This is mainly an update post for my internship. I’m simply going to give a rapid fire recap of three highlights from this past month.

Highlight #1
A couple weeks ago, my mentor, Danny Cox, released his new album “In All Things.” I was honored to be able to play keyboards for him for his CD release party here at the church. So a lot of my time earlier this month consisted of learning a large set of songs and then long rehearsals. It was an experience I was really blessed to be apart of.

Here’s some shots from the evening if you’d like a peak:

Highlight #2
Soon after the CD release, my professor came up from school to visit to see how my internship is going, observe me “in action,” and to connect with my mentor. When he came, I led worship for the Wednesday service here at Kensington.

I’m learning more and more about how to lead not only musically, but also, be attentive to what’s going on spiritually in the room with the people I’m leading, and then what God is doing in my heart. It’s quite a balancing act I’m finding.

Highlight #3
Things are starting to really pick up here for Christmas. Our deadline for the music team is quickly approaching to have all the music done. Right now, we’re in the process of recording some original music for Christmas and arranging some other pieces. While those things are coming together, I’m definitely getting a taste for the pressure that comes along with planning for a big service like Christmas.

It blows my mind to think I have less than two months left here. I’d rather not think about that right now.

That’s all I have for now.

Little did I know that the church I would be interning at handles snakes. I’m kind of kidding, but not really.

On the left, you can see a picture of the Burmese Python we were playing with backstage this weekend for the student ministry service “Edge.” I was talking with the trainer, and apparently, these are one of the largest snakes in the world growing up to 28 feet in the wild. This little girl was only 2 years old and clocked in at only 8 feet long. Apparently, snakes like her don’t bite, but rather, constrict and suffocate their prey to death. A comforting thought.

This is just to say this internship has been full of new experiences and growth so far. I’ve hit about the half-way point, and I’m about three months in. It’s hard to believe that just now as I’m feeling a bit more settled, I will have to go back to school in a few months and depart from a place that I’m really coming to love. It’s definitely a truer reality for me that in life you are either transitioning into a new season or about to transition out of a season and into a new one.

It’s also in that same thought I realize, because life can be so unsteady at times, you can’t stop from immersing yourself completely into the particular place you are in right now or with the particular people you are with right now. If we tune out, because of our anticipation of what’s to come, we completely miss what is. There’s beauty in the journey even if it’s hard, confusing, or lonely at times.

So I am well, and while I do miss family and friends, I definitely see how God has put me exactly where I should be. At first, it was really daunting to enter into such an unknown place. It was scary and a bit lonely, but I’m so grateful for the community that God has immersed me in and the relationships I’ve developed so far while I’ve been here. God, again, is reminding me of his faithfulness and care for us, and my heart is filled with great joy.

This is not to say all art being created by the church is by default shuttled into these categories. It really is hard to pinpoint what exactly makes something “cheesy” or “inauthentic” because these labels often vary among different people and cultures, but to many, it seems like poorly written and poorly performed music has become the standard, or at least a common expecation, in the church.

As people who find their creative identity in the most creative One of all — the Creator of the universe — it’s peculiar to me that we would be so prone to settle for less. Why are we not willing to aim to create art that explores the depths of not only who we are and the world around us, but also who we are in light of who God is?

While I believe we more often than not have settled for less, as I’ve struggled with this own tension in my life as a musician, writer, and artist, I’ve become really challenged by another point of tension that I’m finding is very important to consider. It says, “The quality of your music is not the most important thing.”

Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Similarly, Hosea 6:6 says, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” In God’s anger at Israel for turning their hearts away from him, Amos 5:23 says, “Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.”

We debate constantly in the church about music styles and choices and have been for hundreds of years. But in all realness, this is not just a debate, but a sharp dividing point, where church bodies will split for the sake of people’s tastes and preferences. It’s our way or the highway. We want it the way we like it.

Yet God is saying to us, “Away with your songs! I don’t care about these things. I care about the condition of your heart.”

This is not to say that the quality of our music doesn’t matter. Scripture also tells us to play skillfully (Psalm 33:3). We see that under King David’s rule different musicians were appointed to service and skill was a factor in determining their role (1 Chronicles 15:22). When God gave directions to build his Tabernacle, they were specific and detailed, and they were to be executed in flawless precision (Exodus 25:1-40).

It’s true that this tension is not an easy one. Surely, we do not want to look for a copout here. We don’t want to excuse ourselves from the effort and sweat of creating. It is a poor reflection of our hearts if as artists we refuse to strive to create brilliant masterpieces. But on the other hand, it is also quite clear God cares more about the quality of our hearts than the quality of our music.

Not for music’s sake. Not for art’s sake. Not for our sake. But rather, for God’s sake.

On a daily basis, we hear the most terrible and atrocious news. Think about it. If we just glance at the headlines on my CNN homepage we read things like, “14 dead as powerful quake hits Indonesia,” or “8 dead as violence continues in Baghdad.”

You and I hear of these terrible sorts of things on a daily basis. It’s information overload. Because of this though, these incidents have become so normalized, and we think nothing of it.

Yet, these headlines involve real people like you and me. I imagine many have families. These are people who dream, love, feel, and who share the same dignity and worth as we do, as people who are created in the very image of God.

It’s so easy to tune these horrible news bits out as we live under the umbrella of our comfortable, middle-class lives. Yet, over one-sixth of the world’s entire population lives in absolute poverty and nearly one million children each year are dragged into sex-trafficking. This isn’t meant to be a guilt trip, but let’s be really honest with ourselves. We have become numb and apathetic to these issues. We just don’t care.

I just finished reading this book by Mark Labberton called The Dangerous Act of Worship, which is where I pulled the above statistic from. His book largely wrestles out how linked our worship is to justice. There is a problem if our worship does not compel us to act. Read what he said:

… justice and mercy are not add-ons to worship, nor are they the consequences of worship. Justice and mercy are intrinsic to God and therefore intrinsic to the worship of God. … We should not fool ourselves into thinking that it’s enough to feel drawn to the heart of God without our lives showing the heart of God.

It’s not enough for us to be drawn to God if we refuse to allow our hearts to be transformed into the character of God.

I have no solutions for what to do about poverty, world-hunger, etc. It’s such a daunting issue and one that quickly overwhelms me. But despite this, God is calling us beyond ourselves in sacrifice to live lives full of compassion, justice, and mercy. I like the idea of what could result from this type of life, as I’m sure you do too, but if I am, or we are, really honest, I like my self-centered, safe, comfortable, indulgent lifestyle, where the biggest worry of my day is if I should eat at Chipotle or Qdoba for lunch.

Sacrifice is risky and often painful, but if we do not possess hearts such as this, are we really taking on the character of God? What places around you might God be calling you to walk into that could very well require that you sacrifice your comfort, time, energy, and resources?

Bad things happen to seemingly good, righteous, or innocent people. An innocent child is raped by her own father. A man faithfully loves his wife yet she has an affair with another man. A young, successful student and athlete dies from cancer. The list goes on. You as an individual can set out for good and righteous things yet you might still find yourself in disastrous circumstances.

The experience of injustice or rather the result of unrighteousness in our world is unescapable. We all experience it on some level or another. It begs the question: where are you, God?

Yet God is just. He is a righteous judge. He understands the pain that fills our world. He longs for justice more than you or I ever can or will be able to. Perhaps as bearers of his image this is why we innately experience this similar thirst on some level. And the extent of his great longing for justice is made known in his Son Jesus. It was the surest and most complete plan of action put in place to rescue us from a state slimed with injustice.

Clearly, we need God’s grace, because no matter how hard you or I try, it’ll never measure up or be enough to give us redemption from the hard edges of life. It’s not an issue of trying harder. There are no easy answers, but one thing is for certain that any longing for justice can only be satisfied in this surest and most complete picture of love — that is, Jesus.

It’s been almost two full months of my internship here at Kensington. I’ve had people ask me, “So what do you do as an intern?” For whatever reason, I find this seemingly simple question rather difficult to answer. There is no way to sum it up in one single sentence because one day I’ll do this and then the next day I’ll do that.

I’ve seemed to become a victim of ongoing “intern jokes” around the office. Fortunately, I have a sense of humor so when, say, Mike (service music director) tells me he has an important task for me, and then proceeds to throw a bag of popcorn at me and tells me to go microwave it, I can then take that un-popped bag of popcorn and dispose of it without hesitation in the trash bin right next to his desk. The laughs just roll on in.

If a kitten died for every time someone over the past two months has made a “Hey, intern, go get me a coffee” joke, the market for Purina Fancy Feast gourmet cat food would most likely disastrously crash because there would be no kittens left in the world. But the laughs just keep rolling on in.

But, yes, you ask, “What do you do at work?” Without going into every detail, here are the sort of things I’ve been involved with.

Some days are filled with a lot of meetings starting early in the morning till the afternoon. Then on some of these days you’ll have rehearsal that night. Then you have service days, which generally you have rehearsed for at another time earlier in the week, but you must get there a couple hours before service for a good run through.

Other days we’ll be in the church’s studio recording and creating music for different service elements. Christmas planning is also in the works so I’ve been doing a lot of research on the Magi.

Overall, I’m learning not only by doing but just by watching as well. I am being challenged to think in new ways and to wrestle with new ideas. The whole ministry here at Kensington has quite a different philosophy and vision for ministry than what I’ve ever been apart of. This is fantastic because it’s really opening my eyes and causing me to grow in ways that I wouldn’t have if I was anywhere else.

So thank God for the places he leads us to no matter how much uncertainty or lack of understanding we have going into those very places. Let’s immerse ourselves fully into every minute of every day no matter where we find ourselves so we can say that no moment was wasted and that those very moments were used to further shape us into the people that God is calling us to be.

Dr. Kimberly Young has created the first validated Internet Addiction Test (IAT) to measure your level of internet addiction.

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I had a very strange incident this morning. I went to turn my computer (I have a Macbook Pro) on in the morning like I normally do. However, to my surprise, it wouldn’t boot past the grey screen with the spinning wheel. It would just shut right back down after the wheel spun for awhile.

I have no idea why this happened. I hadn’t installed any updates or made any new software installations the night before. All to say, I became very worried and very frustrated very quickly.

I ended up booting from my Mac OS install disc. I then ran “Verify Disk” under Disk Utility to see if there were any problems. Sadly, an “Invalid Node Structure” error came up. I don’t really know what this meant, but it was in red font, so it couldn’t be good. The option to “Repair Disk” was grayed out and unaccessible so I couldn’t do that. It didn’t seem that my hard drive completely died because Disk Utility was still able to detect it. My only guess was that it was corrupted.

Thankfully, I’m running Time Machine with an old MyBook external hard drive that keeps a mirror image backup of my entire system each day.

What I ended up doing was wiping the entire hard drive clean and restoring to yesterday evening’s backup. While this was a pain, it actually worked.

I’m just glad I back up my system. I honestly never thought I would have this problem. I still don’t know what caused this issue. If you have any ideas, please post them. Everything seems to be running fine, but I would hate to have this happen again.

I hope this helps if you ever have a similar problem. Case and point — backup your computer!

I’ve been able to get a bit more involved. Last week, I was able to play piano for the mid-week worship service “New Community”. I haven’t played piano in this sort of context in quite awhile because I’m normally playing guitar. So it was great and it worked out really well.

Then today, I sang a song for three morning services at the North campus. It was kind of awkward for me because I’ve never just sang a song without being behind the “safety” of a guitar, piano, or marimba. Needless, to say, even though it was awkward for me, nobody died, and it was a positive experience.

On another note, it seemed like we were having quite a lot of technical difficulties and surprises this morning. I think almost every service there was some sort of hiccup — feedback, random noise, mis-queued video, etc.

In the midst of it all, it was easy to think that because of these surprises that people were drawn away and distracted from God. And while it’s true that these were all distractions to people, there were a few instances afterwards where someone approached a service director and said, “Hey, this was powerful, and I was impacted.”

I was reminded of God’s ability to work beyond the surprises. You can plan a fantastic service, but in the end it’s God’s Spirit that moves in and changes people’s hearts — not you, I, or our creative capacities. That’s not to say we shouldn’t strive to give our best effort, but people’s potential to encounter the truth and power of God in no way depends on our perfection. Not at all.

But the pitch I got this morning was nothing like I’ve ever seen. You’ll just have to read it.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
– John 3:16

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