Christmas Is Coming

♫ ♪ It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas♫ ♪ (the choir room is getting all Christmassy)

♪♫ It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year♪ ♪ ♫ (Choirs get to celebrate longer than anyone else!)

♫ I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas ♪ ♪ ♫ (as long as the snow comes after our performances)

Tomorrow night at 6:30 is our annual Christmas Preview Party in choir. Actually, you'll probably want to come a little early to fill your plate so you don't miss any of the music! Bring someone with you who needs to be in choir. Call up your missing friend. This is the perfect time to join choir.

See you tomorrow night!

Here's an old picture of Papa and Gibson from 2003.

Music for August 23 - Grace

8:27 - Welcome & Prayer – Dr. Larry D. Robertson

Your Grace Is Enough

Fellowship Time – Since Jesus Came into My Heart

Choir Anthem – Enough

Covers Me for Life
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)

Bro. Lyndel – Your Grace Still Amazes Me
Wish I could get Phillips, Craig and Dean here (the ones on this video), but instead you'll have to hear me sing it Sunday.

Message – Dr. Larry D. Robertson – The Grace of Salvation

Invitation – Marvelous Grace

Offertory – Gena Tate

Closing – Bro. Lyndel Littleton

Where the Devil Is

Hahaha. You know the old saying - "The Devil is in the details." Well, if you have ever looked at my quotes on facebook you'll see that one of my favorite quotes is "The Devil's not in the details, he's in the sound system." I may have heard that from someone else, but I don't remember that, so I've attributed the quote to myself.

I guess we have a short in one of the channels or perhaps it is going out.

Oh, for my readers around the world, here's what happened yesterday. I had perhaps the biggest choir of the summer up in the loft for our first service (8:30!) and we were singing with a track yesterday. We don't sing with a track every week, but yesterday's song had a great track.

So it was time for the choir number and I was waiting - patiently - wondering why they hadn't started the track thinking - "Oh! this is taking too long. start the track, start the track, start the track!" when all of the sudden loud voices started singing!

The track is a split track CD with instruments on the left and voices on the right.

"Oh no! I know I remember telling the sound guy to turn off the right and just play the left!" I thought to myself.

Well... I won't bore you with all of the details if you weren't there, but long story short - we didn't get it to work first service. After a few failed attempts we just went on with the service. The service was still nice, I just was very disappointed that the big choir didn't get to sing by themselves.

As you've read before from me, God Loves Choirs!

http://hilldaleworship.blogspot.com/2007/08/god-loves-choirs.html

http://hilldaleworship.blogspot.com/2008/04/god-loves-choirs-part-2.html if you only read one, read this one

http://hilldaleworship.blogspot.com/2008/04/god-loves-choirs.html

Sorry, I've distracted myself. Going back to the original point. We think there is a short in one of the buttons or in the channel because between services we just touched one of the knobs on that channel and we could hear the track. We'll test it this week and see if we need to move the CD input to a different channel.

Life is sometimes like a mixing board. It looks like you have everything set just right and all the right buttons pushed or not pushed (depending on what you need to have happen) and yet still things go wrong. The first thing we want to do is assign blame and then we want to know "WHY?"

I don't think either of those is the correct response. Rather than trying to find someone to blame or asking God "why did you let this bad thing happen?" our response should be to find out how God can use this for our good or for His glory. It's not really about you, you know. It's about Him.

Here are some questions you may wish I hadn't asked, but you should try to answer them honestly the next time the devil shows up in your sound system, or car, or workplace or school or ______.

Does your reaction point people to Jesus or does it make people want to avoid you the next time something bad happens in your life.

Do you continue on in faith knowing God is greater than your circumstances or do you look for a rock to sit on where you can have a little pity party?

Would friends and family who don't know the Lord have any reason to want a relationship with God if your reaction was the only witness they had of a person walking by faith?

Have a great week.

Keep your eyes open for the "roaring lion" and walk by faith and not by sight.

Sunday's Music

Whew, Ms. Irene, I almost missed getting this in. I was about to close up for the day and then I remembered how you would be anxiously waiting to see what we are singing this Sunday.
So here it is...

Blessed Be Your Name
Choir Anthem – Majestic
Welcome song – Victory in Jesus
The Power of the Cross
The Wonderful Cross

Duet – Mark Black and Lacey Waynick – East to West

Message – Dr. Larry D. Robertson

Invitation – Come Just As You Are

Offertory – string trio – Come, Now Is the Time to Worship

Closing – Bro. Tony Lewis

More Fun with Amazing Grace

The other day I mentioned some songs whose tunes can be used to sing the text to "Amazing Grace." Here are a few more to try.

Gilligan's Island
"Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see.
was blind but now I see."

Brady Bunch (I love this one)
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost
but now I'm found
was blind but now I see."

You actually need to sing two verses of "Amazing Grace" to get through one verse of the Brady's.

For all you old rockers out there - you may know the tune to "House of the Rising Sun." We actually sang this in the youth group when I was a kid.
"Amazing grace
how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost
but now I'm found
was blind but now I see."

Amazing Numbers

I just sent this out in one of our e-Inchoirer newsletters, but I figured everyone is waiting with great anticipation - wanting to know how our "I Sing, You Sing, We All Sing for Choir" (and Ice Cream) contest is going.

I couldn't believe it when I added up the numbers!

Here is where the the score in our I Sing, You Sing, We All Sing for Choir contest was last Wednesday before choir.

Soprano - 2950
Alto - 2810
Men - 2740

Last week we had double points for choir rehearsal. The altos had three visitors (and somehow through the contest we started counting visitors' scores like new member scores) so the altos got 600 points and the score became this:

Soprano - 3310
Alto - 3410
Men - 3020

The altos took the lead!
But then Sunday came - and again we doubled the score ('cause the contest is almost over.)
Here are the points earned
Soprano - 420
Alto - 320
Men - 360

which gives us these totals:
Soprano - 3730
Alto - 3730
Men - 3380

We have a tie!

Tonight is the final night. We'll double the points one last time. Who will come out on top and win the I Sing, You Sing, We All Sing for Choir (and Ice Cream) contest?

Call your friends and get them to choir tonight. It's going to be a close contest!!

Fun with Amazing Grace

I told the choir in rehearsal last week how I had that week's choir anthem stuck in my head but couldn't remember the words. It ended up, however, that the words to "Amazing Grace" fit it perfectly.

For those of you that know about hymn tunes, each tune has a meter (it's a poetry term actually). You can look in your hymnal (if your church still has them - that's a whole other post) and at the bottom of the page you'll see some numbers. For "Amazing Grace" those numbers are 8.6.8.6. Which means the first line has eight syllables - "Amazing grace how sweet the sound" the second line has six syllables - "that saved a wretch like me" then eight - "I once was lost but now am found" and then six again - "was blind but now I see."

You'll notice something else on "Amazing Grace" the initials "C.M." which stand for "common meter." Apparently we really like the rhythm of 8.6.8.6.

So... Here's the fun part.

You can go through your hymnal and any song that has C.M. or 8.6.8.6. at the bottom of it can have the words to "Amazing Grace" sung to it.

Try "Joy to the World"

Amazing grace how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost

but now am found

(then you have to repeat a little)

was blind but now I see,

was blind but now I see

was blind, was blind but now I see"

It will also work with "O God Our Help in Ages Past," "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" and more.

Here's a fun one (please don't tell me I'm sacrilegious) you can sing it to "The Brady Bunch" too! You have to sing two verses to get the whole Brady song tune in.

Tomorrow I'll post a couple of more fun ones.

No matter how you sing it, I hope you can sing the words from experience!

Sing!

The Great God of Salvation - Sunday's Services

Bro. Larry started a new sermon series last Sunday. It began with a great sermon titled "So Great a Salvation." (if that's not it, it's close)

He shared with me the titles for the other sermons in the series and it is going to be wonderful. This week's sermon is "The God of Salvation" or was it "The Great God of Salvation" or something like that. You'll notice that we are singing some songs that tell of God's greatness.

8:28 – Dr. Larry D. Robertson - welcome and prayer

Everlasting God
Blessed Be the Name

Everlasting God (chorus)

Rise Up and Praise Him

Welcome song

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

Our Great God – Choir Anthem
Psalm 145:1-4

How Great Thou Art
How Great Is Our God

Message – Dr. Larry D. Robertson

Invitation – Jesus, I Come

Offertory – Michelle Dickerson

Baptism – Bro. Tony Lewis (Dillon 8:30)

Closing – Bro. Lyndel Littleton

Don't forget the new schedule!

8:30 and 9:45 are the times at the main campus.

Library Greatness

When I moved form West Tennessee to Middle Tennessee 10 years ago we moved from a pretty good sized house to a much smaller house. Don't misunderstand - I LOVED Bear Hollow as any of my long-time readers could tell you. It's just that we didn't have room for all of our "stuff."

In West Tennessee we had a little sitting area upstairs that had large bookshelves that we had filled with books. For awhile in Martin our church was part of some sort of organization where we could get a lot of things for free or almost free and many of those items were books! I have photography books, gardening books, all kinds of devotional and Christian living type of books, beautiful children's book and more.

Now I have moved to a bigger house I am figuring out that I need to buy some bookshelves - a lot of book shelves. Maybe one or two for several of the rooms so we won't look like a branch of the Clarksville public library!

One of the books I found (it has been in a box for 9 years!) is titled "There's Always Time for Greatness" subtitled "Who did what when from ages 1-100" published by Hallmark books. The point of the book is to inspire each of us - no matter how old - to strive for greatness by seeing what others have accomplished.

Some samples:

At the age of 3 Tiger Woods shoots 48 for 9 holes on his hometown golf course in Cypress, California.

At the age of 13 Anne Frank begins her diary, and with her family is soon forced into hiding from the Nazis.

At the age of 23 Daniel Rutherford discovers nitrogen.

Let's skip a few decades.

At the age of 53 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II, plans and leads the pivotal D-Day invasion of Normandy.

Oh, side-tracked. I attended Mr. Berry's funeral today. He was one of the men who landed on the beach on that day! Wow!

Well, I'll stop. I'll be Twittering some of these things over the next few days or weeks. I have my Twitter, Facebook and Blogger accounts set up where when I "tweet" it updates my facebook status and puts a note over there on the sidebar of this blog. How cool is that?

So what's the point of this blog besides me rambling on? Here are a few thoughts that popped into my head.

Do something great this week. Don't wait until next week or until you are older. And don't stop trying because you've missed your younger days.

Do whatever you are doing with excellence.

Colossians 3:23 NAS Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,

Remember that God can use you to do great things for His Kingdom at any age.

Encourage others to strive for greatness in what they do.

Contest Heads Toward the Final Days

Contest info:
We have one more Wednesday and one more Sunday for each team to rack up some extra points.
Since it is the end, we're going to double the points for this Wednesday - which means 20 for each person in attendance and 100 for new members! and we'll double them again next Sunday.

The score


sopranos altos men

Last Total 2310 2280 2210
29-Jul 200 150 130
2-Aug 440 380 400
New total 2950 2810 2740

(sorry, can't get these numbers to line up correctly on blogger)

Yes! There were 22 sopranos in attendance Sunday which - with double points - gave them 440 points!
It's still any one's game. Call your missing friends. Invite someone new to join you. Let's start the Fall singing season with a BIG choir!

Oh, speaking of the Fall schedule… August 26 is our annual Christmas Preview Party and September 18-19 is our Christmas retreat. It's not too late to sign up! Put these dates on your calendar and we'll see you then!