Sunday Recap – June 20, 2010

Well, this Sunday recap will be different than my usual post, because this is where we were yesterday…

Water slide fun

Yes, I’ve been on vacation all this past week. Yesterday we were at Mt. Olympus Water and Theme Park in Wisconsin Dells, WI.  We had a great time!  But, back at the church I had three great worship leaders leading each of our 3 venues.

Cafe Connection
Last week was our first ever Cafe Connection video venue service.  I felt bad being gone only the second week of this new service, but it went so well last week, that I was confident our teams would do a great job – and they did!  This week, our team did:

This Is How We Know – Matt and Beth Redman
Enough – Chris Tomlin
Amazed – Jared Anderson

Contemporary Service
This service is actually available online to view at our Livestream site. This is the second week of using our new camera system, which so far has worked great!! The songs we did here were:

Our God Saves – Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown
God Is Great – Marty Sampson
Hosanna – Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown
Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher

Traditional Service
Praise the Lord, Ye Heavens Adore Him
O Worship the King
Glory To His Name
Redeemed
To God Be the Glory

This post is part of the Sunday Setlists area at The Worship Community, where worship leaders from around the country share the setlists each week.

Sunday Recap – June 13th, 2010

Here’s our Sunday morning recap from Bethel this morning, June 13th. It was a big day for us here at Bethel with a lot of firsts!! We launched a new service today, called Cafe Connections. We just completed the installation of a camera system in our sanctuary, which opened up a whole bunch of new doors, including this new service.

Our Cafe Connection took place in our Family Life Center, which was reinvented as a coffeehouse style video venue. We had a live worship team, with the message on the screen live via video. Our pastor preached in the Traditional service in the sanctuary, and the feed was sent down to the gym.  All last week was the installation of the system, and it was so fun to see it all come together! I acted as the Producer today, not leading in either service.  I had two very capable worship leaders lead in each service, so I was able to go back and forth between the two services and coordinate the timing of coordinating the two services.

The songs we used in that service were:
“Majesty (Here I Am)” – (Stuart Garrard and Martin Smith)
“Glorious” (Chris Tomlin)
“From the Inside Out” (Joel Houston)

We had one more song scheduled, but in coordinating the two services, we had to cut one in the Cafe. I can already tell that’s going to be the hardest part of this new service! All of the technical stuff with the camera/audio feed worked fine, but it was the timing out the switch was the trickiest part!

Here’s a little video of the new service:

Then, during our two Contemporary Services, we had the worship choir join the team, which is always great!

We did:
“Promises” (Jared Anderson)
“The Lord Reigns” (Klaus Kuehn)
“Glorious” (Paul Baloche)
“A Mighty Fortress” (Christy Nockels)
“A New Hallelujah” (Michael W. Smith)

The other first today was that we began today to stream our services online at http://www.livestream.com/bethelbaptist.  That feature also came off without a hitch! We had people watching our services here in Wisconsin from Indonesia, Brazil, and other places around the country! So, if you like, you can watch our services from yesterday here.

It was a great morning!!

This post is part of the Sunday Setlist blog carnival at The Worship Community.

Sunday Recap – May 30, 2010

I’m here again to give you the Sunday recap from our services this morning. We had a good morning, but it was not without its glitches.  We had a cool start to our service with a tribute to our veterans for Memorial Day weekend. We had a serviceman (different one in each service) who just returned from active duty carry the flag down dressed in uniform. We said the pledge of allegiance, then showed a neat video “Remember Their Sacrifice” by Jitterbug.


Songs used:
‘For All You’ve Done” (Reuben Morgan)
– This one went well; everyone knows it, and people were singing out strong!


“Where the Spirit of the Lord Is” (Chris Tomlin, Christy and Nathan Nockels)
– I love this song! It’s the second time we’ve used it in church, and I thought maybe this second time we did it, that we would see more participation from the congregation. But, there were many people not singing during this one.  Now that I think of it, I should have taken the workshop by Fred McKinnon at the All About Worship Retreat about increasing corporate participation during worship. I’m not sure if I’ll bring this one back or not.


“Hosanna” (Brooke Fraser)
– Another great song! But, I’m not sure what it was about today, people were just not singing on this one either.  I did let people sit during this one, and I’ve noticed people tend to become more like observers when they’re sitting down.Starting with a solo may also have led people to think it was more of a performance-type song.


“Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing)” (Brenton Brown)
– Another great song that everyone knew, and a great one to close our service.  


Read other worship recaps from around the country at The Worship Community Sunday Setlists Blog.  

Cafe Connections and beyond…

(Here is a copy of the article that I wrote for our church newsletter about our new Cafe Connections service and our plans on how we’re going to use our new camera/video system…)
Here at Bethel, we’re always trying to think of new ways we can reach out to our community with the gospel of Christ. We’re also trying to think of how we can best make use of the space God has given us here in this building, given our recent growth.  Well, on Sunday, June 13th, we will be addressing both of those issues by launching a new kind of worship service at Bethel called Café Connections!  This new service will take place in the Family Life Center at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings.  This will be a coffeehouse-style video venue service with a casual, contemporary feel.  Let me explain…
We are in the process of installing a camera/video system in the sanctuary which will help us in both of these vital areas – spreading the gospel of Christ to our community and beyond, and also helping us address our space issue.  There will be many uses for the cameras that are being installed! First, we will begin to stream our services online. This means that from anywhere in the world, you will be able to log on to our website, and watch our services online, as they happen. You will also be able to come back later that day, or during the week, and watch them On-Demand. This is great – especially for those who are home-bound, overseas, travelling on vacation, and others. We are also going to be making DVDs of our services, and offering those to the congregation, along with the current CD. We’re also going to explore the option of sending our service to the local cable channels. These are all ways we will be able to get the message Christ, and what He’s doing here at Bethel, out to our community and the world.
But, getting back to our new service, another tremendous opportunity that this technology will allow us to do, is to send the video signal from the sanctuary down to the Family Life Center.  Our new Café Connections service will feature a live worship team to provide the music. The team will be much smaller than our other teams in the sanctuary and it will have more of an acoustic sound with Contemporary music.  But, when it comes time for the message, we will be watching the message on the screen. So, as Pastor Tim is preaching in the sanctuary during the Traditional Service, those in the Café Connections service will be watching him live on the screen.
The whole feel of this service will be much more casual. We will be trying out this service during the summer, so with the early start time, we’re encouraging you to come early, dressed just as you are, and be able to enjoy the rest of your day with family.  There will be coffee and bagels provided each morning, and the seating will be at round tables and chairs.  You can come as a family and worship together with the kids, or there will also be nursery provided. 
The growth in our other 3 services has challenged us to think of new, creative ways to use our space. We’re hoping as those of you at Bethel come to this new service at 8:00, we will have more room in our 9:30 and 11:00 services for guests and new attendees. This new service, though, would also be a great service to invite your friends to.  It will be a safe, casual atmosphere, where they can hear the Word of God preached, spend time in worship, and fellowship together around the table.
As you can imagine, with a new service like this, we’ll need some help to make it work.  There are needs in the area of music (singers, band members), the tech crew (Sound, Easy Worship, camera operators), and other areas (food prep and display, host/hostess, and other areas). So, if you’re interested in helping out with the new service, please talk to Pastor Tim or Pastor Barry. We would love to have you join us in this new adventure!
Watch for more details on this service in the bulletin!

Thanks,
Pastor Barry Westman

Sunday Recap – May 23rd, 2010

This past Sunday was a different kind of Sunday for me, since I wasn’t actually leading the teams, but still a great morning!  I was at the All About Worship Retreat in Kansas City this past week, so I had someone else lined up to rehearse and lead the teams this week. They did a great job!!

Our songs this morning were:
“Let the Praises Ring” (Lincoln Brewster)
“Awesome Is the Lord Most High” (Chris Tomlin)
“Glory To God Forever” (Vicky Beeching and Steve Fee)
“You Never Let Go” (Matt Redman)

I tried to choose familiar songs for this week that the team knew well. They sounded great! Thanks, guys!

There was just one surprise that caused some stress. We had a segment planned on a missions highlight, and they ended not being able to be there. So, we just had to scramble to find something to take its spot during the offering.  A song played from a CD ended up being what we went with, and it worked fine.

I was able to hang out in the sound booth in back and just keep an eye on what was going on. Our tech crew is great – they do such a good job back there, and it usually goes unnoticed, which in most cases is a bad thing. In this case, you don’t want people turning around and looking back in your direction during the service, because that usually means something isn’t working right!

We’re getting ready to install a camera/video system in our sanctuary in the next few weeks! With that, we’re going to be launching a new Cafe Connections video venue service in our Family Life Center.  Needless to say, I’ve been very busy planning for this new service! One thing we are planning to do with our new system is to stream our services live online. So yesterday since I was just hanging around in the back, I thought I would setup my computer and do a little test run with a webcam. Wow – the quality was horrible! I have a lot of work to do to figure out how to get a good sound and picture for the Livestream. Once our new cameras are installed, I’m sure it will be a whole new story.

Hope you all had a great week! Read other recaps from around the country at the The Worship Community’s Sunday Setlist blog carnival.

All About Worship Retreat – Day 2

Day Two at the All About Worship Retreat! Wow – what a great day!

The day started with a time of morning devotions led by Fred McKinnon. Fred is the founder of The Worship Community, an online community for worship leaders, artists, singers, and musicians! Fred did a great job of getting our hearts in the right place for a day of worship. God really spoke to me a lot today, and it all started during this time.

Our morning session began with worship led by Ben AbuSaada, one of the hosts of the All About Worship Retreat. Dwayne Moore then led us through his second session called “Hitting the Target of Daily Worship”.  He used a great analogy of aiming to throw a dart to describe our attempt to live a daily life of worship. We need to align with God’s Word, discipline our thoughts, rely on the Holy Spirit, and surrender completely. Very challenging! Jared Anderson from the Desperation Band then closed that session with a time of worship.

We also had some great breakout sessions today. I took two sessions with worship leader, Tommy Walker.  One was “Why Be A Worship Leader”, and the other was “How to Prevent Burnout”. Both sessions had great reminders and tips.

I hit Mr. Gyros for lunch with another WL from the conference, and following that we had another general session with Mike Kim, Dwayne Moore and Tommy Walker leading worship. Tommy Walker has to be one of my favorite worship leaders! His style, heart and passion comes through so loud!

Tonight was a highlight of the whole retreat so far, for me. We had a worship concert with Darrell Evans, Jared Anderson, Tommy Walker and Michael Farren. It was an acoustic night with just piano and guitar. What a great night!

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions!

All About Worship Retreat – Day 1

 I’m back at the hotel now, after a great first day at the All About Worship Retreat here in Kansas City.  Ben Abu Saada and Wisdom Moon, from All About Worship have done an outstanding job organizing and putting on this retreat! Thanks so much, guys!!

It was an early morning – getting up at 3:00 (a.m.) to drive to Milwaukee. First time flying Southwest today – what a great airline!  I had a great lunch today with some worship leader friends from the retreat – Fred McKinnon, Joe Brookhouse, and Bobby Taylor.  Great lunch at Jason’s Deli!!

It was great to meet some amazing new worship leader friends from around the country. The strange part was that it felt like I already knew so many of them, even though we had never met! I’ve been communicating with many of them on Twitter and Facebook before the Retreat.

After a short Orientation, we met with our small groups. That will a great time to go deeper on some of these issues. Looking forward to it!

Then, we had an amazing dinner catered by Jack Stack BBQ! Delicious!! Great conversations, too!

Tonights session included times of worship led by Darrell Evans (writer of “Trading My Sorrows”), Michael Farren, (Pocket Full of Rocks), and Joanna Reyburn May (from the International House of Prayer, here in Kansas City).

Our main speaker for this retreat is Dwayne Moore, writer of Pure Praise, a worship study book.  In his first session, he talked about how we should all be next-level worshippers by having a passion to give worship, surrender to live worship, and a burden to show worship to others.  Great stuff!!

Now, time to hit the hay – early morning devotionals tomorrow am.

All About Worship Retreat

This weekend, I’m privileges to take part in the All About Worship Retreat at Grace Church near Kansas City.  This unique retreat is being put on by the people from the All About Worship Podcast, a great resource for worship leaders hosted by Wisdom Moon and Ben AbuSaada.

We’ll have lots of speakers and artists here, like other conferences, but there’s only about 55 people registered for the conference, which will give it a very close, intimate feel. No hype, hopefully; just real conversations about stuff that matters. I’m looking forward to a time of personal, spiritual renewal.

I’ll post thoughts and ideas along the way.

Sunday Recap – May 16, 2010

This morning’s services were a powerful testimony to God’s forgiveness and grace. We were focusing on Genesis 26, and how God has the power to break the power of sin, even generational sin.


Songs
“Salvation Is Here” (Joel Houston)


“Where the Spirit of the Lord Is” (Chris Tomlin, Christy Nockels and Nathan Nockels)
   – We introduced this song today from the new Passion: Awakenings CD. I really enjoy this song, and our team did a great job! I’ll have to do it a few more times to see what kind of response there will be from the congregation. With the separate guys/girls parts on this song, I think it’s something a bit different and something people can identify with.  


“Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” (Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio, others)


“Happy Day” (Ben Cantelon and Tim Hughes)
  – This was a great way to end our service – a joyful celebration of God’s grace and forgiveness in our lives.


Other Service Elements
– We also had three videos today, which is more than usual. Our youth group produced a video to promote their Costa Rica dinner, and we also had a representative from Gospel for Asia here today who showed a video about te Dalit children in India. But the most powerful video today Pastor Tim used as part of his message. His mother-in-law spoke via video about how God broke the chain of sin in her life. There have been several generations of alcoholism in her family and no Christian believers in generations past. But, beginning with her family, that chain was broken. Very powerful!


We had one glitch this morning before the service – just 7 minutes before our service started, our computer that projects the words froze up.  So, it was a quick restart, but we made it in time…


Traditional Service
In addition to our 2 Contemporary Services, we also have a Traditional Service. The hymns we used this morning were:
“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
“Blessed Assurance”
“And Can It Be”
“He Touched Me” (Gaither)
“At Calvary”


I’m looking forward to reading through your recaps at The Worship Community’s Sunday Setlists site. Have a great week!

Relevance Conference tomorrow

It’s the night before I attend the Relevance Conference with two of the other pastors from Bethel tomorrow.  It’s being held at Eagle Brook Church in Lino Lakes, MN.  It feels great, actually, to be back in my old stomping grounds of Roseville. It brings back such great memories of my time here at Bethel College.  How fun to see everything again, and see how things change!

We went to Baker’s Sqaure tonight, and the place was filled with college kids! At first we weren’t quite sure why  it was so busy on a Wednesday night, and then we realized that it was free pie Wednesday! I ordered coffee and pie, and the pie was free! Score! But what was really going through my mind was how young these college kids look! I can’t believe it’s been 17 years since I graduated college! Where has time gone!

So tomorrow we take the drive farther north to Lino Lakes to go to the Relevance Conference. I’m really looking forward to it! I have no idea what the topic will be this time, or what God has in store for us, but I’m ready for whatever! I’ve been feeling very overwhelmed with a lot of stuff at church recently, so it will be good to get a healthy distraction for a day.  I’m ready to hear from the Lord tomorrow!

I’ll probably run in to people that I know tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to as well!  Here’s just a short little video of what we’re going to experience tomorrow. I’ll try to post throughout the day, or tweet (Follow @bkwestman on Twitter).

2010 Relevance promo from Eagle Brook Church on Vimeo.