reaction (or lack of same) to those statements. Well at least for the Vision statement anyway as I feel we are so close. I guess I was hoping for a "Yes! That's it!" reaction. But since they did not go "That's not who we are!" we are definitely on the right track.

God Bless You!

"Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" -- Matthew 28:18-20 [NIV]

The use of stones to represent burdens and brokenness and to have the congregation either come up to put them in the "river of grace" or just drop them to the ground as a sign of the desire to allow Christ's grace to come into our hearts was very effective. Also today the congregation really got involved in the singing - which made for a great service.

There are a lot of changes taking place with the churches of Esquimalt. All of them are searching for relevance in this new century/millennium. Most of the churches seem to be realizing that it is by joining together to develop a tangible presence in the community that we can accomplish the task that has been given to us.

One of the ways this can be accomplished is by having some churches share facilities. Esquimalt United church is in the enviable position of having some of the largest facilities of the churches in Esquimalt. I could be possible then for some of the other churches to share our facilities. And it is in fact what is being suggested. Three of the churches in the area have made proposals that the Official Board of the church will begin to consider tomorrow. As our Vision and Mission start to crystallize, these proposals will be the first tests of what we believe the church stands for and what it needs to do.

God Bless You!

"And when you assume the posture of prayer, remember that it's not all asking. If you have anything against someone, forgive--only then will your heavenly Father be inclined to also wipe your slate clean of sins." -- Mark 11:25 [The Message]

I finally seriously searched for songs to sing today. I spent a couple of hours looking at the bible passages that will be read tomorrow and looking at the song suggestions for those passages. I also looked at songs suggestions that have forgiveness as a theme. After much deliberation, the following songs are a good mixture of old and new. So here they are, in the order they will be sung:

"Come In, Come In and Sit Down" James K. Manley [VU395]
"Grace Alone" Scott Wesley Brown, Jeff Nelson
"He looked beyond my fault" Dottie Rambo

Now that the decision has been made, I guess I better go and put the lyrics onto the presentation.

God Bless You!

PS: It would appear that this is my 200th post in this blog. Even though I have been writing here since July 2005, I still have to make a conscious decision to sit down and write. I would have thought that by now it would be automatic. Oh well...

This has kind of been a frustrating evening as far as the song search goes. The reason I say this is that all I have done tonight is eliminate a lot of songs that I will not be doing on Sunday.

Actually that is not quite true; I did find a couple or three songs that would be fun to sing. But since I do not want to do three new songs (one new song per week is my self-imposed limit) that means that only one of these would make the pre-service singing (assuming I were to choose one of these). I guess I should put links to the lyrics.

"Just a little talk with Jesus" Cleavant Derricks
"He looked beyond my fault" Dottie Rambo
"I Wanna Sing" Scott Krippayne, Kyle Matthews, Kent Hooper

God Bless You!

It bears repeating that the actual name of the event is "Love Esquimalt, Vic. West, View Royal". It just is too long to keep writing out.

Tonight was the March meeting of the LYC committee. A lot of good ideas were mentioned as far as what plans the churches/groups/ministries were thinking of doing and where they were thinking of doing it. I got the impression at the February meeting that our minister had something in mind for our church to do that was different from what we did last September which was to hand out water. Since I never got around to ask her what it was she was thinking about, and since I have not yet approached anyone at church to see what they would like to be doing, I really had nothing to contribute as far as what EUC was going to be doing. I guess it is time to find out.

I started raising awareness for LYC at church last week very subtly; I put a slide in the powerpoint that simply had the LYC logo and the date the next event is going to be held: June 3rd. Hopefully this got them to start thinking and we can start talking about it some more.

There was also a short presentation about Prayer walks. We concluded by the group each reading a section of a suggested prayer for "Neighbourhood Prayer Walks" by Roy Schulz. It was a very moving and meaningful time. Do take a couple of minutes to read it.

I did try, unsuccessfully, to connect to my favourite worship music website this evening to look for songs, but I was not successful. They must be down for maintenance. Let's push that back to tomorrow as well.

God Bless You!

"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin." -- John 8:11b [NIV]

If you had asked me at anytime up until about 6 months ago about what I thought were the important words in the John 8:2-11 passage, I would have said: "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." -- John 8:7b [NIV] But now I see that it is not the case. What I think is the important lesson to gather from this passage can be summed up in one word: forgiveness. What a mind blowing concept that our sins have been forgiven.

That passage is one of two who are the theme Bible passages for next Sunday. And the question for this week is: "What would it take to get a fresh start: Forgiven, healed and whole once more?" I can see songs about forgiveness coming for the pre-service singing. I am unfortunately writing this too late in the evening to go looking for those songs right now, but that is what I will be doing tomorrow (after the Love Your City meeting).

God Bless You!

Tonight was Discernment meeting night. We continued working on the Vision and Mission statements for the church. We were separated in two groups, and asked to come up with Vision and Mission statements of our own. I think we are very close to having the Vision statement for the church, and the Mission statement is also close, both groups said the same thing but in different words. Let me try and illustrate how close we are on the Vision statement.

Esquimalt United church is a community of Christian disciples
Unconditionally loved by God,
Forgiven by Grace,
Following Jesus Christ on a faith journey to [eternal life | the end of the ages.]

where bold is where both groups had the same wording,
italics are the words from one group,
regular font are the words from the other group,
and the statement in the [ | ] means one group used the words before the vertical bar and the other group used the words after.

Pretty close, don't you think?

(Disclaimer: This is my recollection of the statements. I hope I was faithful in my recounting - all differences between this and the statements that will be put on the collaboration site in the next couple of days are errors in my part).

God Bless You!

Update: Fixed the broken link to the collaboration site

I know I say this every Sunday, but I really enjoy all the singing and particularly the reflections. I do not know if it is because I am more receptive to what is being talked about, or because the preaching is better, but either way the reflections really speak to me.

Before I forget about it, I just want to note a song I have been hearing repeatedly lately: "Thy Word" by Amy Grant. I have really enjoyed it, but since I was hearing it in the car, had not paid a lot of attention to the lyrics of the verses. It turns out it would have been a great song for today's service. I think I will have a look and see if it can fit with the theme for next week.

And speaking of pre-service singing, I will have to be better prepared from now on if we are to take requests. I have absolutely nothing against people wanting to sing a song that speaks to them at the moment, I just have never been very good at picking out chords for songs that do not have guitar chords on them. And for the foreseeable future, our new music director, Brooke Maxwell, is on a steep learning curve as most of the hymns he has never heard before.

And on the topic of the collaboration site, I think I was overly optimistic by thinking that people in the Discernment committee would be at ease with the concept. I forget that most people are not as familiar with computers as I am and that online editing of web pages is probably very daunting to them. It is actually easier than I made it sound just now. Hopefully over time they will get more comfortable with it.

God Bless You!

It took me quite a while to find songs I liked for the pre-service singing Sunday morning. I have pretty much concentrated all the songs on the topic of coming home to Christ/God or Christ/God wanting us to come home. So the three songs I have chosen are (in the order they will be sung):

"Little is Much when God is in it" Kittie L. Suffield
"Softly and Tenderly" Will L. Thompson
"O God, We Have Wandered" VU112 (on page 3 of the document)

On the Vision/Mission statement front, I have not had an epiphany yet. Well at least not as to what those statements should be. But I think I finally have a pretty good idea what each one is. I have wrongly been using the terms interchangeably. After doing some reading and looking around, I think a Vision statement is something that says who we are, and the Mission statement says what we do. So, for example, a Vision statement would be:

Esquimalt United church is a community of disciples
Loved by God,
Forgiven by Grace,
on a faith journey to eternal life.

whereas a Mission statement could be something like this:

Esquimalt United church
- is dedicated to uplifting and meaningful worship through prayer, scripture and song;
- welcomes all people into a relationship with Jesus Christ;
- nurtures faith journeys of all ages and all stages;
- partners with others who share the same faith to spread the message of Jesus Christ to the community at large.

I am sure these could be said better but I wanted to put forth some quick examples of what I think the difference between the two is.

God Bless You!

"And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it." -- Colossians 3:14 [The Message]

Pretty much the only thing I have done today is look up the other Bible passage that will be used in Sunday's worship service. Interestingly enough, today's Bible passage resonates with me better when I read it using "The Message". You may recall that just yesterday I was saying that I preferred the "New International Version".

I am still digesting the statements found on our collaboration site, and there are a lot of similarity between them. "community", "disciples", "People of God", "intimate relationship with Christ/God", "faith journey" are terms found in multiple statements. I would think that any Vision/Mission statement that we end up with will contain most if not all of the terms above.

God Bless You!

"For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." -- Luke 15:24a [NIV]

The title above is part of the question for this week's theme for the Sunday service; the actual question is "Lost, Found, Not Yet Begun: Where am I on this journey with God?" And you will most likely recognize the Bible passage quoted above as coming from the story of the lost son (or the prodigal son).

I have turned my attention towards trying to find some good songs for the pre-service singing. I have run across a song called "Come Home" and I think the words are just great. Unfortunately for me, I do not think that the music lives up to the words and it would not be something that the congregation would pick up easily. And those words reminded me of another hymn, "Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling". I really like that hymn, and I think that we have sung it during the pre-service singing before. I will have to keep that song in mind.

Something else I spent some time on tonight is the Vision Statement. Not that I can report progress, but re-reading the statements put forward by the members gives me a chance to think about it some more.

This has taken me a lot longer to write than I had anticipated so I better close.

God Bless You!

"But the Master said, 'Don't argue. Go! I have picked him as my personal representative to Gentiles and kings and Jews. And now I'm about to show him what he's in for--the hard suffering that goes with this job.'" -- Acts 9:15-16 [The Message]

I mentioned in my previous entry that tonight was a meeting of the Official board. We started by grounding ourselves in scripture. The version of the Bible that was used for the meeting was "The Message". For comparison sake, I have put at the top of this entry the same passage that I put in the previous entry; only this time it is out of "The Message". Different ways of getting the message across.

This is why I like websites like Bible Gateway and Crosswalk. You can look up Bible passages and then compare different versions. You will probably find one that speaks to you better than the others. In my case, and for the passage above, the "New International Version" spoke to me more than other versions.

As far as the meeting itself, I think a lot was accomplished. I was going to put some of the highlights of the meeting here, but it occurs to me that I should probably find out first if that is an okay thing to do. I will just say that I agreed with all the decisions that were made and that some of the things that were mentioned will provide a lot of food for thought.

God Bless You!

"But the Lord said to Ananias, 'Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.'" -- Acts 9:15-16 [NIV]

This is from the Bible reading in which we are to ground ourselves for the Official Board meeting tomorrow at church. The Scripture for the meeting is actually Acts 9:1-22, but the extract above is what stood out for me when I read the passage. What I got out of it is that there are hard decisions ahead on the journey that our church is taking and also for tomorrow's meeting. As well, we should not expect things to be handed to us on a silver platter.

I forgot to mention in my blog entry yesterday that two of the members of the Discernment committee stood up and spoke to the congregation about what the committee has been doing and what we are wrestling with. I think they did a very good job of conveying to the congregation the challenges that lay ahead, both for the committee and also for the congregation.

There is one thing I have yet to come to grips with: the fact that my memory is not as good as it used to be. I used to be able to not take notes at a meeting and I would remember all the pertinent information, which of course meant that I would not bother taking notes. So nowadays I still sometimes do not bother taking notes, except that now I do not remember the important stuff. For example, at our last Discernment committee meeting, the facilitator gave us examples of format for a vision statement. It sounded very obvious at the time so I did not write it down; of course now I cannot remember anything about it. Which makes it hard to work on refining the ideas we have into some kind of cohesive statements.

God Bless You!

I enjoyed the Sunday service once again. The reflection was particularly good. Instead of me trying to paraphrase what the reflection (sermon) was about, I will just point you to the sermon itself. I do not know if I have mentioned before, but the reflection for a particular Sunday is usually available shortly after the service, as is the bulletin, on the church web site: Esquimalt United Church.

The pre-service singing went very well, even if do I say so myself. I must say that having our music director, Brooke Maxwell, play along with the pre-service music is a tremendous help. I really appreciate all of his help. I also received music books as well as a tape of Vineyard music from a couple of members of the congregation. You can never have too much material to choose from.

God Bless You!

As I had mentioned in yesterday's entry, I knew there was a song with "you shall be my people, and I will be your God" in it but could not think of it. Fortunately for me, a fellow blogger, "a pilgrim", left a comment letting me know of a couple of suggestions that either had the phrase above or spoke of the Bible. I ended up using one of those selections. So the selection of songs for the pre-service singing is as follows (in the order they will be sung):

"Open Your Ears, O Faithful People" VU272
"Tower of Strength" Unknown
"To Abraham and Sarah" VU634

As I may have mentioned before, my older daughter is visiting for the weekend. She has a weekend off from the Winter Session she has been attending at Naramata. She is very excited about teaching "Tower of Strength" to the congregation, a song she has learned while on course.

The choir (especially the director) were bemoaning the fact that we were only getting to sing 1 verse of some really great hymns and "To Abraham and Sarah" was one of them. So they will be happy to be able to sing all verses to that song. And since the music director has been helping me play for the pre-service singing, he will be pleased as well.

God Bless You!

"I will be their God, and they will be my people" -- Jeremiah 31:33c [NIV]

The above is an extract from one of the Bible readings for next Sunday's service. I keep thinking that there is a song that has those words as lyrics. Unfortunately, at the moment I cannot think of it. Oh well, I have all of Saturday to think of it. But I have had trouble finding songs about the Bible. The only one that comes to mind is one I heard Tennessee Ernie Ford sing "The B-I-B-L-E is the book for me".

Update: Another song that came to mind is "Basic Instructions" by Burlap to Cashmere. And the only reason it did is because it starts with the words "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth". Unfortunately I don't think I can play it. Oh well...

God Bless You!

The title above is the theme for this week. It also asks the question: "Can the Bible really help me hear God talking to me? How?" This is an interesting topic as daily Bible reading is one of the marks of discipleship.

Probably the way I like to read the Bible the best is Lectio Divina, as it is something that we practice at every Discernment Committee meeting. Actually I think I can safely say that pretty much every meeting that is held at church includes some time set aside to read the Bible using Lectio Divina. Clicking on the link will take you to a page that has a good explanation of the process. I had not known before today that Lectio Divina could be practice in a solitary or private manner as I had always done it as part of a group. But I guess since I do just that whenever I read a Bible passage at home it is natural to do just that.

I have spent more time trying to make sure that the mechanics of the collaboration site were well explained so that everyone would be comfortable using the site rather than actually working on the tasks before us. Hopefully now that I think I have done all I can to make it easy to use I can start looking at what is there.

God Bless You!

During the Annual General Meeting, and also from hearing comments here and there, there seems to be this impression that the Discernment Committee is operating in secrecy and trying to turn the church upside down with all kinds of changes. Therefore, at our last meeting, it was decided that we should tell the congregation what we have been up to.

One of the committee members was kind enough to write up a rough draft of the presentation we will be making. I am not too sure I agree entirely with the direction taken in the draft. I have written some of my comments below the draft, but I think we should also cover the following:

• A recap of why the committee was formed
• The reason(s) why we looked at the marks of discipleship
• An explanation as to why we need a vision/mission statement

The main reason to speak to the congregation is to re-assure them that we are not out to turn their world upside down. After all, we are all members of the church which means that we like it here. We are not going to turn the church into something we would not want to be associated with. But I think that there are things that can be done better - to give us a clearer understanding of what the church is about.

God Bless You!

Declining attendance in churches is not limited to the United churches. It would appear that it is a problem for all "mainline" churches. There is an article in today's local newspaper about the Anglican church looking to close 3 churches, including St. Paul's which is but a couple of blocks away from Esquimalt United.

Interesting read.

God Bless You!

I think tonight's Discernment Committee meeting was a good one. And as I had hoped, there were a lot of good ideas that were put forward. People liked my statement, but it is not specific enough to let people new to the church know what we are about. So there is more work to be done. The facilitator thinks that we are even closer to coming up with a Vision Statement than we were a couple of weeks ago.

So some people wondered if it would be possible to continue the discussion about the Vision Statement between meetings. And the facilitator wondered if it would be possible to do this online. And since I am the one with experience in the computer field...

I have had good luck with using a Wiki to share information. A Wiki is particularly well suited to collaborative writing as it allows quick and easy editing of information of the pages that are on the site. So I have created a place on the web where we can go and carry on our discussions. It is named, not surprisingly, Esquimalt Discernment.

I have quickly put down some information so the site is not bare. Anyone can click on the link above and have a look around. To make changes to the page, you first have to register. And once you have your id (mine is ChrisThibodeau) you can login and start making changes to the site.

I am looking forward to the end result of our collaboration.

God Bless You!

I heard good things about the songs for the pre-service singing. Particularly for "Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus)" by Chris Rice. The song fit so well in the theme of the week, but it is such a great song that I am hoping it will stay with those people who heard it this morning.

The reflection was certainly thought provoking. I am still trying to make complete sense of it. "First you rejoice; rejoicing opens your heart; opening your heart allows God to come into your heart." Hopefully I got it mostly right. Fortunately, there will be more to come in the weeks ahead. It is a great thing indeed that we are not just listening, but rather becoming engaged with what the minister is saying.

I guess I should not be surprised that people in the congregation were familiar with the song the choir sang this morning: "Joy is like the rain" by the Medical Mission Sisters. Since the congregation has always enjoyed singing, it would follow that they would be familiar with Christian music. By the way, the choir did sing another song from the Medical Mission Sisters a couple of weeks ago: "Zaccheus".

Tomorrow is Discernment Committee meeting. I hope I have answered the right question, or did I answer "What are we?" instead of "Who are we?". I am very interested in finding out what the others will have come up with. I think that it will be a very enlightening meeting.

God Bless You!

This weekend could not have arrived at a better time. I had been burning the candle at both ends at work and it was taking its toll on my ability to get much accomplished in the evenings at home. This basically meant that by the time I could turn my attention to writing an entry in my blog(s), I was too tired to put forth the effort.

Not that I have not been talking about "stuff". One of the things I have been thinking about is that answer I wrote in my previous entry. I think that the word "the" in the entry should be changed to an "a". Which would make it:

"Loved by God, forgiven by grace, on a faith journey to eternal life."

To me, the saying should apply equally to the church as a whole, and to each person that comes to church - whether they have been here for years or it is their first visit. Which is why it is important to make that change. Although the goal is the same "eternal life", the faith journey undertaken by each individual has to be different since we are all at different stages. My faith journey would not be the same as my daughter, nor should it be. So by putting an "a" there, that saying conveys the message that there are more than one faith journey unlike when there was a "the" there which kind of insinuated that there was only one way to do things.

On to the singing. I spent most of the day just letting the choices of songs percolate in the back of my mind after looking through a few books earlier today. And this is what I ended up with (in the order they will be sung):

"O Lord, You're Beautiful" Keith Green [TFWS2064]
"Take Time to Be Holy" VU672
"Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus)" Chris Rice

For the first two songs, the links I provide do not have the exact words that I will be using. The "The Faith We Sing" hymnal basically only uses the first verse of Keith Green's "O Lord, You're Beautiful". Their second verse is basically just a slight variation of the first one. And for "Take Time to Be Holy", I will be singing verses 1, 3, and 4 of the ones on the web page where I have linked. Both of those songs were listed under the "Trust" heading in their respective topical index. The third song will be sung as printed on the web page. I chose that song because I think it shows that, wherever you are on the journey, you can always turn to God/Jesus.

God Bless You!

Seems like such a simple question, doesn't it? That is the question with which we have to wrestle before the next meeting of the Discernment committee. Ideally, we should have a one sentence answer to that question. It turns out that it is more complex than it seems, well for me anyway. I am probably making it a lot harder than it has to be by imposing some rules onto the answer. I think that the answer should be simple, easy to remember, but full of meaning. I hope that we were not supposed to keep our answer to ourselves until the meeting, because I think that the following is what resonates most with me at the moment:

"Loved by God, forgiven by grace, on the faith journey to eternal life."

God Bless You!