This is the 100th post here on The Musician's Mind!  It took me just a little longer than 6 months to get here.  I hope you all enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing it.  I've had other blogs in the past, but none have really "hooked me" like this one.  The opportunity to jot some of my thoughts down, for others to read (or not - though I certainly appreciate it when you do!) has been truly valuable to me.  Unfortunately, I don't have much more time than this today, but check back in the next couple of days for a lot of great new stuff!  Thanks for helping me get to 100... here's to the next hundred!

As most of you know (at least if you're here in the good 'ol U.S. of A.), today is Memorial Day.  I was thinking about this yesterday at my gig... a lot of folks seem to look at Memorial Day as a really good day to not go to work, have a party, have a few beers, and, in my case, make some money playing at said parties.  But how often do we lose sight of what this day is really all about?  In the end, we would not be assured of our right to do any of the things I mentioned above if it were not for the sacrifice of the countless men and women who have been fighting for this great country for over 200 years.  They
 were willing to give of themselves for the benefit of you, me, and every other American out there, and they certainly deserve our honor and respect, today and every other day.

Enjoy the holiday, and remember those who made it possible!

If you enjoy this post, check out more set lists at Fred's blog.

Centerpoint Church 5/24/09

Opening Set
    -I Am Free - C - (Jon Egan)
    -Holy Is The Lord - G - (Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio)
    -Unashamed Love - G - (Lamont Hiebert)

Closing Song
    -You Said - G to A - (Reuben Morgan)

What a powerful time of worship we had yesterday!   We're one week away from the end of our 1 Peter series, and yesterday's theme was "Dare I Hope to Make a Difference?"  Really great stuff from Dave, and all of our other service elements tied in very well.  We opened the message with a clip from "Pay It Forward" (the classroom scene where Kevin Spacey's character first gives the class their assignment), it was a great set up.

From a music perspective, things were pretty different yesterday.  I'm all about new technologies and the benefits they bring to worship.  In-Ear monitors and loops are great, and modern guitar processing has gotten really good.  I think the sounds that we're able to produce on Sunday's are really great.  Having said that, I also think that those technologies can pretty easily become a distraction and/or barrier to our worship sometimes.  For that reason, I like to get away from them once in a while, and that's what we did yesterday morning.  We used an acoustic setup (2 guitars, 3 vocals, and I switched around between harmonica, ukulele & percussion).  No Avioms, just two old-fashioned stage wedges out front.  First off, I need to say that this wouldn't work nearly as well as it did if I didn't have the team of musicians that I have.  They were right on top of it and everything sounded great.  Our congregation really gets into it when we do these acoustic weeks from time to time, and  yesterday was no exception.  Folks were worshipping passionately and openly, very refreshing to see and hear from the stage.  Great stuff.

Technically, we had a very smooth morning.  We did have to reset our projector during rehearsal, but now that we have a lift at the church all the time, that has gotten to be a fairly routine task.  The only irritating thing about it is having to line the projection back up when it's done!  The mix was great & the monitors were solid (no small task in that room to accomplish both of those things!)  I do think that we can still do a little better with the flow of our video elements.  As soon as the offering song fades, the video can start... we don't want to leave the congregation sitting awkwardly in the dark.

All in all, a really great morning... couldn't be happier!

So I'm in this band.  And if you don't see me around here much the next few days... well, you can blame them.  Memorial Day weekend is a good time for a cover/party band like us, so we've got a lot going on.  And by the end of the weekend, we will all be very tired.  And we could really use a few hundred screaming fans at these shows to help us keep our energy up:-P  Ok, I admit it, I was joking a little bit with that last sentence.  Even so, if anybody is looking for something to do this weekend in the Columbus area, and the idea of hearing some great music tickles your fancy, you should come out and say hello!  Here's where we'll be:

Tonight (Friday): Screamin' Willies in Columbus.  We are the second of three bands and will play from approximately 10-11:30PM.

Tomorrow (Saturday): The Barn in Columbus.  We'll play our full set from approximately 10-2.

(take a breath and go to church... no sleep, though)

Sunday: Captain Woody's in Buckeye Lake.  We'll be opening their Memorial Day party and playing from 3-7 PM.  This is an all ages, family show, so bring the whole gang!

So there you have it!  I'll be back Sunday evening to catch up with setlists and then go to bed!

...and work on my websites.  Lately, most of my "web work" has been focused on this blog, as it is my primary "residence" when I'm online.  Tonight, though, I was improving my personal site.  Specifically, I was working on my music section/store, which is now it's own subsite - http://www.music.ericfrisch.com.  The new page is powered by Band Camp, a really slick service that I recently discovered.  Much better than the SNOCAP store I was previously using, and it integrated pretty smoothly with the existing site.  Unfortunately, PayPal hates me right now, so I can't actually sell anything (yeah, I realize that's kind of the point), but I should have that functionality restored soon.  I'm really excited about this change, because it's going to allow me to do some very cool things around the release of the new record... so you can all look forward to more about that as it happens.  For now, I just wanted to get the word out there.  And now... to bed!

Lately there has been an almost ridiculous amount of talk about using Twitter in worship services.  In general, there seem to be two camps on this - those who want to use Twitter as much as possible, and those who don't want to see it used at all.  That's pretty extreme.  Personally, I find myself somewhere in the middle on this one, and so, as much as the internet doesn't need another guy talking about twittering in worship, I'm going to go ahead and throw my $.02 in anyways.

First of all, I love Twitter.  Most of you know that.  I think it's a great service, unique in what it offers, and it has allowed me to make connections with a lot of folks which otherwise would have been impossible.  Can't complain about that.

(sidebar - you can follow me @ericfrisch)

Having said that, I think we need to be a little careful about Twitter in worship.  A lot of us church-leader folk are easily excitable.  A new technology comes out, and we immediately want to be using it first, best, and extensively.  A great example of this was TokBox.  A few months ago, TokBox sprang onto the ministry radar (though it had actually been around a while at that point).  Instantly, everybody was using TokBox.  Blog discussions, church conference calls, you name it.  But guess what?  I haven't heard anybody mention TokBox in at least a month.  It was a passing fad.  Personally, I think it reflects poorly on our ministries when we are so willing to "jump on the bandwagon" without first being certain that a technology has real, lasting benefits to our mission.

...Which brings me to Twitter.  Now I'm not comparing Twitter to TokBox or any of the other million sites that have caught passing interest.  Twitter has been around longer (at least in internet terms), has a LOT more users, and really seems to have grabbed a hold of something in pop culture.  It seems personally reasonable to me that churches look at ways to use Twitter in ministry (just as a lot of us got into Facebook not long ago - many with excellent results!).  The trick is, we have to think about how we integrate it.  It is not enough to simply say "we should use Twitter in worship!" - we need to think about how & why we want to use it.

I'm not a big fan of simply encouraging folks to tweet to their personal accounts during worship.  Worship is supposed to be a communal thing, and it requires our full attention and mental committment.  God deserves that.  Many folks have correctly pointed out that Twitter can be intensely 1-sided and narcissistic (though that was certainly not it's original intention!).  In my mind, that kind of use detracts from worship at least for that individual, if not the full community.  That said, I've also heard a couple of awesome ideas that use Twitter to enhance community.  One (which I love, by the way) involves using Twitter to gather feedback from the congregation.  The pastor/worship leader/whoever can ask a question, folks can tweet their answers, and the community's response can be seen on the screen in real time.  Very cool.  Very interactive.  That's a community building exercise.  That's breaking down the very real (and very unacceptable) wall between those "on the stage" and those "in the seats".  I love it.

I read an article today that talked about a church that is using Twitter to reach their shut-ins in real time.  By leveraging technology, they are finding ways to include folks who can't be physically present in worship just the same.  How cool is that?  It seems to me that there would be something refreshing about seeing what's happening in real time (and even being able to respond, if you're a Twitter user yourself!), rather than getting a CD or tape of the message a couple of days later.

To wrap up - Twitter is great.  The potential for Twitter in ministry is great.  The potential for Twitter in worship is great.  But if we're going to use it, let's make sure that we do it deliberately and with a purpose.  Technology that truly advances the mission of the church is a wonderful tool, but technology that is used solely for technology's sake is nothing more than another distraction in a world that already provides too many.

This is the 43d week of Fred McKinnon's Sunday Set Lists project.  Check out dozens of other sets here.

Centerpoint Church 5/17/09

Opening Set
    -You, You Are God - C to D - (Walker Beach)
    -Your Name - A - (Paul Baloche, Glenn Packiam)
    -Here I Am To Worship - E - (Tim Hughes)

Offering Song
    -Hope Now - Bm - (Ryan Gregg)

Closing Song
    -Came To My Rescue - Bb - (Marty Sampson, Joel Davies, Dylan Thomas)

Speaking from a strictly personal perspective, I thought this morning's service rocked.  There were a couple of issues, which I'll hit in a second, but I have to say that I was very relaxed and really felt the Spirit moving this morning.  My parents and brother were in town this weekend, too, which was cool.

The band absolutely brought their A game this morning.  We tackled "Hope Now" by Addison Road as a special this morning, and it took up a lot more rehearsal time than I was expecting.  Absolutely worth the extra time - the song sounded great by service time, but it brought us down to the wire a little bit on our other tunes.  Fortunately, everyone knew their stuff and it went well.  We had a couple minor issues with entrances in "Your Name" come service time... nothing perceptible from the congregation, as far as I could tell.

We used a very different video clip this morning - a short film called "Boundin'" which originally screened before "The Incredibles".  Totally different from what we normally do, but it was a fun clip, led into the message really well, and it was fun to watch Heather (our sign language interpreter) signing words like "Jackalope" and "Heliotrope".

We're starting to wrap up our current series ("Dare I Hope") on 1 Peter.  This was week 6 of 8, and Dave's message was called "Dare I Hope For Happiness In This World?"  Personally, I got a lot out of this one.  Really good, no nonsense, Biblical instruction on life, and it came at a time when I needed to hear it.  Great stuff.

We had a couple of timing issues this morning from a tech perspective.  The sequence of special music-video clip-message didn't run smoothly at all... we ended up with an awkward pause before the video and the band "stranded" on stage after the song in full lights.  Other than that, things ran pretty smoothly.  Our overall volume might have been a little low this week... good stuff to keep in mind for the future.

All in all, we had a smooth morning and a great service.  God was glorified!  Looking forward to our Creative Worship Team meeting tomorrow and the ideas that always flow at it!

In July of last year, I had the privilege of being able to teach a course on worship at Covenant Gathering in Michigan.  I was only able to be there for the two days I was teaching, and as such it was a bit of a whirlwind trip, but I was able to attend a couple of other sessions while I was there which really challenged me.  One was a roundtable on the Missional church led by John Sterner.  John is truly passionate about making the church better, and I was blessed to be able to listen and participate in the conversation that day.  John has written a short book, which he calls his "Missional Church Primer".  I stumbled upon that book the other day and was reminded that I had a PDF copy & permission to distribute, so I thought I would share it with all of you.  Trust me, this is worth the read... great stuff here.  Not always the kind of stuff that is easy to hear/read, but definitely some things that the church needs to be reminded of.

John Sterner - Missional Church Primer
File Size:	74 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

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Certainly not expecting anybody to actually use this, but it's still pretty cool.  Discovered through a post at ChurchCrunch this morning that anybody can now post an RSS feed on Kindle (the catch seems to be that they don't really check to verify that the feed is yours).  I didn't have much to do today, so I figured I'd set it up for fun.  The whole process is actually very simple, and this is the result:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0029ZA6IU

Pretty slick.  If anybody out there has a Kindle (or the Kindle iPhone app), check it out!

M-Audio is a pretty cool company.  I've owned/used a number of their products over the years, and I've always been very impressed.  This one takes the cake, though: