Sunday High

You know you are at a great place in life when you start to feel bad for talking about how good things are going. I was talking with a new friend who is also a worship pastor and I was describing our situation at New Life Church and I felt like I should shut up so I didn't make him feel bad. I wasn't bragging, just expressing my excitement.
I feel like I am drinking from the Holy Grail of ministry and I fear that I might become too familiar with this for my own good. Like someone who climbs Mt. Everest and then says, "Now where do I go from here?" I have to remember that mininstry isn't about doing the newest and greatest thing or having the best musicians, it's about people. If I become focused on the "Sunday High", I will lose sight of that and become bored. If I filter everything I do through our purpose; "Leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ", I will continue to enjoy every step of the journey.

Another Great Day

We had another great day at New Life Church yesterday celebrating Mothers' Day. We have been doing a song called Reign in Us by the band Starfield and it's really catching on. I've been trying to get my mind prepared for youth convention even though it's not until October. I have been polishing up some new songs and will be trying to record them soon. I came up with a cool melody hook for one of them this morning, that was encouraging. I'm going to try to have a new CD available by Youth Convention.

It's all Math's fault

It has been a very busy last couple months. It's been a good busy though. I've done a few conferences, done a lot of church, and when you throw an 8 week old baby in the mix, things can be hectic. So much so that I have allowed myself to resume some very bad eating habits. When you add that to the fact that I've come up with some very convincing excuses to avoid the gym, the end result is me getting out of shape. That is really starting to sound like a math problem. [(conferences3+church) x (baby+food) x (tired+back pain) = sloppy]

Anyways, I dragged myself to the gym last night for the second time in about 2 months. It felt pretty good even though I didn't quite have the stamina I previously had. I'm sure it will return. I'm starting another cleanse soon and those always are miserable but worth it.

Twit

Hey, I'm on Twitter, blah, blah, blah. www.twitter.com/samleyde.

Good Times

At New Life Church, we have been in a crazy season of blessing. Giving is up, attendance is up, things seem to be firing on all cylinders. We took a special offering this past Sunday for Convoy of Hope and raised enough money to feed 30,000 people for a day. On top of that we started moving dirt on the property! I am making a conscious effort to enjoy this time and not take it for granted.

Torn.

Yesterday was the 4 year anniversary of the day we moved back to our home state. This rainy, cold weather has really been weighing on me lately. I was thinking this morning about a fishing trip I took one time. We lived in Bend, OR at the time so you could actually count on sunny days in the summer. It was the 4th of July and I got up at 4am so I could be on the water before the sun was. It was already warm out and the smell of smoke from recent local forest fires still hung faintly in the air. I decided to fish an area of the Deschutes river that during our time in central Oregon, became my favorite place in the world. This particular spot was just above Benham Falls but below the footbridge. I turned onto the forest service road as the sun was making it's appearance through the Ponderosa pines. Since it was summer, I had the top down on the Jeep and the mixture of pine needles, Juniper pollen and forest fire smoke filled the Deschutes National Forest. I had just received a copy of Jason Upton's album "Faith" and was listening to it while I drove. If you've ever heard the title track from that record, you know the part where he says, "Because I'm learning to trust that it's not you that hurt me, I'm learning to believe that it's not you that deserted me, I believe that you still love me, brokenness and all." When I heard that, something inside of me broke and I began to weep. It was a bit of a spiritual re-awakening for me.
I pulled up and parked, got my waders on, strung up my rod, and began to walk the trail up to the footbridge that at one time had been a railroad grade. I got on the water and found a spot where the reeds were tall and right against the river. I knelt behind them and pulled some line out of the rod tip and gently dropped the fly onto the surface of the slow moving water. Since the reeds were so tall, I couldn't see my fly. After a few drifts and no action, I began to wander mentally. I was admiring the trees, the birds, the sunshine and I was so enthralled by nature that I was startled by the splash of the fish that had come up and crushed my fly. I felt the weight of a bigger-than-my-average fish on the end of my line. I had been so shocked by the disturbance of my quietness that I was not in the state of mind to actually play and land a fish and as suddenly as it had made it's presence known, it was gone. The price of barb-less hooks.
I fished a while longer once my hands stopped shaking from the adrenaline, and about 9:30 am, I called it day, fishless. I drove out the forest service road, onto the highway that connects Bend to Mt. Bachelor and drove home. Even without ever seeing a fish that morning, it had been a great excursion and I knew that I had been changed as a person and that I would remember that morning for the rest of my life.

Picks Down Please.

Yesterday after church we hosted a lead guitarists workshop with the intent of getting all the current and future lead guitarists on the same page. Essentially, the message was, "If you're going to play lead guitar at New Life Church, this is how we want it done." It went really well, Corey presented the technical aspects of technique, theory and tone, while I was there to provide demonstration music.
It was really an "Above and Beyond" kind of event. We have a wealth of quality musicians here and it would be easy to sit back and enjoy that fact but we want to go above and beyond just having quality musicians, to actually developing our musicians into quality worship teams. The hardest part was keeping 9 guitar players quiet long enough to say anything!

If you would like to learn how to play guitar, check out www.coreysublett.com