Tagged for iTunes Party Shuffle

A blog friend of mine over at realyouthoughts has tagged me... so I'm posting the first 10 songs that show up in a party shuffle on my iTunes. So, Tyler, here they are:

Broadcast - Steve Fee
Frontline - Pillar
Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
Tonight - Jeremy Camp
Try again - Keane
Bad Day - Daniel Powter
Crossfire - Stevie Ray Vaughan
Mind Storm - Joe Satriani
From God Above - Hillsong United
Not Falling Apart - Maroon 5

Who knew? Some of these I haven't listened to in a while. Zach, Kyle, Doug, and Larry - tag, your it! List 'em out gentlemen... your top 10 songs that show up in your iTunes party shuffle.

Peace.

Guys vs Girls: Box Score

Almost forgot to add to the list the latest card game wins.

Guys - 6 **
Girls - 3 ***

** There is also some wins added by my partner while he was on vacation bringing the guys real total to 9.
*** Apparently, there was some sort of agreement to keep the above card game win count in the running total until the guys racked up the wins... the girls only won one additional while our partners were away bringing their total to 4.

Which do we keep :))

Peace.

Orchard Rewind 16

Hard to believe - three posts in one day :)

Here's the latest Orchard Rewind. Not sure what to do with these anymore and not sure they are necessarily being of help to anyone out there.

Suggestions? What would you like to see that would be of help to you (or just entertaining, since that's why I'm really here :)?

This weeks rewind might be a bit hard to hear but it was a chance to do the recap with my team (or part of it) from this last weekend. I lead with a fantastic group of people and quite frankly, none of what happens on the weekend at The Orchard could happen without them. They are faithful. There are no egos on this team, which is refreshing. They are all extremely talented people who want to be used to lead others into the presence of God.

So, thanks team! From the music to multimedia, from audio to video you all rock my face off!

Anyway, here's the rewind.
Peace.

Set Pics for RTO2

Here's a couple of pics of the set we have up for our summer series Rockin' The Orchard 2.

























What kind of cool set stuff are you all doing where you lead?

Peace.

Two B-days and a Bunch of Craziness

Feels like I've been on a blogging hiatus lately. Lots to write about but too much going on to actually do it. For a summer month, July has started out full throttle! We usually have the summer slow down where we kind of 'coast' - not a lot of school work for the kids at home, not a ton of things to do (except yard work), and usually just maintaining the creative level at the church. We have been having a blast but haven't really slowed down.

I have two kids in sports (Seth in coach-pitch baseball and Kylee in Softball). They have been doing great and it's part of our homeschool PE program. We didn't realize when we signed them up that there would be a gazillion games for both of them every week, or that they would be 15-20 miles from our house! You live and learn I guess.

Faith went to camp for a week.
The girls are going to AZ for 17 days.
Josh and Kylee both just celebrated birthdays within a day of each other (Kristen had great posts for each of them).
Seth is losing or pulling his teeth for cash :)
Kristen is losing her teeth for cash too (the money just goes to the dentist :)

We've been running a new series at The Orchard and preparing for several upcoming events. The new series is called Rockin' The Orchard 2 and you can find details in an earlier post (and on our website). We are preparing for our BBQ and Baptism coming up in August. We have more than 80 people signed up to be baptized so far!! I'm trying to find a Blues/Rock band to play that evening as well so that we can add a third 'B' to the BBQ and Baptism.

We have been running Arts team auditions, building sets, learning new tunes, and doing some team coaching as well. I am deciphering through proposals for our auditorium upgrades so that we can get them in soon and have been dealing with consultants. We are getting ready for the fall and the launch of our third weekend service (Saturday nights)... I've actually even been exercising if you can believe that! Lots of fun, but busy.

So that's kind of the latest in a post! It is awesome to see the excitement my family has at what God is doing within our church family and our own.

How's your summer been so far?

Peace.

Fantastic Fourth

My wife already posted about our great day together as a family.
We had a lot of fun together.

I have a wonderful family - more than I could have asked our imagined. My hope is that July 4th, 2007 will be as great of a memory for my kids as it was for me.

I concur with my wife that it was one of the best fireworks displays I've ever seen. It can't get much better than sitting in the middle of a well kept golf course on a blanket with the fireworks exploding right in front of you and even right above you.

I tried to convince my kids that those who were executing the pyrotechnics were creative artists - they choose which part of the sky (canvas) to explode the fireworks, which colors and when. They also work with sound, anticipation, effects and use a combination of those things to draw the participant into what is happening.

I felt a connection for sure as a creative arts guy.
I can't say my kids did.
Hopefully they can block that part of the memory when they recall our time together :)

How was your Independence celebration?

Peace.

Van Halen Reunited

All you rockers out there knew it was going to happen sooner or later... Van Halen looks like they will be going back on tour this fall (after Eddie gets out of rehab) with their original frontman David Lee Roth. You can check out the article on Billboard here.

According to the article, it appears as though Michael Anthony won't be on bass - Eddie's son, Wolfgang, will be playing bass for the tour. That would actually be a pretty cool thing - playing on stage with your dad.

Anyway, if you're a guitarist you care. If you aren't, well enjoy the trivia anyway. :)

Any of you ever see these guys live in concert? When my wife was pregnant with our first, we caught a show with Hagar as the lead and it was awesome. Never saw them with Roth. What's your story?

Peace.

Rockin' Kick Off

I'm sitting back in our tech booth here at the Orchard as we start our first week of Rockin' The Orchard. There has been a big buzz happening about this series among our people here! The stage is set, the music is ready, the message is ready, the videos are ready...

Some technical issues this morning that we never experience - lights going out on the stage during the message (unscripted), AC unit going on the fritz (making a large hum noise and keeping the auditorium a little warmer than normal), interference on one of our wireless mics, a couple musical problems... things seemed to have started off a little rough.

Yet at the same time, we had a great group of people come out for the start of this series! The message still rang clear and the energy and excitement of a church body singing "Here is our King" was still proclaimed. The videos were still powerful and the atmosphere was engaging.

Sometimes we plan and prepare and things still don't go according to plan. As leaders we strive hard to listen to God and follow how his Spirit directs us - I believe the Spirit works in our planning as well as in our services. Yet I forget that the enemy doesn't want church to happen. I take for granted that just because we are gathered together in a building that we are safe from attacks. A good reminder to me today that my focus has to be unwavering on what God is calling us to do here at The Orchard. No matter what distractions, no matter how loud or disruptive, we cannot back down.

If you are a pastor, leader, or even a parent - you cannot back down from what God is calling you to do. Lives are at stake on an eternal level. I encourage you to step out and step boldly.

More on the weekend coming soon.
Peace,

Orchard Rewind 15

Better late than never.

Setlist from 6/24/07. We're conducting some audio experiments during the week to find some better solutions for improving our sound in our room. We also held our first 'group' auditions this last weekend... went very well.

Anyway, how was your weekend?

Peace.

The Starbucks Addiction Continues...

You know it's bad when the mere mention of the word Starbucks or a visual of one of their signs sparks a chant of "Starbucks, Starbucks, Starbucks..." from the back seat of the minivan.

Even worse - when you ask the little twerps in the back to pipe down on the Starbucks and they start a new chant of "decaf mocha, decaf mocha..."

I swear they've had one, maybe two drinks from the place and none of them had caffeine in them. Must be something else they're putting in the cups.

Peace.