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Today I opened up iTunes and noticed in the store new albums by…drumroll…The Lemonheads and Dinosaur Jr.  Excuse me?  This week alone there are also new releases by Modest Mouse, Moby, Queen Latifah, Widespread Panic (kid you not), Tonic and Third Eye Blind.

Is the new music of today not resonating with folks?  Has it lost a bit of its soul?  Is there a resurgence in retro music?  Is the passion and power of grunge and post-grunge making a comeback?  This list of artists could have been written in 1993.  Seriously, look it up.

It made me want to download “Unbelievable” off of Schubert Dip by EMF.  Now that was a cool song.

Side note: DCB just released their cover of “How He Loves Us” from their upcoming CD “Church Music” as a single.  I’m really looking forward to the new CD.  Matt Redman also released a single this week called “This is How We Know.”  Knowing that there are songwriters anointed like Matt still writing for the church continues to give me hope for the future of corporate worship.

Okay, I really don’t know why it has taken me so long to post something (anything really) about Settlers of Catan seeing as how we’re totally into this incredible board game.  For those of you who know nothing about Settlers this post is going to be confusing to you, so I suggest a two step resolution to your lack: Step 1: go to either Hobby Lobby or It’s Your Move in the mall and buy the basic version of the game as soon as you possibly can and Step 2: get 2 or 3 of your friends together immediately and learn the game.  If a step 3 exists it might be 12 additional ones because you had to join a program for breaking your obsession with this game. 

Okay now for all you Catanians out there who not only have mastered the basic game but have advanced past the Seafarers expansion and now have discovered the wonderful world of Cities and Knights:

You may have noticed that the game is a bit slow, and it bogs down some.  Turns take a really long time, and if you are playing with 6 people you might be in for a seriously long night.  For guys that’s cool, but if you have some gals along for the ride (including wives), maybe you will really appreciate the house rules we play with on a regular basis.  I give props to Kirby Thompson for most of these rule modifications.

Here is the best Settlers scenario and the one we play 90% of the time:

1. 5-6 player Cities and Knights expansion (you need that extra building phase!)

2. Combined with Seafarers expansion

3. House rules

4. Only 5 players (we just somehow figured out that odd numbers of players make the best games)

5. Build custom boards/scenarios

This combo makes for a rocking good time.  Here’s the house rules:

#1. In normal C&K you get a 1 commodity & 1 resource when a city produces – new rule: take the 2 resources you’d get for a city in regular Catan and ALSO take the 1 commodity when your city produces.  (YESSSSSS!  This is amazing.  The first time you do it you’ll think we’re crazy, but trust me, when you all can build faster and progress early in the game you’ll be super stoked.)  This means that when wheat and brick produce, you get 3 of those (since there is no associated commodity).  To be clear, if you hypothetically had a city on all 3 corners of a hex that produced you would gain 9 total cards in one shot.

#2. Change the 7 card rule to 9 (the benefit of this is that you can hold more cards and not get slammed by the 7 roll as much i.e. get rid of half your cards if you have more than 7 – yes if you build all 3 city walls you are now protected up to 15 cards!)

#3. We never count a roll of 7 by the very first player rolling in the game.  (They get a “do over.”  Rolling a 7 right out of the gate is lame and allowing this do over builds morale.)

#4. The first time the barbarians attack doesn’t count (allows people to build roads, cities, etc. without having to concentrate on building knights early in the game)

Two more things that are not house rules but may help add to the fun:

#1. Play with the Harbormaster card from the Traders & Barbarians expansion and you will add more ways to win  – make sure you add that extra point required for victory though (i.e. victory is now achieved at 16 points).

#2. Set up your own scenario: this is optional but very, very fun and how we play almost every time now.  We build crazy big boards.  A suggestion if you want to try the multi-expansion thing is to do “Through the Desert” scenario as set up in the 5-6 Seafarers expansion and combine with C&K.  That one is particularly awesome in the radical combo action.

Bonus comment: Don’t let anyone get away with not following the rule that longest trade route must have ships and roads linked by a settlement (or city).  This is important and has thwarted many a possible win.

Now if you think these rules somehow cheapen the game, all I’ll say is try it.  I’ve heard people say that C&K is a bad expansion but that may only be because they don’t play with these house rules.  We played regular rules C&K several times before we discovered these modifications, and while the game was quite intense, it wasn’t as good of a social game anymore. That said, do these house rules, combine with Seafarers, play with 5 people, and trust me, it’s extremely cutthroat. The game still averages 90 minutes but we have had game as short as an hour, and just 2 days ago we had a game last 2 1/2 hours.  To be fair, we had added in the rivers expansion as well as Seafarers and C&K.  See pic below, snapped just as we were tearing down the game.

Have fun!

This week we have been experimenting in the studio.  And in the words of Bruce Dickenson, yes the Bruce Dickenson “exploring the studio space.”  In the course of things I found myself with a mandolin in my hands cutting some tracks for a tune of Julian’s.  This one’s for you Ted.

Last year I posted on the subject of the state of our culture and this was motivated by the brouhaha related to what at the time was a blockbuster new movie, the latest in the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight.  This post eventually has become the 5th most popular ever on this blog and stirred up a lot of feedback from people (on and off line).  I had not seen the movie when I wrote my original thoughts.  A few weeks ago I actually saw The Dark Night and I wrote a reply to my own original post as an update.  Read on…

I was recently on a trip and a friend loaned me “The Dark Knight” to watch on the plane. Having written this post several months back but never seeing the movie, my curiosity was piqued. I decided to pop it in and watch it on my laptop.

I had to stop the movie since the flight was over and normally I would not have finished it because I wasn’t really enjoying it that much. But then I recalled that this original posting got a lot of traffic and lots of conversation, and honestly, some people were a little upset at me. I decided to watch it to it’s conclusion so I could post this follow up.

My first impression as I watched is that the movie wasn’t as sadistic as it was originally reported to have been. Yes, the Joker was quite disturbing. They did a fine job with his makeup and Heath Ledger did a fantastic job acting quite insane, psychopathic, intelligent, and maniacal. But were elements of this movie “heinous” as I mentioned in my original post? Was this really “Saw-light?” (I will say parenthetically that the comparison to “Saw” is not unfair since the morality choice/murder/sicko-methodology combo thing would not be in The Dark Knight if it were not for that series of very popular films.)

I’ll start with positives and a cool-factor. As mentioned before, Heath Ledger did a fine job acting. And the Harvey Dent/Two face character was also well done. Honestly, the Two Face situation was a welcome surprise in the movie even if I felt that just because they *could* show us graphically how disturbing he became, I wondered why they really needed to (back to the whole should-have-been-rated-R discussion). How can you ever really go wrong with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman? And Christian Bale is an acceptable Batman, really the best the franchise history I suppose. And the cell-phone radar thing was a really cool special effect and an idea that worked.

Fast forward to the end of the movie; my first impression had changed. I had witnessed a man cut open and a cell phone/detonation device sewn into his stomach, then blown up remotely killing everyone in the jail/police station with him. I had seen people given a moral choice in pulling a trigger and killing hundreds of men, women, and children on a ferry boat before the people on the other boat made the same choice to kill them (yes, they didn’t do it, but I will point out that the vote taken was overwhelmingly in favor of doing it). We saw a hospital blown to smithereens room by room and during that time we do not know if the patients are in their rooms or not. And yes, there are the multiple times when the Joker takes his knife and slices open people’s faces just like was apparently done to him (though we never really know how or who did it, another dangling plot line). On this last point I heard people say “yeah but you didn’t see it on screen” which basically blows me away. In my most “duh” statement I have ever written on this blog: just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean we don’t know it was done. Do you really need to see it for it to be corrupt or if it’s off screen do we somehow place it in a redemptive category? I vote not since our minds can fill in the blanks.

I didn’t like things about this movie that I guess others either a) overlook or b) somehow expect in a superhero movie: the plot line is thin and strays, I think the hero (Batman) is 2 dimensional, people pop up when you least expect with no explanation of how they got there, villains make silly choices, guys who should know better don’t, the police chief is always made out to be bumbling, Batman’s mysterious code of honor is cloaked in mysterious dialogue of mush, most of the action sequences are too dark to understand what is actually happening, and dangling plots abound. Normal fare for a superhero movie unless it’s named “Spiderman.”

There are movies I have seen that delve into the depravity of the human condition and have sparked interest in discussing redemption. Batman did not do any of that but only left lasting impressions of gross images.

In the end, I walked away with a “whatever” personal experience. The movie was not that good and the really bad guy (the Joker) didn’t get what he deserved, the really good guy (Harvey Dent) didn’t get what he deserved, and the “good” guy (Batman) didn’t get what he deserved (which is somehow where people come off calling him a “Christ figure”). But maybe America got what it deserved which was another movie with a bunch of Satan in it since we seem to love it so much.

Some say Heath Ledger went insane portraying the Joker and his death was the result of the role. It seems Mr. Ledger got so close to the devil it likely killed him. I ask you to ask yourself and the Holy Spirit why you would get close to anything that has that potential? Kind of sounds like the forbidden fruit conundrum.

“Hello, hello, I don’t know why you say goodbye I say hello” – The Beatles

There are many twists and turns, rises and falls, on the road of life.  There are goodbye seasons, which can be bittersweet, and there are hello seasons, which are full of wonder and discovery. Sometimes God takes us down paths in our lives that are unexpected but the result is so amazing.

It’s like the father who is taking his son to his first trip to the zoo.  “Where are we going daddy?” the son asks.  “You’ll see,” says the father with the knowledge that his expectant son will absolutely love where they are going.  The father knows that when they get there his son will be excited and it will be a great experience and he will likely remember it for the rest of his life, so he holds back to get the pleasure of seeing that look of joy and discovery on his son’s face.  Our heavenly Father does that for us sometimes.  I really wish that I knew what was happening next, but God says, “Just wait, it’s going to be good,” and somehow He loves that element of surprise.  God knows, we don’t, and He’s good with that.  The little boy trusts his daddy, just as we should trust our Daddy in heaven.

Dina and I have been in a transition period in our lives.  Transitions are uncomfortable and this particular season was the most painful and difficult of Dina’s and my life. Always there is the unknown, and many times we asked, what’s next Father?  In response our loving God opened up door after door to lead us to a group of Jesus-followers that have a refreshing purity about them in their walk with the Lord and their fellowship with each other; so much so that it seems a special impartation of the Holy Spirit loves this place and has taken up residency there.  In hindsight, the road to this church was an easy one.  An email from an old friend, a coffee with a new friend, meeting, greeting, connecting, praying, plugging in, God speaking, and finally a sense of peace.  I wish all life decisions were this smooth.  In a time when Dina and I could have been hard-headed about what’s next and laid out our own agenda of what the future should look like, God had a special plan for us.  And now that we are here, full of wonder, we absolutely love it.

Isaiah 40:31 says “but those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”  We had patience and let the Lord lead us.  There really is no other choice.  You must trust.  www.vineyardcs.org

Several weeks ago I posted on the subject matter of a lack of reference to the Holy Spirit in our modern worship songs.  In summary, I was a bit surprised when it occurred to me that contemporary, popular worship songs made little or no reference to the third part of the trinity.

I am sitting in the conference hall of the Vineyard USA National Leadership Conference in Galveston, TX right now.  We just had a time of corporate sung worship and I will say that I stand in a position of humble revelation that the church still loves, sings to, and worships the Holy Spirit.  As we worshipped I furiously typed the words to the tune we sang with abandon:

Come Holy Spirit, Come in your power

Come inhabit our praise, Come now and reign in our lives

Come Holy Spirit, Come Like the Wind

Come be Lord of our hearts, Come fill Your church once again

“As Children” by Jeremy Riddle (copyright Mercy/Vineyard)

I had an opportunity to meet some great Jesus followers here at the event and have some discussions about the state of worship in the church and it’s future, which got me thinking about something:

From the perspective of a professional marketer (a worshiper first and a marketer second yes, but experienced nonetheless) I sensed there might be intelligence built into the trend to fill a growing need within the non-charismatic evangelical church market.

A couple of years ago I was at an industry worship conference in a deep conversation with the head of said conference he remarked, “yeah everyone wants contemporary now.”  In a chat with a long-time worship pastor from the Assemblies of God denomination (a guy who had labored for years in helping many churches move from plant to mega size) said to me “I guess that [contemporary worship] is what everyone wants now, so we have to do it.” 

Could it be that the lack of Holy Spirit in contemporary worship based in a marketing plan by the contemporary worship music industry to reach, or rather, feed the evangelical church (and subsequently profit from it)?  The charismatic church, and even the mainline denominations have sung of the Holy Spirit for decades, and in the case of the latter, centuries.  But the modern evangelical church that hugs the conservative side of the road to appeal to a broader audience is making a conversion from old school worship to contemporary worship and could it be that artists and songwriters are softening their message? (Read my post on decline in CD sales here).

The larger the audience the more distilled the message typically becomes in order to appeal to broader commonalities within the audience.  Specialty shifts and lowest common denominator comes into play.  Niche is replaced by “reach.” 

As I said before, the Holy Spirit is a bit controversial.  Is the mentality:  let’s just remove the controversy and leave the palatable aspects of God!  Heck if we do that more people will hear about Jesus right?

The cross is an offense and removing the offend-able aspects of Jesus has been a strategy of Satan for ages.  If you don’t believe me, just ask yourself how many “blood” songs have you sung lately?  The blood is an offense.  I wrote the lyrics “a body broken atoned for my sin” into the song “Savior of the World” and at first the people who heard it met it with chagrin.  They were not used to this kind of poetry.

Removing the blood is like removing the Holy Spirit.  It is a strategy to extricate the whole truth from the lips of God’s children.

I am guilty of man-pleasing.  I don’t think any worship leader can escape that.  With some perspective though I think I truly understand how far popular contemporary worship has strayed from the commands of the faith.  Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength.”  If we leave out the Holy Spirit, we are not following the commands of God.

Worship and prayer being replaced by business and corruption.  Sound familiar?  Think about Jesus in the temple.  Let’s not let this next generation down by not writing about the fullness of God in our worship songs.  Let’s start a revolution.  No barrier between people and their worship of God.

Okay, I have a mac. A MacBook Pro to be specific.  I bought it in November.  I bought it because I have been exploring new audio platforms to use for recording in the studio and macs have a great reputation for stability.  I wasn’t ready to make the jump from my beloved Sonar-based Windows x64 (Vista Ultimate) setup but I was in the market for a new laptop.  So I figured that I would get the laptop and learn the whole mac world so if I ever did make the leap over to something like Logic or ProTools for my audio recording, I would only have one learning curve (the software) not two (the software + the system).  So far I have been very happy with my decision.  The initial learning curve was a bit steep but once I learned a few things, I can say I love my mac.  My experiment has worked and I am happy I made the decision that I did.  

I have discovered something interesting along the journey.  The world is full of mac haters.  Since getting the mac, I have been in a variety of settings with it: church meetings, business meetings, client meetings, interviews, Starbuck’s, my friends house, my studio, etc.  In most, if not all of these settings I get a myriad of interesting comments.  These comments come out right about the time I pull my shiny silver macbook out of my backpack.  They all are some variety of “oh, a mac guy.”  It is said with derision and disdain.  It is said with a smirk.  It is said with a knowing sarcasm that implies “here a guy who thinks he is better than all of us.”  The most interesting comments come from IT guys.  They utter “oh, a mac guy” but this is said with a tenor of “you just made my job harder you jerk.”

Funny thing is, having a mac has made my life easier and more productive.  Compatibility with all systems, networks, wifis, etc has been a breeze.  Case and point: I needed to print some stuff at church and I just unplugged the USB cable from the printer and plugged it into my mac and no sooner than you could say “oh, a mac guy” the driver had loaded and I was printing lead sheets for the worship team.  I was so impressed with this I started plugging into printers in every home and office I visited for about a week.  It worked every time, like a really neat magic trick.

(Here is a good place to address the 3rd category of people which are other mac users who utter some version of “oh, a mac guy!” with delight and a sense of “I’ve got a friend in the world” – call it instant-community – kind of like when you find out your boss is a believer.)

I have never had a problem connecting a peripheral, or to a wifi network or LAN, opening up a Microsoft document or Microsoft formatted file.  On top of that I never shut the thing down, it’s “always on” so startup and shutdown takes as long as it takes me to open or close the lid, screen management for projection is a no brainer, the battery lasts like 4 1/2 hours, the blue screen of death is non-existent, everything is super fast, and Office:Mac actually works.

I have come to a conclusion.  The reason mac people love macs is for all the reasons above and more, but I figured out that the thing works so well you never actually learn anything about your computer.  I am serious.  I think the reason mac users love macs is because they don’t have to know squat about a computer to make it work, they just don’t know this, but wouldn’t really care even if they did because they are more productive than you.  

That said, people who use Windows based computers have to actually know how a computer works.  Here’s the rub for mac users, if something goes wrong on your PC, you can actually fix it yourself – for cheap.  I have built more PC’s from scratch than I can remember and all of them are still in play in someone’s home (or recording studio) today.  And it’s easy to upgrade and modify.  For mac users, if something goes wrong, it’s a trip to the Mac store and I hope you paid $349 for the extended warranty.

So it’s funny, the mac haters hate macs for reasons that are not based in reality and the mac lovers love macs for reasons that would actually make the Windows people happy.

Okay you weigh in, do I have a point?  :)

Okay I don’t know what it looks like at your house today, but here’s our place.  I snapped this shot a few minutes ago.  I just got off the snowplow after almost 2 hours of plowing.  Let me just say that the very fact that I own a snowplow is hilarious to me since I am from the California coastal region.  Anyway, welcome to my world.  Ho ho ho…Merry April.

A year ago today I was rejoicing in a successful evening of Easter services (and preparing for more on Sunday!).  I rejoiced in the opportunity for believers to celebrate our Savior’s resurrection and those who made first time decisions for Christ.  It was by far my favorite Easter program I ever had the fortune of participating in, let alone to lead.  (For video of that service, check out the videos section of this blog.)  It was a weekend of rejoicing for all God had done, and continued to do in many ways in our lives.  This weekend we have a different kind of milestone to celebrate.  God is so good.  A few months ago, a very Holy Spirit inspired couple asked a simple question to Dina and I, “when will [we] build the studio?”  Little did we know they were planning to mobilize this effort.  See, it has been a dream of mine to have a professional recording studio located right in our own home for many years.  We have built 3 home studios (2 in basements and 1 in a bedroom) and have produced several projects out of these studios (and actually ended up with a few good ones).  But I always wanted to take it to the next level.  The first time Dina and I drove onto our property here in the Black Forest we saw a detached and oversized garage and the first words out of our mouths were “that’s where the studio will go.”  Well here we are some years later and the dream has come true.  In the most unlikely of times and under the most unlikely of circumstances, inspired by our amazing friends who have sacrificed in a huge financial way, propelled by big vision from the Lord for change in the world, and seen to fulfillment by a small group of believers who still believe in miracles, Destinysong is now a reality.  Today, Dina, Julian, Jasmine and I put the finishing touches on the studio and officially moved in our first bits of gear.  I stood in amazement that God would bless us in this way.  And the elation I felt one year ago in the fullness of how great an Easter Celebration could be, is only eclipsed by my utter astonishment at how the faithfulness of a few can birth a vision into a reality.  I have been posting pictures on the Destinysong website for the past 3 months to show the progress of the building project, and as soon as the weather clears, I’ll snap a few more of the beautiful, final product.  Check out our website here (or click on the link in the sidebar) and I pray that all of you are blessed as you celebrate the resurrection of Jesus tomorrow!