There are officially no more Sundays between now and me preaching. I have 6.5 more days to prepare for something that is horribly unnatural for me. I have never before preached or really spoken in front of a large crowd. The largest group I’ve spoken in front of and the last time I did it was my high school english class. Being a worship pastor requires a certain amount of speaking skills but it does not normally require such planning and practice. In my experience it’s an in the moment sorta thing led by the holy spirit. By no means am I going to deliver a great message next week. By the grace of God will I even get anything that makes sense out of my mouth or say anything more than two sentences without pausing. That’s partially where my peace is coming from, though. I cannot do this in my own strength or wisdom. Also, as I have already said, I realize that I probably won’t deliver the most transparent, life changing message ever. I am okay with this fact because no matter how I do, good or bad 1. God is the one that has called me to preach next week through Pastor Michael telling me to, I have not called myself. 2. This is a huge milestone in my life, to be called out of a past of insecurity, doubt, and fear living in defeat, into ministry where I lead others, break new ground as often as possible, overcome conflict and criticizm and yet still have to face the lies of the enemy and the world that I am not good enough each week is a victory no matter what anyone says. I will always look back on next Sunday and think “well at least I got up and attempted it”. And 3. I know this is just the beginning of ministry and what God’s calling me to. Don’t get me wrong I have no aspirations to actually become a preacher but I do want to do everything I can to impact people around me and the kingdom of God. I’m terrified and yet super-excited to see how it will go down. If I can do it then anyone can. Also, if I had a stutter at least I would have an excuse for why talking is so hard for me.
Check out the new refuge site @ therefugecfan.ning.com. It’s awesome! We just need the youth to sign up and use it now. It’s for them. They can post on the forum, or upload, music, videos, pictures, announce events. It’s gonna take us higher baby.
On a more serious note. We hope it will allow us to communicate and encourage/ challenge the youth throughout the week in a much more comfortable environment, something that they take a huge part in.
And I understand. I have been so busy I’ve kinda forgotten about my blogging. It’s just that when you’re pouring yourself out into so many different things it’s hard to keep anything to pour out elsewhere. It’s no excuse. I will get better. Look, I’m posting right now above this post.
Check out this newer form of blog/ life streaming im not sure what you call it, but my address is https://twitter.com/Pastorclark. Ive been considering opening a twitter account for a while. Im not in love with it, but im trying it. It does have potential because my friends and I can follow eachother in our day, or family outta state can keep track of me.
Resting after a long day of prep and painting.
Contemplating how in the world I’m going to get a whole sermon outta my mouth.
The worship pastor for Elevation Church and His wife are in need of prayer for their 2 daughters who were born 3 months early. You can get details at http://www.wadejoye.typepad.com. Just please take a moment and pray for their healing and peace. Thank you.
I’m gonna take a minute to share something I think needs to be said. Parenting is hard. No one really explained that very well. Now, I figured this out all by myself but I’m bitter now because everyone jokes that it’s hard, and you kinda chuckle and blow that off cuz you know, of course its tough, but hard?. And there are always those people that complain about their kids. But no one said “Hey Scott, you know how babies are all cute and stuff. Well they also don’t care if you’re tired, don’t care if it’s not your turn to change the diaper, but Mommy’s not home. If you don’t want to hold them, that’s too bad ‘cuz if you don’t hold them they won’t sleep and if they don’t sleep they just get LOUDER.” Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining at all about my daughter, I’m complaining that people must not have felt compelled to share the whole story of parenting. I write all this while laughing on the inside about everything. It’s very much a surreal slap in the face. The fact that pretty much everyone goes through this blows my mind cuz now I get to see first hand what happens behind the scenes, and thank goodness more people aren’t struggling. And I laugh. Cuz no one thought it necessary to make sure we knew that it IS ACTUALLY HARD WORK. Well I’m doing my part to let my sister and her fiance know that it’s hard at times, but it’s a lot of fun and a great chance to grow. And even though its hard; its very easy too, you just realize it’s not about you anymore.
Please forgive me for my rambling.
Have you ever written a blog?? Its hard to keep up with all the things that I want to write about. Anyways……….
Service was good today. It’s a little tough to help lead worship off of like 4 hours of sleep in the bank. I went to bed at like 10pm and woke up at 7am but somehow only managed to sleep 4hrs thanks to my beautiful little girl, who is doing great by the way. Everyday she grows noticeably. Shes grown like 3 inches taller and she has to be over 10lbs up from 7lbs in just 6 weeks. Yeah…………..She eats good. Our second service was a little tough to deal with considering when I did the informal welcome there were 2 church members and 3 guests in the chairs. My welcome consisted of please enjoy this music for a moment as the rest of our church gets here. Sure enough they showed up. Apparently they had a night much like me.
We tried out a 3 song set list in order to make sure we weren’t “wearing out” the church with too many songs. It was okay.. the response wasn’t quite as good as last week so we will take a look at it and adjust what we can. We just keep praying to move forward.
Staff meeting was awesome today. We area little behind in some of our planning. Unfortunately, some pretty big things have gone untended, UNTIL NOW, that is. We got a bunch of stuff planned out. We’ve decided to go with Live music for our July 4th event (DO…NOT…MISS…THIS), and we are hoping to get the road blocked off so we can take full advantage of our land for the event. Check out www.mycfan.com to get more details. I have a good amount of stuff to see to, but it feels good to know I have to actually organize and plan to get some stuff done. We covered a lot of ground today and it feels good. The team had a good practice this evening, we got out a little early. I’ve never quite considered giving up guitar before as much as I have been lately. For some reason I have really been struggling. Tonight it was on Bass, but even on guitar I’ve just been slow to learn. I think I’ve been playing at the same level for so long that I forgot what it feels like to learn and be challenged. I’m seriously excited about this 4th of July, Neighborhood Fireworks Party we (the worship team) are going to do our best to out-do the fireworks, seriously. A little Rick Springfield, some rockin worship (the real, fun-filled kind), and a grand finale that you won’t want to miss. That’s all for now.
I’m trying to figure that out myself. But I am tired of this church culture. Even the “edgier” churches have caught this trend of repetitive music that although the words, half the time, are beautiful offerings to God the music is LAME. I’m getting to the point where I’d rather try and fail then fail to try to play and write music that honors God with both the music and the lyrics.
I think 2 things have caused our “safe worship”; 1. Fear of losing our audience. ANSWER: You can scratch that off the chalk board with your teeth as far as I’m concerned, because God is our audience of one and He’s supposed to be their audience too. And 2. I believe people try to put the focus on the lyrics of the song by making sure the music doesn’t overpower the lyrics. ANSWER: We absolutely, need to put HUGE emphasis on the words to WORSHIP God in a powerful, illustrative, beautiful, creative way, but if our music does reflect that same passion and creativity then why sing it??!
I know some people might never think of it that way, and I know for a fact that some churches don’t have the resources (or freedom, for that matter) to be so creative musically and lyrically, but for us at Church For All Nations it’s not going to FLY to just do what everyone else is doing (or to even continue doing what we are doing). Like my previous post talks about; I’m not going to stop growing, stretching. I know that God is calling me to a higher place, my family to a higher place, His people to a higher place, and I’m not going to let others or a culture stop me. And God help, me I’m going to do my best to not disqualify myself.
What’chu goin’ do about it?
