About to retire for the evening after our first full day of recording today (Thursday July 29, 2010). We started the morning off laying down rehearsal takes on the songs on the list for later in the evening. Things went longer than expected (about 2.5 hours longer) but it was worth it. Our team is incredible. I’m positive everyone is tired but in the end it will be all worth it. I also can’t say enough about how the other members of our worship team that aren’t involved in the recording process this week are stepping up to help out all over the place. You can find them manning the product tables, getting meals for the team during lunch and dinner, and I even caught a few of them secretly praying for us. No jealousy, no “why not me on the stage?” attitudes…just servant hearts and kingdom ambassadors. So cool.
Our sound team gave me a rough mix of the session tonight. Our (amazing!) drummer Kraig is staying over my house this week so he doesn’t have to drive back and forth for all the sessions, and when we got back to my place we literally sat in my living room and listened to 80 straight minutes of music. I thought that was really interesting…I mean, who really just sits and listens to music for 80 minutes in this age of the iPod and mp3? Well, I suppose if you had rehearsed for months you’d want to listen to it. Overall we both felt things turned out well.
The theme of the night was definitely along the lines of the rule and reign of God. We didn’t plan it in our setlist, but that was the theme woven throughout the songs we used and the pockets of prayer and intercession during the night. Pastor Eric Peoples kicked off the night with a few tunes. Every song he did tonight was just big and centered on the kingdom and God’s rule. He did a powerful version of No Sweeter Name. It was awesome hearing people sing the bridge that just says “Jeeeee-sus, Jeeeee-sus”. Beautiful.
Sarah and I split the rest of the evening set. I did a song I wrote a few months back called Salvation (Our God Will Reign Forever) and we moved into a time of prayer for God to breakthrough in our region. People went all crazy happy at the end when Sarah did There Is A River. But the song of the night (for me) was Jesus You Are, a tune introduced to our church just 3 months ago when my friends the Christopher Hopper Band came a led a night of worship at our church. Chris’ guitar player Nate Cronk wrote the song and it’s just…wow. Love it. Chris, if you are reading this, you’d better put that album out soon because if you don’t ours is going to come out before yours does!
All in all the band played great and people were going for it in worship. Kent and I tag-team tomorrow night and I think the title of my entry will be Live Recording 2010 – day three (the Day of Reckoning). My only beef so far this week: we had a good turnout but seriously…WHERE WAS THE REST OF CLG?? Almost half the people attending were from outside our church! C’mon, man! You all pack the house tomorrow night or we are NEVER doing a live recording again! <—- not-so-veiled threat