One thing that sticks in my craw every time is a liar. A TV show that Brenda watches regularly, and I join her from time to time, is Lie To Me. The stories surround an FBI/CIA-type operation with a lead guy who is an über-educated behavioral scientist. His goal is to catch criminals through the study of deceptive facial and body moves. The episodes have taught me to look closely at a person’s reaction to a question or an accusation. It’s hard to lie when the truth is hidden in our physical behavior. Sometimes it’s easy to spot a liar. But it would be handy to have an encyclopedia of deceptive behaviors close at hand when dealing with professional dupers. Brenda has a natural gift of spotting fibbers, and she doesn’t need an encyclopedia.

I have a strong sense of justice, but Brenda’s is stronger. We both have zero tolerance for folks who’ll steal your grandmother blind while they are helping her across the street. But the difference between me and my wife is that she has the skill of spotting a liar a mile away. I guess it’s a defense mechanism from being duped way too many times. I pray that someday I will have half the skill she has acquired.

I came across a photo today that shows the ultimate deception. Since I am a guitar player, and this deception involves a bold-faced lie from the stage, I wanted to share it with you so you might get as big a laugh about it as I did. If you are not a musician, you may not see the deception. In rock and roll, bigger is better. But with huge PA systems available, you don’t need a Marshall stack any more to be heard. Check out the smoke and mirrors!

Thanks to Bret Teegarden

Today is a sad day for the Steeler Nation. The Packers stole the chance for Roethlisberger to bring home another Super Bowl win to the folks back in Pittsburgh. It was a tough game to watch after leaving Pittsburgh Sunday. I led worship in a church there and was completely engaged in the party atmosphere that was even present at the church service. As I boarded my plane for Nashville, I said goodbye to one of my favorite places in the US.

That morning, as I was working with the song lyrics to be projected on the screen for service, the operator pointed out that Pittsburghers would never sing the lyrics to the hymn, Just As I Am, without re-writing them. Pittsburghers are very smart, articulate people–it’s just that they have a certain way of saying things. The locals call it Pittsburghese.

The beloved Myron Cope, who passed away in 2008, was the radio voice of the Steelers for 35 years and was the standard bearer for the Pittsburgh accent. His nasal sounding voice and idiosyncratic speech pattern brought a level of excitement rarely exhibited in the broadcast booth. He is known for being a large part of the invention of the Terrible Towel by urging fans in 1975 to take yellow dish towels to the playoff game against the Baltimore Colts and wave them throughout. His broadcasts helped to propel the Pittsburgh accent toward national attention.

So, with the help of Dr. Cope, a translation machine found at Pittsburghese.com, and some encouragement from my friends at Living Bridge Community Church in Gibsonia, PA, I offer my southern-fried rendition of Just As I Am, Pittsburgh style.

Original

Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee
O Lamb of God, I come, I come

Pittsburghese

Jest as ahz am, witout one excuse, n’at
But that yinzes blood was laid aht dere fer me
N’at yinz called me ta come mere abahts yinz are
O, Lamb a Gawd, I’m gowen to go ovaderr to you, go ovaderr to you, n’at

Brenda and I were going over the events of the coming day when she showed me the scripture she was just reading in 1 Chronicles 7:3-4. It confirms the reason why dad’s need to become warriors for their loved ones.

The sons of Izrahiah:
Michael, Obadiah, Joel and Ishiah. All five of them were chiefs. According to their family genealogy, they had 36,000 men ready for battle, for they had many wives and children.

These 36,000 men in 1 Chronicles had great reason to go into battle–they had much at stake. They went into the fray to protect their homes, wives and children. I see so many men with families who squander their treasure by distancing themselves from their families–either by neglect, working too many hours, or being unfaithful to their wives–maybe all three.

In a world where the boundaries of liberty are fading and the freedoms we possess as Americans seem to be diminishing, it should be no surprise that family men are standing up against opposing forces to say, “We’re not gonna take it any more!” I am not a violent man, but I will not sit there and watch my family get run over by powers which cut contrary to my faith in Christ, my pledge of allegiance to America, or my promise to love, cherish and protect my wife and family.

I pray that in America, we as family men begin to embrace freedom as a cherished blessing. I will do all I can to passionately protect my home and the liberties for which my forefathers died.

Around the middle of January, 2003, I was invited to play guitar in the worship band of a church in Murfreesboro, TN. It was in the middle of their New Years Series, a tradition they had carried on for several years. A week or so before, they had just opened a new and innovative multi-venue worship space in lieu of a traditional sanctuary to support their growing congregation. The decision to go with two venues offered a live, theater-like worship space and a coffee house space with live worship and a video feed of the sermon. This gave the church three different spaces to use during any given week, which included the original sanctuary. I spent that first weekend playing the services in the live venue and, after enjoying the ministry, and being asked to come back again the following week, I never looked back. Brenda and I have worshiped there ever since.

World Outreach Church is nestled in the midst of a college town at the geographical heart of Tennessee. It is a diverse community with a growing industrial and manufacturing base. It’s close proximity to Nashville makes Murfreesboro a bedroom community where commuters drive up and down interstate 24 to work and back. World Outreach Church (WOC) is conveniently located just a mile or so off of that thoroughfare. The church officially began on Easter Sunday, 1980, with 29 people. Today, 31 years later, G. Allen Jackson, Jr. , son of founders Dr. & Mrs. Jackson, has led WOC to a point where, just last week during our New Years Series, we saw 10,500 join us on campus for worship. In January, 2010, after outgrowing our other spaces, we moved into a new 125,000 square foot, 2,800 seat sanctuary–built to accommodate a growing congregation and designed to employ even greater technologies. Along with the other three spaces, we purpose to move into the future with numeric growth, and most importantly, spiritual depth.

I joined the staff of WOC in September of 2004 as a worship leader. At that point the attendance hovered around 2,000-2,500. It is amazing to see such phenomenal growth. I feel blessed to be a part of this wonderful spiritual community. People ask me what our staff has done to cause such an increase. Simply stated: God has done it–we just stay out of the way! As our main objective is to help people become more fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ, I will list a few things that are, from my point of view, important foundations on which our ministry is built:

1) Excellence. We always ask ourselves while planing for services each week: are we giving this our best effort? Are we creating a service which is not only done with detailed care, but does it have heart, cultural relevance–does it communicate? I have said it before, and I’ll say it again–doing things with excellence isn’t for the weak or faint of heart, it requires WORK! God has blessed that effort at WOC!

2) Learn From the Past. At WOC, it is imperative to never repeat past mistakes. We move on! We don’t huddle over triumphs of the past for very long either, we celebrate them and head toward the future. Many churches make the mistake of arriving at a certain stage with the attitude, “Well, we can rest now, we’ve made it.” WOC is not a destination as much as living, breathing, God-infused body of believers, moving fearlessly into our community and beyond for the cause of Christ. Do we at some point turn people away saying–sorry, we’re full…no room at the inn? Instead, we make room for more and continue to look for new ways to communicate the Gospel; we aren’t shy of using new mediums of technology to communicate the Message.

3) Safety. We expend great effort in protecting the safety and security of our children. We require background checks on all people who serve in and and around our Next Generation ministries (ages birth through college). We require every parent or guardian to carry an ID tag to insure each child is released into the care of the correct person. Students register and check in and out of youth events using a bar code system so parents can rest assured that their teen is where they are supposed to be.

4) People Flow. WOC makes use of the natural flow of people in our community to maximize our efforts, our financial investment, and to influence the greatest amount of people. We make use of our Christmas Eve services where unbelievers come with family. Then a few weeks later, we host a three-week New Years Series in January to give holiday visitors a chance to assimilate into the church body. We have a large gathering at Easter in our local university’s basketball arena where we, again, attract families and individuals that may never darken a door of our sanctuaries on campus. In years past we have invited even secular performers, devout believers who are willing to testify of their faith in Christ. We wrap packages for free at a local mall throughout December. We make a presence in the community every summer by hosting a concert downtown on the square. Halloween is time for Hallelujah Hoedown where we hosted upwards of 10,000 people last year. In short, we get out there throughout the year amongst the people of greater Murfreesboro. We don’t wait for them to come to us.

5) Get Smaller As We Grow. A great success at WOC are small groups. We don’t have a traditional Sunday School program but make use of our facilities and places off campus for people to meet each week. Even as our church grows, we create even more small groups to serve the needs of individuals and families. The small group is where much of the ministry and care is delivered. We now offer four service times and two functioning venues from which to choose each weekend. When you break that down, a family can choose one of eight times to worship where the particular attendance is never more than 2,800 in the large venue, or 300 in the coffee house. Some day we will have the other sanctuaries fired up an running again as our growing attendance requires. Even as we expand, an intimate church environment is a continued goal at WOC.

As I continue to serve at WOC, I learn new ways to communicate the Gospel. I want to share a video from one of our New Years Series services a couple of weeks ago. I had the honor of arranging and performing Amazing Grace for guitars. This is a great example of WOC meeting people where they are. God’s grace IS amazing! Thanks, WOC, for allowing me to extend His grace through my abilities.

As a teen in southern California back in the mid seventies, cool date destinations were endless. One of my favorite places to visit was the Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park. Perched on a mountain above Los Angeles, scenes from the epic movie Birth of A Nation were filmed there in 1915 as well as scenes from Rebel Without A Cause, starring James Dean and Natalie Wood, back in 1955.

On this expansive 4,210 acres of land, several attractions make their home–one of which is the famous observatory that houses a planetarium. In the planetarium, back in the post-psychedelic era, they hosted laser shows accompanied by symphonic and cinematic music to punctuate the bigger-than-life nature of the lighting spectacle. The audience, of around a couple hundred (might have been less…I’m going on memory here), would sit in circular-arranged seating with head rests attached to allow gazing into the pretend sky where the lasers were projected. All the while, specially selected music played which accented the colorful array of moving light. The music that caught my ear every time was that of the Alan Parsons Project. His music was, and is today, a blend of vocal and instrumental pieces, infused with synthesizers and the creative use of studio effects like delay and reverb. Parsons’ productions are always filled with great compositions, and are produced with great attention to sonic detail, which was well suited to the Quadraphonic sound system of the Griffith laser extravaganza.

The next day after the laser show, I rushed to my local record shop and caught up on all of the Alan Parsons LPs offered to that point. I waited in anticipation for each subsequent release for years to come. I lost track of his new records after Eye In the Sky, released in the early eighties. But as soon as the new medium of digital CDs offered his greatest hits collection, I once again marveled at the wonderful sound that flowed from my speakers.

Alan Parsons’ career goes back to assistant engineer on the last two Beatles albums at Abbey Road. He was also an engineer on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Al Stewart’s, Year of the Cat, and many more hits of which people are unaware. After Parsons teamed with Eric Woolfson (who passed away December 2, 2009) at Abbey Road Studios in 1974, there began a three decade creative force which brought sound scapes to pop music, rarely existent up to that point. The Alan Parsons Project (APP) forged a brand with the co-writing of Woolfson and his vocals and keyboards, along with other iconic APP vocalists like Lenny Zakatek and Colin Blunstone, and guitarist, Ian Bairnson (of Pilot fame with the hit, Ballroom Blitz–another Alan Parsons production). I have continued to enjoy these recordings to this day.

Alan Parsons has a website which is dedicated to his passion for handing his expansive knowledge of recording to a new generation of producers and engineers called The Art and Science of Sound Recording.

Even though Parsons’ lyrics are a bit esoteric and laced with eastern philosophy and various religions, the productions employ broad sound scapes which evoke wonder and dream-like moodiness that I cannot find anywhere else. Delightful!