Brian Hale-Yeah!'s blog

This is kind of old news now...

This picture is from our local newspaper, the Fresno Bee.
Yep, there's a Peoples Church in Fresno, CA for all you Franklin-ites wondering what I'm talking about. And, our pastor is retiring.
He's been a local icon in our community for 45 years and has transformed this city. His "last service" was pretty amazing. All the stories, all the testimonies honoring God and giving much respect to GL. It makes me really wish I went to our church 25 years ago. It sounded amazing.
There were letters from missionaries, church leaders, government officials and even Billy Graham congratulating him on his service.
The most memorable thing I'll remember about Pastor (wow, it sounds like he's dead or something...) was when I was an intern in our college group. This must've been about 8 years or so ago, but a smaller group of us were visiting in a family room and we were just asking him questions about ministry, life, how he got started, love, etc. One of the guys in our group who was one of the uber spiritual kids asked a real pointed question with a even more obscure Bible verse reference. Pastor, looked at him, told him that he needed to read the verse in context and preceded to quote the verses before and after! It was crazy. And this wasn't no John or Genesis, it was like Amos or Habakkuk or something. His wisdom always stirred me to want to learn more.

Forget my blog, go to Los '

Voting tonight

Jacinda and I are giving up a portion of our "date night" tonight to go and vote at our church's business meeting.
I know, we are such saints.
Actually, a friend of ours Mike,is up for church council. I'm pretty sure he would be lowering the average age by about 15 years. He would be the youngest council member ever...I think.
A young person on the council, now that would be a great move to looking toward the future. Although, he is in his thirties. I don't really think of that as a "young person" anymore.
His main soapbox is to "fuse" the young and old in our church. I would love to see that. Mike and I have been involved together in many things, but we really tried to be involved in some of the "men's ministry" functions and although we connected with some of the leadership, the older men in the groups really didn't make an effort to connect with us. We obviously stood out, but it just wasn't what we hoped it would be.
I really think that the older should teach the younger and the younger should try to keep the older young. That's why I loved working with college students, they'll do anything and they'll say anything. They are just revved up and the questions they ask make you go and study your Word to give them an answer. Working with them for all those years was a great "give and take" relationship.
Who knows if our buddy will get voted in, but at least a bunch of us will be there to show our support.

SDWC

Los convinced me to get out my camera last night and click some pictures. I'm still a beginner at best, but like he told me, my camera is going to do a lot of the work and then you can do tons of stuff in post-production. I forgot to install my photoshop elements program on my new laptop.
The night was amazing with the college students really hittin' on the worship. The black and white picture is of Jony Bos, yes that is his real name. How cool is that? Born rock star. I met the guy for the first time this weekend. He's 6'7" and his heart is even bigger. I have really enjoyed just watching the guy worship.
Then Francis Chan came up and brought the hammer! Let me just tell you right now, go to iTunes and subscribe to the guy's Podcast. I'll have to go back and look at my notes...wow, I can't remember the last time I even took notes during a sermon...It was a night I won't soon forget.
Also, this younger guy spoke this morning, Jason Ma, and he pointed out the fact about how the church does many things opposite of how Christ did them. Christ said, "Go" and the church begs people to "come". Think about it...interesting.

pics from the conference...

For some reason I'm having trouble lining the pictures up with the words, so sorry. I'll also try to get some more pics of the rest of the band tomorrow morning.

the band and other conference staff praying before the evening service.

Los leading with Castro keeping the rhythm behind him.

Matt Cash busting it out with his Gibson Jumbo. What a beautiful guitar!

My girl sang her heart out. I'm a very proud husband sitting in the crowd with my baby leading thousands in worship!

San Diego Winter Conference

If you haven't already got it, Jacinda is singing with Los and Band this weekend at the Campus Crusade for Christ's winter conference.
Francis chan is the keynote along with a bunch of other people, who honestly, I've never heard of. I can't wait to hear Chan though.
I've been sitting with the other wives/girlfriends of the band while we wait for soundcheck, during soundcheck, and during Starfield's Soundcheck.
That's right, STARFIELD... they are rocking it later tonight after the service.
God knows that Jacinda and I need this time to be away from our current situation and get some serious face and knee time with Him. It hasn't even started yet and I'm just getting excited about worshipping with over 2,000 college students! Wish you were here.

Worship Set List

We have this whole new set up for the third service at our church. My wife and I "retired" from leading worship in our church's college group a year ago and since then have been asked to lead worship a half dozen times or so in our main service or as we like to call it..."Big Church". Now, Jacinda and I are officially part of the rotation of worship leaders.
There are six of us total who kind of make up the worship leading team and we could all be on stage or just two of us, it just depends. Four of us play instruments, so we might just be an instrumentalist one week, or a background singer, and we all will rotate on the lead. This week was my week, so I thought I'd post along with all the rest of you my worship set:
Awesome is the Lord by Chris Tomlin
Came to My Rescue by Marty Sampson, Joel Davies, Dylan Thomas (Hillsong United)
From the Inside Out by Joel Houston (Hillsong United)
Surrender by Marc James (Vineyard)

It was our first run at "Came to My Rescue" and it went really good. We use these "in-ear" monitors and these Aviom set-ups for our individual mixes. Apparently I didn't save my settings from our practice night, so I couldn't hear myself singing at all. Nightmare right? So, I pull out one of my ears in order to hear myself, but leave the other one in so I don't get set on the beat that is bouncing off the walls. The amazing thing was actually getting to hear the congregation singing the bridge of the song in unison,

"In my life, be lifted high.
In our world, be lifted high.
In our love, be lifted high."

I think as a worship leader, one of the most beautiful things about worship is when you stop singing and hear the room singing.

new traditions

Our church is going through a major re-haul right now. Our sr. pastor announced that he is going to retire next year and so everything is changing. We have three services on Sunday mornings and the one that we are involved with is the third service, entitled PC3 (Peoples Church 3rd Service). Jacinda and I have led worship in there every other month or so now for about 2 years. We love leading worship and have been honored at the opportunity they have given us. Well, things haven't been going so great in there and about a week and a half ago, we had a meeting involving many of the "leaders" of the service. It was great!
We got some major things off of our chest and are now really excited to see what God is going to do. He is uniting everyone and we all seem to really be on the same page with where to go.
Yesterday, I had the first of many lunches for planning what worship will look like in that service. The other 3 guys who lead actually work at the church in the worship ministries, so, I'm kinda the black sheep.  We are all getting really excited about what we are going to see come to pass. Anyway, I'm really amped for where we are going and can't even think about what I want to say about all that. All I know is that I'm ready for our huge God to have his say in our services!
Jacinda and I are committed to our church and to this service, but we haven't been doing much about it in our personal time. So last night we started something new: weekly Bible Study with just the two of us.

We started by playing/singing through some songbooks we have just to look for some new songs and to have our own personal worship time. I think that people think sometimes that just because we are worship leaders together that we must do that everynight, but we don't. we're not that spiritual. We talked over some songs and then started watching some of the bonus footage from Matt Redman's "Facedown" DVD. This thing is a must. It is basically a worship conversation with people like graham kendrick, louie giglio, matt redman, darlene zschech and boy is it inspiring. I will have to go into that later. I'll leave you with a nice, happy song that hasn't been given too much air play:

oh lovely appearance of death,
what sight upon earth is so fair?
in all of the pageants of life,
can't with a dead body compare.

=Charles Wesley

Pretty amazing hugh. We need to think about what we are singing...

Worship Set

This past weekend Jacinda and I led worship for our third service at Peoples Church, here in Fresno, CA. We have done this several times now and it seems to be getting more and more frequent, which I love. I love leading worship and almost always say "yes" when they ask.

It is always different when we lead because our style is different. We have more of a band feel with a lead singer and background singers. It is normally more of a 4 part harmony with full band and sometimes with horns. Plus, I've only been leading or involved in worship for the last 10 years, so I'm not familiar with songs older than 1994. "I could sing of your love forever" is about as old as I go! Also, I'm not talented enough to pull off some huge brooklyn tabernacle song anyway. So, it's usually a one-sheet per song with me compared to the multipage sheet music that we normally play with.

The set went pretty good, I'll still feel that our church needs to build community in a major way so that everyone feels included in the worship experience, but the set went well. There are just so many out there, who I wouldn't recognize on the street, people who come in late and leave early that I don't feel are connecting in the moments that we are worshipping our Lord. That is what frustrates me more than anything. Why do we even come to church? Aren't we there to lift Him up? He deserves so much more than what we are currently giving Him...even though I can't read peoples hearts, but it's kind of evident in people's posture that they are thinking more about where they are going to lunch rather than what they can give their Christ as a sacrifice of praise!

Anyway, here's my set list

• Marvelous Light-Charlie Hall
• O Praise Him-DCB
• From the Inside Out-Hillsong United
• Facedown-Matt Redman
• Mission's Flame-Matt Redman

I had a Set List

I get to take part in the oh so elite group of worship leaders out there by posting my set list from the weekend. I am a worship leader. it is what I love to do. But, it's not my job, it's not even a regular thing...anymore. If you are new around here, my wife and I led worship for our church's college group for the last 10 years, and last November, after baby girl #2, we stepped down. Now, we don't have a regular gig, which is nice don't get me wrong, but I still long to lead. We get asked every other month or so to lead our churches 3rd service (more contemporary than the first 2). So, last week, Jacinda and I got to lead. We try to pick older songs that the congregation will be more adjusted to, but it's just hard because of the style differences.

The group that I play with is a band, probably like most of you, the normal group on Sunday is more worship team style with 5 singers and sometimes even a full orchestra. It's pretty awesome, epecially for Christmas when the whole thing gets together. Anyways, my set list:

opener:

Undignified by Matt Redman, played in the uptempo version by David Crowder

Body of Worship:

You (All we Need) by Charlie Hall

Beautiful One by Tim Hughes (not Jeremy Camp people!)

From the Inside Out by Joel Houston (Hillsong United)

Offerring:

One Pure and Holy Passion by Mark Altrogge (arrangement by my brotha, Los)

Ending:

They asked us to play "from the inside out" again. that song really rocked (thanks to my ace guitar player Nick!)