I Love What I Do...Do You?

Today the band met for our LifeGroup time in the Green Room. One of the things that we discussed was the fact that we get to be an active part of what God does each and every week at the Tulsa campus of LifeChurch.tv. This week, 54 people indicated that they were accepting Jesus into their hearts, forever to be changed!

I love being a part of life change. I love it when it's the first eternal step, and when it's just one more step in the salvation process (sanctification.)

So, to have my full-time job be at a place where I love what I do and people get radically changed forever is pretty freakin awesome!

What about you? How is God using you in your job/ministry?

I did not vote "Present" this weekend

For 6 1/2 years I've been leading worship at LifeChurch.tv in Tulsa. I normally don't get sick but maybe once or twice a year. I've always been able to avoid missing the weekend but this weekend was an exception. Out of almost 350 weekends leading worship at Life....the sick bug got me.

Fortunately for me, I've got a couple of guys that are rip, roarin, and ready to go. Chris Kizzia stepped up on Saturday night with two hours notice AFTER running the Tulsa Run (15k) in under 90minutes!!! Instead of saying no, and leavin a brother high and dry, he sacrificed and even learned Bennie and the Jets (our walk in song this week.)

That made me think...had I not had guys trained and ready at a moments notice, there would have been a small catastrophe on our campus. Not to say that it can't run without me (cause it did.)

So, who do you have trained and ready to go in your ministry in case the fever bug bites?

#Catalyst08 Conference

So there is a lot of church leaders from all over the country attending the annual Catalyst conference this year. For those of us who are not among the fortunate to go and hear from amazing leaders, hear awesome worship, and mingle with other believers doing ministry together...you can partake of Anne Jackson's Backstage blog. It's called Catalyst Backstage. (LINK)

Anne is streaming some live content and interviews and you can follow when the new content is up from her twitterfeed.

Check it out!

LifeChurch.tv Worship Pastor Confessional #6

Marc Broussard at LifeChurch.tv Tulsa!

Ok, so it's not really Marc Broussard but I would possibly like to cover most of his stuff. If you've not heard of Marc, go ahead and set aside $50 and download his entire catalog. He's flipping amazing!

Someone captured this song that we did this week at church and so I'm re-posting it for you to see. FYI, we do a secular cover song at the beginning of each experience at the Tulsa campus. This is a very intentional move that has proved to be a very useful tool for people to invite others. It has also been a great tool to break down walls that an unchurched person may have about church not being relevant, or that we lack the capacity to recognize where they are.

The cool thing about this is that we get to acknowledge that the world asks great questions through the medium of music, and we're recognizing those questions and offering the greatest answer through Jesus.

Another effect these songs have is that we've re-trained our culture at the Tulsa campus. Several other campuses at LifeChurch.tv do a "walk-in" song like we do and we've noticed that in a very consumerist culture, people actually arrive early and each experience is almost 80% full (est) by the end of this first song. Other campuses that don't do these songs often notice a large portion of attenders stroll in all the way through worship.

Okay, so enough of my explanation...here's the video.

Lifechurch.tv Tulsa Worship Confessional #5

Here's the latest thoughts and concerns from yours truly. I'd love to get feedback about what you guys like to know about and what piques your interest!

Enjoy

Sing-A-Long

If you listen to my campus' free worship podcasts, you'll know that we often do songs by Phil Wickham. He just released a live album (Singalong) and he has made 15 tracks available for download FREE! Go check it out HERE!

You'll have to subscribe to his newsletter, but it's worth it!

The 4th Confessional

Enjoy!

WORSHIP CONFESSIONAL - THE THIRD ONE

I Wish I Could Solo

Jammin' with Derrick and Chris
Originally uploaded by Cooper-S-Harrison

Yeah, this is Chris Hyde. He's good. I'm staring at him wondering if I can fool the crowd into thinking that I'm actually jamming with him. It's more like I'm looking at his guitar thinking to myself, "hmm, I have no idea how to play that..."

BUT. My friend Chris did teach me the sig-lick to Sweet Home Alabama which I play quite well now. Thanks buddy!

Worship Confessional Part Deux

Watch and Enjoy!

Worship Podcast...Subscribe Now!

Yeah so that looked like a cheesy enough headline. Just wanted to make everyone aware that we're podcasting our worship set every week for free from iTunes. If you don't have iTunes, you can download it from Apple's website for free HERE. Once you have it, you can subscribe to our worship podcast and it will download to your computer when we update it every week!

Check it out here (LINK)....lemme know what you think...

Very First Worship "Confession"...Be Gentle

So, here's my first attempt at a worship confessional. What do ya think?

Worship Podcast

Here's a new podcast from the Tulsa campus. Would love your feedback! What do you think of the overall mix, song selection, transitions, and so forth?

Lifechurch.tv Internet Campus

Shooting Derrick
Originally uploaded by jeffclick

Even though I'm leading worship in Tulsa this weekend...we recorded this set at OKC back in September 2007. So, if you wanna check out the worship set, go to Lifechurch.tv and check out the internet campus. It's amazing what God is doing there!

Tulsa Worship Podcast

For a really long time now, we haven't been able to podcast due to technical difficulties. I will blame this on ProTools more than the Mac, but we were sure asking the Mac to do a lot...16 channels in, 8 channels out, video out, midi sync'd lights out...all on an entry level MacBook.

But, we figured it out...and lo and behold...here it is! (LINK) Click on the link, it will try to open your iTunes software and connect it to the podcast location on the music store. Please subscribe and tell your friends! The more the merrier!

Post-Easter Update on Lifechurch.tv Tulsa

Easter this year was a bit mind blowing for me. This is for a number of reasons but the greatest of which was that we launched the second Tulsa area campus mid-January. We asked people to move to the campus based on their geographical location to it, and to help partner with us in the vision God has given to our leaders. Over 700 people went to start that new campus of Lifechurch.tv

The weekend before we launched South Tulsa, we had over 3,000 people in attendance at the Tulsa campus. After that we dropped down to the 2,200 - 2,300 level for a few weeks. On Easter, we saw 3088 people walk through the doors and 43 people indicated a decision for Christ! It gets even cooler...South Tulsa had over 1,000 people in attendance for their Easter experiences. That means, in the Tulsa area, over 4,100 people came to Lifechurch.tv, and 50 people made a decision to follow Jesus!

THAT...is mind blowing!

There are a few things that we did here at the Tulsa campus this past weekend. Usually for Easter I rent a lot of lights and we do a big production, of sorts. But this year we opted to have church like every other weekend, so as to present a more accurate picture of what the church is like for newcomers. Kent Shaffer wrote about his experience visiting our campus this past weekend here. There's some photos there.

A few things we did were:

• Had an attender paint a giant mural of our new series graphic on the building exterior
• Before worship, the band played "The Pretender" by the Foo Fighters while I used a Guitar Hero guitar and sang the song as the video of Guitar Hero played behind me.
• Created a new Guest Services booth to centralize the place for questions and information for the attenders. This was heavily staffed with fully capable and knowledgeable people.

Overall, the weekend went exceptionally well. This week we have baptisms which I'll post about how we do that next week!

What's Been Canceled?

I realize that my posts are somewhat sporadic. The past couple of weeks have been busy for poor Derrick. (Sorry, I don't normally speak in the third.) Last weekend I finished my jet-set life and started my journey home. That's where it hit the fan.

We were trying to leave DFW on a private charter but due to fog, our pilots couldn't get to us. So we waited, thinking any moment they would arrive and we could make our way to Irvine, CA. Finally, after a few hours, we were off....sort of. Due to a strong headwind we weren't moving as fast as planned. When we arrived in Irvine, I was already late for my return flight home to Tulsa. So, I got a flight to Dallas arriving at 12:00am. Chris, my campus pastor didn't want me to drive all night for fear that I'd run off the road. (I fall asleep at the wheel easy..btw.)

Premier got me a hotel room, and at 5:30am the next day I arrived at DFW to get my 6:50 flight to Tulsa....which was canceled. Whoops...I was supposed to lead worship...good thing Stephen Cole was prepared. The Tulsa campus experienced worship live via satellite and I continued to book another flight...hoping to lead worship. The band was ready, but then my flight was canceled again. Okay, not going to make the 10 o'clock experience.

Then my next flight was delayed every hour, on the hour. Not going to make the 11:30 experience. It seemed that at any moment the fog would lift and we'd be on our way. So, finally we board the plane at 3pm. Around 3:45 the pilot comes on and says that the airline canceled our flight but that he had gotten it re-instated. WHAT? THEY CANCELED THE FLIGHT WE WERE SITTING ON? THE NERVE! So, we left, made it into Tulsa at 4:50pm. I completely missed church.

All of this because of fog. I mean, snow...no problem. Rain...it's okay. Fog.....everything collapses. I guess it was important to see the runway...you know, to stay on it and everything. Okay, now I've told my story....don't feel sorry for me. Well, you can if you want. Moral of the story...hindsight is 20/20, when your flight cancels don't assume the next one will work out....just go rent a freakin car!

Serving With A Smile

My boss has been blogging about service lately. This week he's doing a series dedicated to customer service. Check it out HERE.

To me this is a big deal. With my band at church, we've really been focusing on engaging people in the lobby between experiences. Some of them have gone out of their way to talk to people and seek out new people to strike up conversations with. This has been cool to watch! We recently had someone that works at another Lifechurch.tv campus come and visit ours. I asked them if they noticed anything that stood out to them. They told me that they were amazed, because they have never seen any other campus' band come out into the lobby and engage people like our band did. That made me feel SO proud of the guys (and gal) that I serve alongside!

I wonder what ways we could serve people that we come in contact with, and at the same time, not make them feel overwhelmed by us? I'd love to see what your thoughts are. Be sure to check out Craig's Swerve blog at the link above.

NashVegas

Well, part of my job is to help out my counterparts in a certain region of Lifechurch.tv campuses. I've had the joy of being at the Wellington, FL campus to help the launch there. Edmond and Stillwater are both here in Oklahoma so they're easier to visit. But, since its launch, I've never been to the Hendersonville campus. This past weekend I got to hang out with Brandon Frazier a lot. He's the Worship Pastor there and frankly is doing an amazing job! Even with first time band people who've never heard of Lifechurch.tv, they were freakin great! I mean, c'mon...it's Nashville.

Anyway, got to help Branflake out with his new ProTools rig and some ground work on Reason. Both programs can be overwhelming at first, so I just dumb everything down for myself....who needs to re-route the path of the vocoder to a splitter, then to a gate, and a flanger anyway? These are a couple tools we use to create audio loops with and use on the weekend experiences.

In the down times, I got to explore Nashville a little bit. We went downtown and had chips and salsa, while overlooking the main street where all the bars and clubs were. I laid eyes on one of the first locations of the Grand Ole Opry....the Ryman Auditorium. I'm not the biggest bluegrass or coutry fan, but this piece of music history is pretty cool.

Here are some photos of my trip...

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