St. Louis Cardinals 2012 Predictions
It’s time again, baseball fans, for my annual St. Louis Cardinals break-down. There are a bunch of new faces this year and some very major (and a few minor) changes to talk about. As always, keep in mind this is just one arm-chair fan’s opinion and is based on nothing more than general observation and maybe a little bit of hope. So, any comments pointing to some obscure (or not so obscure) sabermetric about this player or that will most likely be ignored.
Offseason moves:
Key losses: Albert Pujols (Angels), Tony LaRussa (retired), Dave Duncan (retired)
Key gains: Carlos Beltran (Free Agent), Adam Wainwright (injury), Mike Matheny
April 21, 2012
Tags: baseball, predictions Posted in: Sports, St. Louis Cardinals 
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Midweek Humor
Hunger Games edition:
April 18, 2012
Tags: humor, Hunger Games Posted in: humor No Comments
Not sure what to think of this…
April 17, 2012
Tags: Doxa, Half Price Books Posted in: music, what are you drunk? No Comments
Charles Wesley wrote 6500 hymns
…and most of them stunk.
That’s part of the message Bobby Gilles wants you know about hymns and hymn writers.
We church music guys — especially since the advent of the modern hymns movement — have come to think of Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, Anne Steel, and other hymnists as an almost inhumanly good collective of writers, whose every lyrical phrase was more sublime than the preceding one.
I do think, like many others, that the 18th and early 19th century was as much of a “golden age” for English congregational church music as has ever been. Many of our contemporary praise and worship songs fall below even the “average” works of that era, in terms of theology, storytelling, lyricism and even accessibility.
I’ll go along with “many” although I do think that there are some very good songs being written now, with attention being drawn to just those things: theology, storytelling, lyricism and even (although not high on many songwriters’ lists) accessibility.
He ends with a couple of good points:
1. Don’t just jump (or remain) on a hymns bandwagon. Think critically about all the songs with which you lead God’s people in worship. Whether the name on the lyric sheet is John Newton or Chris Tomlin, recognize they’re only human. Some of their work will be better than others, and some of their work will be more fitting for your particular context than others.
2. Songwriters, don’t give up and don’t despair when you write a song that doesn’t turn out well. On the other hand, don’t be conceited enough to think that everything you touch turns to gold. If even the best hymn writers in time wrote song after song that didn’t “make it,” then you should regard this fact as a huge weight, lifted from your shoulders. You have freedom to fail and grace to try again.
April 17, 2012
Tags: Charles Wesley, hymns, songwriting Posted in: music, worship and the church No Comments
Worship Music April 15
Mike is starting a new series post Easter that carries the story forward, focusing on the appearances of Christ after his resurrection. My thought process was, since I don’t have any “put your hand in my side” songs, music that centered around being in Christ’s presence or gazing upon Him in his glory.
Pastor’s Greeting
Beautiful One
Glory in the Highest
I Will Sing
Fairest Lord Jesus
I Stand In Awe
Prayer
I’ve always like Beautiful One. Tim Hughes wrote in the liner notes something to the effect that Scripture tells us that there was nothing about Christ physically to commend Him. He wasn’t Jim Caviezel. But because of what He did, because of who He is, He is beautiful. I always have a hard time with this song because even though I hear the first note in my head, for some reason it doesn’t often come out that way (it starts on the third of the chord (B in the key of G) and it’s always higher than I feel it). I need to get better at starting it strong.
I felt like Glory in the Highest would be a good followup to Beautiful One. And I thought it particularly appropriate for this theme. Standing before Jesus in His glory, will you be saying things like “I want to touch you” (I hate that song), or will you be on your face saying something like “holy, holy, holy. Glory in the highest to You alone”? One day we’ll have time for a few real rehearsals and we’ll learn how to do the ending with the second part. For now, we cut out the solo and simply sing “Glory in the highest….to you Lord” which works well with the congregation.
I continue to find places to use I Will Sing, written by my best friend Demetrios. We didn’t have a drummer this week (miscommunication). So we didn’t do the anthemic kind of thing with the drum only chorus. But still it carried the thought and the emotion that I wanted it to there. Such a good song.
If you remember, we were going to do Fairest Lord Jesus a couple weeks ago but didn’t because there were some technical issues. With the theme of looking to Jesus and being in His presence, I thought there could scarcely be a better song. Fairest Lord Jesus is all about Christ’s supremacy over…well…everything. We didn’t do the key change that I had written for the last verse, but we did slow it down and do it a bit bigger and hopefully more majestic.
We ended with I Stand In Awe. It seemed appropriate. It seems like we sang that not too long ago, but I didn’t bother to check to see how long it had been. We sang it through twice, the second time singing it as a prayer since it’s one of those songs that most people know and don’t need lyrics to sing. I found that I still needed my eyes for a few of the chords, though.
April 16, 2012
Tags: Communion Chapel, set list, worship music Posted in: music, worship and the church One Comment
Twelve More Iranian Christians
You may be following the plight of Youcef Nadarkhani which I have posted about a couple of times. Now there are twelve more Christians awaiting sentencing in Iran for being Christian. They were arrested while they were drinking wine during the Lord’s Supper and charged with multiple crimes including “crimes against the order” (which sounds scary to me).
From the article:
Though the Iranian constitution grants protection to religious minorities born into religions, such as Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews, over the last year and a half individuals in these minority communities have reported increased pressure and clashes with government officials and Revolutionary Guards as their influence continues to mount throughout the country.
But converting, or more specifically, the act of turning from Islam, can be punishable by death. To leave the Islamic faith or to attempt to convert others away from the faith warrants capital punishment under Shariah Law.
Pastor Nadarkhani is still being held, having been convicted and sentenced to death. The outcry from the international community seems to have stalled the execution for now, but his life is in no way safe. The twelve arrested last Sunday are: Rev. Matthias Haghnejad and his wife, Anahita Khadeimi, Mahmoud Khosh-Hal and his wife, Hava Saadetmend, Amir Goldoust, Mina Goldoust, Zhaina Bahremand, Fatemah Modir-Nouri, Mehrdad Habibzade, Milad Radef, Behzad Taalipasand and Amin Pishkar.
April 15, 2012
Tags: Iran, Iranian Christians, Nadarkhani, Shariah Posted in: culture, worship and the church No Comments
Midweek Humor
from xkcd:
April 11, 2012
Tags: cadbury eggs, coke Posted in: humor No Comments
Found!
I finally found a field of bluebonnets. Seems I just had to wait until the wildflower season was almost over. I noticed this field a couple weeks ago – that it was sparsely covered with bluebonnets – and wondered if it would fill out. Being late in the season there are a lot of weeds and tall grass growing up in the flowers also, which is a drag. But it’s the best I’ve got for this year, and since this field is on Boerne Stage Road, it didn’t cost me $50 in gas to get to it. Oh, and you’ll notice that I caught a few deer in the back of the field. It was fairly impossible to get good pictures of them. The long exposure needed meant that the deer needed to stay still and as much as I asked them to do so, they often did not comply.
April 10, 2012
Tags: bluebonnets, photography, wildflowers Posted in: photography No Comments
Worship Music April 8
Christ is Risen!
We had a unique opportunity to join our two services (English and Spanish) with another church that meets in our building on Saturdays. Since we were joining the congregations, we thought it would be appropriate to join the worship teams also. The result was an 11 piece band – most of whom came from Alamo Stone. Which was a tremendous blessing. They are great musicians and things came together very easily and quickly without any ego issues or any of the hassles you might expect with that many musicians.
Our Easter service was scheduled to be two hours long, broken up into three sections. The first section would focus on the cross and Christ’s sacrifice. The second section would be the resurrection and the third section would be salvation. So for each section we had about 15 minutes or so of music and then a 15 minute sermonette on that topic. We also incorporated a solo and communion. It was a full two hours.
Last year we did a similar program with a few important changes. Last year we combined the churches, but we kept everything separate. In other words, the worship team from Communion played a set and then the pastor from Communion gave a message. Then the worship team from Alamo Stone and the pastor from Alamo Stone. Then the worship team from Perspectiva Eterna (our Spanish congregation) and their pastor. It worked, but we felt like combining everything would be smoother and would accomplish our goal of integrating the three churches better. This presents some challenges. One is that it is a lot easier for the groups to practice and play their own sets than it is to put everyone together and play three times as many songs. Another challenge is choosing which songs to use and what criteria to use to select music. And finally, there’s the issue of finding space for the worship leaders to share responsibilities.
I worked with Jody, one of the worship leaders from Alamo Stone and with Eliseo, the worship leader from Perspectiva, to develop the set lists. We wanted songs that would fit the themes, songs that at least one of the churches has played and knows (and the more crossover the better) and songs that would reflect the character of our individual congregations. Here’s what we came up with (I’m including the entire service flow so you can see how it all fit together):
April 9, 2012
Tags: Communion Chapel, set list, worship music Posted in: worship and the church No Comments
Christ is Risen!
April 8, 2012
Tags: Easter, Hristos a inviat!, Resurrection Posted in: worship and the church One Comment