Today (Wednesday July 28th) we kicked off our week of worship during our regular mid-week service. The day was a long one, as the team and I rolled into the church around 10:00 a.m. and began the long and arduous task of setting the sound system and room up for a live recording. The unsung heroes of our worship ministry (a.k.a the sound team) all came in to clean up, re-wire, re-cable, re-invent, an re-amaze the sanctuary to make sure things were set. Seriously, this wouldn’t have come together without their volunteer efforts. All of them made sacrifices with work and family to give up the entire day to prepare.

After about 4.5 hours, the stage looked great and was setup according to the stageplot I gave our team. While I was out of the office for the afternoon, Kent Henry arrived and apparently re-wrote one of the songs he was going to do this week called On The Mercy Seat (the bridge on this song is wicked/sick/insane/hot/anti-jackson). The band worked with Kent all afternoon (even skipping dinner) and at 7:00 p.m. we kicked things off. Fortunately no one’s cell phone went off and we didn’t have any technical difficulties. Most importantly, people responded to God in worship and God responded to people worshiping. Kent took us in and took us deep (and did a killer prophetic version of Hillsong United’s The Stand). Great song. We had Where I Belong (by Cory Asbury of IHOP) on the setlist but unfortunately didn’t get to it. That song is one of my favorites. Maybe I can talk Kent into doing it Friday night.

Afterwards I took our sound engineers Scott and Dave out to a well-deserved late dinner at Rein’s Deli. I wholeheartedly recommended Dave try the pastrami Reuben. As you can see, he clearly obliged and was happy with his choice. We are all in complete “conference mode” which is really understood as four things:  1. lots of church, 2. eat (usually unhealthy food really late at night), 3. sleep, 4. repeat.

We get another morning start tomorrow as the band rolls in for some side recording we’re doing in preparation for the evenings. Tomorrow night is going to be off the charts as Pastor Eric Peoples will kick things off. Later in the set I co-lead with Sarah Warner and we’ll be doing some of my newer songs as well as an old hymn called The Love of God with a great tag from a song one of our youth worship guitarists, Josh Orbea, wrote. It’s going to be great.

And Chuck Norris…if you’re reading this, you are welcome to come worship with us. We feel like we know you already.