LCCWorship

In sticking with what seems to have become my tradition, here is my wrap-up from yesterday…

As is normal, we got to the school at 8:00AM and began the setup. This was the first time that we had to completely setup before the service (last month we were able to leave our equipment setup overnight at the school after practicing setup). Not only was this our first time to do a complete setup before the service, but we had more stuff to setup than ever before as we keep adding stuff to our setup (only few items left to add though). Anyway, it took us about 1 hour and 10 minutes to setup. Although this is the fastest we’ve ever done it (1.5 hours was our previous mark), we still are not quite to where we need to be at 45 minutes.

With setup taking a bit longer than expected, we ran late the rest of the morning. Band rehearsal ran about 35 minutes so by the time we actually finished rehearsing it would have already been time for us to start playing for the service, so things were pushed a bit more. Other than being about 10 - 15 minutes behind schedule, the service went pretty smoothly.

The most exciting part for all of us was that we had three new families visit yesterday!

Here’s the setlist…

• Love the Lord (Lincoln Brewster)
• Hosanna (Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown)
• One Way (Joel Houston & Jonathon Douglass)
• Everlasting God (Brenton Brown & Ken Riley)
• Fire Fall Down (Matt Crocker)
• Nothing But The Blood (Robert Lowry)
• Holy is the Lord (Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio)

Well, my last post was just before four of us left for California to pick up our Church on Wheels equipment. Boy that was a long trip! 48 hours, 4 grown men, Extended cab pickup (not one of those nice full cab things, a bit smaller), ~1500 miles, and not much sleep. Needless to say, we will not be doing that again any time soon. The trip was good, but the ride was too cramped for that long of a trip.

No one was able to figure out a way to sit in the back seat without their knees having to be in their chest. There was really no way to get very comfortable, so sleeping in the back seat was pretty much out of the question. Anyway, we made it down there and back and got our trailer, which we have decided to call ‘Tiny’ (there is really nothing tiny about the trailer though), and all of our equipment.

Today we spent all day sorting through the equipment and setting things up.

Tomorrow we have our second preview service, which is very exciting! We sent out 10000 mailers to the surrounding community, so we are praying that God will provide the people.

Its been a very busy 4 days. I hope to post more about our trip, our equipment, and our preview service soon as I reflect on them more. It might not be tomorrow because I plan on just resting in the afternoon after the marathon 4 days I’ve had!

Well, the time has come for 4 grown men to climb into a truck, drive down to CA, and pick up our Church on Wheels (CoW) package. At least in 1 day that time has come.

We’ll be leaving Hillsboro sometime Wednesday evening, probably around 8 or 8:30, and drive straight through the night to Madera, CA (about 733 miles). Once in Madera (Thursday morning), we will spend about 5 hours or so at the CoW facilities receiving our equipment as well as some training on using it.

We will leave Madera and drive back to Sacramento, about 150 miles north of Madera, Thursday afternoon and spend the night with someone who used to attend our ‘parent’ church, Brookwood Baptist. Leaving Sacramento Friday morning between 6 and 7 should put us back in Hillsboro sometime between 3 and 6 PM (coming back will be slower due to the additional 4000-7000 pounds we will be pulling).

On Saturday we will meet with the rest of our setup/tear down crew and practice setting up and tearing down a couple of times so we can be ready for our preview service on Sunday. Busy weekend!

Be in prayer as the four of us drive down to Madera and back, especially when pulling a large trailer.

I will try to post some pictures from our trip once we return, I don’t know that I will have a chance to post anything while we are gone.

Well, our first preview service has come and gone. We were at the school for a total of about four hours that seemed to be over in a flash.

We arrived at 8:00AM to begin setting up. Our setup was a mix and match sort of thing using borrowed equipment from several different sources. Once we have our own equipment it will be much better. It took us about 1 hour to get completely setup and then we had some bugs to workout.  Here’s what the timeline looked like.

• 8:00AM - Arrive and begin setup
• 8:50AM - Begin sound check
• 9:15AM - Band rehearsal
• 9:30AM - Break
• 9:40AM - Prayer
• 9:50AM - Band starts playing
• 10:20AM - Keith begins sermon
• 10:57AM - Invitation
• 11:02AM - Offering
• 11:07AM - Dismissed

So we didn’t quick stick to our original time schedule. I took a little longer at the beginning and got us 3-4 minutes behind, then Keith preached for 7-10minutes longer getting us further behind. I ended up cutting out 2 songs at the end to make up some time.

It was a great service though and went pretty smooth for being our first one! God is doing great things at LCC!

Here’s our setlist from yesterday:

• Everlasting God
• Awesome is the Lord
• Famous One
• Kindness
• Give Us Clean Hands
• Be the Centre (Invitation)
• Awesome is the Lord (Offering and Dismissal)

Next week we have a BBQ!

Let me catch everyone up on what has happened in the last week or so. Last time I posted on this was May 5th and we were supposed to receive our first proposal that day, which did happen.

Our first proposal came in and included absolutely everything we wanted. The key word there being ‘wanted.’  Here are some of the highlights…

• Mackie Onyx 24.4 (I thought the proposal would include either the Mackie Onyx 3280 or the Allen&Heath GL2800 w/32 channels)
•  DBX Drierack PA
• Lexicon MX200
• Fuman M-8L & M-10
• 2 Mackie SA1521z Active Speakers
• 1 Mackie SW1801z Super Active Sub
• 4 Mackie SRM350s for stage monitors
• 2 Behringer DSP1124P Feedback Destroyers
• 2 Benq SP830 Projectors
• 2 62×108 Da-lite rear projection screens
• Leviton/NSI Hon4d-000 and 0056d-000 Lighting packs (8 lights, 1 control board, gels, dmx dimmers, etc)
• 4 extra lights (2 Par56 and 2 Ellipsoidal spots)
• A bunch of stuff for the children’s area
• A bunch of pipe and drape, staging, and skirting
• Trailer system and upgrades
• A whole bunch of carts to store stuff in
• CoW Training - 2 days, 2 CoW staff travel to us, Trailer delivery, etc

For the most part this was exactly what we talked about during the site visit.  Prices were pretty good for most things, but the total cost was about $20,000 more than what we had to spend at the time.

After looking over the proposal in detail, having several meetings online and in person with the rest of the core team, a bunch of calls from Keith to Eric at CoW, searching the internet for better prices on some equipment, and a total of four revisions of the proposal we finally landed on a proposal that we all agreed to. Keep in mind that this all took place in a matter of 3 or 4 days.  Here are some of the highlights of the final proposal…

• Mackie Onyx 24.4
•  DBX Drierack PX
• Lexicon MX200
• Fuman M-8L & M-10
• 2 Mackie SRM450 Active Speakers
• 2 Mackie SRM350s for stage monitors
• 2 Mackie SRM150s for stage monitors
• 2 Behringer DSP1124P Feedback Destroyers
• 1 Benq SP830 Projectors
• 1 62×108 Da-lite rear projection screens
• Elation Lighting pack (8 par56, 1 control board, lighting trees, dmx dimmers, etc)
• A bunch of stuff for the children’s area (we changed out some items for others that cost less)
• A bunch of pipe and drape, staging, and skirting (we took out a few sections of pipe and drape)
• Trailer system and upgrades
• A whole bunch of carts to store stuff in (we got rid of one or two carts that would have just been for extra storage)
• Us traveling to Madera, CA to pick up the Trailer and Equipment and receive 4 hours of training on it

In all we saved over $11,000 from the original proposal.  When we first agreed on this proposal we didn’t know where the extra $10,000 or so would come from so we had to step out in faith that God would provide. Just like always, he did provide. And actually he provided above and beyond back in March without us even knowing. The Interstate Baptist Association had received some funds in March that were designated for us that we didn’t even know about until after we had decided on our order. God is GREAT!

Wow, what a busy day it has been!  I have a bunch of stuff going on today.  So far I’ve been going through the Church on Wheels proposal searching for places to cut back, had a teleconference with Keith, Brent, Chris, and Lance (from FellowshipTech), and been doing my real job (working for Intel). Here’s a summary…

The CoW proposal came in yesterday afternoon around 6. I took a quick look at it before finishing up our t-shirt graphics (more on that in another post). The proposal came in much higher than we can afford right now so we are looking at where we can cut back, and also praying that God will provide the rest of the finances we need to get the equipment he needs us to have. We’ll see what happens.

We have also been looking into implementing Fellowship One by Fellowship Technologies. Today we had a conference call with Lance from FTech for a sales demo. What a great service! We really liked what we saw. We’ll be making a decision on that soon too.

Well, the Church on Wheels (CoW) experience has progressed a little slower than originally anticipated. We were originally told that within a week after our site visit we would have a plan and then need to finalize our order within a week or so after than.

We finally received our Site Layout. We reviewed it last night at our Launch Team meeting. It looks good! It’s nice to finally be able to see some drawings and such with seats and everything. I might try to post some of the drawings up here if I get a chance to later.

This week should actually prove fairly productive as we are supposed also receive our equipment proposal from CoW today. We are going to have to make some swift decisions though as as we are supposed to have our equipment order ready by Friday so we can remain on schedule for delivery for our June preview service.

I’ll post later today or tomorrow if we get our proposal.

God is amazing and he continues to bless us at Life Connections! Last night we had another awesome rehearsal, which is great considering that we looked at 3 band new, tough, songs and 2 tough songs that were brand new last week. Again, we didn’t play everything perfectly and we definately still have a ways to go and a bunch of stuff to work on, but all in all it went very well and we had a great time of worshiping God.

Check out my previous post ‘Set list for rehearsal tonight…‘ if you are wondering what we songs we looked at.

The top two items that we will be working on as a band are volume/dynamics and timing. We had some problems last night with both.  The volume issues could partly be due to setting up slightly different, but they are definately not solely related to that. As for the timing issues - it is very difficult to not start going faster on slow songs especially when there are syncopated rhythms. We’ll work it all out. I’ve encouraged everyone in the band to obtain a metronome and practice at home along with that. This is especially important for drummers, even very good and accomplished drummers.

Anyhow, great practice! Next week we start looking at the set list for our May 18th preview service.

This post is to give an update on how God has provided for us at LCC in just the last few days…

First, we went prayer walking on Sunday in the neighborhoods around Patterson Elementary where we will be holding our services. God’s provision doesn’t have so much to do with the prayer walking itself (although he did provide safety for that) but more the weather. Being spring here in Oregon it can sometimes be hit and miss as to what the weather is actually going to do. The previous weekend the weather was great. It was nice and sunny and in the upper 60s to low 70s (the first ’shorts’ weather for many people in the Northwest). However, this past weekend was a different story. I’ve been trying to locate one of those nice weather icons that forecasters use in the weather reports, but have not been able to track one down that accurately describes last weekend. Friday night and Saturday both were a mixed bag of weather. It kind of seemed  like ‘mother nature’ was just putting her hand in a bag and picking a new weather event every 30 minutes or so. We saw just about everything (Sun, clouds, rain, hail, and snow) within about a 45 minute period on Saturday. It wasn’t just small, light snow flakes either.  It was heavy snow. Snow in April is unheard of in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Anyways, I’ve digressed a bit here, the forecasters were calling for more of the same on Sunday which really would have made prayer walking pretty miserable - enter God’s provision. For the two hours that we prayer walked on Sunday there wasn’t a drop of anything falling from the sky on us, in fact the clouds even cleared up and the sun broke through. I even had to take off my jacket because I was getting hot from the sun. This goes to show that God is faithful to answer prayers and always provides for his people. At some point on Sunday while prayer walking each of us was praying “God, please keep the rain and snow and hail away until we are done.”

Now, the next item…

As I mentioned yesterday we are having our first actual band rehearsal on Thursday. I have been trying to figure out how we can have any sort of productive rehearsal without any equipment (other than our own instruments). No sound board, no mics, no cables, no nothin’.  Well, again God has come through! I sent an email this morning to a couple of the other staff members to see if it would be ok if we went ahead and purchased some minimal equipment that we can use while waiting for our Church on Wheels equipment (not until June). It turns out that God, having seen this need already, had already provided a small portable sound system for us to use. Our Associate Pastor actually has access to a nice portable system that will be more than sufficient for our rehearsals and preview services until we get our own system! Praise God! So it looks like the only excuses now for a bad rehearsal is poor leadership :(.  Pressure’s on now…

These two things really serve as a great reminder that we should not worry about the details and we just need to trust God to take care of them, because as long as we are faithful to him and obey his will he WILL ALWAYS take care of the rest.

Since we are a brand new church that is not having services yet I have been debating on what to begin working on in band rehearsals. I know that we need to begin rehearsals so we can be ready for our May preview service, but I am unsure about what to work on. Currently the band is comprised of people who have all played together before at our sponsor church, Brookwood Baptist Church. Since we have all played together before we shouldn’t have any of that initial weirdness trying to feel each other out. I’m thinking the best option is to start rehearsing songs that will be new to us, as we didn’t play them at Brookwood, but also mix in one or two songs that we did play at Brookwood and really start working on making it our own.

My thought process is also compounded by the fact that we currently have no equipment of our own and wont until late June when we get our equipment from Church on Wheels. I have gotten permission to use some of Brookwood’s equipment along with their portable sound system, but this will still make for some rough, ‘nearly unplugged’ rehearsals.

We’ll see how it all goes, we should be having our first playing rehearsal this week (on Thursday). We already met once for me to go over the info sheet and rules and expectations stuff. I’ll post an update later this week…

If anyone has any ideas, post a comment and let me know.