Easter's Biggest Secrets: REVEALED!

Hello.

It's the day after Easter and I am battling through my yearly post-Easter hangover.  It's a church hang-over not the more commonly known type of hang-over.  But the effects are similar:  Headache, body-ache, blurred vision, slow movements, inability to get out of bed and an overall foul demeanor.

It is now Monday evening and I think I'm coming out of it.

It was a great weekend at Church.  We had a total of 8 services at our two campuses and close to 4000 people came through the doors between Friday and Sunday.  We even had over 200 people come to our 8am service on Sunday morning.  This was WAY above what I was expecting.  I was expecting around 100 and I was secretly fearing that 11 people would show.  That would make for an awkward church service in a room with 1000 chairs.  We may have just called it off and taken everyone to Perkins.

Kristie and I received lots of good comments from several people throughout the weekend and I would first of all like to give some props to some very deserving people.

Most of the comments I received were in regards to the bridge on the stage and how cool it was to have people walk across it at the end of service.  The bridge was designed and built by two awesome guys in the church.  Paul Hoyt and Kenny Parker.  These guys are all pro.  Thanks Gentlemen.

I heard some great comments about the sound and tech stuff over the weekend.  Pastor Chris Cortte is the guy who's in charge of that stuff and he does a great job leading the team of talented volunteers every weekend.  And one of those volunteers in particular is Nils Lorvick who was running the sound board.  He is exceptional at what he does.  Plus he plays drums for us as well and has also been known to pick up the bass guitar.  Thanks to the tech dept.

There was lots of comments about the music.  Thanks to all the very talented people who gave pretty much their entire weekend to the music dept at RVC.  Kirsten Nissly was the lady who sang the offertory and to answer some of your questions.... No. She doesn't sing professionally.  Although she could.  Pastor Ryan and Alli Williams are the talented couple that lead the music at the Faribault Campus.

Many people commented on the cool video at the end of the service that had words that matched the words to the song that Kristie was singing.  The guy in charge of all videos at Church is Pastor Tom Poch.  He edits and produces all videos at RVC.  He's a talented dude and has been at RVC for almost 7 years.

And now to the 'secrets revealed' part of this post-Easter-blog.  There a bunch of people who asked how we did that video and song.  It's not Rocket Science.  Although, I think it would have been super-cool if rockets were involved.  I gave Tom Poch a copy of the recorded song 'Amazing Grace - my chains are gone' by Chris Tomlin.  He made the video to match that recording.  Then I made what is called a click track... (just think metronome if you know music and if you don't... just think a clicking noise that is in the same tempo as the song.  If you don't understand tempo, I'm going to need you to not read any further and Google 'music theory for dummies'.)  Anyway, I made the click track to match the song and we swapped that for the original song track.  When we played the video, the click noises were the only sounds in the video and they were only in my earphones.  So as long as we followed the clicks, the words to the sang matched the words on the video.  Easter's Biggest Secrets Revealed.

Now to answer the other questions I got.

The song that was sung for the offertory was by Cindy Morgan.  It's called "Where You Are"  and it's on her CD called 'Postcards'.  You can purchase it on iTunes.  If you don't know what iTunes is, I'll need you to stop reading and Google 'Technology Skills Needed By Everyone for the year 2002".

And NO, we can not make a CD of songs like that one that we sang in church and sell it and give the proceeds to Kingdom Builders.  This is in violation of Internation Copyright Laws and I would go to Jail.  Or at least get fined.  And if somebody out there wants to make a CD of songs I've written, sell it, make lots of money and they don't give me my share... I'd be unhappy about that.  Not that it hasn't happened before...

Happy Easter.

Comments

[Nancy]

So, what you're saying is you don't just throw all of this together on Friday night, huh? Truly Jeff; everyone did an amazing job and put together one amazing service. Thanks for all of your hard work! It is greatly appreciated.

[Mr D]

Well done by everyone!!! Thanks for reminding me who all is involved. Ministry behind the scenes, but so very important.

[Rachel]

Phenomenal weekend! If you're looking for blog topics, I would love to hear how you select the worship music for the weekend services. I'm always so impressed with the words in the songs, the quality of the worship, and the talent of the group.