Sunday Post-Game: Lent week two

Greetings friends.

What an amazing day of worship today! I don't know about those of you who attend, but it seems to me lately that the Bridge is growing in the ways that we haven't been able to put words to. You wouldn't be able to look around and notice the changes physically, but it's been there. Every Sunday has been a pretty consistent experience of God's love for us in singing and in prayer and all kinds of ways. It's just been good.

(PS--this photo is SUCH a keeper)

Mandi was the worship leader this morning. It's been such a joy to have her voice be a part of our worship leadership. She's a great person to work opposite me and Ed, just to give us a bit of spice in our leadership. It's been wonderful. She was joined by Ian Gallo on the bass and the (can you even handle this?) electric cello, Kristi Reismeyer on the electric violin, and me on a variety of hand drums and percussion. Such drums always make me feel like this:

(actually, not a bad representation of me this mornin, what with the coffee and all)

Mandi's set list:

• O Worship The King
• I will worship/Worth of my praise
• Prince of Peace 
• Heart of worship
• Blessed be your name.

Heart of Worship had to be one of my favorite moments of worship in a while. I just laid out of it, and let the strings and Mandi carry it. It was so wonderful.

Today's sermon was about peace, but more about what peace is not. As you saw when I was teasing the sermon, I was kind of taking a shot at those people in the world who think that if you have enough stuff, if your financial needs are met, then you'll have peace. I don't think so. I talked to the people who think that winning whatever argument they're in will bring them peace, even though I don't think it will. I talked about people who assume that if you simply avoid suffering, you'll be ok. If you sneak through life without offending anyone, without bothering any people, you'll work it out. It doesn't work like that. Jesus was SOOOOO willing to offend people, and so should we. (as long as we're simply speaking truth.) True peace, being none of these ideas, requires us to be satisfied in the love of Christ. I love the quote "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Good thought.

I have an afternoon off. The Pens have won 5 straight. At 6 it gets serious. Let's go Pens!

More later,

Godspeed,

Jason

Studio Blog Day 1.5

Greetings bloggers!

I wrapped up the sermon yesterday. I'm pretty pumped about it. Deffinately old school J Freyer preachin. We'll see how it turns out tomorrow I suppose.

About a month ago I started working on a follow up record to my critically acclaimed "Between the Trees" (if everyone's a critic, and my mom liked it, then it's critically acclaimed.)At the moment the studio has moved into my house, and I'm starting out with some pre-production. Basically, figuring out which songs I want to include on the CD, what tempos they're going to be recorded at, and if I'm lucky, I'll set up the track for people to play along to later. I started on "Chemwehmweh", and had to give up because my fingers weren't doing as they were told. So a quick blogging break to get me out of my own head, and then I'm back to the grind. It would be nice to have this CD done by the sum sum summertime. 

Keep me in your prayers!

Godspeed,

Jason

Sermon Teaser

Just some thoughts running through my head for Sunday:

Wednesday Night Post-Game: Go-Karts and Temptation

Greetings bloggers,

Last night was pretty awesome. Not so much for the planned activities on the night, but more for the stuff that came before and after the planned activities. It was just a good night of youth ministry, which was very badly needed. 

The day started with some craziness around Ed's mission trip. Last year we planned a trip to grand rapids for some mission work. No one signed up. This of course is best represented by the following image:

But then as Ed planned a trip to South Carolina this year, the number of people interested switched the image to look something like this:

(Crammed)

I felt horrible, but we actually had to turn a couple of kids away from the trip. Too many people signed up. The good news? This all happened a week before the deadline. A week people! Our kids are on top of things!

For a game this week we played Gold Rush. It s a simple game in which people attempt to move tennis balls from one side of the gym to the other. Good times. No one died either, and that was wonderful.

Ed led the worships, and then we split for talk time. Honestly, it felt like the kids were in and out of focus for the official talk portion of the evening. Again, that would have bothered me more if we hadn't had such a great time with the kids before and after Veritas, getting to know what they were going through, what they were dealing with, and what was on their minds. It was an actual great night of youth ministry, as opposed to the nights which more often resemble this:

That's all for now. See you soon!

Godspeed,

J

Two very important things!

Arguably one of the best bands in the world released an album today. The very first review I read of it did not favor them very well, so I'm going to listen to No Line on the Horizon today and give a full review later. Two tracks in though, it sounds pretty good.

Turns out failblog is still on youtube, you just need to know where to look. It also turns out that they are picking up the slack in finding me appropriate videos for technology fails.

More later,

J

UPDATE:

From our friends at Pensblog, a brief description of the weather in Pittsburgh lately:

Monday Morning Update

Good morning faithful readers. It's time for the Monday Morning update, a useless recounting of what's going on in my world. Go grab that cup of coffee, and let's dive in.
Current Listening: I got totally pumped when I found out that No Doubt was coming to town in June. I was less excited when I realized it was Matt's wedding date. However, this has not stopped me from listening to "Rock Steady" all week. Plus, No Doubt's new promo photo is sick business:

Current Reading: Back into Jesus for President. I'm hoping to finish it today, because I'm contemplating a sermon about Religion and Politics. Am I nuts???

Bible Study: One of the only new years resolutions that I'm still hot on the trail of. Must stay strong!

The Gym: Ed and Matt have been helping me get back into it. Need to keep it up.

Big Project: Nothing at all. It is a lazy day!

Catch ya later!

J

Sunday Post-Game: Lent week one.

See this? A piece very much like this is required to get the signal from my laptop to the projector in the WROC. About 20 minutes before the Bridge was to start, it became clear that we could not find this piece of plastic.

You get the picture. 

Huge props go to Dave Debor, fellow MAC enthusist, who brought me his adapter. At which point, all of our tech issues from the day had passed!

So happy!

For the first time in what feels like a long while, Jim was able to give me a theme early enough in the week that I could shape the set list around it. And I think it worked out beautifully!

• Sing to the King
• Here is Our King
• O Praise Him (All this for a King)
• Wholly Yours (An awesome version with me Ed (banjo) and Elise)
• Saviour King

Christ the King

The whole set went really well, but in particular I lost myself in the midst of Here is Our King and O Praise Him. It was just one of those moments that felt so right. It was an awesome day of worship. Plus we got a new microphone for Jim. We had been calling these microphones Britney Spear's mics:

It has occurred to us that this might be too girly a name for the mic used primarily by me, Jim, and Ed. So the new mic shall hence forth and forever more be referred to as the Garth Brooks mic. 

(Rock)

All in all it was a great Sunday. Only problem now is that I am up for preaching on Sunday, and I have no idea what to talk about. Any suggestions?

Godspeed,

Jason