Just Like My Blog, I Get No Response

Wow, 9 months! That has to be a record.

And it makes sense that it takes that long considering I have tried my best to stay out of Jason's hair.

But he has to bite me in the rear end in some way, doesn't he?

For the past few months, I have been recieving wall posts on my Facebook from Jason. They are few and far in between ,but I get jsut enough of them to annoy me. And the reason why is this: Whenever he sends me a post it is something very simple like for example today's post was, "Hey Billy, what's new?" And every single time he posts something, I respond to it as soon as I realize he sent me something. I may not like him, but you gotta give him an A for effort. But the thing is, he NEVER responds to me...EVER. If I send him a long detailed response about the things I did, he won't respond. If I keep it short and sweet like I did today, he still won't answer. I even ask him what's going on with him because I legitimately am somewhat interested in what he's doing and he still doen't respond. It gets incredibly annoying when you talk to somebody and nobody comes back to you.

Jason, you're trying to extend some olive branch to me and to other people, but how can you do that if you're not even willing to engage other people in conversation. I'm giving you chance after chance after chance and all I feel is unimpressed. I'd like to see you try and do your sermon stuff in defense when you find out about this.

Just One Quick Burn...I Promise *shifty eyes*

A couple weeks ago I recieved an invitation to eat out at Five Guys Burgers in Northgate. I was pretty hyped cause I had never eaten there. Then Lent comes along and I decide not to spend any money on fast food. Now with that being concrete, I decided to change my RSVP status to "not attending". When I look at the list of people attending this is who I see:

Jason-Leader
Alula-Leader
Errol-Leader
Steph-Leader's GF

Wow. Sounds exciting.

This is supposed to be a thing to get the rest of the young adults to come to a Souled Out event and nobody shows up. Sounds like a successful idea, champs!

What about the idea of expanding it so that all the kids can come? At least it doesn't seem like a Jimenez family picnic.

God, that Five Guys invite looks so miserable everytime I look at it.

Psalm 98:4,
Kuya Billy

mister_b1LL, I Think You Need Love

I'm gonna take a break from my normal ranting to put some real emotion in a blog. If you think this is worth putting on Facebook, by all means let me know.

I have entered a slump. And by that I mean with women. For me it is a very important thing for me to have a girl in mind. But unfortunately, that is not the case. Since I broke up with shewhomustnotbenamed, I've tried to fill that hole that is in my heart for the past 7 months. It's not that I want her back because that is certainly not the case. I have moved on from her. The problem is that I can't find someone to take her place.

Back in the day I used to have a ranking system. I know it's a very stupid idea to have something like this because if you end up with #7, she'd be pissed off at you cause she wasn't your number #1. But it kept me going. I had a top 10 of who I'd like to go out with, and starting from #1 I would go down the list until I found somebody that would click with me and we'd go out. The list would consist of girls from every aspect of my life; school, work, church.

Since recently that list has been all but non-existant. I've left my former church in order to move to another church that as a scarce number of people around my age (18-24). I'm currently not in school and most of the girls at Hollister are already taken. The ones that aren't have no interest in me or I have no interest in them due to personal preferences. Plus most of the girls I don't get to see often because of work schedules.

I have reached this period in my life where I am just too old for the youngins and too young for the olders. For example, I once tried to ask out this girl who just graduated high school. Doing so made me realize just how old I was. At that time I was 3 years older than her. On the other extreme, there is another girl I know whom I feel she and I would really be able to click together, however she is about 7 years older than I am which is way out of my range and is probably also out of her range.

When you combine that with the fact that I have no real people around my age in my life, it complicates things.

I could definitely go the swingers route and go bar hopping every night trying to meet new girls, but 1) I'm not a drinker and 2) I'm not a fan of the potential one night stand. It's not a matter of confidence either. Ask any person at work and they know that I can talk with everybody.

I have just hit a rut. And it's affecting my personal life.

Without someone to pursue, I feel my need for physical satisfaction grow even stronger. Earthly needs outweigh my spiritual needs. In turn, I start to lose my focus.

I need love. No question about it. And I believe I need it soon. I'm not asking for a girlfriend, but I'm just asking for new doors to be opened.

Psalm 98:4,
Kuya Billy

Last Rant As A Member Of Souled Out (I Hope)

APOLOGIES TO READERS: I’m not going to apologize for the material you’re about to read because this is honest talk that is straight from the heart. I’m apologize if there seems to be a lack of direction with this. I wrote this with full emotion and I wrote whatever could come out of my head.

A great song once began with the words, “Let it all out, get it all out..”
That’s what I’m gonna do.

I’m praying to God that this will be the last time I ever rant about Jason ever again.

Last Sunday, Brian chose me to lead worship for Praise and Prayer Night. Excitedly, I chose a lineup well before hand. In my opinion I felt that this lineup would be a more spiritually led lineup. But at the same time I was hoping that I would show the church what I’ve learned since leaving FACC. Each person has a different leading style, and for that moment I really hoped Jason had been watching.

I took the time to watch what the rest of the group was doing. I felt that the youth was sitting too far away so I got everybody to come up to the stage so we can do some close quarter worship, or CQW, if you prefer. Nobody wanted to clap or get active during Today Is The Day so I sat down with them for most of the set, adding the line, “I don‘t want you guys to look up to me during this time of worship, but I want you guys to look up to God.” And during the song I Exalt Thee, I kept singing the chorus repeatedly because I felt that the group was really feeling the song (not because of me, but because of God). It was all about knowing my audience, a lesson I learned at Christian Musician Summit by Overlake’s worship minister, Jesse Butterworth. I felt, from a leader standpoint, that it did start off rocky, but it ended up fine at the end.

The next day, Jason sends me a message on Facebook. I’m pretty sure that Jason wouldn’t want me to present this in public for the world to see, but seeing as how I’m on a roll of pissing people off, I say “Why not?” This is his full message, with nothing edited out.

Hey Billy,Thanks for playing last night. Take the time to assess how you did.

Questions like this help all worship leaders and directors over them.

"Was my heart right?"

"Was I singing to God, myself, or for man?"

"How did I do in taking others to the throne of God?"

"Is there something better I can do, or not do, next time to help others approach God's throne?"

This is for yourself.

I do have one note. Darlene Zschech said it best, "Our main goal (as a worship leader) is to step aside on stage and reveal God as the spotlight."Humble yourself.Another day in God's Grace.

Blessings,
Jason

Jason, first of all, these are questions you should be asking yourself every week. I obviously never go to FACC’s services to watch you lead, but my mom is always there every week, and gives me a clear picture of what you do during worship. She tells me that every week you go out there and continually try to get the audience involved by either clapping their hands or giving “I Have A Dream” speeches. Remember what I said about knowing your audience? Your audience is not a bunch of youth, you lead a bunch of 60-70 year old FILIPINOS!!! Culturally, we are more introverted in the way we praise God. We’re not known for raising our hands or clapping or singing along. You of all people should know that considering you’re late like all Filipinos are, but I’ll save that for another story.

Second, I see so many things that were implied in this message. Keep in mind you’re talking to a guy who speaks implied on the daily. And this is what you’re implying to me. The message that I’m receiving is that you think that I’m doing this as more of a performance. That I’m focusing too much on the music and not on God. I think you’re trying to base that around the practice. The last time I checked, practice is meant for us to focus on the music in the first place. That’s why I took all the time in the world to practice the music. I only had a half hour to practice with you guys since I had to scrounge up a team last minute and that of course could put stress on any leader. I’ll honestly tell you that during the practice I wasn’t thinking about God, but getting the songs down as fast as possible. Another implied message I’m seeing is that there is a very negative tone with this message. You sit here explaining all of my faults (implied of course), and the only sentence that I see that is actually positive is the first line. From then on, you start the hate. I’m gonna tell you right now that real leaders never do that when they send people a message. They take the time to explain what you did right and what you did wrong. They support the rights and help you find a way around the wrongs. You did neither. Instead you left it up to me to figure out what I did wrong and didn’t give me any way to fix it.

But because I’m here blazing on your methods of leadership, even though these questions were meant for myself only, I’ve decided to publicly answer them.

“Was my heart right?”-I can honestly say not for the first couple of songs. The reasons why were because I knew Frank and Ian had never played the songs before so in my head I kept thinking if they were gonna make mistakes or not. But when I started singing Your Love Never Fails and the rest of the songs following, I felt more into the worship and I started declaring that God’s love never fails as if I was conversing with him. My heart was also set on the last two songs, Above All and I Exalt Thee. Seeing the youth sing with their hearts really helped set my heart on God and not the music.

“Was I singing to God, myself, or man?”-This is a confusing question. Mostly because some songs are meant to be directed towards man so they would know about God. But that’s another story. This question in essence is the exact same thing as the question above, so you may refer to my last response.

“How did I do in taking others to the throne of God?”-I talked to Paulo about something like this. He told me that he was feeling it all night, especially during I Exalt Thee, all 15 minutes of it. I took one person to the throne of God. That’s good enough for me.

“Is there something I can do, or not do, next time to help others approach God’s throne?”-Here’s where your implied message will meet my implied message. I think I should have done less talking. Jesse Butterworth of Overlake Christian Church once said, “Nobody wants to hear the worship leader talk, that’s what the sermon is for. Shut up and sing!” Those were really his words, truth. But other than that, because a certain someone failed to state what I did well or didn’t do well, I cannot give a proper answer to this question. But if you were asking yourself this exact same question, I would be more then willing to answer it. Not only would I explain to you the things you didn’t do well, but I would be happy to point out the things you did well. Why? Because I’m a nice guy and I would be a hypocrite if I did otherwise.
I hope that you are asking yourself these questions as well, considering you keep putting me down in your messages. And as for that quote, that’s some good advice. Why don’t you take that into consideration.

I wish someday you can come into Northwest Church. I pretty much do the exact same things that I did for your administration in FACC. But here’s the thing; they respect me for it. They respect the fact that I am a young man who shows his maturity in the way that he leads. And this isn’t coming from a Tita or a Tito who is obliged to say that. This is coming from musicians that have played their respective instruments for up to 40 years. This is coming from worship leaders involved in the church all their life. These exact same people tell me what’s good and what’s bad about the way I worship. More importantly, they SUGGEST IDEAS ON HOW TO HELP ME OUT! You know why? Because they’re real worship leaders. These are people that give opportunities for all people in the church to take part in ministries at NW because they want everyone to expose their talent. If you don’t believe me, I’m leading worship on January 24th. I am openly inviting you to come celebrate with us at NW Church.

I think I said in my last blog that I don’t respect you and I never will. This message you sent me has cemented that statement.

Stop...Just Stop

Last Sunday, I went to Northwest Church. It was awesome as always. We had a guest worship leader by the name of Ariel Cepriano, and the worship was great. It was followed by a sermon that wasn't really a sermon but more of a laying out of the plans for 2010. But Chris still had some lines that I wish FACC would hear. Stuff like if you do too much in the church, most of the stuff you do will be lower in quality and probably would be counterproductive. And we finished off the first Sunday of 2010 by immersing four young ones into our baptismal. It was a joyous moment.

After church, I got dropped off by Ross and Ally at FACC just in time for Potbless. It was quite possibly the most abysmal choice I made that day. For some reason, As soon as I walked into FACC I had felt stressed out. Mostly it was because I had to find an emergency bassist and remind Jason that I needed lead sheets. But nonetheless, I was stressed, depressed, and somewhat angry while being there. I can't explain it, but I was just fine coming into FACC, but when I went out I was a wreck.

It could be a lot of reasons. For example, in that church I feel like I need to cater to everyone. I have to see everybody, and that could put a lot of stress on people and more importantly it could make you come off as fake. Like when I used to lead worship at FACC; I could easily tell who was honest with their compliments and who was just saying them just for the sake of making their "outreach" quota.

Another reason was like I said, I kept thinking about who would be my emergency bassist for that night's P&P Night. I almost lost Ian for that night as well. Jason was in his normal jerk mood. My plans for P&P Night just weren't coming together.

Another possible reason was I personally wasn't in the mood to go to FACC in the first place. I had just come off witnessing four baptisms at NW Church. I don't want that high to go away. I could have just gone home, but I just had to go to FACC. Why? Mostly it's because my mom was there and I originally told her I'd be coming to FACC later.

As I was leaving I was trying to call people to come up to P&P Night and Tita Ida was trying to get my attention and saying she loves the things I do on stage. I ended up getting hella pissed and trying to wave her off. But she kept touching me and trying to intrude while I was talking to people. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I really don't like people touching me (unless it's a hot girl, then by all means) and I'm bound to start some crap if you do. Plus it's disrespectful to keep talking to me while I'm on the phone. I'm a guy that can only focus on one person at a time. Tita Ida, I'm sorry for what I did last Sunday but sometimes you just do things that piss me off.

These past couple months I don't feel good coming to FACC, especially on Sunday mornings. I remember last December, 3 people got baptized at NW Church, and along with the fact that Jason decided to replace me for P&P Night, I decided not to go to Souled Out or to Sunday Morning Service because I wanted to maintain that high I got for seeing people baptized. I still can't explain it because if it was Jason, I would have felt it a long time ago. If it was hanging with Filipinos, I would have felt it a long time ago. If it was Tita Ida, I would have just simply stayed away from her as far as possible, which is what I tried to do my whole tenure at FACC.

So this is a message I'm giving to myself: "Stop..just stop." You said to yourself that when you moved to NW Church, you would have no affiliation with FACC no more. But look at you, now you're back in Souled Out which you swore never to return to. And don't make TRANSFORMED the excuse. That was months ago, and Souled Out is back in the same exact rut it was in when you left. There is nothing left for you to do at FACC, mostly cause the family will never allow you to do any more than what you have done. The only person that gave you a level of freedom was Brian and now he's gone. Get it through your head Billy, There is no need for you to go to FACC anymore. Focus your attention on NW Church and be done with FACC.

Like Brian, the 10th of January will officially be my last Souled Out. I'm not even sure I'll even go to it anyway.

Enjoy Yourself,
Kuya Billy

Souled Out Will Die, Mark My Words

..but before I talk about that, I want to get one more thing out of my head that's been plaguing me for the past two weeks. And of course, it involves everybody's favorite jerk, Jason!!!

You see two weeks ago, we had our Praise & Prayer Night. This is a monthly event that focuses mainly on worship through music and prayer. I play electric guitar with the band. Other than Brian being the Youth Director, this is the only other reason why I still hang out with Souled Out.

The Saturday before P&P Night, I messaged Jason on Facebook to get me the lineup for that night. Jason responds and says that some guy named Edward is playing electric guitar so I had a break.

Why the futch do I need a break? We only do these events once a month. And why did I have to figure this out by myself? I didn't even ask if I was playing because I knew I was playing at the time. I was asking for the lineup and it's like I get taken out without me knowing. And on the day before the event too!

Imagine if I didn't message Jason. I would have come up to P&P Night with all my equipment and some other guy is in my spot. Judging by Jason's leadership, I could've imagined this situation happening if I didn't ask him prior. He has a history of sucking at notifying people.

AND THEN...

Jason has the gall to ask Thomas if he's gonna play bass for P&P Night. Thankfully, Thomas had homework to do so he couldn't attend or play bass. That's a spot I could've taken over.

Now I do hate playing the bass, but it's only if it's on a regular basis. Back when I was playing for the Souled Out band I was plaing bass for them and I hated it because I am an electric guitarist. That's what I'm proficient at and being consistently asked to do it pissed me off. But I needed to stay there because if I didn't play bass, I wouldn't have a spot in the band. Plus the sound sucks without a bass. This time around if Jason asked me to play bass, I would be fine with it because I haven't been asked to do it in a while and I would probably do it on my own accord. But I said to myself, "Forget it." I'm not gonna offer myself to this band.

Jason, seriously, the way you settle things is terrible. And I can't tolerate it any longer. I don't respect you and as long as you are a worship leader at FACC and never get the formal training you should have recieved a long time ago, I never will

Now on to the real story...

I've been looking at the state of Souled Out since Frankie left, and it's been extremely poor. During the summer we used to run a YG of up to 30-40 people. Now we're back to where we were pre-me leaving and pre-Frankie. A YG of less than 20 a week. An enourmous amount of drama has since been brewing within the group and it's just not healthy.

It's made me come to a conclusion that Frankie was the glue that held the group together. Without him, there was pretty much nothing. Brian is doing his best, but it seems that he's a black man in 1960s America. It seems as if his opinion doesn't matter to them. If you think, he's still flanked by members of the old regimes; Jason, Errol, and Alula. And if you were with Souled out during those times you would know how bad it was with them.

Jason led the group from Sep. 2008-April 2009. He also led spots here and there between regimes, like in between the Rachel & John Regime and the second Nick Regime. He has been the go to guy in times of leadership. The only problem is, he doesn't know how to. Sure he's got the Bible sense, but he has no way of connecting with others because of his introverted mentality. The other thing is that he's got way too much on his plate. During his last regime, he was juggling Young Adult Ministry, Souled Out, and Worship Ministry, all of which he was a leader of, and he was still in college. You can't be the best at everything.

Errol has never taken the reigns of Souled Out, which in my opinion makes him the least qualified member. Like his brother Jason, he has a lot of Bible sense, but it seems that he portrays himself as some androgynous guy who sticks around the girls and acts gay around the guys. Errol is the ultimate CB'er, but that's not the main reason why I can't stand him. It's because I can't envision him as a leader. Judging by what he does now, he doesn't seem like he could be a leader. For one thing he's younger than I am, another thing is that he acts very unprofessionally, and third, whenever he does do the little sermons during Souled Out, it's as if he forces people to do things.

Alula is the one I respect the most out of those three. She led Souled Out for 2005 and much of 2006. During her regime, I got baptized along with 4 others during my Landmark Summer of 2006. She has less Bible sense than Jason and Errol in my opinion, but she is more transparent than the others. A great example of this was last Sunday. In our small groups, she admitted to us that she had been doing stuff in the past that she of course regretted. While she may not have gone into great detail about the things she did the fact that she mentioned them shows that she is more open to talking about her issues than the other two. I prefer an imperfect leader than a perfect leader because with an imperfect leader there are no guesses you know what's up with them and you feel more comfortable. With a perfect leader, you spend forever trying to figure out an issue with them because you already know nobody's perfect.

And thinking about these things you consider what would happen if Brian left. What if the last reason why I go to Souled Out just up and left? Well this is exactly what would happen.

If Brian left, I would leave as well. Alula is getting married next month so she couldn't lead Souled Out. Jason is planning on taking the reigns of the Worship Ministry full time as a paid staff member, so he's out of the picture. That leaves Errol, whom I'm pretty already knows that he is not qualified to lead Souled Out in any capacity.

So you're left with the current crop of membes of Souled Out: Patrick, Jorge, Sha Sha, Eddie, Janina, Marvin, Alyssa, Alyssa, Steph, Kenneth, Megan, RV, Dino, Derrick, and Raymond. All of which are not in anyway qualified to lead Souled Out in any capacity. So what's gonna happen? Souled Out Will Die, Mark My Words.

Good, But Not Great

October 18, 2009. This is represented as the first day I've led worship in a Sunday service in FACC since I offically left the church in May. This is represented as a day that dwells in delight and controversy. This is represented as Youth Sunday.

It's been a very long time since I've done a blog of this nature on blogspot. I praise God that no one know about this little operation except for those that deserve to see it.

However, I'll start this one off on a very positive note. The most important bits of Youth Sunday went off without a hitch. We did a skit to the tune of Everything by Lifehouse that was shown during the TRANSFORMED events and it was done to perfection. Everyone in the skit was dedicated to their specific role and the congregation loved it. They even gave a standing ovation. The congregation was also into the worship. FACC has had a long run of horrid participation during the worship set. Now I know that people have said that it doesn't matter how you worship God as long as you do it, but if you compare a normal worship set to the one that was done during Youth Sunday, which one would you rather be a part of. I also loved the amount of visitors that came. Granted, it was no TRANSFORMED event, but to see a decent amount of guests visiting that day was a nice thing. So like I said, the most important aspects of Youth Sunday were done well...

...except for the actual worship set.

Bless his heart, but Nante's leadership is quite possibly some of the worst leadership I've seen in a while. I know Jason can be pretty bad, but when it comes to worship I think Jason has met his match. During the sets, Nante spoke to the crowd as much as we sang. Since coming from NW Church, I've developed the "Shut up and sing" mentality, so something like this is absolutely out of line. In all seriousness, nobody came to hear somebody speak. This is why we cut the sermon from Youth Sunday in the first place. I never come to church to talk, I come to praise God. Meanwhile while Nante is going on about his gibberish (I call it that cause I had no idea what he was talking about), I'm sitting there trying to tall Jason what we should do for the next set and he shuts me up and tells me to listen. I seriously wanted to ask him, "Does he have any idea what Nante is talking about?"

Bless his heart and this is out of respect, but Brian also talked WAY too long during Youth Sunday. During the invitation, he said his piece about how Youth Sunday had touched him and those who had been touched that day should come up, old school altar call style. And that was fine. Following that, we do an invitation song that I just don't feel God's presence singing it, not to mention I was playing keys and I was having an enourmously hard time playing the song. People, however did come up to the front with many different reasons why they did, and for FACC, a lot of people came up to the front. Brian for some reason decides to keep talking...for 10 minutes! I decided right when he was talking I was going to play the chords of the invitation song on the keys so that when he was done, we could all go right back to the song and keep singing. I never expected him to talk that long. Brian, you're a great speaker, and I say that with major honesty, but this isn't a TRANSFORMED event. In all truth it's a normal FACC worship service just with the youngins leading it. Nobody in the main congreation has the same mentality of the kids that were there during the summer. And because of your extended speech it killed the buzz of that moment.

Another thing I couldn't stand was the stage set up. I don't have as much of a problem about this as the above issues, but this is still important. The band was set up far to the left of the stage so that there would be a lot of room for the skit. I understand fully why the set was done that way. The issue I have is that no one could work around the stage. For example, I closed the worship set with a song called Marvelous Light, and because of time constraints I wanted to keep it short. The intro was going to be different from the time we sang it earlier. I wanted a full loud band intro compared to the one we did earlier in the day. I kept telling Ian about it, but he just couldn't hear me because of how far we were positioned. So I told Jason with hopes that he would pass it on, but that didn't happen. In turn Thomas, who was our bass player had no idea what was going on either. In turn, the intro was a horrible clusterfutch of sound for the first 10 seconds. Nante and Ian came in quiet like the intro we did earlier. Thomas and Jason weren't playing. And I'm sitting playing the lead riff as if to say, "I wanna start here." I got so frustrated I kept yelling out "FULL BAND!" repeatedly until they got it. Anyways, the point is the stage set up was fine, it's just that communication between the band members was just plain horrible. Not to mention we didn't even practice half the set prior to Youth Sunday because Jason wanted to sleep, so most of the set was improvised, which doesn't work for Thomas because at NW Church he's used to a fluid worship practice that keeps going until everybody gets the hang of it.

But in all seriousness, aside from the aforementioned issues I had, Youth Sunday was great. I felt God's presence, especially during the Lifehouse skit.

But Souled Out, never, and I mean NEVER ask me to do Youth Sunday ever again.

Psalm 98:4,
Kuya Billy