jaybrams

Lead Me Home

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:24:19 -0700

Breathe You In (acoustic)

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:23:09 -0700

The Splendor

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:21:58 -0700

Need Help

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:53:32 -0800

Everytime I ask you for help, I am asking you for money. So far, i have sadly been let down. ... However, that is to be expected because basically I was asking you to support my sports habits. This time, though I will not ask you for money. I have winter break coming very soon. This is my last week of Comp II, and I have less than a month left in the very Sunday School named-but great content class "How To Study The Bible." I want to use the month I have off to read something other than school related stuff, but I cannot bring myself to purchase non-school related books... so, please be so kind to Christmas gift me with any off of my amazon wish list (click to the right of this post). Here are some highlights: Jim Palmer's stuff is piquing my interests. I dont like that he's compared to Donald Miller, cause i can't get into miller. But I like the excerpts on his site. He's also said to be "emergent" which has all sorts of connotations that may or may not turn you off... but i try not to get into labels. I just want good, thought out thoughts on Christ. All I know is i like what he has to say on his blog and want to read more from either of his books. Dave Burchett has a great blog and two books that are on a subject that I've been thoughtful of lately: the wounded church. Infact, both Dave's and Jim's books deal with this to a degree. And he's in my area so maybe one day i can run into him and say 'hey i read your book' and then he can say 'oh you're one of the two!' we can exchange chortles and hug or something. Mark Batterson is a pastor and this book has received rave reviews on amazon and from my personal friends. And yah, i read his blog too... I've had my eye on this one for a long time, but just haven't bought any books in forever. Maybe it will motivate me to get off my butt and do something for Christ. Those are at the top of my list now, more out of curiosity than anything. Perhaps Dungy's, Driscoll's, or Stanley's stuff is more practical, but i'll take any of it... Don't let me down. The address at amazon.com is correct. One day i'll be in position to hook you up, and I certainly will... just ask blake.

Need Help

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:51:19 -0800

2 Down...

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:48:22 -0800

English Comp II is officially over as my final paper's grade was just posted. The class was highlighted by two papers really. The final paper was about contemporary poets using technology to bring more exposure to the art. I'm not even that serious of a poet anymore, but it was still a fun paper to write... cause i'm a dork i guess. The other paper that I enjoyed much more than I expected was our analysis of the Greek drama "Oedipus the King." I am not a fan of reading plays, especially ancient ones. Seriously, why must we read the ancient's in old english... it was written in Greek in the first place, can't we just translate it to modern english instead of using the old english translations?? Anyway, I digress... so the discussion came up about Greek culture and if the early church had a tough task ahead of them when evangelizing such a polytheistic people. The overwhelming response was "yes" but I disagreed... mostly because I like disagreeing. So birthed from that I used "Oedipus the King" to show that the Greeks were actually ripe for conversion, or at the very least had a foundation of spirituality that Paul could pull from while learning to be all things to all people in order to share Christ. Granted the Oedipus series was written 400 years before Paul, but history and the account of the Greeks in Acts shows that not too much had changed as far as their religious views were concerned. Fast forward 2000 some odd years later and Greece is around 98% Christian... perhaps Paul laid a nice foundation... perhaps one day I'll post the essay. It was limited to 1200 words so I actually only got through about 1/3 of the play before wrapping it up hastily... Tonight is How To Study the Bible. 3 Thursday nights left in this one (Dec. 13th). By far this has been my favorite class this semester. It helps that it's biblical in nature and not just a core/generic class, but beyond this reason I'm thoroughly enjoying it because it is changing how I read and study the word more than I thought it would. I was familiar with most of the concepts and methods before the class started, but I had difficulty putting it into practice. This particular text book is greatness if you want to refresh, rethink, or re-envision the method you use for studying God's word. p.s. - winter break will bring new songs (which will just bore you and prove further that my wife is my biggest fan only because she loves me). p.p.s - Rick was so kind to get me Divine Nobodies. He answered the call to action. And he is so pimpin'.

x:Worship 21

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:44:14 -0800

worship text-fessional for Sunday, November 25 2007 at Fuel student ministry's Ignite Senior High service. Last week (the 18th) was horrid. So I didn't want to talk about it. Basically the volume in the house was changed from practice and while the stage sounded fine, the mains hummed / distorted the whole time. I was oblivious to it until the last song when it broke down to just acoustic and my vocals. Then i could hear it and i was pissed... so, moving on from that week... I've realized that if I give an inch in volume, things tend to fall apart. Not so much due to any one musician, but due to lack of having someone help control the sound at the board. So until I have someone at the board the set up is as follows: Me - Acoustic / Vocals Josh - Acoustic Travis - Bass Logan/James - Percussion Wife - Occasional vocals No electric, no drums. Percussion = two congas, floor tom, stand tom, and cymbal. I personally like the set up alot (we've done it before, now it's just semi-permanent)... it allows for a lot of freedom musically but is not overpowering. It's much more controllable, which is needed right now. This has been the most challenging eight months I've ever had as a worship leader for a wide variety of reasons, largely due to my own faults... the concept is that I will take some experience out of this and become a better person for it, but it seems every time things start looking like they're on the right track, something comes along and derails it. I know I know.... pity me. But that's not really the point. Leading worship has always been a fairly easy process for me. Not that I've always (ever?) been good at it but everything that surrounds it has clicked... equipment, band chemistry, "audience" participation, worshipful hearts all around, etc etc etc... We have had moments of some of this working, but for the most part this has been a whole new monster... anyway, perhaps leadership should take me aside and say "jeremy... that's it..." and i'll lay it down, but i'd prefer not to give it up. so, this week with the new set up seemed to go well. I was losing my voice with all the sudden weather changes, but I fought through it. This was the set: Here Is Our King - Crowder - G: sounds better in A, but wanted it to transition into... O Praise Him - Crowder - G: could've done this in A... anyone else notice this is pretty much a Christmas song? I like to spring that nugget on the youth every year. He Knows My Name / How Deep the Father's Love medley - various people - E: I've talked about how much I like this in the past. Search it if you care to know. Finished by fighting through (voice was really trailing at this point) my favorite contemporary / modern Christmas song "Better Days" by the Goo Goo Dolls. If you watched half-time of the Green Bay / Det game you saw it performed. Song's been out and one of my favs for over a year, though. On a side note, i've noticed that most of the time that a vocalists notices his voice is going, it usually still sounds "okay" to everyone else. I hope that is the case... i hope Better Days wasn't butchered... but at least I didn't sound as horrible as Kelly Clarkson did on Thanksgiving (if you can make it to the bridge of this one, you will know the meaning of "bleeding ears")!

x:Worship 18

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:50:20 -0700

text-fessional for October 21st at FWBF Fuel Sr. High Ministry. I started this week off echoing some words I read a few weeks ago that have really stuck with me. Its time we rethink our priorities and stop putting Jesus first in our lives. Often we talk about Jesus first, then family, friends, work, school, etc etc etc... but the problem is it's a mindset puts Him on a checklist. As with all checklists, when you're done with item #1, you move on to number 2... so we get through with Jesus and move on with life... this obviously isn't what Christ intended when he said "seek first the kingdom of God." We need to put Jesus as the center of our lives so it becomes Jesus IN our family and IN our friendships and IN our social lives and IN our workplace... thanks, steven, for the inspiration... it seemed to hit home with the youth. Naturally, this lead perfectly into our first song: Be The Center (Frye) - D - I loved this song even before the paradigm shift mentioned above. So simple yet can certainly speak so clearly. We keep it pretty laid back with a lot of bass from both the bassist (Travis) and on my acoustic. There was some build each time we got to the chorus but nothing too crazy. All To You (Brewster) - E - This was probably the weakest song in tonight's set because it didn't work well with the new experiment we... uh... experimented with. Instead of having drums, we had a percussion section.Logan set up two floor toms, two congas, a smaller tom and a cymbol, all played with hot rods. Overall tonight I really really liked the outcome of this, but it didn't work as well with this song as the others. We all agreed, but still made it work. My guitar sounded a little quiet from the stage, so that was another minus on this one. We had a good time with it, but it just didn't flow as well as it normally does. Indescribable (Tomlin) - F#m - As we always do, its a full step lower to make it easier on me and the congregation. It went pretty well... During practice, after we realized how weak All To You sounded, I was a bit nervous about how this one would turn out. You'd think such a drum driven song would have suffered with our set up, but it actually worked very nicely. Josh did an excellent job on electric with this one. I'd venture to say this may have been his best over all week, which is really saying something considering he's got very nice chops. The last two weeks especially, he has really made strides as a worship musician as opposed to just a musician with mad chops that happens to worship. Surrender (McRoberts (Vineyard)) - G - Again, like Be the Center, this is one of my all time favs. We kinda do a typical acoustic version with a little of the Brewster version mixed in. We had a time of reflection after the normal progression of the song which went nicely. We also had the blessing of a recently reorganized sound system that sounded better and was more intuitive to our room. Its something the Jr. High worship leader and I had been trying to get together on for a while, but he gave up trying to get me up there and just did it himself. So, props to him. How'd your sunday go? (feel free to link to your confessional in the comments)