Posted via web from Shaping The (Posterous) Space

We can fit more weird stuff in our convertible than we ever could in our hatchback.
 
Convertibles…the practical alternative.
 
Sent from my Nokia E71 on 3

Posted via email from Shaping The (Posterous) Space

I’m asking you to help me make a decision.

It’s a decision that could radically change life as I know it.

Remember, radical is relative.

Ready?

OK…here we go:

Should I link all the additional posting I do on my Posterous blog to this blog?

Things to bear in mind as you cast your vote:

1. I don’t really post here all that often, 2 or 3 times per week, and the only consistent post is the Sunday worship post.
2. Linking Posterous would increase the frequency and randomness of the posts.  If it’s possible to increase the randomness that is.
3. If you already follow my Posterousness you’d get all of this twice. That is overkill of the highest order.
4. All my posts are twittered regardless of what blog they’re on…but I’d likely turn off the tweeting for Posterous if I linked them.
5. There should be a 5th thing to bear in mind, I’m just not sure what it is.  All suggestions welcome.

Told you this was life-changing stuff…

It’s the 12 month anniversary Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com, so come and celebrate by joining the party and checking the blogs of how churches around the globe have been worshipping this week.

The church leadership had our mid-year Vision Team meeting last night (and dinner…the really important part), which was good preparation for the day’s messages on the spirit of our church. We’ve grown about 15% so far this year, so it was time for a mid-year impartation of who / what / where / why. Pastor Gary took the morning service, and we had a rare treat for the evening service with Pastor Lissa taking where the morning message left off. She should preach more often.

Music

Sunday AM
1. You Deserve (Crocker, Hudson / Hillsong)
2. For Your Glory (Pringle / C3)
3. Desert Song (Fraser / Hillsong)
4. Stronger (Fielding, Morgan / Hillsong)
5. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
6. For Your Name (Gillies, Houston, Morgan / Hillsong)
…and for the end of service
7. For Your Name (reprise)

Marg led this morning, and I was meant to be having my week off but for various reasons it wasn’t to be. Not least because we decided to introduce For Your Name, which is track 2 on the new Hillsong Live Faith+Hope+Love album (read my review). I always enjoy introducing songs from new albums, because you get to see who’s been listening to them already. More people were singing along than I expected, and by the end of the service when we did it again, around half the congregation seemed to have it down. Impressive.

We also debuted an updated version of the countdown that we use for the morning services, featuring Somebody Told Me by The Killers. Very cool.

There were also some sweet moments in Desert Song when I could hear the congregation singing quite a bit more loudly than the team. I love that.

Sunday PM
1. Take It All (Crocker, Ligertwood, Sampson / Hillsong)
2. From The Inside Out (Houston / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Shout You Praise (Oroso, Araullo, Reddy / Awesome Church)
…then for the end of service/Worship+…
4. From The Inside Out (reprise)
5. More Than Life (Houston / Hillsong)
6. You Are Here (The Same Power) (Pankratz, George / Hillsong)
7. Who Tha King? (Reddy, Costello, Losurdo / Awesome Church)
8. What The World Will Never Take (Crocker, Ligertwood, Sampson / Hillsong)

Mher led tonight and it was fun! The guys did some fresh twists on the arrangement for Take It All, specifically the electric guitar, gave it some new life too. The Worship+ time (which basically incorporates ministry time followed by a mini praise party) was also the best it’s been in recent weeks. And it’s been great, so that’s saying something.

Beat It returned for the meet and greet too. Sadly, the moonwalk didn’t.

Other Stuff

Despite great services, there were some technical issues which were not fun. The preaching in the morning sounded downright bizarre due to a few errors in the use of the lapel mic that I won’t go into. I spent some time with it following the service to make sure it’s as foolproof as possible, and it was fine for the evening service. However, the morning service was a little distracting for many people because of the issues.

A few of us on the leadership of various teams had an informal meeting in the cafe after church about improvements we need to make to keep honouring the growth of the church and the favour we’re experiencing. It was great to spend time with these guys as often we’re all so busy running our departments we don’t get to sit down together and share outside scheduled meetings. And as Diane was the barista for the evening, we were there a bit later than usual. In total, we spent 10 hours at church today. Just as well it’s ‘home’ huh!

Do you get distracted when technical stuff gets in the way?

Note for Facebook readers : remember if I post a video or song, you’ll need to actually click through to my blog to see or listen. You know you want to.

Well, kinda.

I made some independent CDs and sold quite a few of them (this goes back to the previous century), and still have the registered business name with the appropriate Australian authorities. And my Australian Business Number (which will mean nothing to the non-Australians) still has dg4G Records listed as a trading name.

But I didn’t hold on to the domain names that I had registered at the time.  I just didn’t have enough foresight to imagine me using them again.  And in the days before deregulation of domain name ownership in Australia, owning and not using them was a little expensive.

Out of curiosity, I just checked out the domain for my former “record company” site.

Why don’t you do the same thing.  Right now.

I don’t think I’d want that domain now even if I could have it.

While I still use dg4G as my Twitter name (not least because it’s very short, freeing up more of those valuable 140 characters to use for important things in retweets and @replies, like words), it also makes an appearance in a few of my social media profiles…but not all of them. Or sometimes it’s there, but in an adulterated format, like “dg4G…” which is my Skype name, or “dg4God” which is my delicious.com name and also one of my multiple gmail accounts.

I used to own davidgoodwin.com.au, and could do so again, but why? .au domains are a bit naff.  However, at no time in the last 15 years have I ever seen davidgoodwin.com available for registration or purchase. Until now.

So…should I buy it? How much do you think it’s worth? Is it just a vanity URL, or protection of my future web presence?

Tell me your thoughts … but what I really want to ask is…would Jesus want to own Jesus.com, or JesusChrist.com, or Messiah.com, or Saviour.com (or…the list is almost endless) if his time on earth as a human was happening right now?

Sure, it’s idle speculation…but I think we should take the WWJD question a little more seriously than we sometimes do. It’s easy to be flippant about something that gets thrown around carelessly like WWJD often is, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthwhile question.

What do you think?

Now celebrating 52 weeks of non-stop worship partay, over at the Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com you can read how other churches around the globe have been worshipping this week. And join the big anniversay celebration next week too!

Personally, we’ve had a huge week with moving and other such joys.  I might post about that later, though I probably did enough on Twitter anyway.

Huge is also a good way of describing our services today.  We had Pastor Suliasi Kurulo preach for both our services.  An international evangelist, he is truly one of the most gifted I’ve ever heard.  If you don’t know about him, go and do some research – you know it’s not hard.  Start by clicking on that link I put there for you.

Music

Sunday AM
1. No One Like You (David Crowder*Band)
2. My Future Decided (Houston, Douglass, Sampson / Hillsong)
3. This Is Our God (Fielding, Morgan / Hillsong)
4. How Great Is Our God (Tomlin, Cash, Giglio)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. My Future Decided (reprise)
…and for the end of service
6. This Is Our God (bridge)
7. Say So (Houghton, Gungor)

Dante led this morning, and it was we had a sweet morning. Quite a few little errors from pretty much everyone, but nothing annoying because the whole service was so fun. We had all had a big day in the recording studio yesterday recording a track for our forthcoming album (one of my songs – yay!), so it was a bit weird to be so physically tired yet so pumped for God that He overcame the circumstances so what He wanted for the service would happen.

Sunday PM
1. Run (Houston / Hillsong)
2. Kingdom Come (Fielding / Hillsong)
3. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
4. Rain Down (Seeley / Planetshakers)
…then for the end of service…
5. You’ll Come (bridge) (Fraser / Hillsong)
6. Run (reprise)
7. Say So (reprise)

Troy led tonight, and being led into worship of Jesus with him is so cool. His love for Jesus is infectious. Following ministry time with Pastor Suli, we had a moshpit for Jesus going off.

Late update :  can’t believe I forgot to include this.  For the PM service, we had Beat It as the meet and greet music, complete with our pastor attempting the moonwalk on carpet .  I wish I had my phone ready to video that.  And I doubt it would have been getting recorded for the TV editing either.  However, rest assured I will check when Diane’s unpacked the video editing equipment again…

We also had a special treat with a team of Fijian dancers from the Sydney congregation of Christian Mission Fellowship (the church founded by Pastor Suli, and with plants across the globe). I did a post direct from church over on my Posterous blog, which you can click through too. Or, you can just watch the video I’ve embedded here.

Other Stuff

Technically the day was good apart from a muted mic at an inopportune moment this morning, but no biggie. The projector I mentioned last week was taken in for servicing and we had a loaner, which was fun for the techs from my company to mount way up there in the sky (our ceiling is about 12 metres or 40 feet high). Without moving the mounting post, it was never going to be a perfect fit, but the guys did well making the picture fit the screen. It was great to be able to see everything clearly this week, though we seem to have some signal issues I might have to get investigated.

What did you get up to today?

Note for Facebook readers : remember if I post a video or song, you’ll need to actually click through to my blog to see or listen. You know you want to.

I’m really enjoying how easy it is to use Posterous.

So, as a preparatory post for what I’m about to send out on Posterous…here’s this preposterous post.

Sorry, I really have no excuse for how bad that is.  It’s 1.25am and we’ve been packing.  What can I say.

Now go and check the latest over at my Posterous blog.

But before you do – enjoy this. It’s not only in Diane’s head

There’s a lot of music in my collection, but plenty of people have loads more than me.  At least, that’s what I tell myself.

When I worked in the music industry, my boss had every release across every format – 7″ & 12″ singles, 7″, 10″ & 12″ EPs, LPs, cassettes, CDs, cassingles, minidiscs, didImissany? – to come out in Australia between 1969 and 1995, and since that was the year I was working for him, I’m guessing he has since accumulated plenty more.  With everything filed away in a special room around the size of most people’s houses, carefully archived and everything easily found, all that was missing was a robot to fetch the desired item.  To describe him as anally retentive about who could enter that room would be vastly understating the facts.

I’m also a little anal retentive about my iTunes collection.  The one that requires its own external HDD to manage so that our resource heavy software like Final Cut and CS4 don’t get tooooo upset.  The one that sees me allocate songs to their correct source albums or singles (including tracking down accompanying artwork), even if I’ve acquired the tracks via compilation.  The one that I make sure sorts correctly by manually updating any ‘auto’ sort-field ‘errors’.  Ok, so I’m a lot anal-retentive about this.

Over at Christy’s blog, she was doing a meme thingamy, and since one of my songs was in her list (!), I thought I’d do the same meme thingamy here, not realising one of my songs would also appear in my own list…

I’ve also put some extra explanation stuff in there, because some of the categorisations are a little too constricting for me.  And I’m awesome so I can do that sort of thing.

Here we go!

iTunes Statistical Randomness

Number of Songs = 19,683
Number of Albums = 4,699
Most Recently Played Song = His Glory Appears – Hillsong Live : Faith + Hope + Love
Most Played Song = um…Your Clothes – David Goodwin; 32 plays. When I recorded this, I listened to it on my iPod all the time to check every detail. And I like it too. So there.
Most Recently Added Album = Hillsong Live : Faith + Hope + Love
First Song Alphabetically = A-Punk – Vampire Weekend
Last Song Alphabetically = Zulu Khayalami – Imbizo
Smallest Song Numerically = 0.000890569 – Aphex Twin
Largest Song Numerically = 6161 – Max Tundra
Shortest Song = Suite Outro – En Vogue, 4 seconds.   I’ve got over 200 tracks under 1 minute long, so I’ve taken this as shortest track rather than song…
Longest Song = Ascension, Edition II – John Coltrane, 40 min 41 sec.  Free-style jazz FTW!
First Album Alphabetically = A.O. Mod. TV. Vers – V.Spy V.Spy
Last Album Alphabetically = Zooropa – U2
Smallest Album Numerically = #1 Record – Big Star
Largest Album Numerically = 90125 – Yes
First 5 Songs That Come Up In Shuffle =
…You’re Not The Kind – Sarah Vaughan
…Amazing – George Michael
…You’re Just Too Hip, Baby – Dave Graney ‘n’ the Coral Snakes
…Central Reservation (Ben Watt Remix) – Beth Orton
…Fly Too High – Janis Ian

I was kinda embarrassed that in 5 songs, there’s nothing that reflects my proclaimed passion for worship music. Then I did the stats. I’ve got nearly 20,000 tracks, and around 2,500 of them can be classified as Christian (mainly overtly Christian). So 1 track in 8 should be Christian. Meaning there’s still 3 more tracks I have to redeem myself. Phew.

There’s not much electronica in that shuffle either (the Beth Orton remix barely qualifies) … and according to the stats 1 in 7 should be electronica.  So we’re OK.  Just.

Other Semi-Interesting Tid-Bits

Albums Titles Which Are Neither Alphabetical or Numerical = ( ) – Sigur Ros
Song Titles Which Are (Kinda) Neither Alphabetical or Numerical = Þversögn – Sigur Ros, and also ” µ-Ziq Theme ” – µ-Ziq

This post is part of the weekly Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com. Now in it’s 51st week! Go and check out the other setlists too.

Being Awesome Church is awesome.  That’s all I have to say.

Well, not quite all, since there’s a lot more words on this page, but … whatever…

The message was back on the Let The Word Do The Work series (part 5 this morning and part 6 in the evening service).  The AM message was easily one of Pastor Gary’s best messages too. If you want to catch any of them, you can go to our website, and click through the TV links – search for Awesome Church, or Harbourside Live (for pre 30 June messages), and you can see low-res streaming of our TV program. Diane edits it. She rocks. I’m only slightly biased about that.  Note that the messages on TV are around 2 months behind, so today’s awesome message won’t be on until September at the earliest.

Music

Sunday AM
1. No One Like You (David Crowder*Band)
2. Run (Houston / Hillsong)
3. To Meet You Here (Goodwin, Scarpato / Awesome Church)
4. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
6. Run (reprise)
…and for the end of service
7. He Is Lord (bridge)

Coming after a full-on week at Hillsong conference, I deliberately didn’t use songs that had been sung there, because that can often fall flat if you’re expecting your 300 people to sound like 26,000 (which was the count for the last night, when Chris Tomlin led worship – go and read my posts about the conference over at my Posterous blog if you haven’t already).

The worship was sweet this morning, everything well balanced technically, and a nice sweep of anthemic through to intimate moments.  And it’s so good to hear the congregation singing when you’re on the stage, as I did several times this morning.

Sunday PM
1. Your Name High (Houston / Hillsong)
2. Show Me Your Glory (Murgida / Awesome Church)
3. You Are Here (The Same Power) (Pankrantz, George / Hillsong)
4. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. For Your Glory (Pringle / C3)

Worship+
1. With Everything (Houston / Hillsong)
2. You Are Here (The Same Power)
3. Who Tha King? (Reddy, Araullo, Costello / Awesome Church)

Merv led for the main service songs, and both songs 3 and 4 weren’t planned but came through the flow of the meeting. He Is Lord has really been resonating with our congregation since we introduced it a few weeks ago.

Troy led for Worship+, and it was a little weird. Communication problems I think. But people were still blessed so that’s all that matters. Who Tha King? will need a bit of arrangement massaging before we record it, so it’s likely to be on the schedule for September. But no matter what, it’s gonna be lots of fun pretending to be a black choir for the backing vocals

Other Stuff

We had our speakers (remember that saga) fixed and back in place today, so the ugly spare ones from my work can go back again. Happy about this. However, now our projector has decided it doesn’t like being bright. This wouldn’t normally be a big issue, but it’s mounted 15 metres up and requires scaffolding to be built in the church for servicing. When my techs looked at it 2 months ago, it was dusty but fine. Now it’s looking ttiirrreeedddd. Hopefully it’s not too much of a hassle to fix it.

Now, Diane and I are getting in some Sunday night relaxation before the onslaught of moving takes place this week. Fun!

So, what’s going on in your world? I wanna know.

Note for Facebook readers : remember if I post a video or song, you’ll need to actually click through to my blog to see or listen. You know you want to anyway.

Warning : this is a wordy post.  I’m making up for not posting here very much lately with something I’m passionate about – worship music.

Hillsong have been making live worship albums for 18 years, and while there’s been lots of changes to the team in that time, a couple – like Darlene & Reuben – have been around for the vast majority of that time.

They know what they’re doing. But more importantly, God knows and honours what they’re doing.

It goes without saying that this album sounds amazing. My company provides some of the ancillary services for Hillsong’s conferences and recordings, so I know a bit of what goes into these productions, and they are productions. Very. Big. Productions. This year, they decided to record the album across several locations and several weekends, including each of their Sydney church campuses + the Colour Conference, all in March.

You’ll likely be pleased as I was to find that only two of the tracks are found on the recent Hillsong United album Tear Down The Walls (“No Reason To Hide” and “You Hold Me Now”), so there’s 11 brand new songs here.  Well, brand new if you haven’t been hanging around Hillsong over the past year or so.

At Hillsong Conference this past week, we sang fewer songs from this new album than would usually be the case, but does that mean it’s a weak album ? Not at all. In fact, even at this very early stage, it’s one of my favourites.   In my opinion, their weakest patch began around a decade ago, but with each album since  2004 growing in quality and focus, they are at a new peak in album production.

Note I said albums, not songs … there has always been strong songs in the mix, and the last 3 Hillsong Live albums (Saviour King, This Is Our God, and now Faith + Hope + Love) contain consistently captivating praise and worship music, with thematic links, musical consistency**, and everything you want from Hillsong – energetic praise, anthemic worship, and those tender moments you can use for personal worship too.  Importantly in my opinion, these albums all utilise Hillsong’s now familiar military breakbeat across a diverse range of worship songs.  It’s a musical device I understand – there is something very special about a group of people, be it 20 or 20,000, coming as an army of worshippers before God.

But what about the songs on this album?
The album will be out in the USA in 3 weeks I think, and since that’s where the vast majority of you, my readers, reside, you’ll find out soon enough … but for now, here’s my opinion of the CD.  Note that the DVD is a different track order to allow logical flow based on the locations where the songs were recorded:

1. The First And The Last – a less anthemic opener than we’ve become used to from Hillsong, and nothing mind blowing, but a good congregational praise song.

2. For Your Name – Jad Gillies is leading a lot more often for the main church these days, and this is one of his best. I like the different feel that this song has (especially the sequenced pulsating backing). I’ll definitely be using this in our church at some point.

3. Glow – the 3rd-track-mid-paced-big-song, 6/8 time works well for this, not to mention David Ware’s soulful voice.  David opened the conference, and while the quality of his voice isn’t shown at full effect in this song, he was the right choice to lead it.

4. It’s Your Love – possibly Mia Fieldes’ strongest song since All For Love, with a beautiful picture painted in the verse lyric, a catchy chorus, and Darlene taking us into the powerful bridge where the title resides. Not sure if I’ll use it, but I will certainly worship to it myself. A lot. Especially the bridge/tag.

5. I Will Exalt You – Brooke shared the story for this song in the songwriting sessions, and it’s a beautiful, gentle, intimate song. I’m an emotional worshipper, and just typing this is reminding me of how this song led me to a place I wasn’t expecting at conference which involved tears.

6. Yahweh – a very Reuben song (and if you’re familiar with Reuben’s songs you’ll know what to expect I think), we’ll definitely be using this in our church. This is an anthemic ’set-closer’. And throughout the conference, this was one of the most loved songs by the delegates, all 22,000 of us, give or take.

7. No Reason To Hide – moving into the second half (Hillsong Live albums are almost always sequenced in 2 sets in case you’d not noticed that before), this is one of the songs on the United album, and it’s one we’ll be doing at church soon. Too. Much. Fun. It’s a minute shorter than the United version, but the basic arrangement is identical.

8. God One And Only – with an opening riff that reminds me of Panic On by Madder Rose, this is a fun praise song, as everything JD leads is. We’ll likely use this too. Matt Crocker (who I think is now around 21 – he must be, he’s been writing with the team for 5 or 6 years now) has come up with most of the main riffs Hillsong have used in recent years. The stories he told in the songwriting sessions made me feel much better about my writing process

9. The Wonder Of Your Love – a co-write between Leeland and Marty Sampson, this is the mid-paced-big-song of the second ’set’.  If there are any low-lights on the album, I guess this and track 12 get that gong. But that would be doing both songs a huge, huge disservice.  In reality, Hillsong have so many top writers, nothing bad gets on the albums these days. A sign of this – Ben Fielding, writer/co-writer of some of their best songs in recent years, such as This Is Our God, He Is Lord, Mighty To Save – doesn’t have a single writing credit on this album, but he talked at the songwriting sessions and is still very active.

10. His Glory Appears – the shortest track, and one of my favourites on the album. Easily one of Darlene’s best songs in years, having Brooke lead this was the perfect choice.  It’s gorgeous, and I’ve been singing it to myself since I heard it. Very simple, it’s just a single verse and chorus. Oh, and being a Darlene song…you can probably guess it’s about the cross. And no bad thing either.

11. We The Redeemed – Jill McCloghry has a sweet voice, and I believe I’m right in saying this is her first time leading a song she wrote herself on a Hillsong album. I can see us using this song in our church; it fits well with who we are. It’s got the military beat, it’s got a simple, well-phrased melody, and good scope for ebb and flow in the arrangement.

12. We Will See Him – co-written by Reuben with Robert Fergusson, one of Hillsong’s best preachers, the second pre-chorus – ‘we’ll see the fullness of His word, all of His promises revealed’ really resonated with me leading into the last song on the album. Apart from that, it’s a pleasant enough song. Very Reuben.

13. You Hold Me Now – a lot has been written about this song since its inclusion on the United album, so I won’t rehash it. Easily the single most powerful song at the conference this year, Brian & Bobbie Houston have affectionately renamed this song “No More Bad Stuff”. Amen to that.

It’s going to be a long time ’til I tire of listening to this album…at least partly because I don’t listen to much music on repeat, but also because with our church album recording project ramping up, and my own personal stuff getting a look in as often as possible, I’m going to have to be very selective with listening.

So, what would you recommend I listen to in coming months?

** Musical consistency (by genre) is something our own album is actually not going to have when it comes out later this year – it will reflect the diversity of our team, purely because we can’t do 3 or 4 individual albums to fit each genre.  So I’ve got a big job to do to sequence it sensibly.  Pray for me.

.