Praising God

It's always a joy for us to worship at Phoenix Christian Reformed Church, but today turned out to be an especially joyful day as our grand-daughter Ellie sang for the first time with the praise team. Of course I shot videos!

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

Jesus Love Me

I Know Whom I Have Believed (probably my favorite song of all time)

Cornerstone

Faith is the Victory

My Life is in You

The morning service also a sermon based upon Joshua 3 that was exactly the encouragement that our family needed to hear this morning. God knew just what message to deliver to us today. He is so good!

Let it rain!

Rain is a fact of life here, but it's been wet enough that the locals are starting to apologize for the weather. Thursday was market day in Delft and it was a "normal" market (as we've come to call it) so the market was smaller and the town was less busy. As you can see, the rain came to visit, but business pretty much went on as usual.

The sun did eventually come out.

One of our favorite spots/views in Delft. It's a quiet canal about a block from the main square. Knotten is the first store you see on the left.

There seems to often be one of these street organs at the market in Delft. It caught my ear this time because it was playing a tune we'd heard on the radio "Stay Up All Night to Get Lucky". I found it amusing that this was juxtaposed with the bells of the carillon.

We ARE the UOOGB!

A few weeks ago we got a text from Nick & Tay asking if we’d like to go to a ukulele concert. Since Nick has become quite a ukulele player (and amassed a pretty good collection of ukes), we of course said yes. We had no idea what they had in mind, but were imagining sort of a folk concert with a couple of players at a local coffee shop or similar small venue.

The day before the concert, we find out that we’re going to hear “The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain” – sounds interesting!

When we got to the concert, the crowd in the lobby was being serenaded by a local group of uke players called “The Volcanoes”. It was a great warm-up for what turned out to be a long wait. We learned that the group had been delayed because of an accident on Interstate 17, but that they were definitely on their way. When they finally arrived, over an hour later, we learned that they had persevered through 2 canceled or delayed flights and that the promoters had arrange for a bus to get them to Flagstaff, only to be caught in the traffic jam on the highway.

Our reward for the wait was that they did their sound check in front of the audience, which turned out to be a great thing to watch. Then they started their program, which always starts with the pronouncement “We ARE the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain” – just a sample of the dry British sense of humor that showed that these serious musicians didn’t take themselves too seriously.

Here’s a sample of their program. “The Happy Song” is probably the most fitting song I can think of to be performed with ukulele – how can you listen to ukuleles and not smile?!

The Happy Song–The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Joyful Christmas!

It’s been a strange December. Being suddenly without a regular job, working as a contractor for some IT Consultants who could use an extra hand, getting an interview for a very promising job that looked like it was made just for me – only to receive the “Dear John” letter yesterday.

I was really looking forward to our Christmas Eve services last night. Last year we came home from Phoenix in time to make it to the service, only to have icy roads prevent us from getting to church. No such problems this year since we are in our new building, with no icy hills on the way there, and the daytime temps have been 40F+ for the past few days so roads are clear.

This year we had two services, and packed the house for each one. Because I’m part of the praise team I not only get the privilege of singing some great music, but I get the added benefit of seeing the congregation as they sing. WOW – I was just blown away with the looks on their faces as we sang God’s praises together!

The service ended with the tradition of lighting candles as we sung “Silent Night”. Here’s our worship leader, Patty Gross as we sang. In the background the candle lighters are lighting their candles from the Christ Candle.

As we sang each verse of “Silent Night”, the congregation would raise their candles when we reached the last two lines of the verse. Again, during the closing blessing, candles were lifted high.

“Silent Night” is a very moving way to close a Christmas Eve service, but as the blessing ended I wanted to send the congregation out by jumping back into the chorus of another song we had sung:

Shout for joy
For the Son of God is the Saving One
He's the Saving One
Shout for joy
See what love has done
He has come for us
He's the Saving One

Christ is indeed “Emmanuel” – God With Us. I’m wishing each of you the joy of knowing him personally. May you also be able to Shout for Joy!

You can listen to "Shout for Joy" here.

A New Adventure

Today started a wonderful new chapter at Church of the Resurrection. On the 6th anniversary of the church's first worship service, we worshiped for the first time in a building that we own instead of a rental space!

There were lots of concerns about the sound in the building because it is a very lively room, and all the more so since the carpet has been removed and we have bare concrete floors for about 2 weeks. We had an informal praise service last night to "calibrate" the sound system, and the results this morning were much better than expected. What an answer to prayer!

One of the benefits of having no carpet, is that the floor is covered with scriptures that are dear to the worshipers. Once the floor is covered by carpet, they'll still be there so we are literally a church which stands on the word of God.

Besides moving into a permanent facility, we also changed from a single service to two services at 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. I really wanted to be there for the first service in the building... but it was really hard to get up this morning in order to be there by 8:00 a.m.! Oh... but was it ever worth it!!!

We were blessed with a total of 220 in attendance today for both services! God is good!

Here's a photo and some videos from the 10:30 a.m. service.

The Praise Team at prayer before the start of the service.

First songs. What you can't hear is that on the first verse of "In Christ Alone", I was so overcome with the emotion of hearing the congregation that I could barely keep singing. To hear that profession so strongly from so many people was in incredible experience!

Our offertory song, "Be Thou My Vision", and following Doxology.

What an amazing Sunday!

Pentecost - Moving

I do a lot of online research about a variety technical subjects as part of my job. A recent article about an iPhone user who switched to an Android phone yielded this:

"One thing strikes me about this list: each item is something positive about Android, instead of something negative about the iPhone. That’s often a sign that a decision is the correct one. If you’re moving toward something, it means you know what you want and you think this other thing will deliver it to you. If you’re moving away from something, you’re headed towards… what, exactly? You don’t know where you’re going but you know it must be better than the situation you’re fleeing from.

Are you moving away, or moving toward? Life is a much less nervous undertaking when you travel with a destination in mind."

I never can guess where I'm going to hear God's voice. This was on my mind as I was thinking about Pentecost coming this Sunday. This was the Sunday for Linda and I to become members of Church of the Resurrection. This was a long, and unexpected, journey for us, but as I reflected on making this change it really felt like what the above author was describing. Joining COR was about moving toward something. This is a congregation that has embraced us, challenged us, and encouraged us in our walk with Christ. It is exciting to get up on Sunday morning, knowing that we get to worship there. Even getting out of the house by 8:30 a.m., to get there for Praise Team practice, is a joy.

Pentecost is traditionally a day for receiving new church members since it celebrates the event that began the Christian church. We had quite a group of new members today.

Unfortunately, today was also the last day for our friend Bruce to sing with me in the COR-tet. Bruce & Janet are moving to Clarkdale and will be sorely missed. It was Bruce that invited me to be part of the music ministry at COR and I'm very grateful.

Our song this morning is "I'll Fly Away".

The COR-tet this morning was (L-R) Bill Norris, Bruce McLaughlin, Butch Gross, and Ernie deVries.

COR Praise!

The COR-Tet had an opportunity to sing again this past Sunday during the offering time in our worship service. We sang a unique version of one of my favorite hymns "He Hideth My Soul in the Cleft of the Rock".

It is an indescribable joy to be part of the music ministry at Church of the Resurrection. To look out on the congregation on Sunday mornings and see people singing God's praises is a real privilege. Here are a couple of videos of the praise team that I shot during our worship a couple of weeks ago.

Southern Style

The first time that the COR-tet sang at church, I commented that we needed to find some songs with more energy. Well, the next one that we picked was a traditional Southern gospel quartet number that definitely has more energy!

10,000 Reasons

I've always been a singer. The stories from my parents of my earliest years recounted times of me singing in church. So I was excited to have to opportunity to join the praise team at church this morning. The worship set included this song which has become a favorite of mine "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)" by Jonas Myrin and Matt Redman.

In a conversation after the service someone commented that singing like this "opens up your heart" and I can't think of a better way to describe the experience. Singing God's praises and leading the congregation in worship was a wonderful experience. I'm thankful to Patty Gross, our worship leader, for the opportunity.

Praise the Lord, O my soul, O my soul,

Worship His holy name!

Sing like never before, O my soul.

I'll worship Your holy name!