Bless Richmond, CD Releases, & Tours

I hope everyone has had a great Thanksgiving Holiday.

I’m thankful for a lot. I’ve been a part of a lot of great activity of the last few months. Most recently I had the honor of leading worship for an event called Bless Richmond. It was the first event of its kind in our city. In essence, Bless Richmond was an event where 30+ pastors brought their congregations together for worship, prayer, and giving food to the Central Virginia Food Bank. About 1800+ people came to this event and the communion with the Lord was rich!

Below are a few videos to give you an idea of what Bless Richmond was about. I want to encourage you to start forming relationships and prayerfully do something similar in your city. A friend of mine in Charlotte was the catalyst for a similar event called, Unite Charlotte. There's only one church and we need to be reminded of this!

I also want to let you all know about 3 CDs that I’ve contributed to that are out on the market:

Lori Michelle has released her project Keep. It’s an R&B singer/songwriter EP that I produced. You can sample the Keep CD here.

Logan Jones who is another artist that I have produced has released his CD Ruminations. Logan has a more rock sounding singer/songwriter feel. You can check out Ruminations here.

And last but not least, Jewell Booker has released her project Love Letters, which is a compilation of songs Jewell has written, sharing about her relationship with God. Some of the songs are live from a concert I produced and music directed for called A Tale of Two Women and the other tracks are studio recordings.  You can listen to Love Letters here. 

For those that are in Philadelphia (Dec. 9) & Baltimore (Dec. 10) area next week, I’ll be playing two dates on Alex Mejias’ Christmas tour for his new project that was recently released. The Philly show is in collaborations with the guys from Lamp Mode Records, so Timothy Brindle and Quarry Street Hymnal will be performing that night. For more information about the tour, cick here.

In Indy @ CCDA 2011

It’s been a great week this week being in Indianapolis at the CCDA Conference. It’s been a really busy week. I’ve been playing sax on the worship team lead by Louis Carlo (who is an awesome worship leader!) and a few members the CCDA Leadership Cohort. 

I’m presenting a workshop at 1pm today with my colleague Reynolds Chapman called Melody & Memory. A few months ago, Reynolds published an article in Christianity Today based off of the material he presents in our workshop. You can check out the link below:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/march/worshipinblackwhite.html

If you’re here at the conference, I want to encourage you to attend this workshop and at 3pm, I’ll be on a panel with other artist having a conversation about the Arts in Community Development.

Please come by if you get a chance!

Great Global Songs we did at The Calvin Symposium

I just received this link from Robin Harris, president of International Council of Ethnodoxologist. There are some great songs in these worship services, so feel free to watch the service and take some of the songs to your congregation!

Symposium 2011 - Thursday morning worship from CICW on Vimeo.

Symposium 2011 - Thursday afternoon vespers from CICW on Vimeo.

It's Been A Long Time

In the words of the old school rap duo, Eric B. & Rakim, "It's Been A Long Time."... It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything on this blog.  Things have been busy since I’ve gotten back from Honolulu.  

I presented the workshop at the CCDA conference in Chicago.  I had a blast at the conference in general and with our workshop specifically.  I’ll post a little more about our presentation in the near future, but right now, I would encourage you to attend the next national CCDA conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.  There are a lot of brothers and sisters doing innovative things to bring God’s Shalom to the under resourced communities of our country.

Since I’ve been back from Chicago, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the studio and doing a few gigs.  A few of the gigs were with Alex Mejias of High Street Hymns.  On one of those gigs was with Jimmy G of Mid Atlantic Christian Artist.  Jimmy is a really nice guy and you should check out his company.

We just finished the mixing and mastering for Logan Jones Music.  Logan was the writer for the BWC song “Hear The Spirit”.  I produced the EP for his band.  I’m pleased with the work.  Logan wrote some great songs and his band worked really hard to make this project good.  As far as a release date is concerned, look on Logan’s website because this part of business is out of my jurisdiction. 

There are a few more things that I’ll be announcing soon, but below are a few places that I’ll be in the next few months:

The Harvest Conference - October 29-31, 2010

I’ll be in Pittsburgh at the end of the month leading worship and giving a talk about the Community Discipline of Racial Reconciliation at an Intervarsity Conference.  I’m playing with the multi-ethic worship band, Kingdom Reflections, which is led by Kenny and Achlai Wallace.  Kenny is the Worship Pastor at Mosaic Church in Greensboro, NC.  Achlai is worship leader that is Haitian Canadian.  She grew up in Montreal, Canada and was apart of a really good multi-ethnic worship band that I can’t remember the name of, but they are awesome.  The Kingdom Reflection worship band is made up of people of different ethnicities and we sing worship songs of various languages and cultures.  Kenny and Achlai are multi-language worship leader rock stars in my book.

The National Mosaix Conference – November 2-3, 2010

I’ll be in San Diego, CA at the national Mosaix conference.  Mosaix is a network for churches that are interested in being a multi-ethnic congregation.  Mosaix equips church leaders and churches with the resources and connections to make this happen.  They have a goal of seeing 20% of local churches throughout the United States achieve 20% diversity within their congregations by the year 2020.  I’m not presenting, I’m just attending, but I’m excited to attend.

The Baptist General Association of Virginia – November 9, 2010

I’ll be in Hampton, VA at The Baptist General Association of Virginia meeting leading worship with part of the worship team from Honolulu.  It’ll be different leading worship this team with out palm trees and great weather… we should be able to get it together.   We are leading worship the first night.

Calvin Symposium on Worship – January 27-29, 2011

I’ll be in Grand Rapids, MI at the Calvin Symposium on Worship.  I’ll be on another multi-ethnic worship team leading worship, and presenting a workshop on “Learning Reconciliation through Community and Worship Music”.  I’ll also be on a panel discussing welcoming and worshipping with multi-ethnic communities with other worship leaders.  The worship team was assembled through the International Council of Ethnodoxoligist.  I'm thankful that they choose me to be a part of the team and I'm really looking forward to working with and learn from so many leading professionals in our field.

I want to really encourage you all to attend the Mosaix Conference and the Calvin Symposium if it is possible.  These two conferences have people that will be great resources to you if your into cultural diversity in your gatherings.

If you are at any of these conferences or you’re in town, let me know because I would love to connect with you.

Personal Highlight from the Honolulu

So, I'm back from 2 weeks in Honolulu.  My time serving at the Baptist World Congress was amazing.  There was a wonderful production team from the UK that was phenomenal (or "brilliant" to use their words).  I got a chance to work with some really great musicians from all around the world.  It was really beautiful to see people from many nations, cultures, and languages worshipping together in liberty.

I really appreciated that the decision makers of the conference were really intentional about representing the world instead of one particular part of the world’s culture. 

One of my personal highlights of the congress was performing and singing the theme song I produced for the congress with the Baptist International Mass Choir.  I just saw a brief clip of this song on Flickr.  My new friend, Emanuele Aprile who is from Italy, led the Baptist International Mass Choir.  Emanuele is a great composer and arranger.  Keep a look out for him. 

You’ll also see that Logan Jones, the author of “Hear the Spirit” leading 5000+ people from around the world in worship.  Logan’s CD will be release this Fall, so you will be hearing more about his project from me soon.  Meanwhile, make sure you get your free download of Hear The Spirit!