These pages have been quiet the last few weeks while we’ve made the transition from Spokane to Penticton. It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say (doesn’t happen very often, I know); it’s that I was just all wrapped up in what needed to happen. But overall, the transition has happened fairly smoothly, and we’re now feeling somewhat settled and ready to move forward in Penticton.

There are still some lingering clouds from the storm – selling our house in Spokane, for instance, has yet to happen – but we’re now so excited to be able to get out of waiting mode (we were in that mode for almost 4 months) and transition mode (the last 8 weeks or so), and into full-fledged “let’s go” mode.

I’ve had a great first couple weeks in the office in Penticton, having great talks with our pastor, Vic Morris, and catching up with a few of the key leaders already. I led musical worship for the first time yesterday. We’ve got a gathering happening tomorrow night with our volunteer worship team – musicians, tech people, etc. I’m excited for that, to be able to re-connect with a lot of people (I served part-time at the church almost 5 years ago for 8 months), and meet some I haven’t met before. I’m lookin forward to building on what’s already there – a solid foundation for our worship and music ministries.

We’re also working on plans for the Discipleship life of the congregation for this next season of ministry – both the immediate fall 2009-summer 2010 season and the longer-term season of the next few years. I’m excited for where God is going to be leading us!

One of the biggest reasons I’m excited is that I see my role here s very much a “next level” role. That is, I’m coming on board to help take us to next levels in our journey. My primary role is not to do a lot of tasks, but to build people. And when I think of the amazing gifts of the people, I can’t help but be excited.

My prayer for these next few weeks is for us to catch a renewed sense of God’s leading, and then to follow Him wherever He leads us. It’s going to be a great ride.

As with all moves, it’s a time of sadness and mourning while at the same time being a time of excitement and looking-forward. It’s now getting very “real” as we see the piles of boxes in the garage growing quickly.

God has been exceedingly good to us throughout this difficult time, and we’re now thankful to be able to look forward in a more concrete way. I start work at Concordia Lutheran Church in Penticton on Aug. 1, and we’ll see what God has in store for us as we begin this next chapter in our lives and ministry.

I was there to prepare with the team for this coming Sunday, which will be my last official Sunday at Redeemer. It won’t necessarily be the last actual Sunday there, but it’ll be the last time I’m there as a called worker. (if you don’t know our story leading up to this, best give it read so the rest of this post will make sense…)

So I’m going to be helping to lead music for the later 2 services and preaching at all 3. There was a previously scheduled congregational meeting for 11:45am on Sunday, so I will use part of that agenda to ask the congregation to peacefully release my from my call, and then we’ll gather after that meeting for a reception to say an official farewell, but (probably more importantly) to celebrate the 4 years that God gave us to live and work together for His kingdom.

So if you’re reading this and you’re Redeemer folk, or in the Spokane area, I hope you’ll be able to join us at 8:00, 9:30, or 10:45 for worship, and then again around 12:15-12:30pm for our reception. (And if you are Redeemer folk – come to the meeting to give your voice to the budget and election of officers.)

It truly will be a bitter/sweet day. Bitter because leaving was not what we had planned. Sweet because we will get to celebrate God’s goodness in the midst of struggle, and because I will have the opportunity to share God’s Word with the church family through word and song once again.

God is Good. All the time. Even on bitter/sweet days.

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:8

This verse from Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus should be my life verse, at least for a little while. At least over the last few months, it has certainly felt like I’m being carried only by the Spirit of grace, not really knowing from where things are coming or where they are going.

You may know that we’d been living in Spokane for the last four years and I’d been working at Redeemer Lutheran Church. This spring we ran into some immigration issues, and had to leave the country while we sorted them out. So since March, we’ve been somewhat nomadic, living in various places in Western Canada with gracious family and friends. We were waiting for an answer from the US government about whether or not we could get a new visa to continue living and working in Spokane.

This past week, we still didn’t get an answer. But what we did get was clarity about one thing: we are not going to be able to continue our life and ministry in Spokane.

How did we get clarity about that? We were going to need to have an answer by August 15 of this year, and it became clear this week that it is just not going to happen. Though we could still wait until Aug. 15 to see what happens, we believe that would be foolish to do so; it’s all but guaranteed that we won’t have an answer by then, and it longer makes sense to keep waiting.

That’s all worded rather generically, and obviously there are a lot of details missing. The whole story is just so complicated that it would require a good supper and good beverages to tell, so I’ll not attempt to tell the whole thing in these pages.

But the bottom line now is that Suzanne and I have decided that it would be best to seek a new direction for our life and ministry. Since the door to working in the US is now shut, that new direction will lead us back to Canada. As with the wind of John 3, we’re not yet sure where that will be, but God is gracious – we are exploring some opportunities already, and He’s taking care of us in the midst of it.

It’s been a rough week, discovering that we cannot continue to live and work among people we love dearly. We are feeling pain, loss, and grief. For me personally, a big part of the pain is that God clearly called us to Redeemer four years ago, and I believed that He wanted us to stay. I believed there was so much work I had yet to do there. And if I’m honest with myself and with you, I still believe that.

Yet it seems that God is now calling us away. Right now I’m really struggling to come to grips with that. Yet His sovereignty is often a mystery, and He calls people according to His purposes, not ours. And when we can’t see His purposes clearly, it’s often hard to take. But I take comfort in two things: 1. if my feeble human mind could fully understand God all the time, I sure wouldn’t respect Him very much, much less worship Him (Romans 11:33-36), and 2. the Biblical example of Joseph, whose earthly circumstances seemed hopeless, yet God used all of those events not only for Joseph’s good, but for the good of an entire people (Genesis 37-50).

So we’re preparing to move back to Canada, hurting and wounded right now, but confident that God is leading us, even when we don’t have a pillar of fire, or (as a good friend recently put it), a great big neon sign, to follow.

Thank you to everyone who’s been praying for us and encouraging us. We will continue to covet your prayers as God leads us by His Spirit to a place we don’t yet know, in a timeframe we don’t yet know, but with the absolute assurance that He is with us in the midst of it.

As a full-time musical worship leader, I can tell you that Sibelius is one of the best tools I have in my toolbox. I’ll write another post on why everyone who leads music ministry at their church should check out notation software, but for now, here’s what I’m most excited about in Sibelius 6:

Magnetic Layout: automatically adjusting lyrics, dynamic markings, etc. to position them properly underneath notes. In previous versions, it put them in a default position which needed to be tweaked. This alone would save me hours in scoring.

ReWire support: glueing Sibelius to Cubase (I’m also a long-time Cubase user and fan) is brilliant.  Cubase has always had scoring features, but they’ve never been that great, honestly. To be able to record a Sibelius score into Cubase, add acoustic tracks (like guitar and vocals) and sync them up will make demo production so much easier.

Audioscore: input music with voice or other acoustic instrument. Sing your ideas into the score! Sure, it’s a Lite version bundled, and the Pro version (read: more money) probably works better, if Photoscore is any indication (and it probably is, since Neurotron makes both). But still, this also will be a huge improvement in getting ideas into notation much more quickly than going from voice to keyboard to notation.

Better playback engine: it’s always had high-quality sounds, but loading sounds from Kontakt Player has taken time and latency has been a problem. So if the native sound playback engine lives up to its billing, it’ll be so much better.

Of course, they proclaim a host of other improvements too, all of which I’m sure will be helpful.

The one question I do have which I haven’t seen answered (and really wouldn’t expect see on their marketing anyway) is if they’ve improved copy protection at all. Their copy protection scheme has always been annoying to work with, IMO. So we’ll see whether that’s changed at all.

I’m gonna have to get my hands on this upgrade as soon as I can.

Church musicians, do you have experience with Sibelius, Finale, or music notation in general? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts too – comment away! And stay tuned for another post(s) for my argument(s) on why this type of tool is essential for doing church music work well.

I am just in the middle of watching one of Seth’s talk on Tribes from the latest TED conference. And it finally struck me (sometimes I’m slow) that the church has had it backwards. What Seth has discovered to be true in the business world has always been true of the Christian church (including the Old Testament church): tribes are the foundation of getting a message out.

As I’ve also said before, I love irony. So here’s the beautiful irony in this: the church is jumping all over this concept of Tribes, and saying “thank you, Seth”. The reason it’s startling to find this “new” way of “marketing” in the business world is because churches also chased the business world when it was heavily into mass-marketing. (And many still do, admittedly.) Really, Seth should be saying “thank you, Jesus” (in more ways than one ).

Really, when the REVEAL project revealed that churches would do best to focus on Jesus and the Bible instead of performances, comfort, and slick packaging, and when the business world realizes that small groups and relationship-building are the best way to get a message out, why should anyone in a Christian church be surprised at that? It’s what the church has been about since the beginning of time.

Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6

We had the pleasure of re-connecting with our good friends and colleagues, Craig and Donna Tufts, this weekend. Craig is the pastor at Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Parksville, BC (just north of Nanaimo where we’re staying for now) and we joined them for worship this morning.

It was a little odd to be the only young family there, seeing as how we’re used to being surrounded by them. But the congregation was able to dote on the kids, which was fun. Ellia and Caitlin went up for the kids’ message, and then Ellia went out with Donna as she worked with the kids for their own age-appropriate time.

Their theme verse for this morning was from Psalm 100:1 – “Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!” So they made and decorated tamborines. Ellia, being the big sister that she is, made an extra one for Caitlin and brought it back to her when they came back into the service. For the last song, Donna brought the 5 kids up to the front with their tamborines to accompany the songleaders.

It was a joy to see the girls up there helping to lead! Ellia began her worship leading career last summer at Redeemer’s VBS, so it’s Caitlin’s turn now to get into the act. Look out, church. There are more of us coming.

(I’ll also have to start taking my blog cues from Pastor Mark Beeson of Granger Community Church, who is an avid photographer as well and takes pics to accompany each post. This would have been a great one to have pic’d.)

For anyone who is in Christian ministry and who has a vested interest in making disciples of younger generations (read: for anyone who is a church leader, especially those on staff), this is a must-read book. Though the research is focused on those in their 20’s, many of the results and suggestions will apply to every generation. Things may look a little different for different ages, but the core ideas are universal.

The book is divided into three parts: part one looks at the stats from the research; part two draws some implications from those stats; part three looks at some churches that the authors consider to be doing a good job at reaching those in this demographic. In true post-modern style, each chapter concludes with a fictitious story about 4 friends that weaves together the principles from that chapter, and runs through the book as a story-within-a-story (how very Watchmen of you, gentlemen! )

Obviously you’ll need to read the book to get all of the insight and wisdom it contains, but allow me to share some of the things that really stood out for me.

The #1 stat by far is that they found that 89% of unchurched people aged 20-29 are willing to listen to a friend of theirs talk about God, Jesus, and the Christian faith. Yup, 89%. With all the hand-wringing these days about how our culture is so anti-Christian and so anti-church, 89% of those younger people are willing to listen. But of course the key is this: listen to whom and under what circumstances? A friend within context of a relationship. 89% of younger unchurched are open to listening to the Gospel. And to go even further, 60% said they’d even be open to studying the Bible if a friend asked them to.

That should be cause for church leaders everywhere to celebrate. And the obvious implication then is that we also need to equip our people to be comfortable sharing The Story with their friends within the context of relationships. This is hard work; it is not a program or method. It is pouring ourselves into others, so that they will then pour themselves out to others. And so the Gospel goes forth and multiplies.

Of course, this is not new information. That’s how the Gospel has always gone forth: by the speaking of God’s people to others, both in public worship and in personal conversation. But it is a surprising statistic because we so often perceive that young people are more and more “secular” in their thinking and acting, and more and more resistant to “church” and “Christians”. The hope that this research brings is that there are great ways to break down misperceptions that the unchurched have about “church” and “Christians”. The book addresses some of those stats as well.

The other key insight for me was the four-fold breakdown of principles (what the authors call” Markers”) this generation is seeking – those things that characterize a healthy ministry to and with today’s young adults. They are Community, Depth (and Content), Responsibility, and Cross-Generational Connection. A very brief look at each…

Community involves not just “fellowship” with potlucks and coffee between worship services. It is doing life together. Depth and Content involves wrelsting with what theologians have called “the full counsel of God”. Previous philosophies of reaching the unchurched de-emphasized this, leading to all sorts of issues. But today’s young adults aren’t buying shallow and hollow Christianity. They are attracted to richness and depth in all areas – preaching, service, groups, all of life. Responsibility involves the church being concerned about things outside their own walls. One of the most engaging things for young adults today is seeing Christians care about the people and the world around them. A faith that doesn’t reach out is a hollow, selfish faith. Cross-Generational Connection may come as a surprise to some. Plenty of churches seek more to divide people generationally than mix them. While there is always some worthy age-appropriate ministry, young adults thrive in an environment where they can interact with others and learn from their life experience and wisdom.

There’s so much more to say – so much to chew on. But that’s what the book is for!

It’s tempting for church leaders to see those principles and then ask, “So how do I do that?” And one great thing about this book is that it doesn’t answer that question. In part three the authors share some insight from pastors and leaders who are doing it, but it does not suggest a forluma for re-creating it in your church. You need to grapple with what that means in your local context, and how to best apply those learnings.

Which is exactly how it should be.

It’s definitely worth the read. If anyone’s already read it, I’d be most interested to hear your take on it as well. Comment below!