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US Holiday/WG11 Conference – edify, songwrite, organise, gather live

Day 3 of WorshipGod 11. One general session, two more seminars, and an evening of singing for a live album recording. We worship a generous King, showering kindness on us!

Edify

For the morning session, the worship was led by Sojourn Music. Their songs have a unique indie-folk sound to their songs, and lead using a neoliturgical style, incorporating elements such as responsive reading and structuring the songs using the gospel (from adoration, to confession of sin, to the work of Christ, to assurance of peace etc.) Very fascinating and fresh take on many of Isaac Watt’s hymns. I would particularly commend the song “Absent From Flesh” from their latest album, The Water and the Blood.

This morning, Bob Kauflin taught from 1 Corinthians 14:1-33. Rather than explain a particular view of spiritual gifts, he tried to show that the Apostle Paul’s main idea through this passage is to encourage the divided, self-centred Corinthian church to ensure that what we do in our gatherings edify, or build up each other. Not only that, God is the one who edifies His church when we gather. Another helpful message with very practical implications on how we organise our church services – for example, do we provide some way for the congregation to build each other up (whether planned or spontaneous)?

(Note: You can listen to the MP3 of the message here)

After the morning session, Cheryl attended two more workshops on sound engineering topics, while William went to two others:

Songwrite

In a seminar titled “What Makes These Songs Great?”, Steve and Vikki Cook (writers of memorable songs like “Glories of Calvary”) walked through the melodic and lyrical features that help to make a worship song that stands the test of time. I found it helpful as it was the first teaching on songwriting I’d heard that pursued musical and lyric excellence not for it’s own sake, but so that it better communicates and shares the life-giving message of Jesus. It’s also sparked a dormant interest in my own feeble attempts and songwriting.

Organise

In this seminar, Ken Boer (Music Director at Covenant Life Church) gave helpful principles and ideas for how to organise a growing ministry team – this was very practical and covered things like personal productivity and organisation, timekeeping, team organisation, and leadership of ministry teams. I hope there’s things I can learn from this to better serve our teams back at Howick Baptist.

Gather live

Recording the live album was fantastic. We sang through fifteen songs that trace the shape of a corporate gathering. The songs went from adoration, to confession of sin, to proclaiming the work of Christ, to assurance in our struggles, to preparing for the preaching of the Word, to remembering the Lord’s Table, to a sending off/benediction.

(Here’s a video of us recording/singing one of the new songs, “Generous King”)

The music was tight, the lyrics we were singing were all gospel-focused and gave truth in fresh words and phrases. My voice became really hoarse from singing praises to God so much. I kept thinking, imagine how wonderful it will be in Heaven to have glorified bodies to not only have the desire, but also the ability to praise the Lamb upon the throne forever!

We’re looking forward to when the CD comes out, approximately in November. In addition, they recorded lots of footage on camera so there will likely be video as well. How exciting that this could help to spread gospel-rich, life-changing songs!

Next: mission-focused meetings, instrument shopping, Sunday meeting

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Update (26/08/2011): here’s the full series of our time in the USA.

Part 1: Fly, land, drive
Part 2: train, jam, steak
Part 3: sing, meet, glory
Part 4: rehearse, seminars, NZ connection, Thabiti
Part 5: edify, songwrite, organise, gather live
Part 6: mission-focused meetings, instrument shopping
Part 7: Covenant Life, tears, crepes and goodbyes, Giant groceries
Part 8: DC take 2, travelling back, final reflections

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– William

US Holiday/WG11 Conference – rehearse, seminars, NZ connection, Enfield, Thabite

Day 2 of WorshipGod 11.

A full day of 2 general sessions and 2 seminars, as well as dinner with a family with strong NZ connections. Wow, thank you Lord for such an amazing day!

Rehearse

There was some more comedy from Mark Altrogge in the morning (it seems like a WorshipGod thing for Mark to encourage and make us laugh with the things he says!)

Rich Gunderlock and the Bairds led us in singing this morning. This included some songs they had written, including “Completely Done”. I appreciated the way they pointed to Jesus through singing, praying, Scripture reading and words of encouragement.

The teaching this morning was from Bryan Chapell. He’s written a book called “Christ-centered Worship” which I’ve bought, look forward to reading it soon!

Bryan Chapell taught from Isaiah 6 as a picture or rehearsal of the gospel, and how it can inform the way our services can similarly help us to rehearse the gospel progression: from glory, to grace, to mission.

(Note: You can listen to the MP3 of the message here)

Seminars

We split up and attended two seminars during the afternoon.

William
The first one (run by Bob) covered principles and suggestions when thinking through how to choose songs. There were plenty of really good ideas and things to consider – will be looking forward to see how to apply them when I’m choosing songs in the future.

The next seminar was even more interesting – a few worship bands signed up to play a song each. Bob gave feedback, encouragement and constructive feedback. What was particularly valuable was some of the comments about band dynamics, voicing, arrangements etc that Bob gave from his accumulated experience with contemporary praise bands.

Cheryl
Two workshops by Doug Gould, a sound technician at Covenant Life Church, were very helpful. Lots of good explanations for how to reduce stage noise, how different types of microphones work and what they’re useful for, and more. These are workshops and learnings our own sound engineers at HBC would be blessed by.

Thabite

For the evening session, Thabite Anyawile – the Caribbean Spurgeon – brought the Word to us from 1 Timothy 4, emphasizing that the Word of God is to be central in our preaching. I would recommend this message in particular to both pastors and worship leaders, as there are principles and applications for both. If the Word is to be central in our gatherings, both should be on the same page!

(Note: You can listen to the MP3 of the message here)

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Some miscellaneous highlights:

The worship in song tonight was led by Enfield – and the energy and zeal they had was AWESOME!

We got to have dinner with a family who have a special love for New Zealand. Susan Perdue spent some time in Taranaki as an exchange student in NZ, and still have special connections with her adopted parents that she stayed with. Philip and Susan have three children who are all very talented musicians – their eldest son, Chris, showed me his mandolin – what a neat instrument!

It’s a fascinating experience being in a church where there’s a traffic cop to direct traffic in, and where there’s traffic jams after each session. wow.

Next: More seminars, Joseph, Live album recording

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Update (26/08/2011): here’s the full series of our time in the USA.

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– William

US Holiday/WG11 Conference – sing, meet, glory

Wednesday – Day 1 of WorshipGod 11.

Some miscellaneous observations to begin with first:

My USA driving skills have improved a bit, praise God! The weirdest thing here would definitely be the stop sign intersections. Instead of roundabouts, everyone has a stop sign in front of them, and whoever gets there first gets to drive first. Had to think hard a couple of times!
Food here is preservative-laden, and soft drinks (soda) tastes a different kind of sweet, because instead of sugar they use high fructose corn syrup. No quite the same…
American Chinese food – it’s just like the movies! You get a fortune cookie!!! Words cannot describe how cool it is to feel like you’re in a movie, with American accents all around you as you move around the place.

Sing

Alright – this was the first day of the conference. Officially it begins in the evening with the first general session, but in the afternoon both Cheryl and I had signed up for a pre-conference intensive on using a contemporary choir in corporate worship. Ken Boer, Music Director at Covenant Life Church, was very helpful in both teaching on this topic (the role of the choir, comparin traditional and contemporary style, and how to arrange choir parts to model congregational participation, enhance the congregation’s sound and to add special elements to the church gathering).

The most exciting part about the choir workshop was that we would actually be able to sing with the Na Band, led by Devon Kauflin, for the first session of the conference!

(Here’s a video of us rehearsing beforehand:)

What an experience that was to look out at 1800 people from the main stage to kick off the conference! It was so cool to be in a choir where all we really did was join the rest of Gods people in songs of praise! Some very apt songs as well (will link to the song list when Bob Kauflin puts it up).

Meet

This was definitely the biggest church gathering we had ever been a part of – 1800 pastors, worship leaders, musicians, tech crew etc all gathered together to worship God in a variety of ways!

During each session, Bob Kauflin and a number of regional worship directors give announcements and offer giveaways – even the giveaways, Bob explained, is part of our worship in response to our gratitude for Gods free gift of grace through Christ, by the Spirit. Incidentally, we all had prize draw tickets, which would have been a very effective way of encouraging attendance!

Glory

Ray Ortlund Jr preached from 2 Cor 3:18 on the title, “Gathering to Behold”. A really good challenge from the Word to have a higher and more biblical view of what we do when the church gathers. On Sunday meetings, works righteousness (v14) is deconstructed, and the greater glory of Jesus is presented. We’re not just hearing of Jesus, we should be shown Christ, with unveiled face – for He’s that glorious! God helped me to see through Ray that the local church meeting isn’t just a social thing, or only to be with one another, but a supernatural event that comes from the Lord:

“If what we go to church for is only to be with one another, then that’s all we will get – one another. And that’s not enough.”

Oh Lord, help me to not see our meeting together as “just church”……..

(Note: You can listen to the MP3 of the message here)

Next update: Christ-centred worship, Choosing songs wisely, More Singing!, NZ connections, saying Thabite Anyawile three times real fast….

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Update (26/08/2011): here’s the full series of our time in the USA.

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– William Chong

US Holiday/WG11 Conference – train, jam, steak

It’s been a real joy to stay with the Giglio family. They’re also hosting two other conference attendees all the way from Merthyr Tydfil, Wales – Fran and Matt Richley (father and son). Matt Richley is a fellow worship leader, and recently completed a 9 month internship at Sovereign Grace Ministries under the mentorship of Bob Kauflin and Ken Boer. He’s also (in)famous for the training videos he made for a couple of songs from Sovereign Grace’s new “Risen” CD.

Fran is a police officer and a professional motorsport fine artist (his website) – and really talented on piano and keyboard.

On Tuesday, the day before the conference, the Richleys kindly invited us along for a day trip to Washington DC, about a 1/2 hour ride on the Metro (subway) away. We had lunch together at a Mexican fast food joint called Qdoba’s – what tasty burritos! Afterwards, we visited two Smithsonian museums, the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum. Both were very interesting – the Natural History Museum had a butterfly enclosure that we both particularly enjoyed.

For dinner we were invited to the home of Mauricio and Sonia Velarde – what a friendy and hospitable couple!

Mauricio is an ace on the guitar, and plays in a very authentic Spanish style. He is originally from Bolivia, while Sonia is Puerto Rican. Mauricio cooked us some of his own cuts of steak and grilled them on the BBQ – they were probably the best steaks we’ve ever tried!

After dinner we got our various instruments from Mauricio’s collection – guitars, keyboards, a violin(!), a cahonga and a quatro(traditional 12-string Spanish guitar) and jammed throughout the evening, playing all sorts of songs together. Mauricio was so kind to give us one of his old Covenant Life Sunday morning music folders, which had guitar charts for many of the songs they would use during regular Sunday meetings.

What a joy to be able to share our lives together, with our common unity in Christ as well as our shared love for music. Thank you Lord!!

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Update (26/08/2011): here’s the full series of our time in the USA.

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– William Chong

US Holiday/WG11 Conference – fly, land, drive

Reflections on our trip so far – exhausting and exhilarating! And the conference hasn’t even started yet!

Fly

Flying in basically seemed like an extra long day (since we crossed the dateline)… it’s the furthest from home both of us have ever been. We flew on Virgin Airways, which was the cheapest option. It also meant three separate flights – Auckland to Sydney, Sydney to LA, LA to Washington. We tried to sleep on the Sydney-LA flight – not much success thanks to our body clocks. at the inflight entertainment was pretty good though. Also got some long-awaited reading done, started on Dr Edgar Andrew’s very well-written “Who Made God”, and continuing through “Worship by the Book” edited by DA Carson.

Land

We landed in Dulles International Airport (just outside Washington DC), and from there had to go pick up our rental car at 9pm, foreign country, and all the roads were back to front. Initially our idea was to pick up a US SIM card and then use my mobile phone’s GPS. Unfortunately that became out of the question once we realised that no one sells SIMs around here! After being stung with extra insurance costs and GPS hire charges (doubling our original online quote) – I (William) got behind the wheel and started our 40 minute drive from the airport to the host home.

Drive

OK. I will not lie – driving on the other side of the road is terrifying. I’m used to trying to adjust to the centre lane on my right, and looking out for the blind spot on my right before changing lanes. Now all this is on my left… it’s freaky. Still not used to it. Please pray for us when we are driving, we would love to see you all again! You can click here now to how to plan your trip effectively according to your budget which is also packed with lots of fun and entertainment.

The GPS was so helpful though – told us exactly which lanes to take and so on. We eventually made it to our host home in Clarksburg, Maryland, and were welcomed by Peter and Sherly Giglio (“JHEE-leeo”, not Gig-leo). They’ve been such wonderful hosts so far – they have about 6 other guests with them and are just very casual and welcoming about it all. Such hospitable people! Sherly’s testimony of coming to salvation in Jesus Christ was so wonderful to hear as well.

Got to our rooms and finally got to lie down on a comfy, American bed after over 24 hours and crossing 17 hours’ worth of timezones!

Some miscellaneous thoughts so far:

Every American we have met so far has been very friendly. I wonder if it’s our Kiwi accents.
Speaking of accents, I can feel mine starting to slip already (I’m notoriously chameleon-like with my speaking accent, it changes very quickly to the environment I’m in. Sorry in advance when I get back and it’s all muddled up!)
it’s hot here. It’s almost as humid and tropical-feeling as our last trip to Kuching, Malaysia!
yes, the toilets flush the other way. It is very bewildering.
Driving in miles per hour isn’t too difficult – you can “feel” the km/h equivalent
While I think we were overcharged a fair bit with our car rental, at least we got a Lincoln MKZ out of it (complimentary upgrade).

Thanks to God! We’re safe, no travelly effects (except for some jet lag), driving was OK, and everyone so far has been very friendy to us!

Next update: Whistlestop Capitol tour, Merthyr Tydfil Wales, Bolivian steaks, Es tu Gracia!

Update: here’s the full series of our time in the USA.

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– William Chong