Christian Life and Work

On the move!

2006-08-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

As with my other blog, this blog has moved:

A Glimpse Into My Mind

which replaced this one

Christian Life and Work

which is where I went from this blog. Confused?

See you there (hopefully)!

God Bless You!

The hard road ahead

2006-08-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

I mentioned yesterday that our minister had given me a book on Sunday. The book is Community of Kindness by Steve Sjogren & Rob Lewin, and the subtitle is A Refreshing New Approach to Planting and Growing a Church.

I have skimmed parts of it, mostly because of the following quote on the front of the book: "No matter how hard the going gets, remember it's easier to plant a church than it is to resurrect a dying one". That is actually the title of lesson 38 on page 87. I will not quote any more of the book, but the part that really got me thinking was the last paragraph of that lesson (on page 88). I would go ahead and read it if you have a copy of the book.

God Bless You!

Infrequent updates

2006-08-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

I know I have not been very good at making daily entries, but I wanted to say that there is a very real possibility that the entries will be even less frequent for the next few days as we get ready to pull up stakes and move to our new home on the weekend.

I did manage to put up the pictures from the work party last Saturday on The Empty Pew. Just click on the Work Party Photos link at the top right of the page. There were quite a few people there from at least three different churches and a lot was accomplished. I will be sure to put some more pictures up when the flooring has been put it so you can see the result of all the work.

Our minister has given me a book to read, knowing fully that it is very unlikely I will have a chance to start reading it before the move is over. The book did look very interesting and I am looking forward to when I will have some time to read it.

God Bless You!

Church Development

2006-08-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

I guess I could find it a little disheartening to see that I have not done much with regards to the Summer Study we were given. I touched on it almost a month ago and I must confess that I have not done much more reading about Natural Church Development. I do find myself agreeing with the quality characteristics that are listed; somehow I do not think that it is a coincidence that we have been talking about some of those things during the discernment phase.

If you read this before 1pm on Saturday August 19th, and you are interested in doing a little manual labour, come on down any time after 9:30am to help with the work party. We have to clear out the basement area so that the new flooring can be installed. What is the saying? Ah yes, many hands make light work. Just come on down to Esquimalt United Church (address on the church web site).

God Bless You!

And the theme continues

2006-08-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

Next Sunday will be the second in a series of 5 services based on the song Revival by Robin Mark. I thoroughly enjoyed the first service in the series so I am looking forward to next Sunday. While there are no new songs this week there are a couple of songs that might not be as familiar as the others that will be sung: Shine Jesus Shine was sung at least once as I have a record of singing that song during the June 4th singsong, and I Will Celebrate was done during the church service last year as I now remember practicing it with the choir - that probably means that I introduced it in the singsong as well. I had not yet started keeping track on the Pre-service singing site last year so I cannot be sure as the one place where I could check, my office laptop, is at the office.

God Bless You!

Something wrong here

2006-08-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one that finds it more than a little disheartening to see that the only bit of news about the General Council of the United Church that I see from the CBC is one about a potential boycott of bottled water?

God Bless You!

Am I being too critical?

2006-08-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a lot of web surfing lately, particularly in the area of web presence of churches. That is a direct result of a newsletter I receive weekly called WorshipIdeas; some of the topics of the newsletter are now being put on in the WorshipIdeas.com blog. He points to a few church web sites that I had a look at.

First thing that I realised is that I did not even have a link to the web site of my own church in the list of links! That was easily rectified. Then, after having looked at those other web sites, I went back and had a critical look at our web site. And this is where the title of this entry comes in as I did not think that our site fared very well compared to those others. It basically comes down to this: just being on the web is no longer enough, you now have to realise that your web site is probably the first impression we will make on many of the new generation of seekers. I do not know (okay I do not think) that our current site would appeal to those people. Yet another thing we will need to work on (my opinion).

I was glad to see that our Mission and Core values were easily reachable. It took me a while to figure out where the Vision was however. Apparently telling people that Summertime is slow is more important than telling them what we are about. I'm obviously biased since I spend a year's time in a committee to come up with the Vision, but I think it should be something that stands out when people visit the site.

Okay, enough criticizing for one day...

God Bless You!

PS: I have moved my blog to the beta version, and I understand that it has broken the comment system if those people wanting to comment have not also joined the beta system. Sorry about that!

Update: I have found a way around the comment problem. Just post your comments anonymously.

And it is official

2006-08-14T23:39:00.000-07:00

The discussion and decision that had been put off to give everyone a chance to familiarize themselves with the information (which I touched on in this entry) about make the change from the Official Board to a Unified Board model took place tonight. As everyone was familiar with the issues this time around, the discussion and decision was done fairly quickly. The one year trial of the Steering Committee starts with its introduction meeting on September 11 at 1830.

There is no update and/or new photos at The Empty Pew this week as work has slowed down due in part to the fact that our minister is allergic to paint fumes. There will be more updates coming as the flooring is scheduled to be installed around the end of the month and there is a work party scheduled for Saturday August 19th (0930 - 1300) to get the area ready.

God Bless You!

A successful beginning

2006-08-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned before, today was the beginning of the 5 week period where the theme will be based on the song Revival by Robin Mark. I really enjoyed the service today, and I am sure it was due to the fact that our minister was back. Of course, the fact that we sang some of my favourite Christian music did not hurt either: Cry of my Heart, Open the Eyes of my Heart, and Lord I Lift Your Name on High. Brooke, our music director, also let loose on a couple of those songs and it was great.

Our minister has given me some more new music to have look at - I had forgotten about it until I started writing this blog. Tsk, tsk, tsk. There really was no chance of me not remembering as I put the music with my laptop.

Oh right! For those of you reading my blog to find out when and where the next Official board meeting is, hopefully you are reading this before Monday August 14th at 7:15pm since that is when the meeting is in the new Family room at church.

God Bless You!

Revival

2006-08-10T23:28:00.000-07:00

Now that our minister has come back from vacation, we are launching a new theme for the next 5 weeks based on the song Revival by Robin Mark. As the congregation has not yet heard the song, I will have the privilege to introduce it to them at the beginning of the service on Sunday. I have begun practicing the song as I did not know it before our minister brought it up. It is not a difficult song to play, but the lyrics are giving me a little trouble so far as they go quite quickly. Nothing that another couple of days of rehearsal cannot fix. This is also an opportunity to start building the calluses on my fingers again as I have not touched my guitar since the last singsong at the beginning of July. Needless to say (and yet I will), my fingers are quite sore right now.

This will have to be a short entry as I have to get up early in the morning.

God Bless You!

Back to work

2006-08-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe not just yet. But the fact that our minister is returning from vacation on the 9th is spurring me to start thinking once again about how to make the church experience one that appeals to the young at heart and still is comfortable with those who are used to a more traditional service. That was one thing that Brooke and I did touch on during our lunch meeting; his (and I hope I am remembering this right) conflict in how to play the music at the church. He is used to tailor what and how he plays based on the audience present and since the majority of the congregation is of his parents age or older he tends towards playing the hymns in a manner that would appeal for that age group. Not that I had an answer for him at the time...

But I keep coming back to the idea of a song set. Over the last few weeks I have come to notice how much harder it is for me to get into a good spiritual space when I keep getting up and down - we sing one song, then sit down for a (maybe short) prayer, then up again for one more song, then sitting for a reading... You get the idea. This is to me kind of like stop and go traffic; you just get going and you have to stop. Now I will agree that it is probably a little harder for me to "get into the groove" since I have to run the slides as well, but I still think that the above applies regardless.

God Bless You!

Fun meeting

2006-08-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

Since today is Monday, I had my lunch meeting with Brooke, our music director. I really enjoyed the time we spent together; by the time we decided to call it a day 2.5 hours had gone by just like that! The only bad thing (well good if we get to do this again) is that we did not make it all the way through the hymn book.

Since I do not remember if I did say it or not: "Thanks for lunch, Brooke!"

God Bless You!

Another Empty Pew update

2006-08-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

And this time I am putting the new pictures up in a timely fashion, more or less... For those who are interested, the new pictures are under the Still More Photos link at The Empty Pew. A lot of progress is being made, but the smell of paint is still very prevalent in the downstairs area.

This Sunday's reflection was delivered by Roy. I love the man, but there is something in his speech delivery which makes it very hard for me to stay focused on what he is talking about. I think it is safe to say that I only got about half of what he was saying which is unfortunate.

God Bless You!

Enjoying the time off

2006-08-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

I must say that I have not given much thought to the church this week; and I am only thinking about it now as I wonder whom is going to do the PowerPoint for this Sunday. Note that I did not say faith; while I may not be able to say that my faith is front and centre in my thoughts it is never far below the surface.

I forgot to mention earlier that for the singing of "Blessed be Your Name" last Sunday our music director enlisted the help of one of the youth of the congregation on guitar. I immediately had 2 thoughts when I saw it happening:
1) What a clever way to slowly get the congregation to work up to a Praise band; and
2) I have been replaced... Which of course what a really stupid thought to have.

I guess I better put some of my thoughts about the location of the audiovisual equipment down on paper (or in a document) so that I can pass those thoughts along to others at church. It would be pretty hard for them to make decisions based on the facts if they do not have all of them.

God Bless You!

Empty Pew Update

2006-08-02T22:03:00.000-07:00

I was sent a link to this May You Be Blessed movie and I think you should go have a look if you have not done so already.

Not a whole lot to say tonight, but I wanted to let everyone know that I have finally updated The Empty Pew with the pictures what were shown to the congregation last Sunday. I hope I have remembered the commentary correctly. Since there is no chance for me to remember all of the names of the people in the pictures, I have decided to not put any names down (Also means that I do not put any more information on the web that is necessary).

I am meeting with our music director (as Brooke says, don't check out his web page you won't like it) this Monday to let him know which hymns are familiar to the congregation and what their tempo is. Which of course means that now I get to worry whether the tempo I like is the tempo the congregation likes. I have this vague memory that I like things a little faster than what the congregation likes. Oh well, at least he will have an idea.

God Bless You!

More random thoughts

2006-07-31T22:34:00.000-07:00

The youth that prepared the PowerPoint presentation had a previous engagement so I ran the presentation on Sunday. Once again there were pictures of the renovation to add to the presentation so that they could the congregation could be kept up to date on the progress. I think that it is a great idea to keep everyone informed, I just wish that I did not have to get the pictures in the presentation 10 minutes before the service started. I guess I will just have to get there sooner.

We had another guest speaker on Sunday, keeping with the "Getting to Know our Neighbours in Christ" theme while our minister is taking a well deserved vacation. The speaker was from Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Victoria. He had spoken at the Friday rally of Love Your City, and he covered some of the same material (the new Church paradigm) that he did at the rally. I do think it was good for those who were not at the Love Your City rally to hear his remarks.

One thing that just struck me is that I did not realize until just now how difficult it is to get into the flow of things when you sing a song then you sit down and then you stand up and sing another song. I am beginning to see the merit of stringing songs together to really get into the flow of things.

God Bless You!

What does it mean?

2006-07-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

I have been sitting in front of the computer for the last hour trying to come up with something to write. I was going to write about the fact that I have been finding myself wanting to go back to New Life Community Fellowship. Which of course brought forth the question of why. I obviously liked the service; but is it because the format and content appealed to me or is it because I had no part to play in the service save the part of a person attending the service? That is a question to which I will have to give some serious thought.

If it is the format, I seem to remember that our minister is willing to move towards something similar - I think. I say I think because, as I mentioned in my last entry, I seem to have blocked most of that conversation from my mind.

God Bless You!

An interesting time

2006-07-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

Despite the heat, the service this morning at New Life Community Fellowship was very interesting and I enjoyed it very much.

Our guide called ahead of time to let us know he was delivering the message this morning and could not show us the audio-video system at work during the service. We decided to go ahead anyway. He was able to give us a quick run through before the service and then answered any questions we had afterwards. That gave us quite a few ideas that we will be going over in the next few days and weeks.

Our minister outlined a possible way for the church service to proceed in the fall, but I guess my inner child was doing his "lalalalalalala" posturing as I seem to have forgotten most of it. I will have to ask for a rerun...

God Bless You!

Update: changed having forgiven to have forgotten in the last paragraph - now that should make sense...

Something to look forward to

2006-07-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow should be an interesting experience. I have agreed to go with our vacationing minister to visit New Life Community Fellowship. One of their members did the video for the last two years, and he also did the sound set up for that church. We are going to see what their sound set up is like. We are also going to stay for the service; that is the part that should be interesting as I have not really been to any other church for worship (except for Christmas and Love Your City) since I joined Esquimalt United Church over 16 years ago. I therefore do not have much of an idea as to what to expect, although the fact that they are a Charismatic church does give you somewhat of a hint.

God Bless You!

Summer Study

2006-07-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

I have not had much to say here as I have, once again, been bad at time management. I usually find that it is past time to go to bed before I even start thinking about writing in my blog. And since I am not a spur of the moment writer.....

One thing we have been asked to do in preparation for our new role as "Steering committee", or whatever it is we will be called, is that we do a little preparation by reading "The abc's of Natural Church Development" by Christian A. Schwarz. I have read a few pages so far, but I have also gone to have a look at the Natural Church Development web site for Canada. I do not have any comments on the material as of yet, but I will let you know when I do.

Well I have to get up early in the morning so I will bid you "Good night!"

God Bless You!

The Empty Pew

2006-07-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I took a picture of the pews at the church. I liked that picture and when I was playing with the application on my new computer that lets you easily create web sites that picture came to my mind.

I have therefore cobbled together a couple of pages that I think might be of some interest for people who would like to keep track of the changes at church. So for the adventurous in all of you I give you The Empty Pew.

Right now it is basically just the pictures that were shown at church on Sunday plus a couple of blog entries. I will still keep this blog as the one to talk about my Christian Life and Work but The Empty Pew will allow me to be more visual in what takes place at the church.

God Bless You!

Great Sunday

2006-07-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

Well it all started with confusion. The youth that had been doing the PowerPoint presentations came through this week; but she actually made the presentation for next week. It was a blessing in disguise however, as I will not be going to our church next Sunday. I feel better knowing that it has been taken care of.

I had assumed that the presentation that had been sent to me was for today so I had not really looked at it. It was therefore around 11pm Saturday night that I started doing the one for this Sunday. I had to stay up for work, so it was not as if I stayed up specifically for that purpose.

Then this morning when I got to church, I was handed a ThumbDrive and asked to add 15 pictures to the presentation so that the congregation could be made aware of the changes being done in what used to be the chapel as well as downstairs. I got them added just in the nick of time but would have appreciated a little more notice. Oh well, the fact that I got to church 10 minutes later than usual since I did not have to do the singsong might have had something to do with it; although if I had done the singsong, there would have been even less time to do it. Whatever....

On the plus side, the Pastor from Harbour View Alliance church was the first to come and speak to us while our Minister is away on vacation. The speaking series, called "Getting to know your neighbours in Christ", is off to a great start. I had been looking forward to his visit, and I am happy to say that he was every bit as good as I had expected. I guess the only bad thing is that I will miss the Pastor from Harvest church next week.

God Bless You!

Taking it easy

2006-07-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

I have been doing very little regarding my church life these last few days; I guess you could call that taking it easy. It just does not feel right to me somehow. I am enjoying the time off, but I still think I should be doing more.

Maybe some of it has to do with the fact that I am currently reading "God Songs" by Paul Baloche and friends. Since the book talks about creating/choosing worship music that will touch people, I guess I want to be doing some of that. Hey, that could be part of recharging my batteries...

Oh right, it turns out that there is a special Official Board meeting on July 18th at 7pm at the HomePort to deal with expenses being made for the renovations being done at church this summer. Which of course reminds me that I need to send the information about the Unified Board to one of the members of the Official Board that missed the last meeting. I better make myself a note before I forget again.

God Bless You!

Thanks!

2006-07-09T23:57:00.000-07:00

I wanted to be sure to thank my wife again for coming with me to church even though she had not slept well last night so she could help me with the presentation during the singsong and also during the service. I would not have been able to do those things had she not been there. So a great big thank you for coming even though she did not feel like it at all.

I used my new MacBook to do the presentations at church today. It was the first time I had not used my office laptop. It went very well, and being able to see on my laptop screen the coming slide is a nice bonus. To do the presentation I used the Keynote software from Apple. While I did not make use of the fancy transition features of Keynote for the service presentation, I did use some of them for the singsong. They looked really good when I put them in, and at least my wife said they looked really good on the overhead screen.

Today was the last Sunday for me to do the singsong for the foreseeable future. I did receive some nice compliments (relayed to me) about people enjoying the songs I have chosen. I am very glad that I was able to touch people with songs.

We had a guest organist as our music director had a previous engagement and took one of his Sunday vacations. He did a decent job of playing the hymns and we appreciated him covering for Brooke.

God Bless You!

And it is set

2006-07-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

I did not think of any other songs for the singsong, so the list I gave in yesterday's entry is still valid. One of the songs did not have chords in Voices United, but fortunately I have another hymn book that did which means I did not have to either figure them out myself or even change song. So these are the songs, in the order they will be sung:

"I Heard the Voice of Jesus" VU626
"Just as I Am" VU508
"Bread of Life" MVS5

MVS stands for More Voices Sampler. The United Church of Canada will be publishing late this year an addendum to the Voices United hymnal called More Voices. A sampler of about 20 of the songs that will be used in More Voices was produced and that last song comes from the sampler.

I have been asked, in the absence of our music director, to lead the singing of "Blessed Be Your Name". I have sung it before in the singsong (on June 11th actually) so it should not be too different than when Brooke does it.

God Bless You!

Singsong slowly taking shape

2006-07-07T23:59:00.000-07:00

"Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost." -- Isaiah 55:1 [NIV]

Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the hymn suggestions I have found come from the Isaiah passage. I still have some more thinking to do, but if I were to decide right at this moment, the following three songs would be the ones I would sing:

"I Heard the Voice of Jesus" VU626
"Just as I Am" VU508
"Bread of Life" Stephen Spencer

The third song is there, not because it was suggested, but rather because this Sunday is communion and it is a communion hymn and it just so happens that it kind of fits with the Isaiah quote at the top of this entry (the lyrics can be accessed by clicking on the hymn title).

God Bless You!

Think think think

2006-07-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

"give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." -- 1 Thessalonians 5:18 [NIV]

I spent some time this evening reading the Bible passages for next Sunday:

Nehemiah 8:1-12
Isaiah 55:1-13
1 Thessalonians 5:15-18

and I must say I cannot wait to hear our minister on Sunday (particularly about the Nehemiah reading). By the way, you can read the passages above online; one of the sites where you can do that is BibleGateway. Admittedly, I did not give the readings the time required to really "stand under" those passages, so it is no wonder that I am having trouble wrapping my thoughts around them.

The devotional I read this morning was familiar to me which can only mean that I have now reached the part where I started reading last year. I was thinking about trying out the suggestion from the book "God Songs", namely to sing the bible passage instead of just reading it. I would have to change the time where I do my devotional/Bible reading as everyone is still sleeping then. I will have to think on this some more.

God Bless You!

Ramblings

2006-07-04T23:29:00.000-07:00

I find it interesting that what has to be my favourite communion hymn, I Come With Joy (VU477), is also one of two songs (the other song is We Are Pilgrims (VU595)) the Discernment committee chose to best represent the ideas of the Vision, Mission, and Core Values statements. I usually use I Come With Joy during the singsong whenever we have communion, but since it is already being used in the service I will have to come up with something else.

I have just begun to think about what I will do for the last singsong before the summer; whatever it is I do, I will try to keep it relevant to the theme just as I do any other Sunday. The thought did cross my mind to just do stuff I really like, but since the singsong is not about me that is not going to happen.

I have finally gotten back to reading a book a bought a few months ago: "God Songs" by Paul Baloche and friends. It is a book about how to write (and/or pick) good worship songs. I am once again excited to be reading it. Since it had been a while, I have started the book over but I had only read about 20 pages so it is not a great hardship.

I am still reading the daily devotional from my Bible. One of the things I am looking forward to doing is researching more worship songs. Someone mentioned that good worship songs are like daily devotional, but you get to sing it! And since I really like to sing...

God Bless You!

Has it been a year already?

2006-07-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

I was looking back at the first posts I made in my blog here on Blogger, and the very first post mentions that we had just completed the first church service using PowerPoint (which you can read here). It is hard to believe that it has been a year since we started using PowerPoint for the service. I am not sure that we would be able to easily do without it now as it has become second nature to make use of it. In this short period of time, we have obtained a proper screen (the first presentation was done on a bed sheet!), and a proper stand for the projector (we used a plant stand). And soon the church will be getting a projector and laptop so it does not have to depend on church members for those pieces of equipment.

The singsong went pretty well this morning; many thanks to the young woman who graciously accepted, at the last minute, the job of running the PowerPoint while I sang. It could not have happened without her. I still find it hard to believe that I will be taking a break from doing the singsong, next week will be my last Sunday. I get the feeling that when Fall comes the singsong will morph into something different. Of course I may be totally wrong about this.

God Bless You!

Songs for tomorrow

2006-07-01T23:59:00.000-07:00

I think I mentioned yesterday that one of the songs for the Sunday service did not look familiar. After a closer look that is indeed the case. So I will be doing that song during the singsong tomorrow. And since I received the other Bible readings for the service, I was able to come up with another couple of songs for the singsong. The order of songs now looks like this:

"Make a Joyful Noise" VU820
"All Things Bright and Beautiful" VU291
"Heaven is Singing for Joy" VU230

Now that I have chosen the songs, all that remains is to prepare the PowerPoint slides.

God Bless You!

Catching up

2006-06-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

How time flew this week! Here it is already Friday and I have not been keeping up with the events of the week since Monday.

What was supposed to be the last Official Board meeting took place on Wednesday. It had been a while since the last meeting so there was a lot to catch up on. Well a lot to catch up on for some of the members of the Board as the majority of the members of the Board were on the Discernment committee and already knew all about what was being presented. It did increase the amount of time spent on some of the items as those Board members not on the Discernment committee had to be brought up to speed before any decisions could be made. So we ended up not being able to go through the whole agenda, including the part where we were going to change the method of Governance of the church to the Unified Board model. Those members that are not in Discernment asked for more time to study the motion. Which means that there will be at least one more meeting of the Official Board in the middle of August.

I have been having a quick look at the information for the service on Sunday, and the only reading I know of right now is Psalm 100 so it might be slim pickings as far as song choices based on the Scripture readings for the week. One of the songs this week, "Heaven Is Singing For Joy", does not at the moment look very familiar to me and so I might just do it during the singsong so people will be familiar with it.

God Bless You!

Discernment wrap up

2006-06-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the celebration potluck dinner for the discernment committee. Our job accomplished, it was time to celebrate the end result as well as all of the work that went into coming up with the Vision, Mission, and Value statements (see yesterday's entry). The atmosphere was basically just like a big family dinner: great food, light banter, profound conversations, everything but the squabbles and disagreements.

I think I mentioned earlier that most if not all of us are just moving directly into the next phase and joining the Steering Committee which will start officially in the fall. I guess there still remains the small matter of dissolving (?) the Official Board and moving towards the Unified Board model. Well at least I think that it is what is happening - I guess I will find out for sure at the next Board meeting this Wednesday. Which reminds me that I should have something ready to report as the Chair of the Worship Committee/Team.

God Bless You!

And it has been accepted

2006-06-25T23:40:00.000-07:00

Over the last 12 months (pretty much the life of this blog), I have been mentioning all the work that has been accomplished by the Discernment committee. All the work came to fruition today when a Congregational meeting approved the Vision, Mission, and Value statements. I had been refraining from putting up the finished product until it was approved, so now that it has been I can put it up here.

Vision Statement:

Esquimalt United Church
is a community of everyday people
following Christ on a never ending spiritual journey.

Mission Statement:

Esquimalt United Church:
- seeks to be a spiritual centre where everyone may find
a safe and welcoming place to explore the mystery of faith.
- welcomes all people into a relationship with Jesus Christ
- nurtures faith through worship that touches the heart
and through studying God's story.
- seeks to live our faith in our daily lives

Values:

- We believe that God loves everyone unconditionally.
- We believe in God's forgiveness and grace.
- We believe that Christ's love brings joy,
wholeness and transformed lives.
- We believe that Christ's love is shown through respect,
acceptance and support of all of the diverse parts of God's family.
- We believe in sharing Christ's love in our community
by working side by side with others.

And there you have it: a glimpse into who we are and who we would like to become.

The Discernment committee has now completed its task and will be disbanded immediately after our last meeting tomorrow night. It is a potluck supper to celebrate all of our accomplishments. Another committee is taking its place in the fall to start working on the changes that need to be done to help us become the church of the vision.

God Bless You!

PS: Our music director had a mishap with one of his pieces of music this morning: it went missing. It was on the floor and was probably picked up by our new custodian. It was a loose copy of a hymn which I have in my "The Faith We Sing" book, which is the supplement to the United Methodist church hymnal. To prevent this problem from re-occurring, I have ordered another copy of my book and will give it to Brooke.

I did not know I had asked

2006-06-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

"Here's what I'm saying: Ask and you'll get; Seek and you'll find; Knock and the door will open." -- Luke 11:9 [The Message]

I had been wondering off and on the last couple of days what I would be singing for the singsong tomorrow and nothing immediately came to mind. Imagine my surprise earlier tonight when our minister sent an email asking if the powerpoint for the service tomorrow could be changed to include some Bible readings as well as a "Bidding and Response" section. The surprising part is not really that our minister asked for a change; but rather that those Bible readings were just what I needed to come up with songs. Here are the songs I have come up with for tomorrow:

"What A Friend We Have in Jesus" VU664
"Open the Eyes of My Heart" Paul Baloche
"Cry of My Heart" TFWS2165

All that remains is to put the singsong powerpoint together.

God Bless You!

Second guessing myself

2006-06-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

At yesterday's Worship team meeting, the topic of the singsong came up. Our minister noted that I have been expressing that I am getting tired of choosing songs for the singsong. I was asked, and I agreed to take a break for the summer and the minister and I, as well as the Worship team, will discuss it again in the fall.

Now don't get me wrong, I am glad that I will be getting a break. I have not had a break, except for the month when I went down south for the funeral of my mother-in-law and the drive back earlier this year, since I came back from my ill-fated attempt to join the US job market in May 2001. But in previous occasions when I have felt like quitting, comments made by some of the people that come to the singsong have always kept me from doing so. People that tell me that a song that was sung that week really touched them, or that they come to church early only because of the singsong. What an awesome responsibility and humbling gift to know that God is speaking to those people through the songs. So I always felt before that I would be shirking my responsibility by quitting. But taking a break is not quitting. And I cannot help but feel that the extended prelude, led by Brooke, which will take the place of the singsong will include opportunities for the people to join in singing if they feel so moved.

And speaking of shirking, I have been neglecting the faith side of my life of late. I have been spending a lot of my time playing with my computers and I feel out of balance. I need to focus again on that side. One indication of how out of balance I find myself is that I have been rushing through the devotional readings in the morning - there again I need to regain focus. But hey, who said it was easy?

God Bless You!

Last minute decisions

2006-06-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

I have changed the time of this entry so that it will show up under Saturday's date, but I am writing this just after 2am. Up until 30 minutes ago I had no idea at all what I was going to sing in the singsong. Then I had an epiphany: why not use the 2 songs the Discernment committee has selected as most representative of the Vision, Mission and Value statements since that is what we are talking about in the service? I may also, if the spirit moves me, talk a little why I am using those two songs; and maybe challenge the congregation to see if the statements bring to mind any songs.

Well I better go to bed and get some sleep if I want to sound half-coherent.

God Bless You!

Update: I guess it shows that it is getting late, as I forgot to list the two songs I will be doing:

"I Come With Joy" VU477
"We Are Pilgrims" VU595

Love Your City wrap up

2006-06-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

Things have been busy around here lately so I could always use that as an excuse for not posting, but since my wife has been doing most of the work there is not much I can say in my defense. Although those that know me will know why when I say "new computers".

Wednesday June 14 was the wrap up meeting for this year's Love Your City event. We watched a rough copy of the Love Your City video for this year; it will be really great when it is finished (which is supposed to be Friday next week). We also discussed what went well and what could be done better. The fact that we were all together as one "Church of Esquimalt" this year was what was noted as being the best thing that happened this year. Probably the only thing that people mentioned could be better is the fact that we did not hit has many locations this year and that we should see what can be done about it. Once suggestion was that maybe we could have roving teams that would not stay in one place but go from place to place to perform their servant evangelism.

Pretty much everyone also agreed that we should do this more than once a year; although we could not decide on a date. The one suggestion that garnered the most interest was to have events happen around the end of January as it was mentioned that it probably was the worst time of year for low income families. The Extreme Outreach Christmas dinner was one thing that was mentioned could be moved to January since there are a lot of things happening around Christmas but nothing or next to nothing in January.

In any case, it was decided to meet again on September 13th to start and seriously look at what can be done. Oh, and it was also mentioned that the Ministerial would make a concerted effort to try and reach those churches that did not take part in the event last year. Even if the clergy is not involved from those churches, we are hopeful that some lay people could be found to lead things at the church level.

God Bless You!

Discernment committee

2006-06-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

As I have probably mentioned here before, the Discernment committee has finalized the Vision, Mission, and Value statements. Tonight's meeting was all about finding hymns that, for the lack of a better word, "portray" what the statements stand for. After much discussion, the following two hymns were the ones that best exemplified our statements:

"We Are Pilgrims (The Servant Song)" VU595
"I come with Joy" VU477

We will think about those two songs over the summer to see if they are indeed the songs we want as "theme songs". They will also be used during the summer so the congregation can have a say.

This is the beginning of the next phase in the life of the church. Beginning this fall, a steering committee will start studying to ascertain what to do with the statements as we apply them to figure out the new direction of the church.

I have said that I would be part of that steering committee; but I must confess that what I am looking forward to the most is the summer break. The idea is to recharge my batteries to get ready for the work that needs to be done in the fall.

God Bless You!

Changes and excitement

2006-06-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

I do have a confession to make (and it is not about me forgetting to start the slides for the Gathering Words). Brooke asked me about the tune being used for VU573 (Eternal Spirit of the living Christ) in the service. I repeated to him what I had written in an email earlier in the week: that I did not think the tune for VU581 (When we are living) fit well with the words of VU573. So he decided to go ahead and use the tune for VU501 (Break now the bread of life). I think it would have gone very well if it had not been for the fact that, since some of the hymn phrases did not fit on one line, I used the tune for VU624 (Give to us laughter) as the basis for the phrasing on the overhead slides. I guess unconsciously I liked VU624 better than VU501 and I assumed that Brooke would as well. Unfortunately, that meant that some of the words of the hymn in the phrasing for VU501 were on different lines which I think made singing more difficult. There definitely seemed to be some difficulty in singing the last couple of lines of each verse.

There was one change in the line-up of songs for the singsong: instead of singing VU390 (How great the mystery of faith) I ended singing VU356 (Seek ye first the kingdom of God) as requested by our minister. I had decided to sing VU390 because the tune was not known. Turns out it had been decided to use a well known tune instead of the original tune so there no longer was any need to go over it in the singsong. VU356 was requested by our minister as it really fit with the direction her reflection took.

There was a little bit of excitement during the reflection when one of the people in the pews started to feel unwell. An ambulance was called, and my wife (who is a nurse) looked after him while we were waiting for the ambulance to show up. Our minister was not phased by the events unfolding and changed her reflection and the flow of the service to ease the care of that person. Interesting that it was my wife's first visit at church in a while and it would be then that her gifts would be needed.

God Bless You!

Easy pickings

2006-06-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

I usually, during the singsong, go over any new music that will be sung in the service. So the task of picking music for the singsong is very easy this week as there are two hymns that are new to the congregation (well at the very least new to me) and one that has only been done once in the singsong before. I have therefore decided to do those three hymns. As of right now, the order in which they will be sung is:

"How Great the Mystery of Faith" VU390
"Deep in Our Hearts" MVS7
"Blessed Be Your Name" Beth & Matt Redman

I am looking forward to tomorrow's service as we (and by we I mean the minister) will start preaching on the Vision, Mission and Value statements that the Discernment committee has laboured over this past year. I have two reasons for looking forward to it. One, I am eager to see how the congregation at large will respond to the statements (we have spoken to different groups in the church already with positive reactions), and two, I think this will help get excited all over again over the work that we (and by we this time I mean the Discernment committee) have done.

God Bless You!

Too much enjoyment

2006-06-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

I am getting way too much enjoyment out of not having had any meetings to go to in the evening this week. So much so in fact that I have pretty much done nothing but just vegetate in the time that was freed up by not having those meetings. That did not help much on the "I better look at those Bible passages before the next Discernment meeting" front, or even on the "I really should pick songs for next Sunday" front. So now that the weekend has arrived it is time to start work on both of those fronts.

It is kind of hard to have much to say as I have not done much. I guess I will close then.

God Bless You!

Passages for Sunday

2006-06-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

I have received the Bible readings for this Sunday's service. This is good news because I can now start looking for songs to include before the service. The Bible readings this week are:
Romans 8:22-28
Matthew 4:13-25
Matthew 7:12-29
I wonder if I can read into this selection of readings that our minister thinks more highly of these particular passages as a basis for the Vision, Mission and Core Values statements as that is what she will be covering for the next three weeks. That would be an easy way out of having to go through all the readings she has given us to look at for the next Discernment meeting which is next Monday, June 12th at the church. But that would be cheating. Besides, I have read the first passage and it did not speak to me.

Which brings me to a worry that I have. At meetings that we have at the church we read a Bible passage and we are asked to come up with words that strike us, and what the passage says to us at that particular moment. Lately I have had trouble coming up with anything. I always seem to be stuck in the literal and do not really get anything out of the passages, well at least not anything like the other people at the meetings. It seems to me that I used to be able to get into the readings - I wonder what has changed and why.

Well I better go get some sleep.

God Bless You!

More randomness

2006-06-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

I was really sorry the other day that I did not have my camera with me. While waiting for the morning bus I saw a young man wearing a sweater and on the back of that sweater were the words "Jesus loves even me". It was great to see.

I think Love Esquimalt / Vic. West / View Royal will really miss Laura from YWAM; she kept on top of things and generally made sure that all of us knew what was going on and what was expected of us. She was a great help and she will be missed.

I have been keeping up with my devotional reading for the last 6 weeks or so; so hopefully I am getting into the habit again. We are approaching Father's Day however and since that is when I received that Bible last year I hope that having read the devotionals before will not deter me. I am not too worried as I do not really recall any of them at the moment. Or maybe it is time to start reading the Bible itself instead of devotionals based on the Bible.

God Bless You!

Random thoughts

2006-06-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about what I would say about "Love Your City" if I was asked questions, and particularly "Are you not just doing this to get more people in your church?". If that question had been asked of me a year ago I would have said "Yes" because at the time that is really what I thought the focus was. But after having been on the Discernment committee for over a year, my focus has changed. I think now that the reason we do the "random acts of kindness with no strings attached" is so that the people at the receiving end of the acts of kindness will be moved to investigate what drives us to do it. Having them establish or re-open their relationship with God is the focus.

Today was Pentecost and obviously the church service centered on that. There was also a baptism and I think that our minister did a very good job of tying the two together. I enjoyed the drama as well as the reflection. For whatever reason, I really was in the mood to sing and I had a great time singing all of the hymns as well as the choir anthem. Brooke, our music director, as a real interest in Gospel music so we have been singing some gospel music for the last few weeks. The anthem for this week was "Down by the Riverside" and we certainly had a good time singing it - well I had a great time.

Now that the "Love Your City" events are behind me, it is time to start looking at the next meeting of the Discernment Committee which is a week from Monday on June 12th. We are supposed to review Bible passages to find a biblical basis for the Vision, Mission, and Core Values statements. Needless to say (but yet I will say it anyway) I have not yet begun to look at the passages.

God Bless You!

Sunday music

2006-06-03T23:59:00.000-07:00

I guess I should start by talking about Love Your City since we have just completed all the events today. The Friday night rally was great; I enjoyed most of the music that was played during the rally and the message was very well done. Now when I mention that I enjoyed most of the music, what I mean is that some of the songs the Praise Band played were not songs that were easy to pick up for people that had never heard them before. I think that if you want to get people to get the message you are trying to get across they should not have to worry more about learning the tune rather than just singing. Some of their songs were great in that respect. "Freedom" for example had an easy to pick up, repetitive verse and chorus that most if not all people were able to sing. For at least one song, I felt like the Praise Band was singing to us, rather than getting us to sing with them.

The Saturday events went very well; I had been second guessing myself ever since we had decided to increase the number of bottles from 600 to 1000, but we went through all of the bottles (minus 35 that we had forgotten about) in less than 3 hours. And from all of the comments that were made at the celebration service afterwards we were not the only ones that were very successful. And by successful I mean that we reached a lot of people.

On to Sunday. I obviously did not spend a lot of time selecting songs since I spent most of my waking hours working on / taking part in Love Your City. My song selection was made much easier by the fact that one of the songs we are singing in the service tomorrow is not known by the congregation and I have been asked to teach it to them during the singsong. Another song was selected because it was one of the really good ones used at both the Friday night rally and the Saturday celebration service. And the last one I wanted a song that said something about dancing; the reason being that the choir anthem has a line that says "put on my dancing shoes" and by using that song in the singsong it sets the context for the line in the anthem. And the three songs are:

"Dance with the Spirit" Jim Strathdee
"Loving Spirit" VU387
"Shine, Jesus Shine" Graham Kendrick

God Bless You!

Coming down to the wire

2006-06-01T23:56:00.000-07:00

As I write this, there is about 19 hours before the kickoff rally for Love Your City.

I have been pretty busy this week; so busy in fact that I never got around to checking one of my email accounts until tonight. That was unfortunate because it was the email account where I was communicating with the person coordinating the singing for the rally. I had sent her (late of course) music suggestions for the rally. She was out of town so did not get my email until early this week and by that time the songs selections had been made. She did, however, offer for me to sing one of my song suggestions as special music before the speaker brings the message. Of course, I did not get her message (which she sent on Tuesday) until late tonight (Thursday) which probably means it is too late. I did reply and said I would be willing to sing "Draw the Circle Wide" if that is still possible. I will have my guitar in the car just in case.

I have bought some of the water needed for Saturday. 700 bottles have been stored in one of the Sunday School rooms until they will be labeled and handed out on Saturday. I will go get the other 300 probably before the rally on Friday. If not, I will go by and get them early Saturday. I am actually going to get 350 more since that works better with the size of the water cases, and that way I have a few extra to hand out to the volunteers since they do not need the kindness cards. That and rubber bands are all that is left to buy for the event on Saturday.

You might remember that we had decided on 600 bottles of water. But since we are going to be at more places than last year, we (the minister and I) decided to increase the number of bottles to 1000 so we might have enough. That does leave us with having to cut an extra 400 kindness cards - I am thinking that can be done by the volunteers labeling the bottles on Saturday morning. This is of course assuming that we get the extra cards Friday night at the rally but since that is the logical place to get them I am not worried.

God Bless You!

Official Board

2006-05-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

It came as a surprise to me yesterday to find out that there was an Official Board meeting tonight. Not that the meeting was unscheduled, I just had not put it in my calendar so I had no idea it was coming up. Fortunately, our minister had put it in her calendar and sent an email to remind everyone. A lot of material was covered once again, and the meeting lasted for almost 3 hours and it probably would have lasted for longer than that if the Chair had not kept a tight reign on the meeting and brought us back on topic.

Love Your City officially kicks off in 3 days 10 hours, and I might actually be somewhat ready. There is still the small item of actually buying the water bottles that we will be distributing, and cutting the kindness cards, and getting rubber bands to put the cards on the bottles, and..... Okay, so somewhat might be a little optimistic. But things will come together.

That being said, I better get a good night's sleep as there is much to be done in the next few days.

God Bless You!

BC Conference

2006-05-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

I do not remember if I mentioned it before, but since our church had sponsored an applicant to ministry and that applicant was being commissioned at the BC Conference, the church decided that they would go to the BC Conference service instead of holding a service at the church. This was the first time I had ever gone to any kind of event at a conference for the church so it was very interesting for me.

One thing for sure, the music in the new hymn book that the United Church is publishing early next year "Move Voices" has some really great songs in it. The music that we sang at the service was almost exclusively from "More Voices" and I really liked the songs. As a matter of fact, the songs that were used are in the sampler that was distributed, so I might actually use some of them at the church.

There were 10 ministers ordained/commissioned, which brought the question to mind of how many ministers retired and are we keeping up the numbers.

God Bless You!

More Love Your City

2006-05-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

I guess I should mention once again, since I have not done so in quite a while, that I use "Love Your City" as a kind of shorthand for "Love Esquimalt / Vic. West / View Royal" which is actually what the event is called. In any case, today was sign making day since one of the things we thought could be improved upon from last year was use signs so that people would know what was going on. So I spent about 3 hours on Saturday first getting the "plasticboard" and then going to the church to get the signs made. I was a little disappointed with the low turnout - I would say there were maybe 8 of us there at peak time - but there was a lot of energy there. The signs are mostly made - I still have to doctor up the ones for the "communication centre", but I was lucky enough to have one of the ladies volunteer to work on the water signs and she did a much better job than I had planned on doing.

It feels kind of weird to not have to prepare a song list and a slide presentation for tomorrow. Not that I am complaining. I did entertain the thought of coming up with songs based on the theme of the Conference, but it was a very fleeting thought.

God Bless You!

Love Your City

2006-05-25T23:43:00.000-07:00

"Now I've never felt the presence,
But I know You're always near,
And I've never heard the calling,
But somehow You've led me right here"
-- Chris Rice, Smell the Color 9

It feels to me like I have not posted in ages. As I mentioned in my other blog, I have not felt like doing much of anything this week. I guess it is a good thing that there is no pre-service singing this week so I do not have to feel guilty about not having done anything about selecting songs. I do feel guilty however about not having sent any song selections for the Friday night rally for Love Your City (LYC). Now that I think about it, I should go do that right now. Be right back.

(20 minutes later) Okay, I do not have to feel so guilty now, even though I used the same songs I suggested last year since I still think they are suitable. You can see them here. It was either that or not sending any - I opted to resend the same ones.

I have received and paid for the LYC shirts as well as the kindness cards. I was going to hand out some of the shirts tonight at choir practice, but it was cancelled. Apparently Brooke had a bad day at the school where he is a teacher; hopefully nothing serious. It did give me an unexpected night at home for which I am grateful.

I need to go and buy some "plasticboard" to make the signs we will be using to make the people aware of what is going on for the LYC events. I guess I am doing this Saturday morning sometime before 10am since that is when the sign making is taking place. I am thinking 4 2'x3' boards with the LYC heart on the upper left corner and the words "Free Bottled Water" should be enough. Wow, I actually have a plan before the event. I should really write this down (wait, I just did).

God Bless You!

Sorting my music

2006-05-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of days, I have been gathering up all the printed worship music I have around the house to put in a central location: a new binder. I did not spend a lot of time going over the music I was putting in the binder, but long enough to see that there is a lot of great music I have not used in a while. I should really spend some time playing all of those songs just for the joy of it.

One of the reasons why I have been cleaning up my printed music is that most of it used to be on the piano bench; that used to make it pretty much impossible to sit down and play the piano. After hearing Brooke play, I am feeling the urge to start playing the piano once again. Interestingly, the last time I really felt the urge to play was when one of our previous Music Directors, the late Don Buchan, used to make the piano really sing. I remember asking Don once if he knew how many people were moved to play the piano after hearing him play. I don't recall his answer, probably because he did not answer.

Our minister lent me a music book she bought last week for me to look at. The book came with a CD, but not the kind you would think. The CD does not contain music, but rather a PDF file with the lyrics and also a PowerPoint file with pre-made slides of all the lyrics. The CD is city on a hill's "songs of worship and praise". The only song I know off hand is "God of Wonders" so I will have to track down recordings of the other songs to hear what they sound like.

God Bless You!

Music

2006-05-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

One thing I have been doing these last couple of days is listen to Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). I had not been listening to much music lately, and I think that it might have been part of my problem. I have mentioned it before, but music really speaks to me.
Onto the music for Sunday. Our minister had lent me a CD to listen to and she had listed the songs she liked. One of those songs is one that I really like, so we will be doing it on Sunday. The other two songs are also ones I like (that is probably superfluous to mention that since I would not sing songs I do not like) which speak to the theme of the Bible passages (particulary Matthew 28:18-20). So the order of the songs will be as follows:

"I Love to Tell the Story" VU343
"Come, Be Baptized" TFWS2252
"Blessed Be Your Name" Matt Redman

The choir is doing the gospel song "Swing Low"; hopefully it will go over well - I know I am enjoying singing it.

God Bless You!

Time for a break?

2006-05-18T23:59:00.000-07:00

It would appear I am in the middle of a break period. I have not done much of anything about any of the church related stuff this week. I did update my lists for Love Your City a couple of days ago, but even that is not finished yet. And I have yet to look at songs for this Sunday's pre-service singing. It is almost like a lethargy blanket has draped itself over me.

So as to not feel like I am doing nothing, I did put in my note page the Bible readings for this Sunday - so when I get around to reading them I will not have to search for the passages.

There is one hymn in the service that will not be familiar to the congregation "This is the Spirit's Entry Now" [VU451] and I would usually run over the hymn before the service, so I guess I could do that. (Can't you just sense the enthusiasm there? Me neither).

Oh well, tomorrow is another day and it's bound to be better.

God Bless You!

Photos for BC Conference

2006-05-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

"For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease." - Job 14:7

The Annual Meeting of BC Conference is being held this year only two blocks from our church. Churches had been asked to provide pictures of the churches for a presentation that will be made during the Annual Meeting. Some of the ladies of the church had the pictures, but no means to get them to the person making the presentation. This is where I came in as we have a scanner at home. I volunteered to scan the pictures and send them on. Well I did not look at the notes that were given to me too closely, so it turned out that when I did scan the pictures I was already after the "before date". I sent the pictures anyway, and fortunately for me it sounds like they will be used. Somebody is certainly looking after me.

I just realized that this Sunday will be the last chance to let people know anything pertinent about Love Your City as there will be no May 28th service at the church as we are all going to the Annual Meeting Sunday service to support a (ex?)member of the church being commissioned. No pressure...

God Bless You!

Ramblings

2006-05-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

Since I did not post yesterday, I should mention that I once again really enjoyed the service. I particularly enjoyed the reading of Acts 4:1-35 that our minister did. I had read that passage the day before when I was getting ready for the pre-service singing, but it certainly came alive when our minister read it. The choir did a gospel song for its anthem and it was well received. As I was singing I looked at the congregation and although some people were really into it and clapping along it looked like others were in shock. I know I certainly enjoyed singing it.

I will say that I seem to get more out of singing than I get out of listening people speak. And that seems to me because I really have to focus on what I am singing whereas my mind sometimes wanders when I am just listening. Although I hate to admit it, when our minister was leading in us in prayer before the service, my mind kept being drawn to the music in the sanctuary.

I might as well just assume that I will have to prepare the presentation for the service. It is now three weeks in a row that I did not receive the presentation from the youth who had volunteered to prepare it and this time I heard nothing from her - in previous weeks she sent an email or IM saying she would not be able to get it ready. I gave her until Sunday morning to get it to me (and I sent her a message Saturday night letting her know that if she had sent it I had not received it) and then got the presentation ready. So from now on I will just work on it from the time I receive the material, that will be one less thing for me to worry about.

We passed some clipboards around so that people could let us know what it was they were willing to do for Love Your City which is coming up in less than three weeks. I forgot to bring the sheets home with me, but from the glance I took there did not seem to be any new names. I will have to go get those sheets to confirm that. I should also make sure that those people that got shirts last year that signed up for this year still have their shirts as they can be re-used.

God Bless You!

Singing lineup

2006-05-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

My choices for this Sunday's pre-service singing are mostly based on the suggestions of the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church. I have used that website before, but mostly when the church was following the lectionary. Now I usually go there only when I have trouble finding suitable songs elsewhere. I will just look for when they used the Bible passage being used and then see which hymns are suggested for that reading. This is how I came up with the songs this week:

"O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" VU326
"Grace Alone" TFWS2162
"Majesty" UMH176

I also need to look up some information on Love Your City so I can answer any questions that could be asked tomorrow. But right after I prepare the slides for the pre-service singing.

God Bless You!

Still good to go

2006-05-11T23:48:00.000-07:00

I presented the Vision, Mission and Core Values statements (the Statements) and everyone that expressed an opinion were positive about it. I did not see any indications that anyone had any reservations about the Statements. One of the choir members mentioned that she had already heard about it at the UCW meeting, so all the groups in the church are being approached as is the plan. As I mentioned Tuesday, it is gratifying to see that all the work we have put into getting the Statements is being so well received. As I told the choir, it took us quite a while to find the right words to describe what our church is and can become.

I think that all of the soul searching we did over the last year in the discernment committee has made everyone's faith stronger. Something that stuck with me from reading Max Lucado's A Love Worth Giving is the statement "I wanted a larger church, but God wants a stronger church". I think that what we have been doing is creating a stronger church.

God Bless You!

Intercessory Prayer meeting

2006-05-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

I had been asked a couple of weeks ago if I could come and lead worship for the prayer meeting. Although I had never done it - worship is defined differently in the mainline churches - I agreed to do it. For those of you from mainline churches reading this, worship in this context is where a leader helps those present get into the spirit of prayer through music (I sure hope I got this right - because that's what I tried to do).

Although I had selected 5 songs (I almost said prepared, but really I chose those 5 songs at the last minute - I knew the theme was Unity so I had a couple of songs running in my mind and a couple more made themselves visible when I skimmed my hymn book) but I ended up only doing 4 of them. For some reason, I decided to shorten my singing because there were only 4 people there (including me). I know, it does not make sense to me either now.

In any case, here are the songs I selected: (the first one is the one I decided to skip)

"Open the Eyes of my Heart" Paul Baloche
"A New commandment" Bruce Harding
"Drawn Together by His Love" Bill Cates
"We Are One In Christ Jesus" Anonymous [TFWS2229]
"They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love" Peter Scholtes [TFWS2223]

After the singing, we had a time of prayer - and I actually said something! I don't usually feel comfortable saying anything (you can ask our minister what happened when she asked me to lead the prayer at the Official board - I refused [my mind just panicked - lead? me?]), but I think that I if can ease into it I have a better chance of actually doing it. Which is a big improvement over the past where there was no way I was going to say anything.

They were kind enough to offer to let me go before the Prayer Walk, and since I had been out late the previous two nights I accepted gratefully since it gave me an evening at home with the whole family.

God Bless You!

Validation

2006-05-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Official Board meeting at church. I used the word validation in the title because tonight was the first time we presented the completed Vision, Mission, and Core Values statements (henceforth referred as Vision statements) to people of the church outside of the discernment committee. I don't know if I were the only one, but I know I was holding my breath while they were reading it / having it read to them. I had a great sigh of relief when we received validation of our efforts by all of the non-discernment people present.

Now that the Vision statements have been approved by the Board, it is now time to present them to the small groups in the church to see if they also resonate with them. Since I am a member of the choir, I will have the privilege of presenting the Vision statements to them. And if all goes well it will be presented to the congregation at large on June 11th.

There were many other decisions made by the board, but the one decision made, besides the approval of the Vision statements, which was of great interest to me was the approval of the contract for our Music Director. I am elated to know that the church has contracted Brooke Maxwell to be our Music Director (there was another term used, but I cannot remember it) for the next year. Hurray for us!

God Bless You!

Momentous occasion

2006-05-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

I did not write anything yesterday because I really did not want to think about how much I had not gotten done of the things I had told myself I should do before the Discernment meeting that was held earlier tonight. I did review the comments I had written about the last meeting so that I would recall why I had made those changes. I am very happy to say that we were able to improve the two core value statements that we had been having trouble with. When the final version of both statements were read I had goosebumps! I just know that they are the right statements for the Core Values. Now that those two statements have been agreed upon, we can say that the Vision, Mission and Core Values statements have been finalized! It is now time to move on to discerning the Biblical story that best articulates God's vision for our future.

Once I have a little more time, I will include a link to our new Vision, Mission, and Core Values statements.

God Bless You!

Songs and thoughts

2006-05-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

On my way home today after having spend a couple of hours at church pruning, digging and planting, a thought struck me: a lot of what we were doing on the grounds of the church are very similar to what we want to be doing in the community.

The ground around the church was extremely hard, the hedges were overgrown; some things had not been tended in quite a while (at least to my eye). And so it is with the community; we have a lot of people in the community at large who have never been exposed to religion/faith and we have not gone into the community to spread the message of Jesus Christ.

Which is why I chose "Spirit of the Living God" as the first hymn for the pre-service singing. The other two hymns are based on the Psalm 34 reading used in the service. Which would make the order of songs as follows:

"Spirit of the Living God" VU376
"Cry of my Heart" TFWS2165
"Lord I Lift Your Name on High" TFWS2088

Now to go and make the slides.

God Bless You!

Finding one's limits

2006-05-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a while since I was a teenager, so my memories of it are pretty hazy. I do think that it is the time where people start realizing that they cannot do everything. The reason I bring that up is that I received, from our young adult volunteer, an email this evening letting me know that she has a swim-a-thon this weekend and would not be able to work on the powerpoint presentation for this Sunday. The fact that I understand why this took place does not make it any less aggravating; at least I found out on Friday instead of Saturday night.

Well I better go sleep on it.

God Bless You!

Decisions

2006-05-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

One thing I had hoped to run by other members of the Discernment committee at the canceled meeting yesterday was my thoughts on how many kindness cards should be ordered. If you recall, I had reasoned that we should probably get 600 bottles of water to hand out, hence 600 kindness cards. Since there was no meeting, and the orders had to be in on Wednesday I arbitrarily decided on ordering the 600 cards. If we decide to order fewer bottles of water we can always find other uses for the extra cards.

The choir decided to do "As We Gather at Your Table" [VU457] as our choir anthem. I must say that it sounds very good in 4 part harmony. For this song I get to sing tenor and Brooke will sing bass; well at least that is how we practiced it at choir practice. When we first came to the song in the practice, we pretty much all went "Are we having communion?" (VU457 is a communion hymn). But after singing it, I think that with words like "bringing peace where there is strife" it is a good song to sing on Battle of the Atlantic Sunday .

God Bless You!

Postponed

2006-05-03T23:32:00.000-07:00

The Discernment committee meeting was postponed as some people could not make the meeting and also it was only five days away from the next meeting (they are usually 14 days apart). The next meeting will be on May 8th and since we were also sent the agenda for the next meeting we can be as prepared as we want to be for that meeting. I think the first goal that came to mind when I skimmed the agenda is that I really need to look up those Bible passages to see which ones best tell the world our vision. That is one thing I keep meaning to do but never get around to it.

God Bless You!

Ill prepared as usual

2006-05-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

You would think that by now I would have figured out a routine to be better prepared for the Discernment committee meetings. Just before pretty much every meeting I always feel that I have not done enough to get ready for the meeting. And I think it is more apparent this time around as it has been longer (3+ weeks) since the last meeting instead of the usual 2 weeks. I cannot help but think that it will take me longer to get back into the right frame of mind at the meeting.

Well, as I explained in my other blog, I have a big day tomorrow so I better get to bed.

God Bless You!

Love Your City work

2006-05-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

I sent in the order for the T-shirts tonight. It was really supposed to have been handed in at the last meeting, but I think only one person had their order together then. Not that this should make me feel any better. The fact remains that I seem to be playing catch up. Somehow, the pace of events leading up to this year's Love Your City event seems to be more frenetic than last year. It is almost as if I haven't had the time to really get into the swing of things before jumping in.

The next thing on the list of things to do is to come up with the number of Kindness cards that will be needed as the order has to be put in on Wednesday May 3rd. Since those cards are going to be put on the bottles of water that we will be handing out, that means I need to come up with the number of bottles we will be using. Last year, St. Paul's Anglican church and we shared 1000 bottles. Assuming that we did share them equally, 500 bottles should be our goal. But since I think we did a little more than half (St. Paul's was also handing out cookies) I am leaning towards 600 as the magic number. I will run it past the Discernment committee on Wednesday to see how they feel about it. Oh and I guess coming up with a location would be good as well.

And speaking of discernment, I guess I better go back to the minutes of the last meeting to see what needed to be done before the meeting. That way maybe I can do it before Wednesday.

God Bless You!

Sunday service

2006-04-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

This Sunday's service had a different feel than the service last week. The music for last week's service was very boisterous and upbeat, this Sunday's music was more quiet and mellow. I think it had to do with the frame of mind of our music director, Brooke Maxwell . This is just a feeling I have as I think he was in a quieter mood today.

The same two people that led the service last week also did this week (the young adult and her grandfather). It seemed to me like there were fewer people there for the service, but I could be wrong since I don't usually pay that much attention. I guess I noticed today because I went up to speak about the upcoming Love Esquimalt / Vic. West / View Royal event. I did manage to get 4 more people to sign up for T-Shirts; which brings the total to 8 so far. Since I do have to put the order in on Monday I will order a few extra so people deciding to join late will be able to get a T-Shirt. Back to the service, I am sorry to say that I do not recall what was said in the reflection. That is most likely because I have trouble focusing on what is being said when the grandfather is speaking. Next Sunday our regular minister is back so it will be interesting to see if I have less trouble focusing (as I hope will be the case).

I was going to speak with the young adult that was supposed to do the presentation and who backed out at the last minute to let her know that it is not acceptable that I had to talk to her to find out she was not going to work on the presentation. I know that it does happen that things change and that it is no long possible to complete the job; I just want to point out that she should have let us know as soon as it became apparent that she was not going to be able to get it done. I did not get an opportunity to speak with her before or after the service, so I think I will just send her an email.

God Bless You!

Sunday singing

2006-04-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

Early Saturday evening I sent an Instant Message to the young adult who prepares the powerpoint presentation for the church service to let her know that if she had sent it to me I had not received it. She then told me that she had just come back a couple of hours ago from participating in the 30 hour famine and that she would not be putting the presentation together. Needless to say I was not pleased since if there was to be overheads for the church service I was going to have to do it myself.

I also finally decided on the songs for tomorrow's pre-service singing. These are the songs I have decided upon, in the order they will be sung:

"They'll Know we are Christians by Our Love " TFWS2223
"In the Quiet Curve of the Evening " VU278
"I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N "

I am doing the VU278 song before the service as that hymn has never been sung in church before. I chose the other two songs because the theme for the reflection is "What kind of Christian.... am I..... are we?". And I thought that those songs would be fitting for the theme.

God Bless You!

Coincidence? I think not!

2006-04-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

I have been pondering what to say tomorrow when I talk to the congregation about Love Esquimalt / Vic. West / View Royal. As I have mentioned a few days ago, I have started reading the devotional entries in my Bible once again, after having stopped for a few months. I do not think that it is a coincidence that today's devotional has the phrase God's love is free of charge, with no strings attached, which is exactly what Love Your City is all about! It makes me wonder why I ever stopped reading the devotional entries in the first place!

God Bless You!

Enthusiasm is contagious

2006-04-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed choir practice last night. I, and I really hope others are too, am really enjoying our new music director, Brooke Maxwell. I think he is also feeling more comfortable with us (us being the choir) as he shared with us something that had happened to him. He had not done that until yesterday.

One of the songs that will be done during the service is not known to the congregation so I will be going over it in the pre-service singing. I went and got a copy of Brooke's hymnal page as he has "embellished" some of the chords for the hymn. He was explaining to me how he was coming up with the chord (upper triad) and we had a conversation that I really enjoyed. It also made me want to start playing the piano again. Now all I have to do is find yet another hour every day to practice the piano. That should be interesting since I already feel like there aren't enough hours in the day.

God Bless You!

37 days and counting

2006-04-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the monthly Love Your City meeting. I did not really need the meeting to be reminded of all that needs to be done, and how quickly it has to be done. The title of the entry is somewhat deceiving as it is the number of days (actually 37 days and 10.5 hours) before the beginning of the actual Love Esquimalt / Vic. West / View Royal event. There are tasks that need to be done way before that. For example, the T-Shirt order is supposed to be in by next Monday - which means that I really need to get in front of the congregation on Sunday and try and get a feeling of how many people would participate; and the order for kindness cards should be in by next Wednesday - which of course means I need to figure out how many bottles of water we will be ordering.

Well it is getting late so I will go to bed and pray for guidance on all of these matters.

God Bless You!

Trying to get an early start

2006-04-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

"Then Peter began to speak: 'I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.'" -- Acts 10:34-36 [NIV]

"We believe that God loves everyone unconditionally." -- Esquimalt United church Value statement.

One of the things I have been meaning to do is to go over the list of scriptures that were given to us to find what biblical passages were the basis for our Vision, Mission and Values statements. So when I was going over the Bible passages for next Sunday's service the passage above made me think of one of our value statements, which is why I decided to put both of them above.

One thing I am trying to get an early start on is the picking of songs for the pre-service singing for next Sunday. I do have a head start this week as I already have the powerpoint presentation for the service. So it seemed silly to not take advantage of it. I have glanced at the service, and I have read the Bible passages; this should give me something to ponder and make it easier to figure out which song will be appropriate as I will have been familiar with the service already.

God Bless You!

I didn't even know I missed it

2006-04-23T22:33:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of days, I have gone back to reading the daily devotional in my Bible. The interesting thing is that they seem to be exactly what I needed to read right now. It had been a few months since I had read them (the last mention of devotional in my blog was way back at the end of November) and I cannot for the life of me figure out why I stopped.

I find it coincidental that our minister goes away for her vacation and we immediately go back to asking visitors to stand up and identify themselves. I guess old habits die hard. Our music director let loose on a couple of hymns today, and I really enjoyed it; I hope it wasn't too far out of the comfort zone for some of the other people attending. The young adult granddaughter of one of the senior member of the congregation did the bulk of the service this morning. While I think she did a very good job for her experience level, I never really could get into it. She was basically just reading what was on the page, and I could not get past that. I guess the question I keep asking myself is "If I had been visiting, would I come back?" and I do not think it is fair to that young adult.

God Bless You!

And finally, some songs

2006-04-23T01:47:00.000-07:00

This time I am not going to change the time on this entry (I usually change the time to just before Midnight so the entry shows up for the day it was intended) to illustrate how late I waited to get this pre-service singing ready. I guess the one change from previous weeks is that I have completed preparing the presentation before making this entry; previously I entered what I intended to sing in my blog before getting the presentation ready. But even so, this is later than usual.

The following songs are what I have decided on (in the order they will be sung):

"We Are Pilgrims" VU595
"Many Are The Lightbeams" VU588
"Christ Has Risen" TFWS2115

God Bless You!

Flash forward to Friday

2006-04-21T23:21:00.000-07:00

I just cannot believe that it is already Friday! And it seemed to me like every evening had fewer hours in it as by the time I thought about making an entry it was too late to do so.

Well I have been thinking about doing stuff, but not really getting around to doing any of it. Since the Love Your City meeting is next Wednesday, I should really make some kind of presentation about it on Sunday at church. Also, it was not until earlier this evening that I even looked at the material for the Sunday service. The bad thing is that I received the material a week ago so I really do not have an excuse. I might as well just come out and say that I have been having trouble motivating myself for the pre-service singing lately; and I am not really sure why because I really enjoy doing the singing part. Oh well, something else to ponder in my "free time".

God Bless You!

Statistics about religion

2006-04-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

I was surfing the web a couple of days ago and ran into some statistics about religious affiliation in the United States. I figured there should be some for Canada as well. It turns out that statistics for Canada are easier to get because we do not have the same issue with separation of church and state. There is some interesting reading on the Statistics Canada site. Here is but one example:

According to GSS data, attendance at religious services has fallen dramatically across the country over the past 15 years. Nationally, only one-fifth (20%) of individuals aged 15 and over attended religious services on a weekly basis in 2001, compared with 28% in 1986. In 2001, four in 10 adults (43%) reported that they had not attended religious services during the 12 months prior to the survey, compared with only 26% in 1986.

Another take on the same data can be found on the Religious Tolerance web site.

God Bless You!

He is risen!

2006-04-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, so that is not really a news flash, we do know what has happened. But I think it never hurts to remind ourselves of the enormity of what happened so long ago. The drama at the beginning of the service did a good job to recount the bewilderment, confusion, and excitement upon finding that Jesus was no longer in the tomb.

The reflection was also very good, even though I did not get to hear most of it. I read the reflection online tonight before writing this entry. And the reason for missing the reflection is that we had some trouble with the overhead projector this morning. Well actually I should say we had trouble with the wall outlet that the projector was plugged into. It would appear one of the outlets is very touchy as to how the power cord can be plugged in and twice during the service this morning there was no power going to the projector (or mixing board). While the second time was not as disruptive since it happened while we were just projecting a blank slide, the first time happened while we were singing - which of course meant that all of a sudden there were no words for the congregation to use. Moving the extension cord to the other outlet fixed the problem.

I also had trouble - and this time it was me having finger trouble - with the Blessing Song. We repeated the song 3 times and since there were only 2 slides I decided that instead of making 6 slides I would just go back and forth between the two slides. Well the first time I went back it just did not look right so I kept pressing the back button and who knows were we ended up! Fortunately for me I write down the number of the slides so I was able to go back to the right slide fairly quickly and things went smoothly from then on.

God Bless You!

Ignorance was bliss

2006-04-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the day relaxing as there really was nothing for me to do for the church service tomorrow until I received the powerpoint presentation for me to prepare my guide sheet; particularly since there will not be singing before the service as we are gathering were we left off on Good Friday: in the darkness waiting, longing, praying.

I say most of the day because I found out mid afternoon that the person I thought was doing the presentation thought I was doing the presentation! To make a short story even shorter, I ended up working on the presentation for tomorrow. I really was not a big imposition since as I mentioned above that I really did not have much else to do. That gave me the ability to take my time and just leisurely prepare the presentation without feeling rushed.

God Bless You!

Holy Week services

2006-04-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

I did not post yesterday as I was busy readying the presentation for this morning's Good Friday service. Of course, part of the reason I was working on the presentation the night before the service is that I procrastinated about working on it until then. I had been looking for the right pictures to accompany the service a couple of weeks ago, but had not looked/searched again until last night. Fortunately for me, I was able to find pictures that were nice and suitable.

Both the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services were very well done and hopefully gave everyone something to think about. I am looking forward to the Easter service.

Oh and yes, I have updated the look of this blog. I had been thinking about doing this for quite a while now, and this design really appealed to me. I hope people visiting will like it as well.

God Bless You!

Update: Immediately after writing this post, I ran into a pointer to an article about Overcoming Procrastination on one of the web sites I visit every day. Interesting, don't you think?

More fine tuning

2006-04-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

One of the members of the Discernment sent an email to the group with a suggestion for the one core value statement that we did not all agree on:

We value working side by side with other [Christian groups] to share Christ's love in our community.

The words in [italic] were the ones we were having trouble with. It was thought that maybe we were being arrogant to only value working with Christian groups. So that member suggested the following change:

We value working side by side with other churches and Christian groups in our community.

Well I guess it is my turn to have a problem with the statement. First, I should mention that I think that the problem was not with the word "Christian" rather with the word "value". Also, this may be splitting hairs, but I do not really think we would want to work with the Church of Scientology so the statement would have to be changed to "Christian churches and groups" for it to be okay with me.

I also want to mention that unless "to share Christ's love" was taken out of the statement for the sake of brevity I really want to say that I think it should be included. This would make the value statement thus:

We believe in sharing Christ's love in our community by working side by side with other Christian churches and groups.

And now that I look at the value statements more closely I would also like to change another value statement to read:

We believe that Christ's message of love is modeled through respect, acceptance and support of all of the diverse parts of God's family.

Okay, enough playing around for the time being.

God Bless You!

Another frustrating meeting

2006-04-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

I really respect people that have the best interests of the church at heart and want to be fiscally prudent/responsible. And I am sure I have ruffled some feathers, offended some people even, by suggesting that the money they were willing to offer was inadequate. But I do believe that young, enthusiastic, talented musician do not come cheap anymore if they ever did. I also believe that what Brooke brings is worth the extra money.

Just for fun, I figured out what an equivalent offer would be for what our previous music director received when she first started at the church 5 years ago. Assuming an annual rate of inflation of 2%, her monthly rate of $750 turns out to be $828 in 2006 dollars! I just worry now that the quote we are asking of him will be out of our price range and that when we tell him what we are willing/can afford to pay him he will laugh in our faces. This is definitely something worth praying that it does not happen.

God Bless You!

Unfocused meeting?

2006-04-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

For some reason tonight I felt like we were not as focused on the task at hand as we had been in previous meeting. We did get some work accomplished, but it certainly seemed to me like we were very easily led away from the subject. Could it be that working on fine tuning our Vision and Mission statements as well as our core values is not as exciting as coming up with them in the first place?

One of the things that we did get accomplished was to refine our Vision statement. The new version now reads:

Esquimalt United Church is a community of everyday people following Christ on a never ending spiritual journey.

I do not recall mentioning it here, but the previous version (which you can read here) had me wondering what kind of community we were talking about. The refinement above answers that question.

We also made some small changes (more refinements) to the Mission statements and the core values. For those, you will have to wait until the Esquimalt United church Collaboration Site is updated with the latest meeting notes.

Confession time: I must say that I was reticent at first to use some of the statements that our facilitator had brought to the meeting which had been gleaned from other church web sites. I had found it interesting that only 2 or 3 meetings ago the facilitator would not help us as we had to come up with our own statements but now it is okay to help us? Anyway, we did end up using one of the statements that we all thought fit our church particularly well.

God Bless You!

Woefully unprepared

2006-04-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

Why is it that every day before a Discernment committee meeting I always have the feeling that I am completely unprepared for the coming meeting? Granted this week we only have one week in between meetings as opposed to the usual two, but that is because the usual date would have fallen on Easter Monday. But still, there was not a whole lot do to:

Reflect some more on the Vision, Mission statements and core values;
Give some thought on what the church should do for Love Your City;
Look at different Bible passages to try and identify which Bible passage best tells the world our vision.

I have to confess that I have not done any of those things - and given that the meeting is in less than 19 hours it is very unlikely that any of them will get done either. I probably was supposed to read another chapter of our book as well - yet another task I have not done. I think it is definitely time to start writing down what it is I need to do as it would appear that things get pushed down by more recent tasks and do not surface in time.

Oh well, I better get to bed - something else I am late getting to (grin).

God Bless You!

Not as easy as it seemed

2006-04-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

When I wrote a couple of days ago that I was going to restrict myself to the joyous part of the Sunday service as it was coming right after the pre-service singing, I did not realize how hard it was going to be to find songs that only spoke of Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Most songs seem to prefer to cover all of Holy Week in their verses. So basically what happened is that I ran out of time trying to find those songs that only touch on the joy and ended up with the following (in the order they will be sung):

Tell Me The Stories of Jesus (VU357)
We Sang Our Glad Hosannas (TFWS2111)
Lord I Lift Your Name on High (TFWS2088)

I guess I better put those into the presentation now. I am still trying to decide if I should sing all the verses of "Tell me the stories of Jesus" or if I should leave out the last verse. But then if I do that I guess I would have to leave out the 4th stanza of "We sang our glad Hosannas". Oh well, I will put them all in and decide at the last minute.

God Bless You!

Felt well enough to procrastinate?

2006-04-07T23:59:00.000-07:00

I did end up going to work today. As I wrote in my other blog, I really did not feel bad enough to stay home. And then it was time to pick my older daughter at the airport. And then we went out for dinner to celebrate her return.

So now it is after midnight and I have done absolutely nothing towards the song picking for this Sunday. All I have is a feeling and no concrete ideas. I guess part of the problem is that I don't really feel like picking songs at the moment. I am sure the moment will pass, but it certainly is frustrating while it is here. I think I need to listen to some music.

God Bless You!

No progress

2006-04-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have been staying home for the last couple of days as I have been sick. So I have not been feeling up to doing much of anything. So today I have done pretty much nothing today; the only "work" I did today was go to choir practice and really only because I had the music for one of the songs on Sunday.

I am hoping to feel better tomorrow and I can go back to procrastinating about stuff.

God Bless You!

First thoughts about songs

2006-04-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

I have started to look at the songs for this Sunday. Nothing specific yet, but rather just looking at the overall mood of the singing. I would seem to me that I should probably concentrate on the joy of Palm Sunday as it basically is where the service begins. I do not really want to get into the "heavy" songs of the latter part of Holy Week at the beginning of the service.

Part of the preparation for the singing is to enter some more information onto the Pre Service Singing site. I am currently just concentrating on the song titles and their location in the hymn books but at some point I would like to have the lyrics there as well. I may also link, where possible, to a web site that allows you to play the tunes of the hymns; but I think this will be something to do in the future.

I have copied all the information what was online about the different meetings of the church to the one place that I currently think is the best place. I have called it for lack of a better name Esquimalt United Church Collaboration Site. It is very possible that I am doing this for my benefit alone for the time being, but I think younger generations live online and will find more use out of that site. Just a feeling, I may be totally wrong about this.

God Bless You!

Computer can fix anything

2006-04-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

Or so you would be led to believe. I found a website (from the targeted advertisement on one of the Wikis I use) that claims to be "You complete resource for rapid and sustained growth". They have a video that introduces one of the modules that are offering. I would suggest you go listen to the video (it is about 7.5 minutes). You can find the video on the Connection Power website. Now I am not saying that their program is bad, it is just that before you can go ahead with their program you have to know who you are and what you want to accomplish - which of course we are still defining.

I did put the text of the Discernment committee meeting minutes (more like notes I guess) on the usual website: Esquimalt Discernment. Just click on the "MeetingApril03" link and you will find the notes. I have also been trying out another site. I requested an account a couple of weeks ago and it was only a couple of days ago that I received an answer. The same information can be found on the Esquimalt United Collaboration Site. I had visions of one website for all of the committees of the church so clicking on "Discernment" will take you to the Discernment committee section of the site and you can click on the date of the meeting to see the minutes. "Current events" on the left of the page in the "navigation" box will list past and future meetings for the committees and you can click the dates there as well to get to the meeting minutes. All this because I believe that anyone in the church should be able to find out what is going on and one good way to do this is to have access to the minutes of the committees of the church.

I have yet to even look at the bulletin and powerpoint for next Sunday so I can get started populating the Pre service singing web pages I am building and also start choosing songs.

Well this has gone on longer than I thought and it is quite late so I will close.

God Bless You!

Enlightening meeting

2006-04-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight's meeting was really great. It would appear that yesterday's reflection (sermon) by our minister touched a nerve and she heard from a lot of the 30-45 year old people she knows. A couple of them met with her and she took the opportunity to run our current Vision and Mission statements by them. They had a long discussion and she shared with us tonight some of the things they mentioned. I think it was just tremendous that we were able to hear how what we are doing would be received by our "target audience".

We spent most of the evening trying to simplify our Vision and Mission statements as well as our values so that they are easily understandable by people who have never been exposed to church while still staying true to the Vision we had already pretty much agreed upon. I am not going to include everything we worked on, but I will put the current version of our Vision statement below so you can comment on it.

Esquimalt United Church is a community who is following Christ on a never ending spiritual journey.

I will put a link to all the work that we did at tonight's meeting (Vision, Mission statements and values) in tomorrow's entry, as soon as I get a chance to enter it in our (new?) collaboration site (yes, I am trying yet another one).

God Bless You!

Has it been two weeks already?

2006-04-02T23:52:00.000-07:00

First I should mention that I enjoyed the service once again. Our music director, Brooke Maxwell, can claim some of the credit as he can modify his style of play based on the mood of the congregation which makes it much more enjoyable to sing, and somehow the experience is more meaningful. Our minister should claim the lion share of the credit as she is the one orchestrating the services.

The reflection was once again very good; it made me realize that I had been just singing "Down in the river to pray" before, and not really getting its meaning. I tried to convey some of that new found meaning in the little solo part I had at the beginning. I ended up with the solo as the first volunteer for the solo got tonsillitis, and the second volunteer we are assuming forgot to "spring forward" and woke up too late to come to church.

The reason for the title is that tomorrow night is Discernment committee meeting night. It seems just like yesterday that I was getting ready for the previous meeting two weeks ago. And I have just realized that I have not yet read chapter 4 of "A Love Worth Giving" by Max Lucado which was mentioned at the last meeting as what we should currently be reading. I wonder if I can find time tomorrow to read that chapter.

God Bless You!

Singing about prayer

2006-04-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

"After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone," -- Matthew 14:23 [NIV]
"But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." -- Luke 5:16 [NIV]

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the theme for the service this Sunday is "Connecting to God through prayer". So even though there are many Bible passages being used this week, they really all have the same theme: prayer. The passage may speak about something different, like Jesus feeding the five thousand, but the part that is the focus is the first passage I have at the top of this entry.

With that in mind, I have tried to find songs that at least mention prayer, praying, or speaking to God. What I have come up with is the following:

"Take Time to Be Holy" VU672
"Come To My Heart" VU661
"Just a Little Talk With Jesus" Cleavant Derricks

All that is left to do is enter the lyrics in the powerpoint presentation.

God Bless You!

I must be out of my mind

2006-03-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

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!

Link to more pictures

2006-03-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

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!

Connecting to God through prayer

2006-03-30T23:00:00.000-08:00

"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!

Worship committee

2006-03-29T23:43:00.000-08:00

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!

Let's make that official

2006-03-27T23:50:00.000-08:00

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!

Weighty decisions

2006-03-26T23:46:00.000-08:00

"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!

Singing lineup finalized

2006-03-25T23:06:00.000-08:00

"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...

Song search

2006-03-24T23:59:00.000-08:00

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!

Love Your City (LYC) meeting

2006-03-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

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!