LW Christmas Updated Update

It has been fun hearing different people talk about the songs they like on the Christmas recording. Women and young children seem to particularly like Away In A Manger. The teens and twenty somethings like O Come Emmanuel. And a lot of the 40 and 50 somethings seem to really like It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. It’s interesting to see what strikes different people.

I’ve listened to the recording now about 7.5 million times. I had to play each song over and over and over and over and over again while recording, mixing and mastering with the other guys. And I’ve had in on in the car. As of today, I think I like listening to Coventry Carol the most. It might be a different one tomorrow. But Coventry Carol turned out like a little chamber orchestra piece, in a way. It’s simple, but I think it’s cool how it turned out.

Some people have asked if In the Bleak Midwinter is an original song. It’s not. Coventry Carol and In the Bleak Midwinter are both standard carols in England/Europe. A friend of mine is from Scotland and he said he grew up singing those songs as a child. The only original music on the recording is By The Fire, which is based on a poem by Longfellow, and the bridge to Away In A Manger. Everything else is a traditional piece from the Public Domain.

It was very hard to get done, but now that it’s done and I get to sit in the car and listen to it while I do other things, it’s kind of fun to listen to it. You sort of forget that it’s your own thing. It just becomes its own thing. The music of the spheres.

Anyhow. It’s been doing well for the church. It’s helping a lot. And our musicians are pretty proud of it, which makes me happy. Now they’re talking about recording a worship set of original songs for summer, and then another Christmas one for next year. It makes me a little tired to even think of doing it, but we’ll see.

I’ll mention again that you can get the download for a donation of 10 bucks or more at the church website. If you want a CD you’ll have to contact me. We appreciate, seriously, how kind and generous everyone has been with this. You are a wonderfully amazing people out there.

Yep. This is the Link.

Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

LW Christmas Vol. 01

I know, I haven't been very vigilant with the blog. I haven't lost interest, I've just been otherwise occupied.

I've been doing my first full production job for a Christmas recording. Using my small studio set up, I and a group of intrepid ar teests have been producing a set of songs to help raise money for our church. And it's finally FINISHED!! It is a grass roots production, but not as grass roots as you might think. We've got CD's and there is a download option at our church website. It's a ten dollar donation thing.

In case you don't realize it yet, today's blog is the first of many shameless promotions that I'm going to be involved with over the next few weeks.

Hundreds of hours of time and labor and kindness have been poured into this thing at zero cost for our church (dollar wise) and every single penny we manage to gather is going to the church to help get a decent building fund up and running. An artist/art teacher at the church did the cover art for us. Some of our musicians helped me get the mastering done. A bunch of people put their voices and musical ability on it, and we even have the kids from church singing on it. If we do another one, we're going to get more people on it next time. We just ran out of time this year.


Like I said, it's to help raise much needed funds. If you want a copy on CD you'll have to contact me, or better yet, show up at church and get one there. The easiest thing would be to get the download, which you will find at the following link on our church website:

LIVINGWATER CHRISTMAS V1

I thank you in advance for your support, and I hope you enjoy the songs. Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Pastor Nance

I, personally, have two pastors in my life. I have the pastor I had when I was a kid, who I still think of as my pastor. And I have my pastor/friend/mentor, appropriately named Paul, who has been helping me for years to find my way and be faithful in what I do. I love them both.

Unfortunately, we found out last night that the pastor of my youth, Willard Nance, has passed away. I have to admit it’s got me feeling pretty down. It’s sad to see him go, but he was very ill, very old, and it’s good to know his suffering is over. He had a stroke a few years ago, and he was incapacitated by it. I went to visit him a few times and he became frustrated and agitated because he couldn’t communicate clearly and we couldn’t understand him. It was miserable and it made me feel bad for him, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

I could write a book with memories of this pastor. We went to church a lot in those days. Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Plus, eventually, youth group things with our youth leader, a guy named Gary. It was a big part of my childhood and teen years. I remember standing in the baptismal pool and being dunked by Pastor Nance. I remember going to a Holloween party in the church basement, and finding a creepy person in a mask that all the kids were standing around, trying to figure out who it was. It was driving us crazy, and it ended up being the last person we would have guessed. It was our pastor.

A pastor who wears creepy Holloween masks to spook the kids. Or, just a pastor who will wear a Holloween mask in the first place. That’s my role model. And he was a great role model. We KNEW he loved us.

And there was never any doubt about how Pastor Nance loved Jesus. He loved the Gospel. He knew what the word “grace” means because he believed so much grace had been poured out on him. I don’t know the details, but we heard glimpses of stories over the years about how he had struggled with substance abuse in his younger years. We knew that when he presented the Gospel, he was sharing something that was very personal for him. It mattered to him, so it mattered to us.

He never had a mega-church. He wasn’t asked to speak at conferences. He didn’t do a lot of big, impressive things in the eyes of the world. He was a working class, working man’s pastor, and I loved him for it. He was a great man, but not for the usual reasons people might bring up. He was a great man because he had a great love for Christ and he acted on that love. He served faithfully for years until he literally couldn’t stand anymore.

He is one of my heroes, and he will be greatly missed.


Peace to the family and friends of Willard Nance.

© LW Publishing 2011

Believe It Or Not

This past summer we took our kids to the Smoky Mountains, and one of the things we did was go through the Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was totally cool, including my favorite: a three dimensional holographic projection of Mr. Ripley himself, talking to you from inside a small room. Very amazing.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a certain kinship with the oddities of the Ripley Museum. Maybe you’re completely normal and everything, with no idea what I mean by this, but I have my own list of Ripley’s type things in my own personal life. Do you? Unusual things that are true, believe it or not? Here are some of mine:

1. BOY RUN OVER BY BUS, LIVES TO TELL THE TALE...

I have been run over by a bus. Seriously. I wrote about this under the post: “The Boy & the Bus.” (Go read it if you dare. It’s archived under March 2010.) Thing is, about 10 years later, I was just barely kept from being run over by a bus a second time by a friend who pulled me out of the way at the last second. I was not paying attention. You’d think I would have been a little more careful after my previous experiences.

2. BOY ACTUALLY ALLERGIC TO SUN...

When I was a kid I had a fairly rare problem with “photosensitivity.” I would have an allergic reaction (severe, painful itching) after getting sunburned. The first time I had a reaction was after a day at the beach. I had a very mild sunburn that any normal person wouldn’t have paid any attention to. But a few days later, I was sitting in church and I thought someone was poking me in the back with needles while I wasn’t looking. Thing was, no one was sitting behind me. It freaked me out, and it didn’t stop. It began to spread, and the intensity of the pain kept increasing until I ended up running into the church basement where I was found a little later writhing incoherently on the floor with pain and madness. (I would have rather died than interrupt the church service, ya know.) I think my parents thought I had lost my mind, or maybe I was possessed, which would have been very embarrassing, considering we were at church. But, being raised Baptist instead of Pentecostal, they didn’t try to exorcise me. Instead, they rushed me to the hospital where I was diagnosed and covered with cloths that were coated with the miracles of modern medicine. They informed me that I am allergic to the sun, which put me off a life of being a beach bum. (And just kidding about the Pentecostal thing. Sort of.)

3. THE EERIE SYNCHRONICITY OF TWO DAVES...

One of my best friends is named Dave. My name is Dave. When we first met, long after High school, we discovered that Dave and I both graduated from the same High School about 5 or 6 years apart. We also discovered that we both have wives named “Sue,” and both of our wives were occupational therapists. On top of these startling coincidences, we both had dogs named “Buddy,” who are since then both dead, and we were both involved over the years in church work. (I know, it’s like that whole Lincoln/Kennedy thing.) And it’s also true that my buddy Dave is thin, healthy, energetic and smart. Which is, unfortunately, where the similarities end.

All of these things are 100% true, I’m pretty sure. Almost and completely entirely.

Believe it or not.


Ecclesiastes 1:9
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010

Shy

If you know me personally, what I’m about to write may make you laugh derisively with incredulity. But it’s still the truth: I am a shy person.

I can talk. I can make conversation. I can connect verbally. I’ve learned to do these things the hard way, but it’s almost never comfortable for me. It’s work. And the odds of my saying something odd or stupid are always high because I’m usually a little bit nervous when I speak. Why? Because I’m shy. I am emotionally hesitant and it effects my communication.

Let me give you an example of how shy I am. This really happened.

When I was a kid I went to a Baptist church. In fifth or sixth grade, some of the kids at church started “going out,’ which didn’t mean they actually went out, it meant they had agreed to be boyfriend and girlfriend when the Sunday School class went on trips and such. Like skating or going to Cedar Point. So. There was this girl. I thought she looked nice. I don’t remember her name. I almost remember what she looked like, but not really. It’s all vague. But I do remember getting my friend to ask this girl if she would “go” with me. Which he did. And she said “yes.”

So far so good.

But that meant I was probably supposed to actually talk to the girl, right? I mean, I should say something. “Hello,” maybe, or “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a church like this?” Hardy har har. But I had never spoken to the girl before and for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything to say to her. We smiled at each other across the room a few times for a few Sundays in a row — which made me nervous — but I could not get up the nerve to talk to her. So a few Sundays later she talked to my friend and told him it was over. We would have to break up because I was too . . . shy.

And I was. And I still am. Inside, I feel the same way now as I did then.

But over the years I’ve learned to talk to people. My wife helped me with this a lot. She is a very social person. And I’ve had good friends over the years who listened, even when I was saying some profoundly stupid things. So I learned. I learned to ask questions. I learned to articulate. And I do like stories and ideas, I like to pass them on. I even do public speaking now, but it’s never easy.

Overall, I would be content to say much less than I do, but it’s important to talk, even if you’re not completely comfortable doing it, even if you sound dumb sometimes. It’s important to connect with people verbally. In fact, the more you do it, the easier it can become. And you will likely get better at it, which can be important too. A day may come when you wish you had prepared yourself to communicate. It can be devastating to know something needs to be said, for your own sake or for the sake of someone else, but you don’t have the words because you haven’t learned the art of expressing yourself.

Words are complicated things. They take practice. Especially for shy people.







Luke 21:15
Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2010