Been awhile

The well-intentioned but oft-neglected blog; which is just one of the items on my 'list.'

I was doing some thinking this evening - you can get up off the floor now, I'm serious - about the mass of things facing me personally and professionally. It's the ever-growing 'list' of things that I need and/or want to accomplish. I use the term list quite loosely here because there really is no list (personally), it's all just thought and talk right now, but also weighing heavier and heavier on my soul - as I sit here and stare that the new computer I recently purchased that sorely needs my attention.

As I think about this, I try to look back at my life and can't help but wonder what happened. I don't think I used spend more time thinking and worrying about what needs to get done, than actually doing it. When I bought my first house, for example, it was a fixer-upper in every possible sense of the term. I pretty much gutted the main level of the house and redid everything from flooring to trim to paint, fixtures and appliances - all within 3-4 months of closing on the house then moving in. Today, I have a house. We did get the interior painted prior to moving in, but it's not changed otherwise one iota since we moved in - and believe me, there's a LOT that needs to be done.

For cars, I used to dive in and fix anything/everything I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment derived from taking a pile cast iron, aluminum and steel parts and having a running engine at the end. I used to actually love to balance the checkbook, maintain loans, do accounting - in fact I seriously considered accounting as a career path at one point because I aced every accounting and finance class I took. But now I have several nagging things to take care of, but can't seem to find the energy, motivation, drive - whatever that 'thing' is that makes us desire to get something done.

I'm left with a depressing question: What the hell happened?

Mike somewhat amusingly calls my state 'post (former employer) management disorder.' While my time at my last employer was indeed spent in a dysfunctional and oppressive management structure, I can't just let that excuse my disappointment in my ability to do things. Something has changed, and I'm pretty sure it's a whole lot deeper than the case-study-on-poor-management that was the place I worked for. In fact as I look back, I'm pretty sure this all existing prior to working there.

Cognitively, I know how to tackle these projects, and I think I'm intelligent enough to research, learn, and apply new methods. I have a degree in project management, for crying out loud. You'd think I'd have learned *something* about taking on a gelatinous mass of confusion and massaging it enough to coalesce things into manageable tasks. For that matter, I pursued the degree because at one point in my life I though it was something I was good at. I felt at one time that understanding how things fit together on a macro scale, knowing what needed to happen to get the pieces together, and communicating those tasks was something that came naturally. I was always the one that could take a project handed to a group and divide up the work among the team. Now, I'm not at all sure that's something I should be pursuing, or is even a strength at all.

There are plenty of tools and methods out there that I can apply. I've read about many, but the same thing that's in my way has affected me actually choosing something and starting to apply it. I have the GTD book, both in ebook and audio book format - but haven't read nor listened to it. I have several bits of software tools that I could use, but don't. There's something bigger, more sinister, that's wholly a part of my make-up going on here.

I'm missing something, some key ingredient for success. And that, more than anything right now, is beating me down.

Sunday Setlist and Recap, January 25, 2009

To continue my participation in Fred McKinnon's Setlist Carnival, where you post your song service setlist for the week and link back to his site with the goal is to see what others are doing in order to help with our own planning and whatnot, here's our setlist for Christian Church of Broomfield for this past week:

10:45 (Contemporary) Service
Here I am Worship (Tim Hughes)
We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise (Kirk Dearman)
You're Worthy of My Praise (Reginald Heber, John Dykes)
Praise Adonai (Paul Baloche)
Here I am to Worship (reprise) (Tim Hughes -communion)
I Will Come and Bow Down (Martin Nystrom -invitation)
Everlasting God (Brenton Brown -closing)

We were short several band members this week, so we made some major changes to our intended set. We orginally had "Let God Arise"(Tomlin), "Father, Spirit, Jesus"(Casting Crowns), and "We Fall Down"(Tomlin) in the set. Those got axed, and "Here I am to Worship" was added. For musicians we had Jeff as leader on acoustic guitar, Robert on synth, and me on (Jeff's) acoustic bass (I wasn't on the schedule at all). Our pianist was sick and didn't show this morning. The scheduled guitar player didn't show at yesterday's rehearsal nor today's service, our normal worship leader was out of town, and there was no drummer scheduled.

The service went well, all things considered. There were a few rough patches: getting into songs was harder than normal because the 2 primary song-starters were out. There were a couple of turns missed, but we compensated well and kept a flow within songs. The starting and transitioning between songs (really the overall flow) of the song service was our biggest concern at our post-service chat.

The post-service chat went well. I led the discussion with my idea from last week, and I think that really encouraged participation. I look forward to chatting with Todd this week. I find myself brimming with hope that we've collectively come to a focal point for improvement. There are so many aspects we could address that nothing really improves. This helps us to point our energies.

Start of a new era

Tomorrow begins a new era in the United States, for better - and worse.

Yes, America needs to move on from the Bush administration. No question about that. Yes, it's great that a minority was elected to the highest office in the land, giving a lot of people a sense of validation and renewed hope. And maybe even some healing.

The expectations, though, are frightening. When people realize, and many never will, that government can't (and shouldn't!) fix everything that's wrong in their lives, the honeymoon will be over.

The current mess we find ourselves in isn't due any one political party or even ideology. It's due to one thing, and one thing only: entitlement. Our culture has so convinced us that we need and deserve a nice house, a nice car, the latest television, the best cellphone, and the nicest clothes We're convinced that if we don't have these things that we don't measure up - and there's an easy way to get the shiny thing that will make us think we've arrived: Credit.

When we ALL stop believing that BS and start living within our means - that's when real change will happen. That's the change that's needed in our economy. Proverbs says "The borrower is slave to the lender." Is it really any wonder what's going on?

There's always an answer to the desires of our heart, but is it right one.

Thanks to Michael Sitarzewski for the inspiration to write this.

Sunday Setlist and Recap, January 18, 2009

To continue my participation in Fred McKinnon's Setlist Carnival, where you post your song service setlist for the week and link back to his site with the goal is to see what others are doing in order to help with our own planning and whatnot, here's our setlist for Christian Church of Broomfield for this past week:

10:45 (Contemporary) Service
The Lord Almighty Reigns (Terry Butler)
Wholly Yours (David Crowder)
Holy, Holy, Holy (Reginald Heber, John Dykes)
You are God Alone (Billy Foote, Cindy Foote)
God of Wonders (Steve Hindalong, Marc Byrd)
Above All (Paul Baloche, Lenny LeBlanc)
I Stand in Awe (Mark Altrogge -communion)
Power of Your Love (Geoff Bullock -invitation)
Awesome God (Rich Mullins -closing)

I ran sound for our first service at 8:00, but again neglected to bring a bulletin home so I could post that setlist. Our DVD player (which we also play CDs with) made some interesting noises, so we'll be looking into that before next week. The music for first service went fine - there were no other issues with sound and the team did a fine job. The only problem I could hear, or rather couldn't, was the organ. See the organ's volume is controlled solely by the organist, it's not connected to the sound system at all - due to voiced speakers, I'm told. I try to stay away from organ discussions, it's something of a sacred cow. It gets played twice a month at hardly-audible levels and is a waste of space and resource, in my opinion.

For second service I played guitar. You'll notice the length of our set..that was a challenge. We cut down songs to make them all fit. I think we should've axed a couple songs instead, and that's something I'll bring up with our leader tomorrow. The performance aspect got off to a bad start because all the instruments and vocalists were muted in the house. The sound tech was distracted with recording, and didn't realize the problem right off. The whole first song was.. missing :) Once that was resolved, the songs went pretty well from a band standpoint.

A significant change was made at the drum set during rehearsal. Working with the drummer, we found a patch in the Roland brain that has a more defined bass and snare drum. That made a big difference in timing and tightness of the band over weeks past, and gives me some hope about our rhythm section, certainly much room for improvement there - but progress happened.

My favorite song this week was "God of Wonders" because I thought we did the best job on it overall. We hit the changes, we hit the tempo, we hit the parts, we hit the breaks. Everyone did, it was beautiful. The only real problem we had was starting "Holy, Holy, Holy". We'd worked out an arrangement during rehearsal, and decided that bass and piano were going to start the song together immediately after we finished "Wholly Yours". It didn't go well because the pianist forgot, and the bass player was waiting on eye contact with pianist to get started. Finally, the bass just started and we were able to get into the song. It tripped up our flow, but we recovered.

We tried something new this week: we held a 10 minute debrief immediately after the service. The purpose is to come up with things that we did good with, and things we can improve upon. As I listened to the discussion, I think I'd like to make sure everyone has a chance to participate, so I'd like to try a format of

- each person say one thing they thought was good about the service that someone else did
- each person say one thing about what they themselves need to improve on
- each person say one thing they think the team needs to improve on

and see how that goes next week. I'm excited about how this went this week and look forward to this being a tool for improvement.

The 2 major things that came out of this were: starting songs, and transitions between songs. Other things I thought of later were the 'too many songs' issue, and quality of sheet music/chord sheets. That issue tripped myself and the bass player up a couple of times this week.

Sunday Setlist and Recap, January 11, 2009

This post is part of Fred McKinnon's Setlist Carnival, where you post your song service setlist for the week and link back to his site with the goal is to see what others are doing in order to help with our own planning and whatnot, here's our setlists for Christian Church of Broomfield for this past week:


10:45 (Contemporary) Service
Hosanna (Baloche/Brown)
How Can I Keep From Singing (Tomlin)
Victory Chant (Fitts)
Bless the Name of Jesus (Carman)
Praise Adonai (Baloche)
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) (Tomlin -communion)
More Precious than Silver (Deshazo -invitation)
All Hail King Jesus (Moody -closing)

I didn't play this week as a long-lost guitarist decided to show up. I also forgot to bring home my bulletin, so I don't have the first service songs to list this week. If I think of it, I'll try to find one tomorrow night when I'm at the church for the Bethel class.

The band had energy that was lacking this week, due mostly to using a drummer-in-a-box, and Jeff's solid bass playing. There some mix issues, the synth was too loud on a couple of songs, the electric guitar seemed to be missing from a couple of songs, and the piano was too low on one. The bass and vocals sounded great, and Todd's guitar sounded pretty good, too. The overall mix was too quiet

'Hosanna' and 'How Can I Keep From Singing' came off good, due in large part to good drum groove. The electric guitar tone was too distorted and buzzy, and was lacking musically. 'Victory Chant' was fun, but Todd muffed the lyrics a couple of times throwing off the congregation - plus I don't think most realized it was a call-and-response tune. I think Todd was going for a male/female thing, but I don't think most others got that.

'Bless the Name of Jesus' is a great song, and we typically do it with a lack of...something... funk. Today's rendition was probably the best we've done - hope we can improve that one. Praise Adonai came off ok. This song needs some polish, but i think we're doing it pretty well so far. 'Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone),' one of my favorites, was pretty good, too. This the one where the piano was too low in the mix, and the synth was overpowering it. The singers did the vocals more traditionally, but miss some of the nuance and style that makes this song great.

All-in-all, an improvement and a good experience.

I thought a lot about the drummer versus the drum box this morning, and had a good lunch with Todd after service where we talked about options. We're considering purchasing Abelton Live and using Interactive Worship Live to help take up the load there (among other things). Pretty excited about that.