We began the morning with a large vocal ensemble singing a new arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner”.  I want to thank Patty Thompson for directing and rehearsing this group.  They did a stellar job!  The ensemble help lead us in worship with an “unplugged” band (acoustic piano, violin & bass).  Together, we sang songs of God’s provision and faithfulness to us.  We began with continue reading »

Through music and words, we gave thanks for God’s unending love and grace.  Kuttless’ song “Taken By Love” helped set the tone of our worship, stating that are hearts are taken by His love and His grace.  The next song proclaimed who He is and that He is worthy of all Glory (Glory to God by Fee). The song “Your Grace is Enough” hopefully gave us great encouragement!  We also sang Matt Redman’s “You Alone Can Rescue”.  We closed the service with the Desperation Band’s “Rescue”, proclaiming that we are captured by God grace!  Tommy Morelock gave a great message this morning.  Please check it out at riveroaks.org!

This Sunday, Tim spoke on the kind of sincere worship that God desires.  For this service we felt that the our worship time would work best after the message.  Tim’s message was a great prep for worship.  We began with Matt Redman’s “Heart of Worship” (lyrics:  I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, Jesus). We continued with “Here I Am to Worship”, “Holy is the Lord”, “You Alone Can Rescue” (Matt Redmen) and closed with “Worshiping You”.  I encourage you to re-listen to Tim’s sermon (riveroaks.org) to prepare your heart for our future corporate worship times, as well as your own personal times of worship.

We began this service with Chris Tomlin’s “Sing, Sing, Sing”.  It’s a great song that asks the question: “Why would we NOT worship our God”?  It encourages us to not hold back our worship (turn it up!).  We continued with Robbie Seay’s “Song of Hope” and Tomlin’s “God of This City”.  Next we introduced a new song for River Oaks, “You Alone Can Rescue”, by Matt Redman.  This is a great song of hope and grace.  I’m sure this will be a ROCC favorite.  We closed the service with a song we used to sing a few years ago, “We All Bow Down”.  I’m not sure who’s recorded it, but I’m sure it’s on itunes & Amazon (and others).

I’m currently reading through Proverbs.  It’s all there: wisdom, a guide for life, a refresher in common sense. Even if you don’t profess to be a Christian (or Jewish,..), following the principals of this book is the key for successful living.  It seems easy, doesn’t it?  I wish it was. There are a lot of things we get hung up on in these chapters:  greed, lust, poor vs rich… Unfortunately, even the writer of this book (Solomon) found it hard to follow later in his life.  Take a look through Proverbs.  Find wisdom (and act upon it)!

I’m “back in the saddle again”.  I couldn’t decide if I should use a Gene Autry or an Aerosmith picture (they both have a song “Back in the Saddle”). Great week off, but great to be back at ROCC. We kicked off a new teaching series this week on “the Minor Prophets”.  During our worship, we sang songs that declared God as King of all things, that He is powerful, unchanging and everlasting!  Songs included:  “Praise to the Lord the Almighty”, “Everlasting God”, “Marvelous Light” and “From the Inside Out”.  We closed with the wonderful hymn “Have Thine Own Way”.

Just got a text from Nate Harris (Lindsay’s hub).  Their baby “Leilani Grace Harris” was born today at 8:26 am, healthy and beautiful!  WONDERFUL!

I was on vacation this week. I was able to spend some time recording throughout the week, which was great.  On Friday, we traveled to Indianapolis for the weekend. Our niece Brianna, graduated that weekend, so we went to the graduation on Friday and the open house on Saturday afternoon. My brother’s daughter Adrianna, had her graduation open house on Sunday, so we came back to town for that.  Congratulations to both!  continue reading »

I’ve got this week off.  Bar a few distractions, I’m getting to work on some of my own music.  I’ve recently upgraded to a new computer and all new software.  So there’s a bit of a learning curve, but I’m getting some stuff done!  Hope I can share it with you soon.  I hope to release a full album (cd, download, whatever, …) in the fall.

Sometimes, it’s fun just to play with a smaller band.  This week we did the “Ben Folds” line up (piano, bass, drums).  It was great fun (all though my hands hands hurt from pounding the piano a little to much).  At least my fingers didn’t bleed (like Ben!).

We kicked off the worship time with Luke singing “Taken By Love”, recorded by Kuttless.  We continued with “Stand” (Hillsong), “Let It Rise” (old school version!),  Almighty God ( Joel Engle), Holy, Holy, Holy, and Desperation Band’s “Rescue”.  continue reading »