Bethel Day 5

What an awesome day yesterday was. We had Chris McClarney lead us out in musical worship. For those of you that don't know the name you will know the songs. Your Love Never Fails, Your Love Is Everything (We Cry Out Album). Great worship. It was a sweet time with the Lord. I will admit it was hard to focus due to the fact that Kathy put up the sign-up sheet for the band session I was trying to attend, I went out there during the second song and it was full so I made it onto the waiting list in 2nd place. Come to find out Brian will be doing a bnd session now for leaders in July so I am now praying that is the one I can get on the list for.

So after worship Jenn got up and did some Q & A and there were some great questions. So much of what she talked about I think would be wonderful to do now with the team. I am looking forward to talking to you guys about it. Then Brian got up and began to speak about worship leading. His style of teaching is to have a long list of points and start reading them and see which things rabbit trail into more. He was lit up. I just loved this session. He talked about the deep relationship and connection you need to have with your senior pastor or leader. I luck out on this one. It doesn't take so much work.
He made some fun points like we start worship but hopefully by the end of worship you are in the background and the people don't remember who led. Another is that we need to teach our people to express joy, and to celebrate His goodness. Brian said this would change the atmosphere faster than anything else and this way we, as a worship team, do not have to force the issue. Again we do this in our free worship!
We must remember always that we are carriers of the presence. Bill spoke in the afternoon and he said if a dove had descended on us and we did not want it to leave how would we walk? We would take great care to remember the dove is there and move accordingly. The same with the presence. We need to keep it at the forefront of our minds and walk accordingly. It was a great point. Unity of the spirit is the culture of honor. We will not all agree on what we like or do not like but we can be unified in the spirit. He also said that Praise is Faith. These words could be exchanged for each other. Praise is Holy ignoring.

One of my favorites that he talked about was that suckiness songs impart sucky revelations even to new believers. He has found that because a lot of churches focus on how to fix our sucky lives we sing songs about it all the time. Jenn had a wonderful vision of people praising the Lord and God holding a big mirror and those praise reflect back on the people. Because the more we praise Him and spend time in His presence the more we become like Him. This was such a great point and of course we all know I hate those type of songs about how crap I've been but I did not look at it like this is what reflects back on us. Plus he talked about singing what you want to become in 5 years. I don't want to become a sinner in 5 years or a hopeless fool. I want to become holy, righteous, joyful. As you can tell this was awesome. Worship brings revelation and we want people to have amazing revelations. As you can tell there was a lot in this teaching. I look forward to telling you the rest once I'm home.

After lunch I took Brian's Review your song class. This is a class where people play their original worship song and then he and Chris critiques them Wow, can I say we have some awesome talent at this school. Brian even said that this school kicks every other schools a**. Yes, that seems to be one of his words and it cracks us up! I just know we will be singing some of these people's songs someday. They were awesome.

After that was Bill. Need I say more? It was awesome. So profound. I think that most of you should just listen to the teaching. We did find out that the teachings will be available for download for $3.00 almost as soon as the class is done. We will hear more about how to do that today. Also, Brian gave us all the greatest gift by letting us know that at the end of school we will all be receiving chord charts for the new songs they have been trying out on us and that will be laid down on a album in September. This is a change of heart guys! I asked last Friday and they said we would have to wait and just keep checking. This was very exciting. The worship out here has been awesome and watching the songs change and transform each day has been great.

So Bill's teaching was that we naturally become like what we worship. I can tell that in my own life. So much becomes less and less important than spending time with the Lord. He broke down the scripture of 1 Cor. 3:18. It was wonderful. He said the Father looks for worshippers not worship. So true. Again I will repeat this point from earlier. Every move we make we must keep the presence in mind.

Another thing he talks about was if we ask for things that have already happened (ex. rend the heavens and come) well He already did and we will not be able to find our joy in the answered prayer. So then we must find our joy in the discipline of prayer. If it has already happened then it cannot be fulfilled in our midst. There is so much more. Maybe I will write a second blog about it or you can wait till I get home. I have to get ready for today. We start the Creating a Kingdom Culture conference and will be busy for the next 3 days.

The little of The Lift I saw last night was wonderful...dark...but wonderful! I am looking forward to seeing it in person. Have a wonderful day. Love and miss you all.