Life with Brian

Carols and Christmas Songs

My Christmas season this year has been colored in a multifacted hue of great arrangements.  Here's a list of all the Christmas Carols and songs that we have utilized or will utilize at church this Christmas Season:

1. Angels We Have Heard On High -  (traditional)
2. Christmas Offering - special music [Casting Crowns]
3. Come Now Our King - special music [Chris August]
4. Come Jesus, Prince of Peace - Women's Chorale
5. Do you Hear What I Hear - special music [The Blenders]
6. Echo Christmas Joy - Chorale
7. God Is With Us - special music [Amy Grant]
8. Hark the Herald Angels Sing (traditional)
9. Joy to the World (traditional)
10. Joy to the World - [Casting Crowns version]
11. Joy to the World (unspeakable joy) [Chris Tomlin]
12. O Come All Ye Faithful (traditional)
13. O Come O Come Emmanuel (instrumental)
14. O Holy Night (traditional)
15. O Holy Night [Shane & Shane Version]
16. O Little Town of Bethlehem - Choral
17. Silent Night (traditional)
18. Sing Noel, Sing Hallelujah - Chorale
19. Still, Still, Still (the Snow Carol)
20. Sweet Little Jesus Boy - Chorale
21. The Thirteen Days of Christmas - special music [Deke Sharon]
22. What Child is This (traditional)
23. Winter Wonderland - special music [Avalon]

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Let me invite you to our 4:30 Christmas Eve Service, where we will have the choir, a brass ensemble, vocalists, and a special string ensemble leading us in the traditional carols we love and a dramatic  re-telling the Christmas story.  It is one of the most special times that we look forward to all year, completed by a candlelighting ceremony that appeals to people of all ages.  Then on Christmas morning join us for the 10:15 service as we celebrate with more special music and a message from Pastor Dan at First Covenant Church, 801 Willmar Ave SW, Willmar, MN.

Merry Christmas!

 

I'm feeling all Christmasy now that the concert is done. On Saturday night, we hosted our annual "Amid the Winter Snow" concert at First Covenant, a tradition that we brought up with us from St. Joseph. It's always a great day when you can make great music with great friends and sing harmony with the one you love. And that, my friends, is what we did.
This year's concert featured the talents of four great groups: Voce, The First Covenant Sanctuary Choir, Jetlag in Reverse, and the Mill Pond Jazz Combo. Voce is latin for voice and is a mostly a cappella group. It's morphed over its three year existence, beginning with eight members from the choir originally, then swapping out a singer last year, and then going from 8 to 6 this year and swapping out 3 others. Featuring the talents of Becca Gardner, Beth Daniel, Amy Swanson, CJ Collins, Scott Newberg and myself, we opened the concert with "Christmas Time Is Here" and mixed ourselves in throughout the rest of the concert with the Blender's version of "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and Avalon's version of "Winter Wonderland" performed with the Mill Pond Jazz Combo.

The Sanctuary Choir which boasted 30 members this year, sang a wonderful rendition of "Sweet Little Jesus Boy", full of dynamic expression and tempo contrasts, this ballad was endearing to the listener and performer alike. The next song we sang is typically not a favorite of mine, usually because when I've heard it done before it's so difficult to get the alternating intervals in tune that it's painful to listen to. However, the choir did a lovely job of producing a quality performance of "Still, Still, Still". I know it had to be the favorite of someone in the audience. Then we stretched ourselves with an 8-part divisi arrangement of "O Little Town of Bethlehem", averaging about 3 people per part. My friend Wes said that when the choir produced their final chord, goose bumps ran up and down his arms. How cool. Sometimes I'm amazed at the effect that music can have on people, how it captures a moment in time and can cause us to feel something different than we come in with. The choir finished out their portion of the concert with Deke Sharon's "Thirteen Days of Christmas", a delight for people of all ages and chalked full of surpises.

"Jetlag in Reverse" was a phrase that came to me one day in a conversation. I was looking for a name for a band previously and had just been musing on my temperment for the day and how I felt like i had jetlag in reverse (which would be optimistic, energetic, and lively). After I said the phrase, I kept it in reference to a band that we put together just for the concert. That was three years ago. Jetlag this year featured the talents of Jim Bach on drums, Dave Roberts on bass, Laura Schuh on guitar, Beth Nordstrom on Keys, me on piano, and my wife and I on vocals. Throughout our 6 song set, we invited members of Voce to come up and join us on a song. It was a great way to spread the love, diversify our set, and alleviate some of the responsibility I felt, plus it created moments for the other singers to shine and offered a different timbre from song to song. Songs included "Come Now Our King", "Winter Snow", "God is With Us", "O Holy Night", "Joy to the World", and "Christmas Offering" and there was a theme that ran through the set: advent (waiting), the birth, the revelation, the celebration of Emmanuel, God with us.

At Pastor Dan's request, we sequestered the Mill Pond Jazz Combo for our headlining act, which was okay by me because I absolutely love listening to them jam and was honored that they would ask me to play along. Their 25-minute set was so lively and quick that you would have thought St. Nick himself had visited the building and left everyone with their favorite present. It was such a good vibe and everyone was in such great spirits after the concert was over. One of the highlights (and there were many) was getting to sing Avalon's version of "Winter Wonderland" with a great band like the Mill Pond Jazz Combo. Under the direction of Mark Freitas, it was a smashing good time.

This evening, there was something for everyone. Ballads, humor, a cappella, jazz, swing, folk, rock, improvisation. It was cool. In the middle of the night, Beth mentioned the text of one of our songs and encouraged everyone to focus on "Emmanuel, God with us" for the remainder of our season and that if we did, our hearts would be a little bit lighter. I pray that for you, that this Christmas season you would be able to focus on the fact that God is with us, God is in us, God is for us. Emmanuel.

Peace.
Brian

ramblings in space

The last time I had anything to say, it was a rant over the changes occuring in our financial picture.  It wasn't pretty.  Felt like we had the wind kicked right out of us.  That was 10 months ago.  Today, unbelievalbly, we're sitting in a nice house that has our name on it;  we're able to pay all of our bills; our kids have what they need for school; we're not lacking too much.  We were even able to take a vacation, albeit that we stayed with my cousin and her family in their nice home in Los Angeles, we borrowed one of their cars for the four days we were out there, and we packed picnic lunches for each of the days at the happiest place on earth and the four beaches we got to visit.  All-in-all it was a great time.  

So here I am today, entering back into the cybersphere with ramblings in space that may only matter to me.  Some days there will be insights into my day; others will play host to rants and raves; some will even attempt to be inspiring as I dive into forging a vision for our local worship and media ministries.  Most of the time, however, it will probably serve as a window into the life of the family man, worship pastor, all-around-good-guy that inhabits this office in the northwest corner of my little world.   It's good to be back and to have a venue to share my thoughts, concerns, hopes, dreams, and desparations.

hello = goodbye

hello restructure
so nice of you to visit
but now that you're here
and taking up permanent residency....

goodbye...

goodbye doctor visits
goodbye dentists
goodbye things to look forward to
goodbye vacation
goodbye new house
goodbye family time
goodbye gym membership
goodbye free time
goodbye quality of life
goodbye choices
goodbye hope

hello second job & maybe a third
hello life as we use to live

I haven't missed you

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Project 1 @ Studio 801: Faithful

It's pretty cool, I must say to be behind the wheel driving a pro tools rig. Huge props to Josh for all the help in getting it started. He's the one who gave me the direction for what type of equipment to piece together. But that's another story.

This week, I was able to get together with a couple of different musicians on a couple different days and lay down the sum and bass tracks for one of our original songs that was written at first covenant. That's a pretty big deal for someone who has always enjoyed being in on other people's projects but has waited 17 years to start his own. Yeah, I'm either a huge perfectionist, a bit of a procrastinator, or just too poor to be able to afford doing it on my own. You can choose.

Monday, Brock and I got to work on the drum tracks. He's a great drummer, learned the song the week before, ran through it a couple of times, and voilà. I think we spent more time in setting up and striking the drums than in actual recording but it was so good there wasn't any sense in playing it 100 times. The unfortunate thing is that his next three weeks are pretty solid for work so we may not be getting such a fast start on the next tune.

Tonight, Dave came in to lay down the bass track. The food thing about this was that we've played the song for a year so he was already on top of things. In fact, the first run was pretty good. In fact, it would have been good enough, but I've learned something over time and that's this: good enough is often the enemy of the best. Do you ever find yourself settling for good enough only to come back to the thing a couple weeks later wishing you had done something different? So rather than settle for good enough, we spent some more time going through it until it was magic- everything falling into the pocket.

Next week, we'll be laying down the rhythm guitar, acoustic Gtr, and keyboard tracks. Hopefully by then this cold I'm fighting through will have dissipated and I'll be ready to lay down some vocals with the singers.

I'm discovering some things I've always known but a good serving of humble pie now and then isn't such a bad thing:
1. I don't know it all.
2. Especially when it comes to music
3. Especially when it comes to writing
4. Especially when it comes to recording
5. I don't have the best voice
6. I'm not a great guitar player
7. I'm not a great piano player
8. I'm really not a consistent player
9. I'm really not a perfectionist
10. And that's okay

As long as you know I'm an amateur, then we can have a great time making and recording music together and kerning something about ourselves along the way.

But I'm willing to learn

After a week of having sick kiddos and being sick myself at the tail end of it, it's time to accentuate the positive for a little bit.....

The weather in Minnesota today is absolutely gorgeous with it's blue skies, mild breeze, and temps in the 70's, and I've spent all day of it inside my office working on the service for the weekend, music, and filing odds and ends paperwork/supplies/junk that's been sitting around for a good year or two. It feels good. The great thing is that I'm surrounded by windows that now open and the breeze coming through has been very refreshing.

Tomorrow, I'll get to dive into recording a demo track for the singers and musicians for a song I wrote back this previous fall based on the Lord's prayer. We're using it in both services this weekend sanz drummers/quasi acoustic. It's really going to be more of a raw service with me at the piano, Aane on acoustic, and Karen on keys, plus a few singers. I guess some weekends will be like that.

I got to have lunch with my fam today only to be eating it on the go as they were done shopping. I shouldn't tell you that I dropped a big dollop of mustard and ketchup on my big toe while walking and eating. My daughter who is now a high school freshman was absolutely mortified. Considering that the past week we've all been covered in a lot worse, it was the least of my concerns.

I'm sitting in a music studio, which has always been a dream of mine, and absolutely amazed at what I'm getting to work with now....it blows my mind. I hope you can come see it sometime and record with me. I've settled on calling it "Studio 801". My desk is complete but there are still a few items to complete: storage wise, shelves, finding a comfy couch, etc. It's all good.

I had a piano lesson with one of my students and was able to use my ipod to not only jot notes about the lesson and areas to work on, but also to record a couple of songs he's working on and then email it to him and his mom. How cool is that? I'm still geeking out over it like the dad in the tv series Modern Family. I almost downloaded the birthday cake app just for fun.

Life is good.

Vacation

Our time of praise & worship at church yesterday was good and encouraging. God was present as His Word says He inhabits the praises of His people and His presence was sweet. I believe people were encouraged by a revelation of God's love for them during worship. If we get out of the way and worship Him authentically, not trying to put on a show or manipulate the atmosphere but rather just worship Him as we do when no one is around, then we are worshiping Him in spirit and truth, thus allowing Him to freely move among us and through us.

I'm encouraged by people taking me up on my invitation to join the worship team. There are a couple of people joining the ranks as piano/keyboard players which will be nice, filling in the holes that have been missing and allowing me to return to the guitar and leading from the front. I believe that a few more key musicians and singers will join us in the coming season. The worship team is coming along nicely for the contemporary service. I'm somewhat at a loss, however, for new direction with the traditional service. I believe God wants to do something new with them. I'm just not sure what.

Construction on the new office really hit a high point this week as the radiators and a/c ductwork went in. Today, it is a bustling bit of activity – the sheet metal workers are presently installing the radiator covers; the buildings and grounds crew are there painting the choir room and the radiator panels; the contractors will be installing the interior window trim, closet doors, and storage cabinetry. Tomorrow the carpet and baseboards will be going in, leaving just a few details to complete in the coming days ahead: the window dividing the two rooms of the office, the desk top, and then the acoustic panels in the recording booth. I'm stoked and can't wait to see it all finished – and then get started on projects that have been on hold the past three months.

Our family just took a small vacation trip to the cities. It was only a couple of hours away but it was to get out of town and just focus on the family. The laptop stayed home and I tried to stay out of my email and text messaging as much as possible. In fact, being on "radio silence" (no calls, no emails, no texts) is not only nice, it's necessary for the health of my family as well as my own mental health. We spent a couple of days at the Mall of America, walking the shops, experiencing the food, dreaming, shopping for clothes, and playing minigolf at Moose Mountain. The other day of our trip was spent at Valleyfair Amusement Park from open to close. Maddie, my charming eight-year old, took to the roller coasters like a duck to water and rode everything she could as many times as possible. She had a blast, even on the bigger coasters, though she would spend the first half of the ride ducking and clinging to my arm. At about the half-way mark she would laugh and then look up to enjoy the remainder of the ride. We ate way too much food that was no healthy and spent way too much money but the family is worth it. The trip left us all wanting more – one more day would have been nice but we now are looking forward to our week at Lake Beauty in August, planning our next daniel6pack adventure day in October, anticipating a trip home to Missouri over spring break, and working out details for a California Adventure trip next summer. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories shared together.

This weekend found us at Green Lake enjoying the beautiful water which was a perfect temperature, the beautiful blue skies with their fluffy clouds, the band at Melvin's, and time splashing each other and soaking up the sun. In fact, yesterday we forgot to put on sunscreen and a couple of us are reflecting back some sun in the form of very pink skin. I think I'm learning a lesson this summer about Minnesota – after being trapped indoors all winter long, you need to take advantage of every day you can in the summer to get out and enjoy the 75-80 degree weather with its low humidity and cool breezes. Six weeks of summer are left and we plan on soaking up as much of it as we can.

 

 

Sunday Reflections

• Today I was the teaching pastor at FCC.  Every other pastor was gone except for me.  I was a little worried because I don't see myself as a preacher - mostly because I ramble and have a hard time getting to the point, bringing it all together.  If I could sing it it would be fine.  We dived into a message based on "The Air I Breathe" by Louie Giglio, which has been a very instrumental book in my life.   I was so pumped about this message that last night I couldn't fall asleep last night until 2 am. 
• Worship is....our response to God, both personal and corporate, for who He is and what He has done, lived out in the things we say and the way we live. 
• The band did a great job with worship today.  I enjoyed being able to do more than just 4 or 5 songs but being able to go on a journey today through the theme of worshiping the limitless, infinite, all-sufficient God.  It was pretty special.  Want the list?  Here we go:  
• • I'm Singing (Kari Jobe)
  • With Abandon (Eric Stark)
  • The Air I Breathe (Michael W. Smith) 
  • Beautiful Savior (Chris Greseth)
  • Revelation Song (Kari Jobe)
  • God of Wonders (Third Day)
  • Your Name High (Hillsong United)
  • Hosanna (Paul Baloche) 
• Beth is feisty today but I think I gave her permission to be during church. I like it.  She's awesome!
• Merica invited us and several others to come over this afternoon. Hanging out at the pool with friends and family was fun, relaxing, and a perfect end to a great day.  She's a great hostess and is doing a great job raising 4 kids all under the age of 7.  
• This week is the SonShine festival in Willmar.  I'm looking forward to seeing some of my favorite bands again:  Decemberadio, Superchick, Casting Crowns, Tenth Avenue North...just to name a few.  In the same week, we're also hosting two musical groups at church.  The Gospelmen will be doing worship during both services and the Allen Family will be doing a concert Sunday evening.  After that, it's time to get out of Dodge for awhile and have some one-on-one time with the family.
• The office remodeling is coming along but it seems to be a little slow right now.  Monday/Tuesday, the new windows will be going in.  We have to order carpet and counter tops.  Acoustic sound tiles have to go in. The choir room paint has been purchased and will probably be done this week.  Some wiring is still left to do as well as all the heating and cooling (radiators reinstalled and duct work put in).  It may be the middle of August before I get to be in there but that's construction, right?  
• Final thought for the day - diet plans can be my nemesis but losing 11 pounds the last two weeks is huge. 

Between Sundays

What a week, what a week.  Life with Brian has been quite busy between Sundays this week.  Here's just a snapshot:

• Dress rehearsals for the Music Man at the Barn Theatre were Monday and Tuesday night.   I've had the great pleasure of working with a superb cast.  I could go on and on about the cast but you really just need to experience it yourself.
• We opened the show on Wednesday and had 4 great performances.  There are 8 more to go.  Wed - Sat, June 16th - 26th.
• Emily (my oldest daughter) ran her first 5k this week in 22 minutes in the rain.  What can I say except I'm super proud of her.  
• Meanwhile, I ran my first time in 2 months - the schedule has just been crazy - I've been lazy, really, and boy could I tell it's been a while.  My back was stiff and I had to cut my 35 minutes down to 25.  Ouch.
• Our outdoor service was scheduled for today.  I had the sound stage ready to go, the sound equipment, band, and singers, only to have to move it inside due to the threat of rain.  What a drag.   We had a great time inside but 50% chance of rain turned into an entire day of no rain whatsoever.  Everything else happened outside - games, face painting, inflatables, barbeque cook-off (congrats to Sheila) (better luck next year Chad).  
• After a short break from the block party, we returned to the church for VBS.  Great time - almost 100 kids.  When it comes to VBS, you can never have enough volunteers but our helpers are awesome.  
• Now I'm chilling with the Tony's, enjoying some great music, typing during the acceptance speeches, and looking forward to a day off tomorrow - just playing guitar, songwriting, and who knows what else.