[Note:  For full disclosure, I am sitting on the sun deck at my hotel overlooking a jellyfish-strewn Cocoa Beach.  This isn't really relevant; I'm just rubbing it in.]

As I was reading Chapter 2 over breakfast this morning, I started thinking about some of my motivations and selfishness.  Francis Chan uses several funerals as examples in the chapter.  I don’t know about you, but I like funerals where you hear about the people who were touched by the recently deceased.

I’ve often thought that I wanted my funeral to be like that.  I want there to be many stories about the people that I touched or helped or motivated.

Am I not an incredible person for wanting to help people and have an impact on their lives?  I’ve even been reading about servant leadeship on this trip! 

But this morning got me thinking about my motives.  I think my motives have been rather selfish to date.

We are called to help others.  Not to be known for helping others.  Do you see the difference?  It’s all about who gets the fame and glory.  Is it you (or me)?  Or God?

Our calling is to help others in order to bring glory to God.  Period.  End of discussion.

Am I only the one who has struggled with this?  Feel free to weigh in with a comment.

Tuesday, in particular, caught my attention:

“Our level of development is fairly obvious with tennis or piano playing, where it is impossible to pretend.  But it is not so obvious in the areas of character and emotional development.”

Profound!

As I have been interviewing people for several positions at work, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.  It’s so hard to ascertain character in a 60-minute interview.  You never know when someone is faking it…

A 60-day probationary period sure would be nice sometimes.  Although, we’d probably end up using it as a crutch and not be discerning enough before hiring…

“The people complained about their problems instead of praying. Some problems can be solved by careful thought or by rearranging our priorities. Some can be solved by discussion and good counsel. But some problems can be solved only by prayer. We should make a determined effort to pray when we feel like complaining because complaining only raises our level of stress. Prayer quiets our thoughts and emotions, and prepares us to listen.”

I don’t know about you, but I seem to default to solving my problems through careful thought and discussion (read as complaining…).

I found out 2 weeks ago that my cheese is being moved.  I learned that there are some changes coming with my new job.  (Change is a great thing; except when it happens to you…)  My job doesn’t appear to be jeopardy, but I’m not exactly sure what my role is going to be either.

So I’ve been trying to think through all the possible outcomes, and the pros and cons of those outcomes.  But here’s the deal, it probably won’t do me a lick of good.  In fact, it will probably just stress me out.

Yesterday’s reading was a good reminder for me to put my trust in the Lord and let Him take care of things.  After all, I’m just along for the ride.

Here’s a partial list:

• Why do people leave their car running unattended outside of convenience stores? 
• Why can’t  I eat whatever I want and lose weight?
• Why doesn’t the rest of the world operate on my schedule?
• Why would anyone would cheer for OU?
• Why are people so mean to each other?
• Furthermore, why do people try to get ahead by destroying other people?

So what are some of things that cause you to scratch your head?  (Figuratively.  Not literally.  We’re not talking about head lice people…)

You can type in your city or zip code, and then check out census data overlaid on a Google map.  The initial map is racial/ethnic distribution, but be sure to click on “View More Maps” to see education levels, household income, and a few other things.

It’s a good way to kill some time.

So… it’s been more than 3 months since my last post.  And 8+ months since my last post that wasn’t a Sunday Setlist.  After taking a little break, I’ve decided it’s time to get blogging again.  But no Sunday Setlists.  Well, probably not.

From the beginning, I wanted to use my blog ” to inform, to inspire, to debate, and to entertain” while doing my best not to bore you.  Somewhere along the line, I bored myself. 

I’ve had a lot of ideas rolling around in my head the last month, or so, and I’m thinking it’s time to start putting them on the interweb blog thingy. 

You may be wondering what I’ve been up to the last few months.  So I’ll do my best to summarize October thru December using a bullet list.

• I’ve barely touched my mandolins.  Mostly, I’ve been playing guitar as of late.  The plus side is that I’m getting much better on the guitar.
• I changed jobs in November.  I quit my job in Purchasing at Cessna to be the Engineering Manager at PCI, an aircraft interior supplier.  It was very weird leaving after 13+ years but it was a great opportunity for me.
• Coinciding with the job change, I stepped out of my leadership role in the band at GracePoint.  Just not enough time and bandwidth with the new job.
• My daughter, Jada, had another brain surgery in November to put in a shunt that keeps the spinal fluid from building up and causing headaches.  This was a possibility after they removed the tumor this summer.  She’s doing great!
• We took the kids to San Antonio after Christmas break for our summer vacation.  (Yes, I realize that it is winter, but our summer vacation plans were cancelled when Jada had surgery on July 1st…)  We were able to go to Six Flags, Sea World, the AlamoBowl (Go Cowboys!), and we had an awesome  hotel room looking down at the Riverwalk.

I’m sure there were other things, but that is what immediately came to mind.

See you again soon!

Ronnie

What a fun, but exhausting, weekend!  My daughter turned 9 yesterday, so she had two friends sleep over Friday night and a birthday party on Saturday with about 15 screaming/giggling girls…  I also had the great pleasure of seeing her baptized tonight at the GracePoint Baptism Bash!  A great end to a great day!

Today was week 2 of the OMG! series at GracePoint Church.  Bryson spoke about Catholicism and how it differs from Protestant Christianity. 

The Setlist:

• Mess of Me by Switchfoot (walk-in & exit)
• We Shine by Fee
• No One Like You by David Crowder Band
• If We Are the Body by Casting Crowns
• You Never Let Go by Matt Redman
• No More No Less by Mercyme (offering)

Mess of Me is our new favorite song!  This was the second time we’ve played it.  Very fun to play.

We Shine , like the rest of the songs to come, is a song we’ve been using for several years.  It’s a great one to kick of the worship set with.

No One Like You was maybe a little fast this morning…  It was tough to keep the tempo in check coming off of We Shine.  For something a little different, we skipped the intro and went straight from We Shine into the first verse…

If We Are the Body is a GP favorite.  I thought Gil did a fantastic job of engaging the crowd this morning, especially on this song.

You Never Let Go never gets old.  How awesome that we serve a God who never lets go of us!

No More No Less …  not my favorite song in the world, but it’s fun to play and other people really seem to get a lot out of it.

The band:  Gil - vocals, Tommy - electric guitar, Ronnie (me) - electric & acoustic guitars, Carlos - bass, Chris - drums

As always, you can find more Sunday Setlists over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

Have a great week!

This week at GracePoint we launched a new series called OMG, comparing other religions with Christianity.  With all the stuff in the news lately, it was very timely to learn more about Islam.

The setlist:

• Show Me What I’m Looking For by Carolina Liar (walk-in and exit)
• Let God Arise by Chris Tomlin
• See His Love by Jesus Culture
• Grace Like Rain by Todd Agnew
• Psalm 130 by Edge of Grace
• Set Me Free by Casting Crowns (offering)

Show Me What I’m Looking For is an awesome song.  Carmen always does an incredible job singing it.

Let God Arise remains my favorite Chris Tomlin tune.

See His Love … another great worship song.

Grace Like Rain is one we haven’t done a lot lately, but it really spoke to me Sunday. 

Psalm 130 is an original.  It was the first time we used it during the worship time.  You can ready more about the story behind it here.

Set Me Free is a favorite of both the band and GP.  Very powerful.

The band:  Thomas - vocals, Carmen - vocals, Bruce - electric guitar, Bryan - bass, Rod - keys, Phil - drums.

For more Sunday Setlists, be sure to check out TheWorshipCommunity.com.  See you next week!

Happy Monday!

We wrapped up the “Jack’d Up” series  at GracePoint this week.  There’s been some amazing stories about the jacked up and broken people that God has poured out His love on.

The setlist:

• All Jacked Up by Gretchen Wilson (walk-in)
• Jesus Freak by DC Talk
• The Time Has Come as recorded by Jesus Culture
• King of Glory by Jesus Culture
• Your Grace is Enough by Chris Tomlin
• Mess of Me by Switchfoot (offering)
• Jesus Freak (exit)

All Jacked Up…  It’s been four weeks of All Jacked Up for the walk-in during the “Jack’d Up” series…  I think we’ll take a little break…

Jesus Freak is a song we’ve been doing for quite a few years.  It amazes me how much people still like it.   It was fun to rap again!

The Time Has Come is a great high-energy worship song!

King of Glory is becoming one of my favorites.  Jamie did a great job on the vocals.

Your Grace is Enough is another older song.  We’ve done it acoustically a few times in the last year, but it’s been a while since we played it full band.  I won’t wait that long again…

Mess of Me is a new one.  You’ve probably been hearing it on the radio lately.  It wasn’t originally slated for the offering slot (we were going to do it as an exit song), but Sea of Faces just wasn’t gelling together during practice and Mess of Me sounded really good.  So we axed Sea of Faces.  I think it was a good decision.  People seemed to really get into the song, and the bridge sounded great with Gil belting out “There ain’t no drug!” while Tommy doubled the melody on electric guitar.  It’s our new favorite song!

The band:  Jamie - vocals, Gil - vocals/bass, Ronnie (me) - electric guitar/acoustic guitar/rap, Tommy - electric guitar, Rod - keys, Deric - drums.

I think that’s everything…  For more Sunday Setlists, be sure to check out TheWorshipCommunity.com.

See you next week!

Woo-hoo! It’s been a couple of weeks since I actually got this out on Sunday…

Today was week 2 of the “Jack’d Up” series at GracePoint.  The message this morning was titled “No Perfect People Allowed”.  Props to Kelly  for sharing his story on video about how God had taken his jacked-up life and turned it around.  It seems to be a common theme at GracePoint…

The setlist:

• All Jacked Up by Gretchen Wilson (walk-in)
• Revolution by Starfield
• My Glorious by Delirious
• Made to Love by TobyMac
• Hosanna by Hillsong United
• Sanctity by Christina Wark/Phorn (offering)
• Revolution (exit)

 All Jacked Up is… appropriately… the theme song for the series.  It’s been a while since we’ve done a song throughout an entire series.  I’m sure we’ll be sick of it by week 4…

Revolution is a great high-energy song to kick things off with.

My Glorious is one of my favorite Delirious songs.  What an awesome moment at the end when everyone was singing “My Glorious” over and over acapella!  The church bells that Rod threw in for the 2nd verse were very nice…

Made to Love is a song that we hadn’t done in a while.  On TobyMac’s Alive and Transported concert DVD, he turns the song into a pretty powerful worship moment.  It was good, but I think we probably fell short of that…  (He is TobyMac after all!)  We’ll give it another go sometime.

Hosanna… You’ve got to have Hillsong somewhere in the worship set, right?  Great song!

Sanctity was a new one for us.  Christina wrote this song and has been singing it with her band, Phorn (a.k.a. 4N), for a while.  I thought it really made a nice counter-point to All Jacked Up. 

The band: Christina - vocals, Gil - vocals, Jeff - electric guitar, Ronnie (me) - electric mandolin & electric guitar, Eron - bass, Rod - keys, Chris - drums.

I think that’s about it…  You can find Sunday Setlists from other churches over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

See you next Sunday!