Good Friday - Exploring "Torn"

Good Friday at our church is entrenched in tradition, to which I am a latecomer. Because we've had a history of having worship leaders on staff who go on to much bigger things (Chris Tomlin, Brandon Heath, Robbie Seay), from the moment I arrived on campus, I was barraged with conversations constantly harking back to our (fairly recent) days of yore, with sighs of "I miss when.." and "it was way better..." We are not a forward-looking community.

Our biggest signature move was to rent out the massive outdoor concert venue across the street from us each Easter weekend. We centered the event around a big concert on Good Friday led by our worship leader du jour. When we needed to cut costs, we moved the weekend back to our campus, but then we built a hefty stage on the lawn, hauled out every watt of moving lights we had and rented a heap more, and had succession of events that drifted slowly from "energetic worship" to "energetic rock festival," all played before our less-than-energetic members (we're Methodists. We don't jump. At most we... lean).

A couple years ago, I joined a worship committee that sacked all that, moved the service back into our sanctuary, killed the rock-show vibe and tried to revert the service back to a night of worship and teaching as strong and unified as we could manage.

It's been a couple of years of that now, and I'm proud of the work I've gotten to do on those services. I won't wander off into a diatribe of what worship is or why it matters, because you've likely (definitely) read much better thoughts than mine before, but as much as we've maintained a good deal of spectacle in these services (we are who we are), it's been nice to center the evening around community and worship, and to focus on the meaning of that particularly sacred evening.

This is all unnecessary introduction for these three videos I did for this year's service, based around the theme of "Torn" - two stories, totally unrelated, but deeply connected to what happened on that Friday a long time ago. If you'd like to see all the videos in context, the sermon they're interspersed in is up at The Woodlands United Methodist website.

I've never been happier with work I've done, or more excited about the stories I got to tell. These videos are my favorite of all my work.

More Posting Tomorrow

There'll be more news up tomorrow, but for right now, here's the big news: I have completed and sent off a commercial for broadcast in the Houston area. As you can imagine, this is a massive deal to me, and I'm pretty awed by it all so far. If I can find out roughly what times it's going to play, I plan on staying up all night, or watching every single daytime soap that's on, whatever I need to do to in order to see it live.

You can see the commercial right now, though, at riseeaster.com.

Even if you don't do that, be sure to check out barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com, which just gets better the more you click.

And finally, I couldn't find a link, but congrats to Jay and Ryan, whose band, the 71s, was featured in the most recent issue of Relevant Magazine.

Easter/Rob Thomas/Goldie Hawn/30 Rock

Apologies for not posting, but things have been awfully busy around here with Easter coming up. Between Maundy Thursday, videos for Easter morning, and this big concert we've got going on tonight, it's been a mess. Still, Leeland plays a free concert tonight on the lawn, and I get to film it, so I'm siked.

No one uses that word anymore besides me, but I just don't think there's that many good words that fit that meaning. I could use "jazzed" or "fired up," but both sound lamer than "siked," which is weird since "siked" kinda died for good in the early 90's. Though I guess "jazzed" probably died a lot earlier than that.

Most of your know that I'm a Matchbox Twenty fan from way back - sometimes it's the only thing people remember about me, since there are so few people these days who admit that they love Matchbox Twenty - and so it might seem strange to you that I finally heard the latest Rob Thomas single "Little Wonders" and got all depressed. But I knew that hearing that song meant that Matchbox Twenty is officially over. The band took a hiatus a year or two back in order that everyone could go and work on inferior side projects - you might remember I reviewed Thomas' first album - but I was dearly hoping that they'd get back together and make music again, because frankly Rob Thomas just isn't all that great by himself. There's a lasting power to all of Matchbox Twenty's records that Thomas just doesn't have by himself. "Little Wonders" was more of the same - a nice song, but nothing we'll be singing in ten years. I miss having a real, raw, guitar sound behind him. This song sounds like - and, in fact, is - something off the soundtrack to a kid's movie. And not one of the good ones. This one:

Yaaaaay.

In other news, I've been watching old episodes of "Laugh-In" - the church bought the DVDs for a film project I did - and I discovered a beautiful, talented Goldie Hawn. It's weird for me since basically I've known nothing about Goldie Hawn all my life except that she used to be a famous starlet, and now she's old and has a famous starlet daughter. That's all I'd ever thought of her as. And now, watching "Laugh-In," it's impossible for someone to watch and not go "well, no wonder she became famous." She was fantastic on that show.

By the way, if you're not watching "30 Rock" by now, you really should be:

"Let me teach you, Lemon. I would like to be Michelle Pfeiffer to your angry black kid who learns that poetry... is just another way to rap."

Paired with "The Office," it's the best night on television, plus the fact that the three shows around it ("Andy Barker, P.I.," "Scrubs," and "My Name Is Earl") may be on and off, but when they're on, they're really, really good.