From the Mind of MandoRon

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m sitting in the La-Z-Boy blogging…  What a loser!

Yesterday, I got to spend some time with several of my friends from high school.  Last year, several of us got together for breakfast and had a great time reconnecting.  I guess it’s officially a tradition now since we already started making plans for next year…  Joe - you’re hosting!

Here’s the group photo.  And just for the record, Andrea didn’t go to high school with the rest of us…

Chirstmas at Crista's 2008

Since we’re leaving town tomorrow, Andrea and I gave the kids one of their presents today - a Nintendo Wii.  I’m not sure who was more excited, me or the kids.  So today has been a Wii-filled day.

We have, however, made some time to check Santa’s location at www.noradsanta.org.  This is a pretty cool website.  Jada claims it’s proof that Santa really exists!

In another hour, we’ll be heading downtown for GracePoint’s Christmas Eve service.  The middle school (where we normally meet on Sundays) wasn’t available, so we’re renting the Orpheum, a historic theater in downtown Wichita.

Santa was just sighted over Egypt!

Anyway… have a Merry Christmas tomorrow.  If you’re travelling, be safe.

I came across this Monty Python sketch yesterday while perusing the Mandolin Cafe discussion boards.

Funny stuff!  I like how the shop owner tries to come up with clever negative responses at first, but later gives up and just says no over and over…

It’s especially timely with all of the barren store shelves this time of year.

Good afternoon, people of the blogosphere!  Once again it’s time for my Sunday Setlist recap of this morning’s service at GracePoint.

Today was the last Sunday in the Beatles-themed “Let It Be Christmas” series.  The Christmas Eve service at the Orpheum in a few days will be the last of the Beatles…

For a few months now, we’ve been broadcasting the services live over the Internet.  I may be getting the story wrong, but this morning a church in Romania was going to stream the first service live at their church.  Pretty cool!

On to the music…

• Little Drummer Boy (walk-in)
• Bring Me to Life - Evanescence
• O Holy Night - Barlow Girl
• Revolution - Starfield
• Solid Rock - Delirious
• Revolution - The Beatles (offering)
• Come Together - The Beatles (exit)

Little Drummer Boy is one we started using several Christmases ago.  I don’t know who came up with the arrangement originally, but we “borrowed” it from Granger Community Church.  The band gets a groove going, and then it’s a lead guitar solo of the melody in 3 different octaves.  (You can watch Granger’s version by clicking on this link and then scrolling down to the “Blue Man Prelude” video.  It is second from the bottom.)  Fun song!

Bring Me to Life has been a GP favorite for a few years.  Jamie is incredible on the song.  Interestingly, it transitioned really nicely into the O Holy Night…

O Holy Night is another one that we’ve used for a couple of Christmases.  The Barlow Girl arrangement of the song is awesome, and it fits Jamie’s voice perfectly.

Revolution is one that we unveiled earlier this year.  It’s a lot of fun.  Now that I think about it … it was a morning of fun songs.  It fit in very nicely with Bryson’s sermon about Revolution.

Solid Rock is a great version of a classic hymn.  Rod really gets the “Steve Wonder funk thing” going on the keyboards.  Our good friends PC Revelations and the God Squad joined the band on this one.  These guys have an awesome ministry, and do a pretty good job of helping us white guys get our hip-hop going.

Revolution was the classic Beatles version, but rocked up a bit, if that’s possible.

Come Together was brilliant.  PC joined the band again and got an Aerosmith/Run DMC thing going on.  Nobody wanted to leave.  I can’t blame them really…

AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs last year.

600 executives took home an average of $2.6M.

Ridiculous…

As I mentioned last week, Jada and I were invited to perform at the Bentley Elementary 1st and 2nd grade Christmas program.

Last Friday afternoon was the big day, and Jada did awesome.  After school on Monday, Jada was relieved to be finally get away from “all of her fans”.  Her friends had asked her to sing all day long, and she didn’t really like the attention…  At dinner, she prayed that her fans would find something else to think about!

Anyway, I got the video yesterday, and I thought I would share.

In case you’ve missed the whole saga, it started with a Christmas song that Jada wrote a few weeks ago.  We made a video and the rest is history.