Church, Love and London

Tonight I played electric guitar for worship at Plantation.  (A satellite campus for the church I am going to school at...)   This is a picture from the same church earlier in the year.  Im in the back by the cross...awesome huh? Anyway, the service went really good.  We had a bit of a mishap which is worth noting for advice's sake.  So we played this song called "Your Name," and we had an awesome loop to start it.  Problem was, the drummer forgot to reset the loop from rehearsal for the actual service, so when he pressed play, it started from where we had ended in rehearsal.  So naturally, this messed the band up pretty decently.  The singers came in at the wrong time, I didn't play the lead at the beginning which probably would have helped the singers come in at the right time, basically it was a mess.  Andrew Woodell was the worship leader, and he is pretty experienced.  Luckily, he was the only instrumentalist playing at the time (since I had totally neglected the part I was playing...way to go me huh?) but anyway, He was able to recover pretty seamlessly.  It was nice.  The rest of the song, and service was fairly flawless.  

Here's the lesson I learned from this...I think a lot of times musicians tend to put a lot of emphasis on playing the right notes and having the right tones and pedals and all that stuff, and rightly so because who wants to sound bad.  However, it's times like tonight when we make obvious mistakes that what I like to call the "real person" surfaces.  Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but I often see the human race as a bunch of actors who are parading around on this stage we call life.  I feel that there are few times when people are truly, truly themselves.  We always have some role hat we have to fulfill.  If we are teachers, we have to try our best to sound smarter than we are so that our students feel we are qualified to teach them.  If we are Doctor's we have to make sure our patients feel like we know everything there is to know about their bodies so they trust us.  if we are Pastors, we oftentimes unintentionally come across as a "better Person" than those in our congregation (another conversation altogether).  if we are musicians in a worship band, we often try to pretend like we are better players than we actually are so as to "not distract anyone from worship."  Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's a very good, and necessary thing to play as good as possible when leading worship to both honor God and to lead the congregation, distraction free.  But tonight when I messed up, I know it was caused by the Lord.  I wasnt worshipping at all.  I was just playing.  I was getting to use this Boss DD20 delay pedal as a demo and it sounded sooooo good.  I was so pumped.  I was attempting to worship, but it wasn't genuine.  When I messed up, i all of a sudden came down out of the clouds and became me.  I became the flawed Chance that I always am.  And it was perfect.  it was what God wanted.  He wanted to just meet with me and my flaws.  He wanted to hear my guitar playing, not because it was perfect, but because it was for Him.  Its a good lesson for us to learn as worship musicians...God isnt necessarily looking for the perfect lead or perfect tone or perfect pitch, but instead, He is looking for the perfect heart in worship.  Now, hopefully when we offer Him the perfect heart, He will meet us in the middle and help us to play to the absolute best of our abilities as well.  But man, we gotta get our hearts right if we wanna make the best music.  because like any other art, the best art happens when it's from the heart.  God is our muse as Worship musicians, and art requires a muse or else it ceases to be.  So, worship musicians, focus your hearts and your tone will follow!!!

Outside of that stuff, today was Valentines Day.  Hope you all had a happy one.  I did.  I spent the majority of it with my wonderful wife and dog.  I woke up early and went to pick up this arrangement of chocolate covered strawberries I got shelley.  I came home and gave them to her, she loved them and we both ate them!  Then she made us waffles!  We then watched one of my favorite movies ever...Sadly it is the movie "Notting Hill."  What a great love movie....It is set in London (hence the title of this blog) with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.  it was pretty much awesome.  I want to move to London and just walk around being in love.  My friend Jennie lives there (or lived there....) and I dont think she realizes how lucky she is (was.)  Anyway, great movie...everyone watch it and feel warm and happy!  We then went to Sonic for some drinks.  Shelley Loves Sonic....Then after church we ate at Pei Wei, one of our favorite restaurants.  Great day overall.  I am so blessed to have such a wonderful wife! (and dog...)  Pretty much God has blessed me with a wonderful church, a wonderful family, wonderful friends, a wonderful love for music, wonderful boots, and wonderful bandanas.  What else could a man ask for?  Life is Good...