I’ll be leading worship again this Wednesday night at Crossroads so I put this set together for Elevation on Sunday to be used there as well. It’s kind of like using the same term paper for two different classes, …not that I ever did that. I’m just trying to get the most out of the work I do. Energy conservation, it’s very green of me.

Here’s the set:
Made To Worship – Chris Tomlin
Hosanna – Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown
Send Revival, Start With Me – Matt Redman
How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
(Sermon)
Better Is One Day – Matt Redman
Wonderful Cross (Hymn) - Arr. By Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman

As you can see this is pretty much a Tomlin/ Redman love fest here. What can I say, they are my main guys. Again, wanting to put together a set of fairly familiar songs, I seem to lean pretty heavy on these guys. Obviously, Tomlin is approaching that Steven Curtis Chapman status, where the general Christian audience are familiar with his work. But as for Redman, (and it used to be this way with Tomlin), if I was playing a CD (now I’ve dated myself) for a non-worship-team crowd, people would be like, “oh he does this song too?”

As a whole, I thought the set was great because it made it easy for people to jump right in and worship God. And wouldn’t you say that’s the whole point? Would you? No, seriously it’s a question, what do you think the whole point of playing music in church is?

So it’s new years eve, and I’m kind of feeling like… ‘whatever’.

I mean I’m excited about this next year, and it’s been a decent year and all, God gave us a healthy baby boy, for which I’m eternally grateful. I’m not even that bent over the economy. I guess I kind of look at things as one week at a time, which is a little bit more planned out than one day at a time, but that’s just how I handle time management. So maybe the transition of years is not quite as exciting as the transition of weeks in my life.

I’ve got to leave in a few hours to run sound at a big outdoor event that’s happening tonight in downtown Sacramento. Maybe the festivities, and a few thousand people there will get me in the spirit. Post-Christmas blues, birthday in 4 days (not quite as exciting these days), I don’t know….How do you feel?

My daughter, Chloe’s first solo performance. Special moment.

Yes, the pre-Christmas Eve service, consisting of a few good songs that just didn’t work for the coming Christmas Eve service, accompanied by a few appropriate worship tunes. Here’s how it went;

Angels We Have Heard on High
O Come Let Us Adore Him- traditional & Matt Redman Version
I Adore You- Phil Wickham
(Sermon)
God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman – The November Green Version
Humble King – Brenton Brown
King of Glory – Chris Tomlin

It would be real easy to play the first two tunes exactly the same, but I thought that might get old. So we played Angels with just a simple G to C on 4, medium groove and then played all of the half-note/ quarter-note chords on the Chorus. I liked it. O Come Let Us Adore Him, pretty straight up-tempo until going to cut time feel used by Matt Redman on one of the Passion Live CDs. Was very pleased with the way the Wickham tune closed out this set in good worship. God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman, good dramatic tension, except when I flubbed the lyrics to the second verse, oh well. Was checking, out Brenton Brown’s blog, and came across this version of Humble King with a Christmas Verse, that I had never heard before, and thought this would be a good E-minor transitional song. When I finished playing this song, it just seemed to want to take me to a slow chorus of “Who is this King of Glory? The Lord, strong and Mighty” and than we speed up the tempo, and closed out the service. It was a good morning of worship. Next-up, Christmas Eve, and I’m off next Sunday so I’ll recap that on next Monday, the 29th. Merry Christmas!

Sadly this is the last fantasy football post I’ll make until next August. Even sadder, my quest for a three-peat championship fell short, 95-87. But let me just close by summing up the importance of playing the wire,  as well as the unpredictability and luck of it all.

Last week I picked up 3 players: RB Dominque Rhodes, RB Tashard Choice, & TE Jeremy Shockey.

I played Shockey over Greg Olson, Shockey had 1, Olson had 4, a difference of minus 3 points.

I played Rhodes over Brandon Jacobs (who was out), 23pts for me. 

And here is how I lost the championship, I played my #1 pick, a healthy, league leading rusher Clinton Portis against a weak Bengal defense, instead of playing the non-starting, had one good-game, rookie, Tashard Choice, against an acclaimed NY Giants defense. Portis gives me 7,  Choice breaks a late TD run for 30 yards, and ends up with 20pts. A minus 13 difference on the bench. I mentioned that I lost by 9pts right? Of course, I don’t expect any sympathy, just like no one except Boston is rooting for the Brady-less Patriots. Oh well, it was the most competitive season so far. And I still say, you got to play the wire, if you want to win at Fantasy Football. Any one else make it to their fantasy championship?

As, I’m writing this it’s starting to snow here again in Auburn. This happens maybe a couple times a year. The first time this year came on Sunday, and in a weird way, I think had some effect on our gathering. First of all, attendance was pretty low. It’s a rural community, so those living in a higher ‘elevation’ (pun-intended), opted to stay home. Second, if it’s snowing than it’s obviously cold, kind of like the audience’s response. I did my best to warm them up, and invite people into worship, but it was a bit like trying to plow snow, it takes a while to get somewhere. Here are the songs, I played on Sunday…

Move Me- Jesse Butterworth
The Highest and Greatest- Tim Hughes
Great is Thy Faithfulness – Hymn
Pour Out Your Spirit Lord – Evan Wickham
Indescribable – Chris Tomlin
Not To Us- Chris Tomlin

Despite my excitement in picking and playing the opening set, it just wasn’t moving people, so instead of fighting it, I cut off the more up parts we rehearsed and took the songs down with mellower, slower, acoustic, choruses, which did make the hymn turn out nicely. Pour Out Your Spirit Lord, was probably my favorite song, just a cool vibe you can expect from the San Diego Native Wickham Jr. I’m bummed that I won’t be able to see him play at Crossroads on Christmas Eve. The last 2 songs made my wife say “I’m looking forward to the Tomlin concert in Sacramento in March. We need to get our tickets”. Yes we do, Yes we do. Any Cold-Weather Worship Leaders have any advice for beating the winter elements?

So this is the championship weekend and I’m happy to say that for the third year in a row, I’ll be apart of it. Whether I can win it or not is quite questionable. I’m not feeling very good about what used to be my strength, my running backs. Clinton Portis, Brandon Jacobs, & Marion Barber. This used to be a good problem as they were all scoring 15-25 pts a week,not lately. Portis might be my healthiest choice, in that he didn’t play much last week, so he should be able to practice and play, if he can set aside his public mockery of his coach, and take it out on the Bengals. I would have played Peyton Hillis again, but he’s now on the IR. NYG plays DAL this week, two tough defenses. Brandon says he’s going to play this week. Barber didn’t even travel with the team and is having his toughness questioned by owner Jerry Jones. Absurd. So in light of this, I made quite a few waiver moves last night. I picked up Barber’s back-up Tashard Choice, but I’ll need to wait until Saturday night to see if there’s clarity about who’s going to start. I also picked up Dominic Rhodes. Joseph Addai is a little banged up and the Colts are playing Detroit. Could be a realistic possibility.

And as for TE, Graham kind of let me down while Greg Olson had his best game with 11pts. So I dropped Graham and picked up the shakey Jeremy Shockey. These guys square off tomorrow night, so I’ve got to decide soon who I’m going to start. Shockey is ranked higher on most experts rankings this week. Oh by the way, my opponent put up 122pts last week in his victory and I put up a lesser 103pts in mine. So, which TE should I go with and which RBs should I start? Help?

I attended a different congregation this Sunday. Drove 150 miles to get there. Parking was terrible, but man were people excited to be there. They took offering like 3 times, even before the program was started. Over 60,000 people were wearing their faith based apparel, breaking bread, cooking up burnt offerings of meat, and serving wine, and other fermented beverages. They even had large inflatable’s for the kids. The seats were cold, hard, and crammed together. It started with music, singing, announcements, pyro-techniques, and the largest American flag I’d ever seen. The gathering was highly entertaining and received much applause at the end. The choir outfits were a bit inappropriate, and the worship leader was kind of funny looking, but I’ll probably go back…

I know I said, I would post this Thursday, but just couldn’t get to it. As I posted earlier, Wednesday night I lead worship at Crossroads Church. I was a little nervous, with it being the biggest church in town, and having some old friends there, but also felt very welcomed too. I also have a reputation of being a bit “livelier (which means louder)” than some of the area worship leaders, so I wasn’t sure how that was going to go over. Turned out it went over fine. Being a guest leader can sometimes be a bit uncomfortable for a few songs, while people are just kind of checking you out. My prayer of the day was that, this wouldn’t be about me, but that people would worship passionately. By the time we hit the chorus of the first song, “Forever”, people were engaged. It was awesome, and I was just honored to be apart of it. Peoples hearts ready to respond in worship was truly a testament to what God is doing at Crossroads Church.

You can check out the listing of the whole set below. I was also asked to play a couple of my original tunes, so I snuck in “The Everlasting” and “Thanks & Rejoice”. It was kind of “special-music-y” which isn’t my normal favorite thing, but I think it was appropriate in this setting. I also met a lady who said she had read on Pastor Todd’s blog that he was listening to my CD, and so she checked it out on iTunes and bought it. Wow, this whole blog thing might actually be working! What do you think Brody, might be a good idea for a company (SkörInc)?

Overall, very thankful to get out and play for a new audience. Looking forward to going back again. My advice to other worship leaders, is that sticking to at least 75% familiar songs to a new audience, is definitely a great way to get people engaged quickly in worship, which is always a good thing. Got any other good advice to share?

For most of the fantasy football world, playoffs start tomorrow night. I’ve made it in one of three leagues I played in. Fortunately, it’s the elevation league, the one with the most pride and ego on the line. I’m trying to go for a three-peat championship! Unfortunately, much of my success has come from the legs of Clinton Portis & Marion Barber. However, both sustained some injuries which I saw play out last weekend. This forces me to use my wire pick-up of a few weeks ago Peyton Hillis to pair up with Brandon Jacobs. I’m a bit nervous, but Peyton has scored at least 15pts a game since taking on the starting role 3 weeks ago. He’s also facing the worst defense in the league, Kansas City. So this should be a good matchup. He’s still a rookie and I have my concerns, especially after seeing what we thought was a beat-up Brian Westbrook score 4 TDs last week.

As far as this weeks wire move, I haven’t been happy with my TE’s. Greg Olson hasn’t been doing much, and Kellen Winslow is out so I dropped him in favor of Denver TE Daniel Graham. I know he’s sharing the field with the other well known TE, but Graham has more TDs and has gotten some good points lately.

This week I face the Fighting Weavils (Devin Liden). I barely beat him by 2pts during the regular season match up. I’m sure he wants revenge. Anyone else looking for revenge in the playoffs?