Institutions Really Do Fade Away

I went to a Gaither Homecoming concert last night. The last time I went to one, the stage was filled with all the "greats" in gospel music. From young to old, everyone made great contributions to a wonderful evening.

I cut my musical teeth on Bill and Gloria Gaither songs. He Touched Me, Let's Just Praise the Lord, and many, many others. Now these are "classic" songs. New writers have come to the front, Chris Tomlin, Paul Balouche, the Hillsong writers, to name a few. We appreciate and value the older writers, but their time has come and gone.

Last night's concert had a strange mix of artists. Besides the newly minted Gaither Vocal Band, there was another great quartet, Ernie Haase and Signature Sound. The only "old timer" was Ben Speer. They did a cool effect, playing an audio and video track from some of the older concerts featuring Vestal Goodman, Jake Hess, George Younce and others, and having the on stage artists sing along. During some of these songs they switched the large screen image from the old video to the live stage. Gloria Gaither was a no show and Guy Penrod isn't singing with the Gaither Vocal Band anymore. While I enjoyed much of the concert, I realized, as we were leaving, that even this great institution, is fading away and is only a shadow of what it once was. All of these thoughts prompt me to say; "Enjoy life in the moment, without looking too far ahead and missing it, and looking too far behind and never catching up." Someday, we will all be classics. Maybe I already am...

What Do You Guys Do All Day, Anyway? Part 2

Yesterday I described a typical Administrative Pastor day. Today, Wednesday, is the day that I have my Minister of Music hat on. On Wednesdays I am preparing for the coming weekend services, plus preparing for a Choir rehearsal. Later in the week I prepare for our Sunday Orchestra rehearsal. Today's to-do list consisted of:

1. Develop the AM services worship song list. This is a little like preparing for a sermon, selecting a theme, making sure songs are in compatible keys, working through transitions, etc.

2. I copy and collate music for the core worship team; vocalists, rhythm section. I also copy the song list for the orchestra and choir.

3. I prepare the weekend PowerPoint slides with all of the song words on them, including worship songs, choir song, and any extra features.

4. I email our tech crews with all the details for the weekend including who-is-doing-what, special features, video, etc.

5. I email the core worship team with a complete song list and remind them about our Wednesday rehearsal. 

6. I compose a one page Choir News newsletter and copy it for each Choir member.

7. I post the Choir News on the WCAG website so anyone who cannot make the rehearsal can find out what's going on. 

8. I update the main page of the website and any other updates that other department leaders have given me.

9. I prepare music for the Choir rehearsal. Today included copying a new Praise & Worship song that we are going to start working on and putting out a Choir song we'll start rehearsing for a June Sunday.

10. I prepare our rehearsal room with our sound cart, keyboard, attendance forms, sharpened pencils, water for coffee. Everything to make sure that we can start on time and have everything completely ready to go. (I hate wasting any volunteer's time)

11. I worked on booking a guest for our June 28th Star Spangled Spectacular.

12. I selected a Memorial Day video, and made sure it worked in our projection computer.

13. I read a Christmas script that goes with a brand new Christmas musical. I also, inventoried the new Christmas music I have received and got it ready to listen to. June 1 is the start of the Christmas season for most Minister's of Music.

14. I rehearsed some of Sunday's Praise & Worship music.

At 5:30 this evening I'll have supper here at the church with my family and then start the evening off with a 6:15 worship team rehearsal, a 6:45-8:15 choir rehearsal and then an 8:15 meeting with our middle and high school students and their parents to help our senior pastor talk about the search process for our next youth pastor. I'll be there because we're hoping to include our students in more of our Sunday morning worship planning. A youth pastor with worship leading skills will help us do this.

Well, that's it. A 12 hour Wednesday. I love it...   

What Do You Guys Do All Day, Anyway?

Since most parishioners only "see us in action" (pastors) on Sundays, a logical question is "what do you do during the week". I wear 2 hats, I am the Minister of Music and the Administrative Pastor. In order to manage both jobs, I break up the week according to the priorities of each job. Today, Tuesday, I primarily work on Administrative items. My to do list for today:

1. Format items for the church web site, up-date the website. (www.wcag.org) 

2. Review an Audit proposal, yay-we could save $3,000. a year with this new company.

3. Work on a warranty issue with the lift we use to change lights in the gym and Sanctuary.

4. Meet with a couple of guys to begin to develop emergency plans; people with weapons, tornadoes, fire, estranged spouses trying to pick children up from our kid's areas, etc.

5. Meet with a contractor to review roof repair bids.

6. Find a vendor for restroom handicap grab bars. (Someone donated money for this, so it needs to get done right away)

7. Talk with a vendor about automatic opening doors. (Someone is going to start donating money for this)

8. Order larger TV carts to accommodate larger TVs that have been donated.

9. Work on issues that our landscape maintenance company informed me about.

10. Work on updates to our Leadership Manuals for distribution later this month.

11. Review invoices and approve them for payment.

12. Telephone call backs.

13. Email replies.

14. Try to find a good answer the tax liability for the possibility of a donated car for missionary use.

15. Work on insurance issues for our annual 4th of July commercial fireworks display.

16. Try to determine the best way to fund a missions trip to Viet Nam that will make donations tax deductible, and yet paid for by the participants with their own credit cards. (this is a tough one)

I really enjoy the Administrative Pastor job. While many of these tasks are fairly bland, I enjoy the detail it takes to stay on track. This is truly "behind the scene" stuff, but it is very necessary to the operation of our church. Next time I'll detail the other side of my job.

Poison Ivy 2 - Me 2

I decided that this was the year that I am going to eradicate poison ivy from my yard. The previous owner let our back yard develop very naturally with a lot of plants that she found "out in the wild" and brought into the yard. Growing up in California, I knew what poison oak looked like and had terrible cases of it many times. But I did not have any experience with poison ivy. The first year I did a lot of spring clean up in the yard, I trimmed, pulled, cut and raked for two straight days. Since it was warm, I used my tee shirt to wipe my face several times and used my hands to wipe sweat off my face as well. You guessed it... two days later I had a near medical emergency. A steroid shot helped, but my face and arms looked like balloons. It took a couple more seasons of observation to finally figure out what poison ivy looks like.

Fast forward to this year. I started in the front yard and pulled out a couple of plants that had started growing. I also pulled out what I hope was the entire root system. 1 for me. On my next workday I put on my gloves from last year and pulled out plants and roots from the backyard. While I was very careful, I later found out that poison ivy oil can stay active for over a year. So while I was careful to put on my gloves, I got the PI oil on my hands before I put the gloves on. 1 for Poison Ivy. On my next attempt at eradication, I didn't use gloves, pulled a lot of roots out and washed like crazy afterwards. 1 for me. Last Tuesday, I was careful again, pulled what I think is the last of the PI and washed my hands carefully. Later, I remembered that I had opened the back door of our house and the garage door with my bare hands before washing. I used a paper towel to wipe of both door handles. Here is where my memory gets fuzzy, but I think I may have wadded up the paper towel before throwing it away and did not wash my hands again. Today is Friday and I have poison ivy on my eyelids, ear, chin, both wrists and a place where the "sun doesn't shine". 1 big one for Poison Ivy.

I think there are some spiritual life correlations here: first, if it looks, smells and acts like sin, and you touch it, you are going to get dirty. Second, even if you are as careful as you can be, the moment you overlook one detail, your best plan is shot. We aren't clever enough not to get caught. Third, the recovery and consequences always take far longer and are much more painful than you ever imagined. Certainly not worth the pleasure - or in this case the satisfaction - of the original encounter. While you can spray for poison ivy, there is collateral damage to surrounding plants. Maybe that's what Christ meant when He said it's better not to have an eye or a hand if it causes you to lose your life. Maybe a little damage to other plants in my yard is worth more than the discomfort I'm experiencing right now. We'll see...

Thank God For His Protection

At 4:30 PM yesterday I received the call all husbands dread, "I've been in an accident". I rushed out my office and got to Kathy fairly quickly. She had been making a drive-through deposit at the bank, (she is the secretary at the Christian school that rents our church facilities) and just as she was handing over her school deposit, the wind caught some of the cash and blew it away. She jumped out of her van to retrieve the money, thinking it was in "park", only to realize that it started moving. She tried to get back in, but the van was too close to the bank wall. As it moved past her, it pinned her to the bank wall before it finally cleared the building. It went down a short lawn area, across a two lane street below and hit a car that was stopped in a left turn lane. When I got to the bank, she was sitting in a chair, ice on her thigh and the paramedics had treated a scrape on her arm. The passenger in the car that our van hit was taken to the hospital because he was complaining of pain in his leg. As I talked to the teller who had been helping Kathy, she told me that "when I came outside to help, I fully expected to see her on the ground, run over by the van."

Today she is very sore, and black and blue in places. She stayed home from work because she wouldn't have been able to sit for very long and walking is very slow and painful. While she is in a lot of pain, we are so thankful that the van did not crush her against the building, or cause her to fall and then be run over. God is good, and we are thanking Him for His protection. Even though we have all the hassle of getting her van fixed, being without a car for a week or more, and dealing with other people who are affected by this accident, we realize how much the "stuff" we own doesn't matter that much. Cars can be replaced, people can't. So tomorrow I'll take her van in and get the process started, and thank God again for His protection.

"Everyone Did As He Saw Fit"

My read-the-Bible-in-a-year reading today was from Judges 19-21. It has to be one of the most gruesome and oddest stories in the Old Testament. Basically, a Levite was having marital problems. His concubine (a non-married living arrangement) left him to return to her father's home. He goes and gets her and on the way stops in Gibeah for the night. Late in the evening, morally depraved men pound on the door of the home where the Levite is staying and want the owner to send the Levite out so they can abuse him sexually. They eventually send out the Levite's wife (concubine) after offering her and the host's virgin daughter. The moral depravity of this situation is not only the men on the outside, but the moral confusion of preserving the men inside but throwing a woman outside to be abused. In fact, she is so abused that she apparently dies on the doorstep of the host home.

When the Levite gets home, in a fit of moral outrage, (how can this be, he was the one who didn't protect her), he cuts his wife into 12 pieces and sends her around Israel to rally the nation to moral indignation. They eventually nearly completely wipe out Gibeah. Then, after massacring men, women and children, they have a moment of compassion and decide they need to help re-populate the tribe of Benjamin. These men were trying to protect the people of Gibeah. They discover that the people of Jabesh Gilead didn't help them in their war against Gibeah, so they decide to wipe out the people of Jabesh Gilead and give the men of Benjamin the virgins from Jabesh Gilead. Do we see a movie script unfolding here? From a starting cast of thousands to just a few hundred.

Then they discover that there are not enough virgins to go around, so they hatch a plot to help the men of the tribe of Benjamin kidnap virgins from a festival. When the kidnappings occur, they basically tell the families of the kidnap victims "live with it, deal with it". The last verse of Judges sums it all up. "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit."

For a moment I caught myself saying "boy, I'm glad I didn't live in that time period", and then I remembered that yesterday a member of the president's inner circle of advisers called pro-life advocates, "racists". We are still... so morally confused. God help us.

Tweet, Tweet

A couple of weeks ago I created a Twitter account. Twitter is a social communication network that is limited to 140 characters per Tweet. (a tweet is a message) I initially started following people who write the blogs that I read regularly. Interestingly enough, almost immediately I started getting email messages that told me people were "following me". To follow someone on Twitter means you have added their url to your account and you begin reading their "tweets".

Last week I spent some time acquainted with the program and began tweeting in earnest. The jury is still out on this one. Between my work emails, home emails, phone texts and my Facebook account, I'm getting pretty maxed out. I'm going to give Twitter another week. The nice thing is that Twitter adapts very well to my smart phone, so while I'm waiting in line, I can tweet, or read my incoming tweets.

If you Twitter, what has been your experience? Is it worth the effort. Leave me a message. Off to my next 140 characters...