A big shout out to our friends back in Louisiana and the New Orleans Saints’ win in the Super Bowl! Here’s hoping that Doug C. saved me some of his incredible homemade jambalaya.
Today our church, LifeChurch East Valley, had a MicroMission (something we do on a regular basis – it’s basically a one day missions trip to serve our community) where we picked fruit for The United Food Bank to help needy families.
We had over 130 people show up!
We picked over 25,000 lbs. of grapefruits…enough to feed over 19,000 people.
I’m so very proud to be part of this church and community. I have never, in my life, been part of a church that’s so active in our local community and missions. Blessed to be part of this family!
perry.kallevig.with.bonus.of.percy.kallevig
Published February 4, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a CommentYesterday I had the privilege and honor of meeting my former pastor, Perry Kallevig, for lunch. Perry is in town for Pastor Tommy Barnett’s pastor’s school. BONUS, his twin brother (and my good friend) Percy was with him!
We had a wonderful time catching up and I was reminded again just how stinking incredible these two guys are!
Perry & I
Percy & I
Today I get to have lunch with one of the most influencial people in my life, Pastor Perry Kallevig.
Will write more later.
I’m rather excited about this weekend’s worship set. Reg will be leading this weekend and he always does a great job! He’s got a good song set and I wanted to just touch on the lyrics of one of those songs, but first here’s the set list:
Let God Arise
Your Love Never Fails
The Heart of Worship
I Adore You
I love the song, The Heart of Worship. Musically it’s a great song, catchy melody line. Lyrically it’s so stinking powerful, read these lyrics…
I’ll give you more than a song
for a song in itself
is not what You have required
You search much deeper within
through the way things appear
You’re looking into my heart
WOW! Those are powerful lyrics. It’s so easy as musicians to get caught up in playing every note perfectly, making sure we awe and impress those in the congregation – don’t get me wrong, God for sure deserves the very best we can give Him – but these words of this song ring in my head, it’s not really about the musicianship, or our vocals, it’s about our HEART!
This weekend whether you’re worshipping with us at LifeChurchEV, or at another church – make sure that you are worshipping our Creator from your HEART!
If you have not picked up the new Carlos Whittaker EP…
STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW!!!
Click here and pick it up – you WILL NOT BE SORRY!
My wife is a blogger (click here for her blog) and has developed a bit of a following from people around the country and from a few different countries as well. Ummm, yeah I’m proud of her! She’s also an avid reader. She literally never goes anywhere without a book…and when I say never, I mean NEVER!
Our new church, LifeChurch East Valley, has several different LifeGroups (small groups) and my wife is starting one of her own, a book club. She’s running a contest on her blog right now asking for help in naming the group – the winner will get a free copy of the first book the club will be reading.
Their first meeting will be Monday, February 8 at 7p and they are meeting at The Wildflower Bread Company in Gilbert, AZ.
So why am I writing about this book club? Well, I’m glad you’ve asked…
Last night my wife got an email from Wildflower, they scour the web (Twitter, Facebook, and blogs) looking for customer feedback. They came across my wife’s blog post about her book club meeting at their store and they are going to provide a 12 person dessert tray, free of charge, for the group to share and enjoy.
I was so impressed with them for doing this that I just had to share it with you! If you’ve got a Wildflower in your area, stop in for lunch real soon!
If I only could use one word to describe today’s worship set it would be, “Wow!” Now that’s not to say that it was perfect, cause it certainly was not – but wow it was a great weekend of worship at LifeChurchEV.
Here’s the setlist:
- Today Is The Day
- Your Grace Is Enough
- How He Loves
- King of Majesty
In the first experience I started the second tune, Your Grace Is Enough, well actually – I totally screwed it up. Somehow I lost all focus on the click track and yet I still started to play the intro, then it hit me, I’m soooo not with the click. By this time the band must have been thinking, “how do we recover from this?” well somehow we did and got through the song. Then we were really off on the timing in How He Loves during the first verse, we really need to get Cheryl some In Ears so she can hear the click. :) (That’s for you Reg.)
In the second experience, it all came together and went really well!
Even with the rough spots, it was a great day of worship for us on stage and for those in the room! Great, great day and I’m already pumped for next weekends worship setlist!
I watched the Hope for Haiti Now special tonight – the one thing that impressed me the most was they did not show ANY NAMES of the performers…not once! It screamed to me that it’s not about the performers, but about helping those in Haiti.
I pre-ordered the Hope For Haiti Now CD from iTunes – YOU should too! All the proceeds go directly to helping those in need in Haiti. At the very least, please pause for a moment right now and say a prayer for the people of Haiti.
I’m no genius, but one thing I’m learning is that dynamic leaders make up dynamic churches. I used to think that staff members at dynamic churches were lucky (yes I used the word lucky) to be on staff at these churches.
My point of view is changing, dare I say changed.
A couple of years ago I began to follow the blog of a guy who was on staff at Buckhead Church in the Atlanta area. His name, Carlos Whittaker. He’s at (well actually was at – now he’s diversified) a dynamic church…lucky!
Over a year ago I began to follow another great creative blog from a guy on staff at North Point Church (also in the Atlanta area). His name, Reid Greven. He too is at a dynamic church…lucky!
About the same time I visited a dynamic church right here in my backyard, Cornerstone – they’ve got a great facility and a really great worship center. Their worship pastor, Brian Wurzell is at a dynamic church…lucky!
Recently I attended another church right in my hometown of Gilbert, Mission Community Church. Man is this church exploding and awesome. One of the associate pastors, Mike Work, is – well at a dynamic church…lucky!
Is it luck…?
I think not!
I’ve sent Carlos Whittaker an email before asking questions about how he does (or shall I say did things) with his team. I’m a nobody to him, he has no idea who John Forbis is – in fact I bet if you sent him an email right now he’d say, “I have no idea who that guy is.” No worries I’m okay with that. Still, Carlos took time to reply to my email, answer my questions – even when I emailed back with more questions.
Why did Carlos answer my email? Because he’s a dynamic leader.
The exact same thing happened when I contacted Reid Greven with some ProTools technical questions, he doesn’t know who in the world John Forbis is either, yet he took time to even write and devote a blog post to answering my questions.
Why did Reid take these steps? Because he’s a dynamic leader.
Since Brian Wurzell is right in my backyard I began to think to myself, I wonder if this guy who’s at this dynamic church would meet with me? Yeah you guessed it, Brian has no idea who in the world John Forbis is either. I emailed and asked Brian if we could meet for coffee. He replied to my email and set up a meeting for coffee. He had an hour to spend with me and had another appointment immediately following our time together at another location.
Spending time with Brian was amazing, he took the time to get to know me, ask me questions and when I shared with him a difficulty I was having at the church where I was on staff at…he listened…..
We’d now been meeting for almost 58 minutes, he had another appointment in 2 minutes at another location and as we were closing our time together he asked if he could pray for me. I expected one of those cursory prayers, you know, “God bless my new friend, use him and help him through his difficulties, in the name of Jesus, amen.”
But that’s not what happened, Brian prayed for me for almost a complete 5 minutes (yeah, I timed it – so sue me). He took time to pray for me a heartfelt prayer that honestly meant the world to me!
Why did Brian take this time with me? Because he’s a dynamic leader.
A couple of months ago I visited Mission Community Church – a very dynamic church in my hometown of Gilbert. I met one of their pastors, Mike Work, I wanted to complement him on how much I enjoyed the service (Mike produced that day’s services). I had recently been laid off from my previous position and that somehow came up in our conversation. Mike immediately asked for my contact information and told me he’d be praying for me. Later that week he contacted me (via email) and we’ve chatted a couple times through email since then and in fact we’re meeting for coffee tomorrow morning.
Why did Mike take time to get my info? Because he’s a dynamic leader.
I am now convinced…
I say, I am now convinced that these guys – and so many others around the country – are not “lucky” to be at dynamic churches. Rather, the churches where they are on staff at are dynamic because they have dynamic leaders leading them!
My prayer, Lord help me to become one of those dynamic leaders!
PS—Dynamic leaders really just honestly care for people. Not just important people, or people of influence, rich people, pretty people….but simply people. Dynamic people care for people!
But then I’m no genius….
