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