Joyful Always
So I was really looking forward to leading worship this morning at church. I was up early for once (had to make sure I got to church before the Chinese service began at 9:30 am so I could haul all my stuff into the sanctuary) and I avoided any family arguments and disagreements that so often arise on Sunday morning on our way to church.
There were six of us who met before service (starts at 11:00 am) and we had an awesome discussion about the importance of support groups. We talked about how some people are feeling "burnt-out" from serving in the church. Where can you get that spiritual refill that sometimes you need to carry on? There's always prayer but we realized that it's so important to have people in your life who you can be completely honest with. People who you are transparent to and with whom you can give and receive advice/encouragement.
So we went through our usual routine of setting up. I don't know but I always feel a bit rushed trying to get stuff ready. We have to wait until the Chinese service is done (usually around 10:40 but sometimes they go overtime) and we're supposed to start at 11 am. Setting up the stage, setting up guitars, amps, etc. We don't even have time to warm up or do a proper sound-check half the time. As I mentioned earlier, I was really excited because we had come up with an awesome version of My Redeemer Lives and I was hoping to really get the congregation into it. Anyway, I had a buddy's tuner pedal in my rig for the first time and I didn't know I had to leave it on to play. I used it to tune and then I turned it off thinking that it would be like my chorus pedal. I went through the whole first song with no sound going through the system from my guitar. On top of my incompetence, my lead guitarist left the power cord to his effects board at home so he just had to go directly into the amp (my Peavey Classic 30 that I was letting him use). But this was the first time we had used the amp to lead and the only other time he used it was in practice. It turned out to be setup all wrong and he didn't have the ability to use the volume pedal on his board to soften it. So he spent a lot of time trying to fiddle with the amp settings while we were playing. I felt bad because I had no idea that this was going on at the time and I was wondering why he wasn't playing what we went over in practice.
But ya, we got through it and I'm sure most people didn't even know what was going on. What was upsetting was the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how things weren't going as planned and what's going to screw up next. Instead of focusing on worshipping God, I was getting all worked up about why it wasn't sounding right. Even afterwards someone asked me how church was and the only answer I gave was that I screwed up the worship set. I guess it's just too easy to become complacent about these things and I really don't want to let things slide because of being unprepared or whatever. However, I realize that anything can happen and I have to realize that regardless of the outcome, I need to put God first above everything. Even if the entire sound system crashes and we have to sing a capella - we're still praising God and that is what counts.
On a slightly better note, the amp I bought off ebay finally came in on Tuesday and I was able to pick it up on Thursday. I spent a good 3 hrs playing it as soon as I got it. However, I'm still faced with the limitation of having to use a sub-par guitar (Squier) that I can never get to stay in tune. So I'll have to wait probably another month and a bit before I can try out my Legacy on it and really see what kind of tones I can coax out of my Classic 30. In the meantime, here are a few pics that I took...
There were six of us who met before service (starts at 11:00 am) and we had an awesome discussion about the importance of support groups. We talked about how some people are feeling "burnt-out" from serving in the church. Where can you get that spiritual refill that sometimes you need to carry on? There's always prayer but we realized that it's so important to have people in your life who you can be completely honest with. People who you are transparent to and with whom you can give and receive advice/encouragement.
So we went through our usual routine of setting up. I don't know but I always feel a bit rushed trying to get stuff ready. We have to wait until the Chinese service is done (usually around 10:40 but sometimes they go overtime) and we're supposed to start at 11 am. Setting up the stage, setting up guitars, amps, etc. We don't even have time to warm up or do a proper sound-check half the time. As I mentioned earlier, I was really excited because we had come up with an awesome version of My Redeemer Lives and I was hoping to really get the congregation into it. Anyway, I had a buddy's tuner pedal in my rig for the first time and I didn't know I had to leave it on to play. I used it to tune and then I turned it off thinking that it would be like my chorus pedal. I went through the whole first song with no sound going through the system from my guitar. On top of my incompetence, my lead guitarist left the power cord to his effects board at home so he just had to go directly into the amp (my Peavey Classic 30 that I was letting him use). But this was the first time we had used the amp to lead and the only other time he used it was in practice. It turned out to be setup all wrong and he didn't have the ability to use the volume pedal on his board to soften it. So he spent a lot of time trying to fiddle with the amp settings while we were playing. I felt bad because I had no idea that this was going on at the time and I was wondering why he wasn't playing what we went over in practice.
But ya, we got through it and I'm sure most people didn't even know what was going on. What was upsetting was the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how things weren't going as planned and what's going to screw up next. Instead of focusing on worshipping God, I was getting all worked up about why it wasn't sounding right. Even afterwards someone asked me how church was and the only answer I gave was that I screwed up the worship set. I guess it's just too easy to become complacent about these things and I really don't want to let things slide because of being unprepared or whatever. However, I realize that anything can happen and I have to realize that regardless of the outcome, I need to put God first above everything. Even if the entire sound system crashes and we have to sing a capella - we're still praising God and that is what counts.
On a slightly better note, the amp I bought off ebay finally came in on Tuesday and I was able to pick it up on Thursday. I spent a good 3 hrs playing it as soon as I got it. However, I'm still faced with the limitation of having to use a sub-par guitar (Squier) that I can never get to stay in tune. So I'll have to wait probably another month and a bit before I can try out my Legacy on it and really see what kind of tones I can coax out of my Classic 30. In the meantime, here are a few pics that I took...
posted by Matt at 7:20 PM
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