I got this in the mail the other day. The Frequency team are running a worship songwriting competition. You can submit your songs up until April 8th 2010.
One little drawback. You need to be a Frequency All Access member. Bummer. That rules me out.
Click here for the full details.
The NWLC blog has posted a small piece on the bloggers that will be reporting on the National Worship Leader conferences this year. I’m happy to see that I will at last get the chance to meet Pete, Ben and Wisdom at NWLC East!
Thanks to the National Worship Leader Conference (NWLC), specifically Katie Finley over at the NWLC blog, I will be travelling to the NWLC East regional conference in October of this year.
It would be great to see some of you there. I have never been to the NWLC before, so I’m not sure what to expect yet, but according to their website, this is why you might like to attend:
There are three conferences altogether. The Kansas City conference seems to be the largest by far, with two smaller regional conferences in Albuquerque, NM and Lancaster, PA.
Keep a eye on this blog as I (and others listed below) should have some free tickets to give away in the coming weeks. We will also try to keep you informed of all the news on the conference itself.
NWLC bloggers (as of 04 Mar 2010)
I’m involved in a church plant and we hope to launch after a series of preview services on January 10 2010. Church plant people will know that money does not grow on trees, so we need to come up with lots of imaginative ways to save cash.
One way of saving money is to write our own church database system. This will end up potentially saving us $$$ every month that would normally go to a company like Fellowship One.
Initially our system will allow us to record adults and kids attending our services, and record giving. The system will also provide a range of reports and email functionality.
I hope to chronicle the development of this system – codenamed StoryChurchDB – over at my geek blog snowjunkiedev.wordpress.com. In the future we will probably look at making it generic and available to other churches, so please feel free to suggest features you’d love to see.
I just ran across this cool site for printing blank sheet music. There is lots of various options including time signatures and key signatures that can be added.
I’ve been working on some videos for Story Church recently. Here is one we created for the home page of the web site.
We went to the Walmart parking lot today and handed out free water to unsuspecting shoppers. These are some of the things people said as they rolled down their car windows and follows is more or less how I replied.
How would you respond to some of these comments?
“This is so nice, thank you very much!”
No problem ma’am. You’re welcome.
“Can I have another bottle because I’m pregnant?”
Of course! Here you go…
(Angry) “You should go find a homeless person and give it to him!”
Er…
“Why are you doing this?”
We’re part of a church and serving the community by providing cold water.
“Are you taking donations?”
No ma’am. It’s free! (I love any opportunity to say ma’am).
(Reaching for water) “Oh, you’re a church? I’m an atheist – keep your water!”
It’s not poisonous!
Just over a week ago we arranged to go hand out free ice cold water to shoppers in the parking lot of our local Walmart in Raleigh. Jeremy had flown in help from California, only they didn’t know that.
I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t sure what purpose it would serve handing out bottles to random shoppers. We wanted to show Christ’s love in our community by blessing people with ice cold water on a near 100 degree day. However, I was also very aware we are launching a new church and it would be really great if these nice people came along.
I was a little afraid our motives would lean more towards the latter. It’s hard to explain my unease with reaching people this way. I don’t want to fall into the trap of treating people like consumers. This has the potential of creating a church culture where most take and few give.
I arrived at the parking lot to find the guys filling large wheelie bins with the water bottles and then emptying bags of ice on top. We spent the next couple of hours handing out bottles of water to anyone that would take it. Along with the bottle we handed a ‘Story Church’ business card.
Some people took the water and moved along while exchanging a quick smile. Some people stopped and chatted with us. We even had some undercover pastor play ‘awkward’ until we caught him out. However, it was surprising how many people looked at us with suspicion and would not take any water. Some people even ignored us like we didn’t exist.
I couldn’t help reflect on how God must feel when He sees people just passing up on His free gift. Hey it’s free! I’ve done everything for you. All you have to do is take it. Nah, sorry mate, not interested.
Anyway, even though going in I was not too sure what to expect, coming out I was very glad we did it. I do not think we got our motives muddled. I’m happy about the few connections we did make. On top of all that I think I have a little more boldness now too. I know next time we go to do this I won’t have the same reservations – I’ll be all over it.
It’s common to see psychometric tests used within the work place. We are led to believe that we are more employable if we are team players. Could these tests be useful for teams outside of the work place? What about having your worship team members try this out?
Here’s a summary of my mini-report results. They are pretty close to reality, but I’m wondering if it simply got lucky. If you do the test, let me know your results and whether you agree with them.
“It will come as no surprise to you to hear that you are not the world’s greatest team player! You are independent and prefer your own company to that of others. If asked for an opinion you may make a suggestion but only after you have carefully considered the facts and all the information to hand.”
I’d never seen this site before. I signed up today and browsed through the forums a bit. Lots of people on there looking for feedback on songs they have written. It seems very good and fairly busy.
Also, I love the New Song Cafe videos they do. I’ve seen a few on YouTube before, but didn’t realize they came from here originally.
