My Worship Revolution

Found this article on MMIBlog. It’s a glossary of worship terms written out in a blog by a worship pastor named Phil Christensen. There is some pretty funny stuff in there, and a lot of it cause many of us have been there and know what he’s talking about. Enjoy!

A new worship team member once confided to me that she felt like a stranger in a strange land. “Learning these songs is easy,” she said, “but I think I need a translator to help me understand all the jargon!”

What “jargon?” I had just told her that the chord chart was in Dog, but we’d be starting in Cat, so she should hold back her groove until the transpo. I asked her to open her voicings and get ready to skate over the signature at the end while we resolved into the target key of the next tune of the ballad salad.

It seemed plain enough to me. Don’t people speak English anymore?
Loving shepherd that I am, though, I started a glossary to help her and others. Unfortunately, laughter kept overtaking me and I was forced to shelve the project.

So no, Family Christian Bookstores will probably never feature a Worship Team Dictionary. But all this reminds me that the same words that that might confuse people can also provide some interesting insights about the nature of our work. As you read the following, some of the definitions may resonate with you. Some are fun. Some are intended to provoke a bit of thought. Certainly, none are meant to hurt any feelings, so please receive them in the spirit offered.

And if I should fail to land in the pocket, I hope you’ll just vamp with me until we get to the turnaround….

• ALTOS and BARITONES: (ahl-toez and behr-i-toenz) People who complain that the songs are too high until they learn to harmonize.
• BALLAD SALAD: (ba’-lud sa’-lud) A worship set of quiet songs intended to foster a gentle flow of worship and meaningful encounter with the Lord. The Ballad Salad generally follows the up-tempo moments of celebration (see also Rocking the Flock).
• BIG KAHUNA: (beeg’ kah-hoo’-nah) Lead Pastor whom God has placed in authority over you. Honor this man. Submit to him graciously unless he asks you to break one of the 10 Commandments.
• BLACK HOLES: (blak-hoelz) The dark vacuum around people in the congregation who steadfastly refuse to connect with God during worship. Sometimes accompanied by contemptuous facial expressions. If you can intercede for these individuals during worship, do so, but otherwise avert your attention to avoid being sucked into their gravitational pull. (See also Super Novas)
• BLANDED WORSHIP: (bland’-dud wur-ship’) The uninspired result that comes when we approach corporate worship with the pathetic goal of avoiding any criticism.
• BLENDED WORSHIP: (blend’-dud wur-ship’) The astonishing result of a tapestry of praise that’s been skillfully and lovingly woven together with worship ideas from the past and present. “All Creatures of Our God and King” can flow seamlessly into “Here I Am to Worship.”
• CHECK UP FROM THE NECK UP: (chek’-uhp fruhm thuh nek’ uhp) Important moment during rehearsal when we lower our boundaries and get honest about how we’re really doing. Often involves prayer and teaching. (See also The Hot Seat).
• CHOIR: (kwy’-ehr) A disciplined group of singers who sacrifice untold hours away from home to master the intricate details of a three-minute choral arrangement. Their performance is intended to delight and inspire a room full of listeners who, statistically, will never purchase a recording of choral music.
• CHORD CHART: (kord’-chart) A document that contains lyrics and a few vague musical suggestions. May or may not indicate the proper key, time signature or even exact moment of the chord change, but it does give musicians something to look at while the song goes by. Particularly frustrating to pianists, who prefer being told exactly what to do. Ideal for guitarists. (See also Sheet Music)
• DRUMMERS: (Druhm-merz) Terrific people who worship God by hitting things. Churches often keep them in Plexiglas cages.
• EARLY SERVICE: (ur-lee’ surv-us’) A service in which attendees may appear zombie-like. While unnerving to worship leaders and teaching pastors alike, the event is generally harmless.
• FRISBEE STYLE: A deliberate approach to worship leading in which the leader’s role is “handed off” from song to song. A good way to mentor new worship leaders.
• GROOVE AND FLOURISH: (Gruev and flehr-ish’) The mark of a good musician interacting with other players. His or her part should land subtly in the pocket, submitting to other musicians; this is “groove.” “Flourishing” occurs when a player discovers the perfect moment to emerge from the groove with a few cool, inspiring licks.
• HAND-BURGER: (hand-ber-ger’) The painful result of carrying musical gear through a narrow doorway and not paying attention.
• HOT SEAT: A chair placed in the center of the room for a member of the worship team who needs prayer; the rest of the team gathers around and ministers to them. (See also Check up from the neck up.)
• HUMILITY: (hew-mil-ih-tee’) The beautiful quality in a talented artist of considering others more important than him or herself. Closely associated with servanthood. Rare.
• HYMNS: (himz) Historic praise music. Usually boiled down to 4-part arrangements on a single page with normal rhythmic flow extracted. Lyrics are often stunning, and many of the melodies are almost as powerful as the timeless truths they carry. These songs are infused with the heart-cry of a billion Saints and should be treated accordingly. Ignore at your own loss.
• IN THE POCKET: (in thuh paw-kett’). The subtle groove created by mutually submitted musicians.
• OPEN/ROOTLESS VOICINGS: A stylistic practice of both guitarists and keyboardists in which primary notes of a triad are substituted or dropped altogether to create versatile textures. Can be puzzling to newbies who briefly wonder why a C chord would contain only a D and a G.
• ROCKING THE FLOCK: (Raw-keeng’ thu flawk) The effect of an up-tempo praise song on God’s people.
• SEVEN-ELEVEN MUSIC: (7-11 mew’-sik) Praise songs that repeat the same seven words eleven times, or some similar configuration. These are generally enjoyed by youth, but annoying to older adults.
• SHEET MUSIC: (sheet mew’-sik) A document containing detailed instructions for a musical arrangement. Perfect for keyboardists. Particularly frustrating for guitarists, who 1) hate to be told what to do and 2) usually can’t read it anyway. (See also Chord Charts)
• SIGNATURE: (Sig-nuh’-chur) A musical phrase that helps define or set up a song, most often heard in the introduction. Well-known signatures include the opening 6 piano notes of “Shout to the Lord.” The signature often forms the “turn-around” for the piece and the closing notes, as well.
• SUPER NOVAS: (soo’-pehr noe-vuz’) People in the congregation who visibly connect with God during the worship events. Not a dependable indicator of their maturity, but impossible to miss and a joy to observe. (See also Black Holes)
• THE THRONE-ZONE: (Throewn-zoewn) The place we’ll spend eternity, and therefore the place we should spend every possible moment on planet earth right now.
• VIBRATO: (Vi’-brah-toe) A technique used by singers to help hide pitch problems.

Phil Christensen is worship pastor at Cedar Hills Evangelical Free Church (CHEF) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He is married to Mitzi, the Beauty Queen, and is father of four great kids. Phil has served as a worship development missionary in the Pacific Northwest and is co-author of two books for Kregal Publishing. You can reach him via email at philc@chefc.com.

WOW, yesterday was a crazy day. Last night Revolution hosted our Halloween outreach event Bug-a-Boo, and it was awesome. It was a full day of picking up 50 bales of rental hay, 25 pumpkins, getting stages and bouncers in place and more!

As many of you know, there was a contest for the best game booth hosted by a life group. We had a blast as a group putting together our marsmallow man, Ghostbusters, Mallowcannon XHO booth. Jared and Randy came up with this idea to try and make a gun to shoot full size marshmallows (I always thought it was selled marshmellow, but found out differently this week) using pvc and compressed air. Charlie and Stephen then refined the idea to ultimately create the Mallowcannon XHO. Everybody in our group helped in making our 12 foot tall Marshmallow Man to shoot at and we just had a great time working together. Thanks life group!

Although we didn’t win, I was glad to see my former life group, the Bambricks come out on top. They dressed as pirates and had a pretty sweet booth, and the kicker was giving away pictures of kids with the pirates in little cards with a sticker that had Revolution info on it. Great job guys! The Dicksons showed up with probably one of the most creative booths of the night, shooting super soakers at guys belly buttons while they blew up balloons like a carnival game. Bret, Adam, and Keith sure made those wigs and goggles look good! All around the game booths were just awesome! It was a huge improvement from last year and the kids had a blast.

This year I jumped in on the raw hot dog eating contest. I got through almost a whole package in 2 minutes, but I just couldn’t hang. Butka took the trophy for the second year in a row, downing a whole package of hot dogs and then some. Did you know that when hot dogs are raw, it’s actually pretty easy to swallow large peices whole? It just kinda slides down your throat.

Overall it turned out to be an amazing and really fun event. Lots of people showed up and things really went smooth. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my camera with me, so I don’t have any pictures to post! I’ll be sure to get some from others and put them on this post or just toss them into a new post in the future. Thanls again to everyone who helped in making yesterday such a fun day!

This morning I had some people from Revolution Church over at my place to start watching a 6 part teaching by Louie Giglio called Worship: That Thing We Do (and eat Krispy Kreme donuts – yum!). Louie Giglio is a well known author and worship leader and I’m really looking forward to going through this series and hearing some great teachings on the subject of worship.

This fist teaching focused on the fact that every single person worships, it’s just what we do. How we live our lives tells a lot about what we choose to worship. One of my faorite quotes was, “I don’t say to God my worship, I live to God my worship.” So often we come to church and talk all about how much we love Jesus and take pride in being a worshiper of God, but our everyday lives can paint a different picture.

The fact is, everybody worships something. You can see it in the way that people react to music stars and professional athletes. Truth be told, the world often worships icons much better than we as a church ever worship God. One of the keys to the teaching was this – it’s not the quality of our worship that needs to improve, it’s the object of our worship that needs to improve.

This really got me thinking. I really believe that the reason we don’t worship God with the passion that the psalmists describe over and over is because we often times have an incorrect view of who God is. Perhaps it’s the quality of our object of worship that needs improving because we don’t really understand how worthy He is. We can say all the right words about His perfection and holiness, but if we really allowed it to permeate every part of our souls, what would our worship look like, both corporately and in our everyday lives. I recognize that the more I spend time in God’s word the more I understand who Christ truly is and the more genuine and life changing my worship becomes.

Like I said, I look forward to taking the next few months to watch these videos and really explore a biblical picture of worship. If you want to study worship deeper, especially if you are someone who helps lead others in worship, come and join us for the next 5 weeks (except Thanksgiving weekend) at my place at 9am. E mail me for more info (like my address and minor details like that).

Okay, so this one will be a long shot, but I figure it’s worth a try. Right now, Chris Tomlin is on his “Indescribable Tour” along with Matt Redman and Louie Giglio. My wife and mother-in-law get to go on Mon. November 7th at Saddleback Church, but I have got class that night, so that’s out for me. I would love to go and the only other possibility is Saturday Nov. 5th in Westlake Village. It’s sold out. So on the off chance that someone out there ended up with an extra ticket for sale, I’d love to hear about it. Otherwise, I guess I’ll just have to live it through the eyes of Rachel while I listen to the CD.

For those of you who read this blog who may be connected to the entertainment industry or know people who work in entertainment, there is an organization I was recently told about by a new friend called Inter-Mission. It is one of several ministries in the greater LA area that purposes to bring together Christians who work in all aspects of entertainment.

This Tuesday night, October 24th, they are having a screening of an upcoming movie called End of the Spear. Click here for more details. It is the re telling of a well known story of missionary Jim Elliot. At the screening they will have interviews afterward with the writer, director, and one of the actors. I can’t wait to check the movie out. I’m kinda bummed cause I’d love to go to this screening, but it just so happens to fall on my life group night. But for those of you who are free, it could be a great chance to see a good movie, hear from those who made it, and meet some other Cristian artists in our area!

The last of the group just left our place from our second game night since our life group started. Tonight, 15 people packed inot our little apartment for games and lots of laughing! We also had a potluck with lots of food, including lumpia, pansit (is that how you spell it?), jumbalaya, lasagna, chicken, salad and chocolate satin pie.

One of the highlights for me was running into our next door neighbor while letting people in and then her coming next door to hang with us for about an hour or so. Rachel and I have just been getting to know her over the past month or so and she has come to Revolution three times now. I hope tonight was a great way for her to get to know some people around Revolution and feel a bit connected.

After eating and hangin it was time to get our game on! We started by splitting up the room between guys and girls for a little Battle of the Sexes, where the guys did win might I add, but it was close the whole way through.

Then we split up into teams for a game of Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture DVD edition. Again we had a great time and Bridget, Christina and Randy came out on top.

As the crowd thinned out, the die hards kept going…first with some good ole Apples to Apples and then finishing up with a homemade game of Salad Bowl.

We finally called it quits after 2 in the morning, and hopefully the neighbors don’t hate us with all the noise we were making. In the end, it was another awesome night of connecting with our life group. It was great to have everyone over and we definately missed those who couldn’t make it. It’s nice to get together as a group outside of our Tuesday format and get to know each other better. Thanks to all y’all who joined us. Anyone out there who doesn’t attend a life group yet, there’s a lot of great one’s at Revolution with open doors…ours included!

Being the avid Lost fan’s that Rachel and I are, we had a few friends from our life group over to have dinner and watch Lost last night. It also happened to be Will’s birthday, and he didn’t want us to make any big deal about it, so we threw him a "little" celebration for the evening. Before he showed up we threw up some streamers and a happy birthday sign and Chris Koble joined us later to watch Lost and sing Happy birthday before we ate Boston Cream Pie from Marie Callenders (I love that pie!). It was a lot of fun and it has been so great getting to know and spend time with the people in our life group. Hope you had a happy birthday Will!!

My cousin and his wife rolled into town from the Laughlin area yesterday to spend three days at disneyland for their son’s fourth birthday.  So I had my homework done earlier than I ever have before…done by 11:30 a.m.!  Usually I’m running late to class so I can finish homework!
I got to the park around 2:00 and was able to spend about 3 hours hangin with them.  Their sons name is Zach and it is so great every time I get to see him.  He is a handful and then some, but he is pretty stinkin cute!  We had lunch and then took Zach on Splash Mountain.  We were afraid he’d freak out after the drop but he loved it.  Then, I finished my time with them by joining them for some Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.  Unfortunately, Zach didn’t get quite high enough in the picture, so you can’t quite see how cute he is.  But as you can see I kicked his butt in points!!  OK, so that score is wrong…I think he did have like 17,000 or something.  But either way I still beat him!

This weekend, Rachel and I went down to Canyon Lake to visit her family.  Well, I love to visit other churches whenever I can and I know some people in the area, so I left her with her mom while I went to check out Life Church in Temecula.  I found out about them through some friends who started going there several years back and have since had the opportunity to get to know their worship pastor, Eric Beeman.
It’s always nice as a worship leader to have the opportunity to be led in worship, and Eric did a great job at leading.  I know he felt like it was an off night, but I couldn’t tell and God was doing great stuff. 

In addition to the worship itself, I always find myself getting caught up in checking out the decor, setup, and technical equipment of any church I go to.  Being that we still don’t know what kind of building we could be in a year from now (or sooner), I was interested to see how they worked in a weekly setup/teardown situation at an elementary school.  They are currently in a series called "I Don’t", a relationship series.  As you walk in the front door there were two dummies there, like the bodies you’d see in storefront windows (no heads…kinda creepy).  One had on a tux and the other a wedding dress.  Next to it was a wedding arch that you walked under, covered in Christmas lights, and a white lamp post near it.  It was a really nice touch that gave you a feel for what was going on and was manageable for a weekly setup and teardown.

They also had some nice setup with their lights for their worship time.  Finally, one of the highlights for me was probably getting to take communion.  I know it sounds odd, but communion has always been a really significant and meaningful sacrament for me, and it’s not very often that I take it at Revolution since I’m leading worship when most people take it.  they happen to do it the first weekend of the month and it was just a great time of reflection and intimacy with Jesus.
Overall it was a great experience and I came away with some refreshment as well as some idea’s to store away.  The thing that I love the most about the church is their vision and passion for church planting.  The church has been in existance for 3 years, has planted 4 other successful churches in that time (one being two blocks from where they meeting), and according to their bulletin are currently averaging about 600 people a weekend.  This obviously resonates a lot with me considering the passion God has given me for church multiplication.  It’s been fun getting to hear about how God is working there and to be in relationship with them in some way.  Great job guys…keep up the good work!

Yes, it has been a very long time since I’ve blogged. I guess I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus without much to say. But I figured it was about time to throw something up here. So I’ll start with something kind of random.

Some of you know that I own a cat which my wife talked me into bringing home from a pet blessing event (not a joke) we were at last August with the street team. I must say I’ve never liked cats much – in fact I’ve hated them – but I just couldn’t say no with her giving me the pouty lip, the Bambricks all helping her out (thanks a lot Rick!), and it was a kinda cute baby kitten. I’ve always been a dog person and can’t wait til I can actually own one. But I must say, over the past year I’ve actually come to like Tigerlily (our cat’s name) maybe a little bit.

Point is, I saw this post on another blog, and I thought it was kind of fun, and most of it even has quie a bit of truth to it. So here’s a list of reasons that you might rather have a cat than a dog as posted by Billy Cox:

• Cats are cleaner than I am – My cat is an indoor cat, takes care of himself, and he hasn’t needed a bath since the first Clinton presidency.
  
• Having a cat prepares you for dealing with self-absorbed people – Dogs are man’s best friend because they are natural liars. You could be the BTK killer, and a dog will still act like your return home is the greatest thing since Kibbles and Bits. Cats on the other hand will wait for you to get with ‘their’ program even if you’re the Queen of England. What better way to prepare you to deal self-centered people than to own a cat?
  
• Cats come in basically one size – There is only a small size variance in all the cat breeds. This means that you don’t have to settle for bad temperament just to get a small pet, and a cat will never leave ‘surprises’ the size of a toaster in the yard nor will a cat ever crowd you out of your favorite recliner (although they may try to take it while you’re up for 1-2 minutes).
  
• Cats are low maintenance pets – If you can manage to keep food in a food dish, water in a water dish, and keep the ratio of litter to excrement moderately high, then you can take care of the average cat. I have taken weekend trips before and simply left plenty of food and water…and the cat did great. As smart as dogs supposedly are, they can’t do anything for themselves, unless it is figuring out how to get food trash out of a sealed trash bag.
  
• Cats respect boundaries – You never see a cat tied to the side of a house or locked in a chain link enclosure. Maybe an outdoor cat will do bad things to wildlife or to a neighbors garden, but you never hear of a cat having to be put to sleep for chasing down and biting a kid. It’s also pretty easy to train an indoor cat which furniture is off limits for them. All you need is a water gun and the self-control to only use it when the cat is about to do something you don’t want it to do.
  
• Cats remind us that we the world doesn’t revolve around us – If you want a reasonably intelligent pet that will keep your feet on the ground without making unreasonable demands, then a cat is the way to go.