FredMcKinnon.Com

Hey Gang,

For all of you worship leaders … when was the last time you got off the platform?  For all you church goers – when was the last time you saw your leader off-stage?

I’ve been off the platform for the past two Sundays at SSCC.

Two Sundays ago my wife and I took the weekend (sans kids, thanks to my mom!) and went away to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary together.  I tuned into our worship services via our SSCCLive.Com internet broadcast and enjoyed seeing my friend Russ Hutto lead the worship.  You could say I was truly “off” that Sunday, except for about 15 minutes of emailing and texting when our scheduled drummer for the youth service was a no-show.

Yesterday I was back at work, but off the stage.  My friend Shannon Lewis led worship for us. (read his recap of the service and the setlist on his blog) It’s so funny to hear how many people come up and say “you’re off today”?

I believe that as leaders, we have a responsibility to raise up and empower other leaders.  As we work to duplicate ourselves and multiply our efforts we have to step aside and let other leaders flourish.

This Sunday, Shannon’s leading in our main sanctuary gave me the ability to do several things:

1.  give him a chance to lead and bless our congregation with his gifts (we all lead differently, and the diversity is good)
2.  gave me a chance to mingle more with our people as they came in and connect with them relationally
3.  gave me a chance to worship in the congregation and get the much-needed perspective of what that’s like
4.  gave me the chance to observe the culture of worship in each of our venues (Tiny Town, Kid Jam Clubhouse, Youth Rooftop)

Being off the stage brings so much perspective.  From the congregation I can see how the audio mix is sounding (great job, Ben!), I can observe how people are engaging, how our lighting feels when it’s adjusted in the room, what other distractions may be occurring that we miss from the stage, etc.

Some of you are in a church where you have nobody else to lead worship.  It’s you, or it’s a CD.  I’d like to encourage you to really pray and ask God to bring in more leaders.  Ask the Holy Spirit to give you eyes to see who on your team may be that next leader.  Begin to mentor them.  Take the “you lead with me, I lead with you, you lead” approach.

My goal is to be completely off-platform 2-3 times per quarter.  I typically adhere to that unless I have a very specific reason for not doing it.

How about you?

(this recap is a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com each week)

Hey Gang,

I started playing the drums in high school marching band after we no longer needed my piano skills on the bass line for “Bird Land”.  (remember those big ole’ keyboards on the roller cart w/ the amp attached?).

Ever since, I was hooked on drums and percussion and found myself marching quints on the drum line at Georgia Southern University for three great years.  Few things ring me up like the sound of an intense drum line banging out a sweet cadence full of dynamic and flare.

Enter the new sample package “Rumble” from SampleLogic.Com (configured to work with Native Instrument’s Kontakt player)

I’ve seen drum line used occasionally as a feature in a worship setting.  It was creative and inspiring.

How this can be used in every-day composing, I’m not sure – but I’ll give you this:
Listening to this clip got me FIRED UP.
RUMBLE by Sample Logic

What are some ways you’ve used drums/percussion creatively?

For years my parents would warn me sternly, “Fred, you have to be careful.  You can’t be running around doing these pranks.  One day, someone could come out and shoot you or you could get yourself into a lot of trouble”.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Parents always seemed to say something like that.  As usual, I didn’t listen.  Parents come up with things like that all the time – to scare you, to make you obey.  They don’t really mean it.  (Now, as a 40-year old parent of four, I see how crazy we really were and know how sincere my parents really were).

Since our buddy Chad introduced us to the concept of forking yards the whole town had become aware of this tomfoolery.  Many-a-homeowner would wake up on Saturday mornings to peek out their window and breathe a deep, slow, sigh of relief to see a clean lawn instead of a plastic cemetery.  Some were not so lucky.

Our crew successfully forked yards for weeks before our identity started to leak into the town.  What made things worse was the other kids – lower classmen – who wanted to emulate our canny, dextrous works – yet; whose standards were not up to par.  Their escapades would lessen the impact of our beautiful work and worse, constantly jeopardized our plans and secret identities.  As with any prank, it wasn’t long before the infamous R&R circle was in full motion.

R&R Circle?  The never-ending cycle of “revenge and restitution”.

There was this one school of chicks (I used the word school, as it refers to a group of fish … potential explanation to come in a future story) that really had it out for us.  They not only retaliated but would proactively plan ambushes on our camp outs, sleepovers, and parties.  We’d hit them a number of times and they’d successfully penetrated our defenses once or twice.  It was their time.

Word in the halls of grand ole’ Telfair County High School was that the Fish were gathering for a sleep over on Graham Street.  This could be our chance.

Whether it was a Friday or Saturday evening I don’t recall, but the sun was setting and we’d just cleared out the shelves at Piggly Wiggly and Winn Dixie.   Thankfully, the Patriot Act was far from anyone’s imagination.  You know how the F.B.I. is supposed to notified by storeowners if somebody comes in and buys a bunch of fertilizer or bomb-making materials?  Well,  we weren’t too concerned about tipping off anyone except maybe Mr. Purvis and Mr. Yawn, the managers at the W/D.

I suppose the first thing we did wrong was choosing the Hardees parking lot as our meetup point.  Not only did this bring undue attention to the gathering of the crew, it sucked in a few underclassmen who had no business being a part of our exploits.  To make matters worse, our public gathering was like a Billboard of Shenanigans and attracted the presence of McRae’s finest, Officer Jimmy Joines.

For some ludicrous reason, I never really could see Jimmy as a real law officer – he was just Tommy‘s big brother.  That gun couldn’t be real, much less that shiny badge and patrol car.  I’d grown up with Jimmy stomping around mine and TJ’s playground – so, I never could quite get used to him driving around with such authority in his squad car.

Still a catastrophic weakness for me as an adult, my exuberance for the adventure at hand trumped my ability to keep my stupid mouth shut and I started running it loosely, forgetting that Officer Joines was not just TJ’s big brother … he was a sworn-in Officer of the Law.  I’m clueless as to why some of my buddies didn’t stop me from revealing our agenda.  Come to think of it, they were probably hitting the Hardees restroom once more and stocking up on a few “Hot Ham’n Cheese” sandwiches.

Nevertheless, it was done.  We were poised for attack and I’d just left our destination and mission details in the hands of Officer Joines, our Foe … or Friend?

(to be continued)

——————————————

“Small Town Stories” is a departure from my typical blog content on worship, faith, and leadership and presents short stories about my memories of growing up in a small town.  As always, memories are that … memories.  Names will be substituted where appropriate, and facts will be blended with fiction, or half-memories.  That’s what makes them fun.  If you enjoy this series, please let me know by commenting.

Hey Friends,

My good friend Dwayne Moore at Next Level Worship is offering a free registration (a $299 value) to his online Worship Leadership Training Course.  You actually have TWO chances to win.

Requirements:
You must be available to attend the online sessions, Sept 6 – Nov 8, Tuesday, from 8:00 – 9:30 CST.
Leave a comment here sharing what you’d like to learn in this course.

I’ll do a drawing next week – and check TheWorshipCommunity.Com tomorrow for yet another change to win.  You can register to win at both sites!

Here’s a recap from St. Simons Community Church for this Sunday, August 7, 2011.  As always, this setlist recap is a part of the weekly “Sunday Setlists” event that happens over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Today I enjoyed welcoming our two newest additions to the praise team – Beth Cox (vocals) and her husband, Allan (trumpet).  It was awesome having them serving together.

Our walk-in was an older favorite, “Love the Lord“.  We did the bulk of our praise and worship right at the beginning of the service today as we had a packed Sunday with 50+ minutes of teaching/speaking time.

The opening set included Come Thou Fount, Jesus Saves, and I Exalt Thee.

One thing that was cool during “I Exalt Thee” was as our band backed off and just let the people sing out, we had our tech team actually RAISE the house lights up a bit – the idea was that our darker, more intimate setting was for personal worship, and as we began to change from “I Exalt Thee” to “we exalt Thee”, it became a corporate cry and I wanted our congregation to not only hear one another, but also SEE on another.

I honestly can say that in both services I could hear a noticeable difference as we did that.

Our closer was “I Will Never Be”, a beautiful old Hillsong ballad.  The teaching time went well past our cutoff, so we essentially sang this as people dismissed.

Tomorrow night (Monday) I’m headed down with my wife and our Tech Director (and his wife) to see Hillsong United in Jacksonville, FL.  Should be a cool time!