Worship Leader Tip: Song Planning Tip

Create a playlist in iTunes for upcoming worship weekends, label them. During the year, put your iTunes on shuffle and throw songs into the corresponding playlist.

Easter worship ideas
Christmas worship ideas
Patriotic worship ideas
Acoustic worship ideas
Country music worship ideas
etc...

Then when it comes time to select songs, you have a playlist ready to roll. Sounds so simple. Why didn't I think of this 10 years ago?

Nice Feature with Apple Mail: Redirect

Just discovered a nice feature with Apple mail. Maybe it's been there all along. But redirecting email is handy when it really was intended for someone else or if you already sent an email but forgot to send it to another individual. Shift-Command-E does the trick.

Piano Fall Goof: Audio Included

OK, OK, fine. Quit asking me for a recording of the Palm Sunday piano fall during prayer I referenced earlier. Here it is. You can either stream it or download it. Goof occurs 30 seconds into the clip.

Making It For God

My son, Joshua, came to me last night and said something striking. He had constructed a Tinker Toy airplane. He came to me and said, "I made this for you daddy."

I thought, wow...that was selfless. He wanted to please me and thought of me when he made it. It made me perk up and want to pay attention.

God must be the same way when we do something solely for Him.

God, help me to be selfless and think of You (instead of me) with what I do. I want You to be pleased with what I bring You.

Kids Musical Countdown

Coming Soon to a Mac Near You

Coming soon to a Mac near you...

Revamping or Creating a Church Website

How does a church create or revamp its website?

Andrew Norton, Business Manager at Grace Church (Lititz, PA) where I had been for 10 years previously, had asked me how Topeka Bible Church is revamping its website. While there are my avenues to take, our church decided to go with a new upstart that seems to have a slick solution designed just for churches.

So here is a quick 5-minute crash screencast video in how City Gates is assisting our church by hosting and giving us a great user interface to manage our website. They've taken the technical part of creating a website out of the equation and giving more access to the common man - which should produce easier updating to more users, but maintaining a pleasant uniform look, feel, and navigation.

Head over to City Gates to see how they aren't one of those cookie-cutter web solutions. It's designed and built just for churches by real people.

TBC's site should launch soon.

Musical Umbrella: What Next?

Really? Is this gonna fly? I give it an A for innovation.

Robotic Fly: Imitating God's Creation

Man, once again, has recreated what God has perfected. Check out the flying insects - but these are man-made robots. Amazing. But not amazing as God's design. He designed it first. Copycat.

Embarrassing Moment During Prayer

For those of you who missed it in the 3rd hour of worship yesterday...

While senior pastor Jim Congdon led our church in closing prayer this past weekend, I walked onto the stage from the back. I was going to lead the last some from the piano. I walked over to the piano and TRIPPED on an extension cord. It wasn't a little trip. It was an ALL OUT FALL toward the piano. I put my hands out to catch myself and my FULL WEIGHT went onto the piano keys. It wasn't just a finger or two...it was my FULL FOREARM. Talk about a 20th century tone cluster - Charles Ives would have been proud. It was loud. It was distracting. And it was embarrassing. Jim looked over at me and simply said, "Thank you."

I want to take this time to publicly thank Chris Davidson for shaking his entire pew with his laughter while I led the last song.