January Update

Songwriting

In September, I decided to get more consistent about spend weekday morning worshiping God at the piano. I’ve come into work 30 minutes early after dropping the boys off to school. It has become, perhaps, my favorite time of day. Through this process, I have countless song fragments scattered among notebooks, cell phone voicemails, digital recorders, napkins, etc. At the present time, I have two priorities as it regards the songs I write/have written:  Incorporate them into our local worship at Victory Christian Center (as appropriate) and connect with other artists/churches who could take these songs beyond where I feel to go.

Collaborating With Malachi Jaggers

I met Malachi Jaggers a couple of years ago through our mutual friend Scott Greeson. I was just visiting Scott’s studio to meet Malachi and ended up recorded some background vocals with him for his album “Rumble In My Soul“. It’s taken us until 2010 to really get to know each other, but I’ve grown to love Malachi’s heart for the Lord and have enjoyed beginning to co-write with him on an almost weekly basis since the new year began. Malachi is a worship leader in Idaville and is working on a worship album for the Spring. His album will include a mixture of his own songs, songs we’ve co-written this month, and a few I’ve written over the past couple of years.

Spiritual Emphasis Week

It was an absolute honor to have been invited to lead a week long series of special morning chapels at Lafayette Christian School. I have 2 boys enrolled at this great school. Each day, approx 250 children attended these 50 minute chapels. Our theme was “Built Together” and we used a “building construction” analogy to discuss the different aspects of our spiritual life. Foundation…Cornerstone…Walls…Windows…Roof. I may blog about each of these in short over the next couple of weeks.

Recent Reading

Besides countless books that enhance my spiritual growth, I’ve recently bought a copy of Robin Frederick’s Shortcuts To Hit Songwriting. Now admittedly, I am not crazily obsessed with and motivated by radio airplay, but I am happy to have found a fun book full of 126 “shortcuts” to write memorable songs that help hold people’s interest. As I read the book, I am becoming painfully aware of songwriting habits, ruts, etc that have kept me from feeling excited about some of the recent songs I’ve finished. Highly recommend this one (published by Taxi Music Books).

VCC Worship Team

My wife and I lead our church’s worship team. This month we’ve begun to restructure the way we run  rehearsals.  For this season, we are meeting weekly and placing a greater emphasis on “team development”  and “practicing His presence”, as well as learning the music. We had the whole team over to our house on Thursday night for a gathering and time to share together. It is a bit of a paradox: to tighten the group connection, at the same time purposing to grow the team in numbers and “make it about someone else”. I am reminded again what a great team God has put together.

Oh Yeah… The House

I actually found some time to refinish this piece of furniture that now sits in our front hallway. Ali has been asking me for something that can hold and hide all of the boy’s backpacks, coats and shoes. Thanks to John and Elizabeth for rescuing this little beauty from the side the road this past fall.

What have YOU been up to this month?

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