brent(inWorship)

I’ve talked to you before about me love affair with Twitter. I really enjoy the conversations, challenges and resources I receive through the Twitter world.

So my buddy Matt Singley has a little give away going on right now. Starting today, Matt started giving out free, unlimited subscriptions to SpinVox. SpinVox is a killer resource that turns your voicemail into email or text. I don’t know about you, but voicemail can eat up my day and being able to put it into text form is a much easier, faster and more relaible way of handling it.

So here is the catch. If you want a free subscription to Spinvox, all you have to do is follow Matt on Twitter and your name goes into the drawing. If you haven’t joined Twitter yet, go for it. You could get a cool service for free and you’d be following rthe Tweets of a great guy.

While your at it, feel free to follow me as well. If your following along for my “Weekend of Jazz”, you’ll enjoy lots of tweets and twitpic’s the whole weekend.

I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while. This week I read something that pushed me over the edge.

As a man, I understand that I am capable of being very strong. Both physically as well as emotionally. I can handle pain as well as being picked on. Of course, my reactions often come at the expense of others. I can easily use my “force” to attempt to gain my own way. All of us have been in a fight at some point in our life. Fists were thrown. Blood was shed. Some fights were worse than others. Some of you have even hurt another in such a way that medical attention was needed. And some of you are proud of that.

Here’s where I am going though. Some of you have decided that the best way for you to live the life you want is to treat your wives like crap. You take every opportunity to let her know who’s boss, as if you are some superior being. You may actually “fight” her and this physical brawl may even lead to the need for medical attention. Really? Even worse, you’ve spoken to her in a way that makes her feel invaluable, cheap and worthless. You see, emotional abuse in my opinion is far worse. The physical bruises will heal. An emotional bruise may never heal. Who are you?

If you are a husband that has never treated his wife this way, than I am not speaking to you. I am directly speaking to those jerks that feel the need to act as if they are some glorious creature that has more rights than another. I’m sick of you. I’m tired of hearing about how you treat women. I see you everyday. I see you when I am shopping. I see the way you talk to your wife and even worse your kids. I see you online. Looking at or even posting pics and videos of women that need to be honored instead of masturbated to. I see you at church. When you come into our office and ask for us to fix your marriage cause your wife won’t do what your asking her to do.

I understand that many of you are hurting yourself. But, why in the world do you choose to hurt others to make yourself feel better! Be a man and get help. But there are many of you that don’t care. I don’t understand you. I don’t care for you. I want nothing to do with you. And yet, God says I need to show you love. I don’t like that. but I know it’s right. So, here is what I am going to do. I am going to live as an example. You can then choose whether you will continue to be an asshole or you will decide to be a real man. And, yes I am upset. Because everyday, I am watching you destroy something that God has created. Woman. The one thing you desire the most. A beautiful, loving woman is the one thing you are destroying. Don’t you see this!!!

So, again, I will choose to live by example. I will choose to speak honestly to you. I will choose to love the ones that you choose to abuse. I will choose to counsel and pray for those that you have damaged for life. I will choose to love, the good and despise the evil. I will choose to help you. But I will not help your pride and anger. I will do everything in my power to destroy it.

And I don’t care if you believe in God or not. This is not about God and yet, you can learn a lot from Jesus. Everyone knows what love and security is. When you choose to trash it, everyone sees that as well. But, God says that we as men are to love our wives as Christ loved the church. And don’t throw Ephesians 5:22 at me. Because Ephesians 5:22 doesn’t even exist without 5:25.

Men, Christ died for the church. Are you willing to die for you wife? Or, are you more intent on killing her? Because every time you yell at her and call her names. Every time you slap her or punch her. Every time you laugh at her and chop her down in front of friends. You choose to kill her. A beautiful, God created Woman. You choose to take her life.

Here’s where I sat this weekend.

Had a great weekend! Jim, my co-leader led worship again. I have been working sound for a couple of weeks while our sound men take some time off. It is awesome to have Jim around, I can count on him leading the church well.

So, the set list was geared around doing some things that would work well with acoustics. The team was fairly stripped down today. We had a great vocal team, but the band was just Drum, Bass and 2 Acoustics. It was fun to mix.

We are in the 4th week of a study on James. Today we talked about Generosity. We had a fun time giving away $50 in each service. The assignment is to take the $50 and to give it away to someone in need. We put a cell phone number up on the main screen and the first one to call the number received the $50. That was fun and a great practical way of practicing generosity. Each of the people that received the money will be giving a report next week and what they did with the money. I am excited to hear about people’s creativity in helping others.

So, here is the set list. it’s a picture of my console snapshots for the weekend.

I thought it would be fun to throw one of the tunes up from this AM. This is just a quick rough mix of the Pro Tools tracks. This is Hallelujah(Your Love Is Amazing)

Blessed Be Your Name by Matt and Beth Redman
All Creatures Of Our God and King by Saint Francis of Assisi (Crowder version)
Create In Me by Brown Bannister
Come Thou Fount, Come Thou King by Robert Robinson and Thomas Miller (Gateway Version)
Hallelujah(Your Love Is Amazing) by Brenton Brown and Brian Doerkson
By His Wounds by Mac Powell

This post is a part of the crazy carnival that is…Sunday Setlists.

So, I was reading a post over a djchuang’s blog today. It was well written and thought through as his work usually is. It talked of emotional maturity and what that really looks like. I don’t want to re-hash what he’s written, so if you have a moment, go check out his post.

But, there was a little quiz that he linked to in his post and I wanted to pass it along to you. I thought it was interesting. it’s quick, like 10 questions, but here is what I came up with.

So how about you? Head over and take the quiz.

Then come back here and tell us, what is your emotional maturity?

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. Over the last 2 weeks, tam and I have had the awesome opportunity to meet, for the very first time, some Twitter/Blogging friends.

This last Friday PM, we had Mike and Brooke over with their little sister Grace. We met Mike and Brooke for the first time in the Twitter world, before we even knew they lived in the same town as us. Crazy! We had a blast. we BBQ’d, played music, watched videos and laughed a ton. It was awesome. We already knew each other from Twitter, so their was no need to impress and we quickly struck up conversation. Brooke brought these amazing cookies over. And Mike is a great guitar player. Unfortunately another Twitter friend was under the weather and had to rain check the event. I can say however, that we truly had a great time and this will be something we do frequently.

We also had the opportunity to hang out last week with an old friend, his wife and a new blog friend. I used to work with Mark and it was awesome to have dinner with him. And it was pleasure to finally meet the infamous Matt Singley. This dude is the real deal. If you want to get an idea of who he is in person, just take all that personality from his online presence and times it by 10. Tam and I had an instant connection with him and we will definitely be hanging again in the future. He was also kind enough to allow me the pleasure of enjoying a wonderful scotch that he had brought with him, just for this occasion.

So, in June we had awesome friends from Pennsylvania. This week we enjoyed Mike, Brooke, Mark and Matt. In October we will be enjoying the company of Papa and Mama. And then in February, we are off to Nashville to hang out with a ton of new blog friends there.

So, what do Twitter, BBQ’d chicken and scotch have in common? I don’t know

If you read this blog, you’ve read about my trip last week to Portland to attend a simulcast of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. I went with 2 guys I work with and we had a blast together.

I didn’t head up with any expectations. Only to listen and soak it in. I was blown away. By the quality of the speakers. By the focus of the event. And, by the things God continues to reveal to me through everything I took in.

Instead of pouring into all my thoughts, I though I would highlight some of the quotes I’ve put together, from the conference. These are just a fraction of the notes I took.

I would love to hear what they mean to you.

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-Injustice in the bible is a particular sin. It is about the abuse of power, to take from other people the good things God intended for them. Ecc 4:1

-God wants people to know He is good. People need to know the goodness of God. The Lord loves justice.

-So why isn’t God doing anything about? Because we aren’t doing anything about it. The plan is for us to seek justice and rescue the oppressed. There is no doubt God has given us the work of justice in this world

-If we find ourselves saying “justice is not our thing” than God will find Himself saying, “you are not my thing”.

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-What are you doing that you need to stop doing?

-What is God trying to show me through my greatest limitation?

-What has God called you to do that you are afraid to attempt…and when are you going to do it?

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-Should we answer God with just a fraction of ourselves?

-If I were God for a day, would I pick myself to be used for His desires?

-Have I been shoveling stuff into my own wheel barrow all my life? What if I continue to shovel but only into others wheel barrows?

-Gods plan for us is greater than anything we could ever create.