RickScheibner.net

I wasn’t scheduled to play this week, but a last minute change to the worship schedule had me playing this morning. I had only played with one other band member who played today, so it was good to be able to sit in with some other musicians. Totally different feel for a lot of reasons. Our set:

• With All of my Heart (Dave Fife)
• Let My Words Be Few (Matt Redman)
• More Than Ever (Robbie Reider & Allan Fuller)
• Invitation Fountain (If You Lead Me, Lord, I Will Follow)
• Holy God (Brian Doerksen)

The only tune I hadn’t played before was the Invitation Fountain tune, and I think that’s because it was written by our leader today, Dave Florea. He’s known for not crediting himself when we do a tune that he wrote. And that’s too bad, too, because he writes some really good stuff. This particular song only had two chords through the whole thing, so you had to get creative when going back and forth. Even so, it had a great melody and fit in nicely with the set.

Dave led, with Jeff on Bass, his wife Eilene on djembe/backup vocals, Brad on drums, and me on keys. If you ever have to sit in on a worship time, cold turkey, with no rehearsal time, this is the group to do it with. Musically, this is about as solid of a group as I’ve played with in quite a while.

How was your worship weekend?

Carlos Whittaker put a little different twist to his Creative Chaos series this week:

I want us to post on where it is that we go to find our personal creativity.
And it HAS to be outside the office.
And Tell Us Why…

For me, collaboration with others, regardless of the setting, is the key to creativity.  And that collaboration can take place in many forms as well.  Maybe it’s having the drummer over for dinner, or hanging out with the team leader.  Getting to know them a little bit in a social setting so that you can get a sense of what makes them tick in the worship setting on Sunday morning.  Sometimes, in the middle of talking about kids and the day jobs we find something that works for us in worship team.  How about if we did this intro this way?  Or what if we put these two songs together that way?  Just getting away from the rehearsal setting can give me some perspective, but it needs to be with other musicians. 

And for my own personal creativity with how I play, I just listen while I’m doing other things and let those musical ideas work their way into my subconscious.  Can’t explain it any other way than that.

Where do you go to get creative?

And be sure to get your own Creative Chaos at:

Ragamuffin Soul »  Creative Chaos @ Ragamuffin Soul Guidelines

Tags: CreativeChaos, Christianity, worship, music

Our local Starbucks crew was struggling to keep up with a moderate crowd of 3 or 4 this morning. The lady in front of me picked up her grande caramel macchiato and quickly made her way out the door. Thirty seconds later, a Starbucks worker put a similar drink out on the counter and called out “Grande caramel macchiato!”. I waited another five minutes for my own beverage while the macchiato sat there. When mine finally got up there, the lady handed me mine, looked at the other drink still sitting there, and called out again, “Grande caramel macchiato, please.” Trying to be helpful, I explained, “I think that might be a duplicate; the lady in front of me just took one out exactly like it.” She looked at me a little strangely. “Well,” she replied, “they all look the same.” I took my latte and headed out the door. I’m unsure as to the fate of the caramel macchiato.

On a similar note, I got a retro cup with my latte, so I promptly got a sleeve to go with it. I didn’t want to end up like this guy.

Technorati Tags: Starbucks

Life’s been a little hectic the last few days, so I’m a little late getting this one out this week.  We did:

• Holy is the Lord
• Dwell (Casey Corum)
• Come Lord Come (Harmony Smith)
• I’ll Be Still (Jennette & Travis Ross)
• Worthy, You Are Worthy (Redman/Tomlin)
• Saving Grace (Steve Jones)
• One Thing (Matt McCoy)

I felt like we had struggled a bit at our rehearsal last Thursday, but things came together nicely on Sunday.  Specifically, I thought we were listening to one another and had some better balance on Sunday.  Interesting what a difference a few days and a good run-through can make. 

I’ll be a regular worshipper at my church the next couple of weeks, but I will be back with another Worship Confessional after the last week in April.  I won’t even be in my helper-guy role at rehearsal this Thursday as I’ll be on a group bike ride. 

A few other worship confessionals/set lists from this past weekend that you may enjoy reading:

• Jeff M. Miller (Consuming Worship)
• Ben Abu Saada (Babu Life)
• Rich Kirkpatrick (check out the situation with the stuck lift)
• Tony Chavez

How was your worship weekend?

I don’t try to jump on every Web 2.0 fad networking opportunity that comes along, but several of my blog buddies were getting into Facebook last year, and I just had to give it a try.  I had already tried the MySpace thing, and had gotten a few laughs out of it, but Facebook seemed, well, more in tune with my demographic.  So I signed up and got into the act.  It didn’t take long to get some friends aboard and connect with a few groups and check out a few causes along the way.  I have to admit, I have spent more than my share of time seeing how much I’m “like” somebody else, or comparing movie tastes with other people that have seen the same flicks as I have.  Apparently, Scott and I enjoy the same movies.  John, and I, not as much.  Ironically, I’ve seen a lot more movies with John than I have Scott, and we seem to have roughly the same opinions of the ones that we see together.  (BTW, Scott, if you’re ever in Oregon and want to catch a flick, look me up.)

So, I seem to get quite a bit more out of Twitter than I do Facebook, so I’m wondering if now is the time to streamline my web presence a little and just stick with Twitter and this blog.  Still, though, I have a few reasons to at least keep my profile:

• I can keep up with a few family members.  In fact, there are three generations of us on Facebook right now.  If I could get my 90-year-old grandmother to sign up, we could make it four. 
• I have an upcoming NFL draftee as a Facebook friend.
• Ditto a guitarist for a Grammy-award winning band as a Facebook friend (although he’s on Twitter, also). 

So maybe those are enough reasons to keep the lights on at my Facebook account.  I’m just wondering about my investment-to-return ratio with the thing. 

How about you?

It’s now spring, so I really don’t have any excuse for not working out and getting in shape.  We had a gorgeous day here in the Inland Pacific Northwest, so I thought I’d take advantage of it and load my bike up for an excursion along the Columbia River trail near here.  I wasn’t disappointed.  But man, am I going to feel this one in the morning.  I rode for nearly an hour, and I haven’t really been doing anything to work myself up to it.  At 40, that’s probably not a good idea.  D-ohh!  In any event, here’s my first-ever (and possibly last-ever, depending on how thing goes) video exercise confessional. 

Oops:  At 2:48, I should have said “Pacific Ocean”, not “Columbia River”.

Now, go confess yourself.

Cross-posted at FatBloggers.

My schedule is packed today, so I’m just going to leave ScribeFire open and post my thoughts throughout the day. Kind of like Twitter, only…not.

• I think the upgrade to WordPress 2.5 messed with my previous layout, so I downloaded a new one and tweaked it last night. I kind of like this one better. Of interest: I think a Subscribe button should be conspicuous but not obnoxious. This one seems to fit that bill. I am going to tweak the stylesheet when I get a chance, as I don’t like the line spacing in this one. That’s my only complaint.
• Speaking of WP 2.5, I really like the new dashboard layout and options. It was worth the wait.
• Had pizza with the drummer of our worship team last night. It’s cool getting to know new people.
• I work with some innovative and flexible educators. Sometimes, just being able to juggle all of this requires constant re-thinking and re-organizing.
• Disturbing news shared by Maurice via Twitter this morning. I’m going to comment on it later.
• Imagine running a 400m race. You have 12 hurdles in front of you. The guy in the next lane has 6. That’s what our ELL kids have to do every day at school, and some of them perform really well in spite of those odds. Or maybe because of them.
• Last summer, I thought about getting a team together for the Hermiston 3-on-3 tournament. Now I’m not so sure I’d be able to handle that any more. Sheesh, Kareem was averaging almost 15 ppg in the NBA when he was my age.
• That means I need to start hitting the bike pretty hard if I’m going to stay in shape. Better do that after school today.
• Some kids just don’t fit the educational categories that we create for them. Imagine that.
• It’s not even noon, and my schedule has changed about 3 times already. Oh, district counselor’s meeting tomorrow.
• Ok, I’m REALLY looking forward to a bike ride along the Columbia River today.
• Attendance is a huge issue at our school. It’s amazing the lengths some parents will go to to keep their kids out.
• Gorgeous day out. Our third graders are really competitive in anything they do. Didn’t want to come in from recess!

Technorati Tags: Floating Thoughts