This kid straight up rules. And so does his hair if I may say so myself. But it needed a little trimming to get back to civilized!
Here’s Cruz and his first haircut…
Cruz’s First Haircut from Jason Williams on Vimeo.
Caught a hold of this super sweet music video starring Alison Sudol from A Fine Frenzy today over on Blaine Hogans bloggity.
Creative. Inspiration.
Jesus conquered the cross.
He defeated death.
Light overtook darkness.
Love won in the end.
If you’re facilitating or leading worship for this upcoming Easter celebration at your respective communities…what songs will you be singing to help communicate these truths?
Here’s some new (and not so new) ones that I’m thinking of….check em:
The Monday Mojo is a weekly posting of great resources for worship leaders. You’ll find anything from album highlights and releases, introspective articles on worship and the church, helpful media, tips on instrumentation and sound, sites and applications to boost the organization & structure of your respective teams, even simple words of encouragement. Click the Monday Mojo category above or come back every Monday to stay in tune with the mojo… -Jaydubbs
The Mojo for this week is another great resource for all of you worship leaders incorporating some form of electronic music programming into your music sets. For quite a while now, there was not a whole lot of really good sites or places where you could locate usable loops or tracks to use during leading worship. For a season there was Sacred Loops, but that site seems to be getting less and less contributors…and it was a little hodge podge at times as well. Bwack’s Forum can be a cool place to discuss methods of programming and talk gear with other forum members, even directly from David Crowder Band dudes. But even there, it’s a bit difficult to hunt down great programmed tracks or sounds that people are sharing.
So when I ran across Loops In Worship, I was pleasantly surprised. 
Finally, there was a resource and well laid out website where you could easily find loops and program sounds that are actually really good, and with the distinct purpose for use in a worship music setting. Granted, you won’t find really any “tracks” for actual songs that have been created like you might in Sacred Loops or Bwacks Forum. But you will find useful sounds that you can use to easily build your own tracks inside a program like Ableton Live, Reason, or Garageband in a short time.
All the sounds you will find at Loops In Worship come with a small charge, usually less than $20 for a large package of them, but you know what they always say…”you pay for what you get”. And that doesn’t change here. You pay a little, but again you get some great sounds that will go a long way to build another layer into your sound.
After several months of searching, praying, processing, thinking, and all the other “ing” words that I’m sure we took part in at some point in time, we’ve landed on where we think the Lord is wanting us in this new season.
Remember, we had 2 opportunities that were really exciting to us…Seattle or Scottsdale. Long distance or local.
Well, Jessica and I have decided to stay in Arizona and accept the Scottsdale position at Scottsdale Bible Church.
It was definitely a very difficult decision. Not that Scottsdale Bible was not a fantastic place to see ourselves at. It is. Our family has a loooooonnng history there. And the maturity, solid Biblical foundation, and vision to really see people live in Christ is practically unparalleled in the city. It was difficult in the fact that we anticipated God giving us a real discernment into where he wanted us. But God does not always work in our expectations.
We had the chance to visit the church in Seattle a couple weeks ago. To be honest, we thought the community there at Bethany Community Church was fabulous. The staff is caring and vibrant. The people are inviting and warm. Pastor Richard Dahlstrom is a real visionary, incredible teacher, and he’s at the helm of a tremendous and thriving community. Not to mention the city of Seattle is dirty sweet! Can’t wait to get back there again.
So we did a lot of wrestling.
Pretty much the best commercial…oh I don’t know….ever.
I guess it completely slipped my mind to update a post here because my wife Jessica does such a fantastic job of declaring this kind of news to the world in her blog-o-world Journal of A Mom.
But the fact is Cruz is gonna be a big brother! We are expecting our second little tyke in September!!
It actually was quite a surprise to us, and it happened to us a little earlier than we had planned, but we all know what that type of planning gets you…
The Monday Mojo is a weekly posting of great resources for worship leaders. You’ll find anything from album highlights and releases, introspective articles on worship and the church, helpful media, tips on instrumentation and sound, sites and applications to boost the organization & structure of your respective teams, even simple words of encouragement. Click the Monday Mojo category above or come back every Monday to stay in tune with the mojo… -Jaydubbs
Lets get straight to the point here. If you are a worship leader/musician in the church and you’re not implementing a click or metronome during your music sets, you are severely limiting yourself and your ministry in terms of versatility & musicianship/talent. I will explain my thoughts on why that is below, but first, there is a prerequisite before you can begin piping in click to your players…you must have the ability to use in-ear monitors (IEM’s).
In-ears vs. wedge monitors are a whole other discussion, so I’m not going to focus on that, but the bottom line is you can’t use a click if you are only using wedges for your monitor feeds.
If you have the capability to use IEM’s, it would be ideal to have all your musicians and vocalists on click, meaning that they all have the ability to hear the click. At bare minimum, just having the drummer on click would raise the level of musicianship significantly once your players are accustomed to it a bit. Here’s 3 reasons you should be using a click: Read the rest of this entry »
This last weekend, we took a trip to Seattle to check out a possible new opportunity to join a new church community called Bethany Community Church and lead the music ministry. We came away with a ton of thoughts and ideas. Here’s a conclusion to our weekend visit to the Emerald City without all the crazy details…think 30,000 foot flyover.
Seattle – That city is the straight up jam. Really. I could spend a whole other week just walking around downtown. I’ve yet, in my life, to come across a city with more culture, grittiness, fantastic design, and color. You have the city lights. You have water. And you have natural beauty all around wherever you look. We loved it! Jess thinks she would love the gray skies and drizzle all the time…not sure how it would fit me. But the catch-22 here is that, without the climate and weather that Seattle goes through, the city wouldn’t have the particular beauty that it does.
Seattle: 2 thumbs up
Chelsea Station Inn - This is the bed and breakfast that we stayed at over the weekend, and it was probably one of the coolest places we’ve stayed at in a long time. It was sort of a small apartment inside a renovated old building right across the street from the zoo & a huge park called Woodland Park. Every morning we crept downstairs where the innkeepers would make a ridiculously good breakfast from scratch! Some of the nicest people ever there as well. Check out the Chelsea here.
Chelsea Station Inn: 2 thumbs up
Flying/traveling with a 15 month old rambunctious boy - Don’t get me wrong, I love my son Cruz like crazy…I just didn’t like him that much over the weekend. He was like a different kid, I swear. I’m sure there was at least 8 people on our flights that would’ve duct taped his mouth shut if they could have. Including me. Southwest Airlines made our flying time as comfortable as they possibly could, but even they couldn’t fix Cruz “uncomfortability” every single time I had to change his diaper in a 3×3 airplane bathroom. Picture evidence A:
Cruz & flying: 2 thumbs down…and in to my ears because Cruz is screaming.
Bethany Community Church – What an incredible community. These guys are excited about where God has led them until now and are rampant in seeing God awaken hearts in their local community. Pastor Richard Dahlstrom is a tremendous teacher and such a down to earth dude, that you get to experience his real heart in the first 10 minutes of hanging with him. They have a slew of worshipers who are stoked to be part of serving Gods people in music with their various talents. And trust me, these peeps have talent.
Bethany: 2 big thumbs up
You’ll have to wait a bit to hear where we are thinking of landing in our search for a new church community to be a part of or whether we’ll be in Scottsdale or Seattle. We are still processing a bit with various people and praying about the situation, but you friends will know sooner than later.
Thanks for your prayers and support over the weekend, we have been SO blessed to have people like you behind us!
Stay tuned…
We’re still trucking along on our “101 in 1001″ list of goals and I’m happy to report that my family and I have accomplished 12 of the 101 since October 9th! That may not sound like much but that means we’ve eclipsed the first 10% with a little over two years to go!
If you’re not understanding what I’m referring to, check out this post: 101 in 1001
My wife Jessica and I put together a list of goals, 101 to be exact, that we hope to reach or fulfill within the span of a 1001 days. On a road trip back from California in October we had a ton of fun in the car laughing and reminiscing as we created our list. It’s been a super fun project for us together and given us a set of achievable markers to look for in our lives. Some of them are silly, some are practical, a few are deep and heartfelt. But they are all us.
Maybe you should start a 101 in 1001 list for yourself or your family?
