NEW SERIES

New series in the book of Philippians starting this weekend at our church.

More info. to come ...

ATTENTION

Kristian Stanfill's new EP Attention releases on iTunes today. All I have to say is ... wow. It is everything I was hoping for and more. This guy knows how to write songs that will turn your heart and mind toward God AND make you want to sing at the top of your lungs. It's good stuff. I am hoping to use some more of his songs in our church services over the next few months.

Here's a snapshot of some lyrics from the song "Kingdom":

Stand up and heed heaven's call
Coming to us one and all
To live love and give love
To those who don't know of
The lavish and true love of God
We are the kingdom of God
We are an army of love
We carry truth to the world
We are the kingdom of God

Be watching for the full album coming 4.21.09!

CONCERTS COMING UP

I'm always looking around the internet to find out if my favorite bands and artists will be in town anytime soon. Over the past week I've found out about some events happening in the Chicago area in the next few months that I either have tickets to already or am going to try to make it out to...

-Phil Wickham is going to be leading at 631 Ministries on Monday, February 9th in Berwyn, IL. 631 is a gathering of 18-20 somethings that meets monthly on Monday nights at 7 PM.

-Matt Maher, Brenton Brown, Michael Gungor Band, and Kelly Minter will be leading a worship training day hosted by Worship Together at First Assembly of God in Kenosha, WI on Monday, March 16. I won't be going to the training, but am hoping to make it to the evening worship program at 7 PM. Tickets are $10. Details here.

-Chris Tomlin and Israel Houghton w/ New Breed concert at the Sears Centre - Saturday, March 28 at 7 PM. This is going to be a great concert. Plus, Chris is hosting a Worship Frequency gathering a few hours before the event, where he will talk about leading worship and take questions ... the idea being to help train and equip local worship leaders like yours truly. I am hoping to take some guys from our church's worship team to this concert, but they don't know that yet ... so shhhhh. Check out details here or here.

If you know of any other worship gatherings or concerts coming up in Chicagoland this spring, leave a comment and spread the word!

8 Below

It's cold...

They were saying on the news that it got down to 20 below zero overnight (that's not including wind chill!). This is the coldest day Chicago has seen in some 15 years.

Why do we live in Chicago again?

THE GOSPEL COALITION

I just registered to go to the Gospel Coalition Conference on April 21-23 - it's in Chicago this time! The theme of this year's conference is "Entrusted With the Gospel: Living the Vision of 2 Timothy". The Gospel Coalition is an organization of pastors and Christian leaders from all different denominations, who all share the same conviction that the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is presented in Scripture has to stay at the center of all of life and ministry. Check out this video that gets at the heart of what it's all about.



I'm really excited for this conference for a number of reasons, one of which is that I have a chance to attend the conference and soak everything in with some of my good friends and partners in ministry.

The conference is only $100 for students if you register before Jan. 31 ... AND they're giving away an ESV Study Bible to everyone who attends! Find out more here.

First Blog Post

OK, so one of my New Year's resolutions for '09 was to start my own blog. It is something I've been thinking about doing for awhile now, but never pulled the trigger on. So here we go!

Some of the things you can expect to find on here:

-Reviews of our Sunday services at Arlington Countryside Church, where I am the Worship Arts Pastor
-Current happenings in the realm of worship music and ministry
-Good books I've read or am currently reading
-Things I've been learning from God's Word
-Videos

And a whole smattering of other things.

Check back regularly for new posts ...