FR practice week

This week:
Summer FR band overview
Foundation Red practice week video tour
Lost season finale (Thursday morning)
FR chord charts (simplified version because I don’t know how to write what Martin actually plays)
http://www.esnips.com/web/FRchordcharts

This is one of the best two weeks of the year: Foundation Red practice week. I love our band. When I started this 10 years ago at Cincinnati Christian University with Josh Owings, Matt Davidson, Jennifer (my wife); Chad Smith, Jarret Heaston and Mom/Lisa Lewis I had no idea I would get to work with some many incredibly genuine people. Right now FR is Jon Hill, Producer, Martin Bravenboer, Electrick guitar; Monte Hunt, Drums; Amber Davis, Vocals; Jessica Hennig, Violin and yours truly singing as well. Every year we try to reinvent our set lists. As a rule of thumb we drop 60% of our songs and go through a process of picking new songs, writing new songs and just spending time hanging out. I wear a few hats at CIY. I was journaling about this in church just yesterday actually. I’m coming off of two weeks in DC & Estes Park, where I was hanging with some great minds in jr high ministry. Still today my mind is consumed with some of the student decision processes we talked through. I will be switching gears this week in a weird way. When I started working with jr high students it was in the context of small group leader, band leader, & co-youth minister. I was officially on staff at churches as a worship minister; yet 50% of my time was spent with students. I have always said that I am a pastor who just happens to use a guitar and worship to enter spiritual intimate moments with students before the father (notice I didn’t say that I created an atmosphere that was spiritual. I am old enough now to realize I have never created one of those moments. I have only been fortunate enough to be there when the Holy Spirit decided to show up big upon a group.) Anyhow, I digress to make a point on how the band takes such a backseat to what I do at Christ In Youth for the Believe event. I think this is why these guys have been so effective in leading worship. Because we are all so ingrained with consistently going back to jr high intentionality. By always going back to that fundamental idea everything we do as a band becomes more purposeful. I think it naturally lends itself to thinking out songs, transitions and what we portray on stage at a deeper level than we would if I did not wear these other hats. The summer stint we do with CIY Summer Conference is always good for us to see the drastic difference between high school and middle school students. It really comes into play when we start dialing in for the Fall Believe schedule. It is like a built in reminder of how special an all jr high audience is.
So that is this week’s task. It is time to play guitar for Jesus. It takes a day to get gear loaded in. We are doing practice weeks at Jon’s house and Memorial Hall in Joplin. Jon’s house is this week so take a look at our crazy set up. This is going to be a great week. I will keep you posted with all the fun stuff going on!