July 31, 2007
For some reason, musicians who’ve attended UC don’t realize we’re still looking for more musicians (especially lead guitarist and vocalists). If you’re a musician and are looking to serve with you gifts, drop me an email at matthew@uprisingchurch.org!
mjd
July 31, 2007
My birthday’s the 9th and Chel’s is the 19th…which makes August the Birthday month. I told Chel we wouldn’t be able to do anything for each other, but I got a Nintendo anyway to surprise. She was sooooooo excited. I love seeing that smile on her face, and it’s actually something fun for us to do together. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when she starts working…it’s going to be tough.
Super Mario 3, here we come…if only we could get past level 6…
mjd
July 30, 2007
Starting next month, we have some changes coming to the band, vocalists and tech crew. Because we’ve been a church plant with volunteers coming from other churches, we haven’t pushed the issue, but the time has come to ask for a commitment from each of the team members. The commitment is two-fold: be a member of UC, and regularly attend a Connect Group. Of course we’ll have subs in and out on occassion that won’t be members, but we’ll check into the spiritual life of each person before we allow them the public role on stage at UC.
Why?
Because before we put people on a mic, or behind some type of electronics that can influence the weekend service, we need to know they’re committed to God and growing in their relationship with Him (we do this through the accountability of Connect Groups) and that they’re committed to the vision of the church (we know this through membership). We want to make every stride we can to ensure that we’re like-minded. We’re not all the same, we don’t all share the same convictions, but we share the same belief system, and we must stand united to facilitate the music and media ministry at UC each weekend. We must all agree to submit to the spiritual authority of our pastor.
When I discussed this with another local worship leader, I got a really negative reaction. Asking for this level of commitment in Nashville is evidently taboo. I believe we must break that paradigm and encourage our musicians to be committed to the vision and leadership of one church.
Always changing (and hopefully for the better)…
mjd
July 30, 2007
I wanted to take a sec and give Freddy (www.fbreedon.com) kuddos for the awesome video this weekend promoting our next series. Take a look at it here on UC’s homepage!
mjd
July 30, 2007
I expect to see at least 10 of you have these moves ready for worship next week. We’ll find some good techno to go with it! LOL! Ripped this off another Worship Leader’s blog (Babu from Grace Church)!
July 30, 2007
For those of you who’ve been worried that I’m “tracking” you, quit worrying! I’ll never tell your boss how many times a day you visit the blog! 
No really, it doesn’t say your name or zip code, I just see the location of your Internet Service Provider. I got reports over the weekend that some of you are only checking the blogs every couple of days because you didn’t want to be exposed as a blogaholic! Check away! But save yourself some time and check out this post to make your lives easier…
mjd
July 30, 2007
So, we’re making adjustments on lighting right now. I’d love to hear from UCers if they’ve noticed the changes. The lights that were on on the tracks have come down (thanks David and Elaine) to the floor and we’ve added a couple of lights on the track. With Lincoln on the board, we’ve begun utilizing scenes to match solos and chases to match tempos and feels of songs. It’s definitely a nice addition as we try and continue to refine things. If we can add some electricity (we threw a breaker during setup) and 2 dimmer packs, we can fully utilize our lighting system. Yea!!!
Thanks to David McCaffery for his work on Pastor Joe’s mic this week and for always taking the initiative to fix things without being asked. UC appreciates your servant’s heart!
We’ve also added a short (5-10 min) Production Meeting on Sunday morning’s after rehearsals with our lighting engineer, sound engineer, media engineer, Pastor, Me, Chel, and our Director (Pam Case). We’re continuing to work to make seamless transitions throughout the service. The meeting involves last minute reviews of transitions and any possible last minute changes. I try to chart things out in Planning Center Online to reduce last minute changes. It’s getting better every week, but above all, we’re still putting Jesus FIRST!
mjd
July 30, 2007
We don’t get to do it near enough, but we always have a blast when we get to have dinner with Pastor Joe and Pam. The Cases are always a barrel of laughs. We did the usual – sushi and Starbucks. We were getting our “payment” for watching the dogs while they were on vacation – we both got a really good deal if you ask me!
