Archive for July, 2009

• Did you know that I actually served as a hyde park lay-person before I was on staff at hp? It's true – for one day I was a lay-member of hyde park church. I officially started at hyde park on Monday, August 1st, 1999 but unofficially began serving as Minister of Music and Outreach at hp on Sunday morning, July 31st. It was on that morning, 7/31/1999, that Keyna and I joined hp, which made me a lay-leader for exactly 1 day    
• If "we" had "our way", I would've never ended up here! 3 different people told me about the hyde park position; I had no interest in hyde park because I didn't want to go to another church that was anti-change and assumed that hp was that kind of church. On the church's side, Hubert Waddell (search committee chair) was told about me by a mutual friend, my former pastor. Hubert never called, later stating, "if he was worth anything I would already know about him". Once again, I must say . If all had been left up to he and I then I would have never come to hyde park! Thank God that he doesn't always give us what we want!!
• When I decided to undertake our 1st Passion play, "The Promise" in April of 2000 I lost half of the existing choir. Consequently, when the play was over the choir doubled in size in spite of the mass exodus. Again, that would be a 
• Favorite event through the years? That's a hard one… I've had a bunch but the one that I believe stands out the most is one that most of you know nothing about… A mission trip to Upstate New York with about 15 of you to a church plant that we were supporting. Not only did we have an amazing time ministering, but the fellowship on that trip was life-changing. Those of you who were part of that… that was a great, great time for me.  
• Most memorable worship experience? Two actually (in no particular order). The first would be April 8th, 2001 – Palm Sunday. We were in the middle of our 2nd of 3 years doing "The Promise" and we were worshiping on Sunday morning. The Spirit of Jesus was thick in the place when one of our former worship leaders, Chad Fallin, took the stage to sing the song, "Watch the Lamb". As Chad told us the story of Jesus' crucifixion in song I found myself and most of the church weeping at what we were hearing/seeing/experiencing. When Pastor got up to preach he began to read his text, Isaiah 53 and as he did he couldn't even get through the text for weeping. I experienced the presence of Jesus in the most tangible way that morning – His presence was manifest among us that day. Unbelievable. The second would have to be September 28th, 2003 – the week before we kicked off the "40 Days of Purpose" Church-wide campaign. That morning I was really busy prior to the service and had not been in the auditorium in the 15 mins prior to starting. When I walked onto the stage the whole place was filled – shoulder to shoulder and "the buzz" of the people was unlike anything I had EVER experienced in a church before… people anticipating worship and all that was about to happen. Within 2 months we were forced to add another worship experience to accomodate all that was happening in our midst. 

Maybe you have some questions like this that you would like to ask – make them good ones and we'll answer/talk about them here this week as I reminisce about 10 powerful years.  

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