This is a good week: opportunities for Worship…

Every once in a while I have a week were I get to live my dreams (like here, here, & here, for instance): this week is one of them.

On this past Sunday night I got to lead worship at the Gathering Place for the first time.  This has been a dream of mine since my first visit to Brunswick and the Golden Isles.  Now, as the Worship Leader for the Gathering Place this Summer, I will be leading multiple teams of High School Musicians – a first in the 28 years the GP has existed – in leading the 1,000+ youth who come from all over to hear the Word taught by some excellent speakers, and worship together in an atmosphere that can be called nothing short of “EXCITING”!  This past Sunday was our first of the Summer, and it was CRAZY!

On Monday night I rehearsed with next week’s team for this coming Sunday.  The two guitarists working with us this week are Freshman in Highschool, but you wouldn’t know it to hear them.  Rehearsal was not only fun, but also a great encouragement to even the adults present.  To see High School kids worshiping God with passion, learning to work together as a team – to see them GET the BIG PICTURE is just exciting!

Last night I spent recording my wife’s vocals, and putting some final touches on a high energy corporate worship song we wrote called “All in All”.  An early demo of it can be heard on our Virb site.  We hope to mix it this weekend, to make it available for free at my brother-n-law’s c.d. release party on the 20th.  More on that in a few days.

Today – in just a few minutes – I will be heading over to St. Simons Community Church to lead spontaneous worship during a corporate prayer time we have there weekly.  I won’t say I’m not a little nervous, as spontaneity is not one of my gifts, but I’m more than willing to step out in faith and give it a try.  God will catch me.

Tonight, a highlight of every week, is Inside Out.  I’ve been leading the worship team there for a few years now: I love the kids – I love the energy – I love the ministry that takes place there.  Honestly, I look forward to Wednesdays the same way most people look towards Friday.

On Thursday night I’ll be rehearsing with Harriet Jones, preparing for Sunday morning at SSCC.  Friday night I will be mixing “All in All”.  Saturday morning I will be rehearsing with Saint Lewis to prepare for next week’s concert.  Sunday morning, singing tenor & playing a little guitar for both services at SSCC, and then I’ll be back at the GP for the 2nd main event.

I’m sure to some it sounds exhausting, and physically, it is.  But I feel so blessed with opportunity during weeks like this – I get to live my dream of playing music, & worshiping God.  It gets no better than this.

CORE AUDIO: DISK IS FULL

So, how many of you guys recording tunes with Logic have ever had it stop mid-session and the words of doom pop onto your screen: CORE AUDIO: DISK TOO SLOW!?  I’m running Logic on a Mac Mini, so I’ve been encountering this problem often as of late, which is terribly given that I’m in a crunch on finishing a few tunes.  Well, apart from purchasing a Western Digital external fire-wire drive, which took a bit of the load off of my system, I discovered another simple fix.  If you’re like me and love using the plug-ins, that can apparently really suck the CPU dry.  So, once you’ve got those tracks pretty much as you want them, click on the little ‘snowflake’ besides the ‘solo’, ‘mute’, & ‘record’ buttons, and freeze the tracks you aren’t going to be messing with for a while.  It takes all of the info in those tracks and creates an aif file for each track freezed, which it refers to until you ‘thaw’ it to make changes to later, which frees up a ton of memory.  In my case, it gave me my ‘recording studio’ back.  So, just a little tip for those interested.

Blessings…