Got this nasty little stomach thing. Eating a lot of pretzels. Getting ready to move to our new digs soon.
Got this nasty little stomach thing. Eating a lot of pretzels. Getting ready to move to our new digs soon.
This beautiful Spring morning is deserving of a fanfare. This one is for two trumpets, with strong high school chops. Enjoypdf file of Fanfare
Once again, it is Friday – time for a fanfare. Have a sweet Good Friday! http://www.churchbrass.com/Fanfares/Fanfare_Two.pdf
I love conferences…
It is good to reconnect with old friends, make new ones, and get motivated. However, in really thinking about a conference that changed the way I do ministry, only one comes to mind.
Now, first of all I have been on some marriage retreats that have done some amazing things for my wife and me on communicating, but nothing in comparison to “Baptist Expression of Marriage Encounter”. This conference was the “biggie” that we’ll never forget, it radically changed the way we have done marriage.
I’ve been on spiritual retreats; probably the most meaningful to me was “Walk to Emmaus”. This was an incredible, three-day event that was life-changing for me.
However it was out of a crisis that the most ministry-changing conference was to be on my horizon…
It was December of 2000, I was a minister of music at a mid-sized church near St. Louis, Missouri. I was all creativity and no organization. I actually “poo-pooed” the idea of being organized, wearing a messy desk as a badge of ‘the creative spirit’. It was dress rehearsal of our big Living Christmas Tree performance. I was REALLY firing on all cylinders, and busy as busy could be, when music ministry tragedy struck. We were doing a collection of pieces with tracks and live musicians. I mislaid the track of one of our pieces (thank goodness, it wasn’t the opener, or big finale). I searched everywhere, spending hours looking for a single thin CD at a time in my season that I had no time in my season. The CD was found…in January. Yep, I had to cancel one of our songs because I couldn’t find the track. I realized then that my lack of organization had stifled my creativity.
We had a new year’s budget a few weeks later. I had already put in to go to the worship conference that I always attended for my “Professional Development”. However, I realized that I was “underdeveloped professionally” when it came to organization. So, I researched, and I found the system that would best suit me, I went to a conference on Time Management, bought all the materials and decided that I would 100% buy into the system that they offered. I did, and it worked.
I still use methods that I learned at that conference, a dozen years later. I changed formats when the Palm Pilot, later to become my ‘Droid, came out – but the concepts never changed. My suggestion for you is to find some subject matter that you want to dive into, maybe not the same one you go to year after year, but one that can really change how you look at things and can radically alter your approach (in a positive light) to ministry or music. Here are some suggestions:
Another “conference” I did was to spend a weekend with an instructor in his studio learning MIDI Recording and composition techniques. It was ‘beaucoup’ dollars, but well worth the deep understanding of technology to which I still refer.
More often than not, we attend conferences that tend to be a “mile wide and an inch deep”. While those can be informative, motivational and necessary, we sometimes need more than varied one hour lectures and a lot of inspiration; sometimes we simply need to “go to school”. If you are taking the time to read this blog week to week, you are probably a candidate of something more.
Let me invite you to think long and hard about the conference you go to this year, and maybe shake things up a bit.
John Francis
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Romans 12:1
Several years ago, when my income was basically being a traveling musician and radio producer – I made my wife a bread box as a Christmas present. . .
It is still proudly displayed on our kitchen counter. Well, proudly but not prominently. It is to the left of the sugar pot, and behind the coffee grinder. It never has closed very well. I had a real hard time angling the cut to match up on the cover. One of the hinges is catawampus and clacks when shut. When it is closed, there is a groove in the door that I could stick my pinky into. To actually store bread in this box, would not be a bright idea. Kimberly uses it to store coupons, kitchen matches and other non-perishable, synthetic, non-edible, inorganic items.
You see . . . I am not good with my hands.
Oh, how I’ve tried, and I wanted to be. I love the smell of fresh wood being cut by a scroll saw. I so enjoy gluing, hammering, cutting and leveling. Yet, the Francis touch always seems to leave its indelible mark on every object I try to create. Now, understand I do think that my wife loves this bread box – because it was a sacrificial gift to her. But, she doesn’t love it for its usefulness.
But I can play music.
I remember sitting in college, in an interminable music theory class thinking of leaving school and just working for a living. I had friends that were doing it, and making a lot more money than a starving student like me. But thankfully I remembered that I really wasn’t good at anything else.
But when I play trumpet, I feel like I’m praying to the Lord. Jazz trumpet player Miles Davis used to say “Pray and Play, Play and Pray.” Another great trumpet player, Maynard Ferguson was seen backstage right before a concert staring down and moving his lips. Someone asked Maynard what he was saying. He sort of blushed and said, “It’s a prayer I pray every time ‘May I be an instrument in Your hands, an inspiration to my audience, and a joy to the people in the band.’”
But enough about music, what about your talents? What is your ‘living sacrifice’ to the Lord. I think that Christianity is more than being a redeemed people, it’s about being a people, rich with ability and giving it back to the One who gave it. Romans 12 tells us that giving Him ourselves is our ‘spiritual act of worship’. Nearby this very famous quote is a not-so-famous one, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Romans 11:29. That’s the King James, the New International version better captures the Greek when it says, “for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable”. This means that He has given you ability, that He has no plan to recall. So use it to His glory.
In the movie “Chariots of Fire” There is the famous Eric Liddell quote, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
Is there something in your life that when you do it, you ‘feel God’s pleasure’? It may be working with your hands, writing, singing, building, or gardening. The important thing is how it feels when you dedicate that craft and that moment to God . . . it’s a lot like praying to Him. The outcome may not be exactly the way you desire, but it is the process of dedicating yourself and your abilities to Him that is the important thing.
Instead of being negative about what you can’t do, be positive about what you can do. As we near the time of the New Year, make a resolution; one that will be a pleasure to keep. Identify a skill that has God placed within you, and dedicate it to Him. Let Him bless it and help you to take that skill wherever He wants it to go. Feel His pleasure, and ‘practice the presence of God’.
Isn’t that a great resolution?
Lord,
make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi
Great time last night with “Hanging of the Green” at Beacon Hill Baptist Church. Go to video page to see the Beacon Trumpets in a fanfare.
Beacon trumpets played “We Gather Together”, at the Community Thanksgiving Service last night…went well…check it out under music page on churchbrass!
Starting a new trumpet study, “Trumpet Synthesis”. J. Mercer and I are doing it together. We’ll be memorizing passages and playing them to one another. This week…page 7!