Happy Summer Day to everyone!  The sun is out, and it’s a beautiful day in Vancouver, Washington.  Yesterday was a good day for our Worship Service at Laurelwood, but I’ll admit that it felt a little off.  I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced this, but the practice was great and things [...]

Do you ever have one of those feelings? You know, when you haven’t heard from your drummer all week, and an hour and a half before the rehearsal is supposed to start, you give them a call to confirm, and they’re out on the lake? Yeah….so….. We had two different drummers, one for Saturday evening [...]

Pianos, Pianos everywhere and not a key to plunk. This episode is the first of two in our first workshop on playing piano in the worship band. In a lot of contemporary worship music, keys tend to be harder and harder to come by. Not anymore, keys are making a comeback, baby! We do some [...]

 Worship Ministry Catalyst Podcast - Episode 0039 - Piano Workshop Part 1 (of 2) [43:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So, things went pretty smooth on Sunday… much better than a couple weeks ago!  If you remember, two weeks prior, we went super long and we ended our service almost 30 minutes late.  I’ve been determined to help keep things on track the last couple weeks, so this Sunday we did a few less songs than normal [...]

Do you ever find it hard to focus on 8 things at once? I sure do. How do we do it? Seriously! How can you focus on your vocals, your pitch, your keyboard parts, the other vocalists, the acoustic, the electric, the bass and the drums…all at the same time. I’ve got to be honest [...]

I’m continuing on with the work of raising up other leaders on my worship team.  I wasn’t off stage and in the congregation like David was this week, but I did have a chance to work with one of our guitarist as he led some of the music.  It’s been great seeing other people step [...]

I wasn’t on the band at all this weekend. One of our volunteers (who used to lead worship at a church and has extensive music experience as well as his wife) led worship and it was great. He was face with a few challenges, a drummer who hadn’t played in 4 months, a drummer/electric guitarist [...]

Do you know what I’m talking about? You know….(long awkward pause)…. quiet song …… (long awkward pause with weird, random instrument noises) …. Loud song (scared to death from the shock of the loud sound, heart rate jumps through the roof). ….. beuler….beuler…. Etc. Picking up from last week’s episode we’re talking once again about [...]

 Worship Ministry Catalyst Podcast - Episode 0038 - Flow [34:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hi everyone!  Church on Sunday was… well… it was long!  At Laurelwood we have a 75 minute service and I’m usually pretty good about planning and coordinating so we stay within 75 minutes.  But this Sunday, everything went long! I take a lot of the blame because I think I was being somewhat naive about [...]

For about the last 6 – 8 months we’ve been starting to build a Photography team at our church. So far, we haven’t done all that much with it, but the possibilities of it are huge. I thought I’d share with you what we have already done, and what we’re planning on doing. When we [...]