On Dec 12th our church we busy taking pictures of local families for Help Portrait. When I say local, I mean local local, as in families that live in the surrounding blocks. Our church has really felt convicted that we haven’t poured into the immediately surrounding community. The community we are in is a pretty rough one, a lot of broken families, drug abuse, prostitution. We’ve always felt like we were planted here for a purpose, but recently that purpose has become more concrete and we’ve started to act on it.

So the same day Help Portrait was in full swing a local company donated 15 kids bikes to us, a total surprise and huge blessing. My pastor and I started brainstorming ideas on what to do and we thought, “why not just walk through our neighborhood on Christmas day and hand these out to kids?” Wasn’t a typical church outreach plan, or typical for us either. We weren’t going to invite them to a service and make them wait to the end, or give them away to all the kids in our church. Though we love our kids too, we thought we’d demonstrate it to them differently.

We felt a greater blessing for our kids would be for them to come with us and help us give them away. So on Christmas Day a handful of families loaded the bikes into a truck and we took the caravan through the neighborhood. We met a lot of the families in the neighborhood and they greeted us with tearful thank you’s and the kids were overjoyed. About 10 minutes into it word had spread quickly and kids were running out to greet us.

It was truly one of the most amazing experiences I’ve been apart of, we were so blessed and thankful to be able to do it and share in the lives with the families around us. We really look forward to doing this every year, but also doing a lot more on a regular basis with these families. We are actively praying about where God would lead us and where and how he’d have us serve our local community. Thank you to everyone who took part in this, it truly was special.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas, but something tells me it was incomplete. In fact I know it was because you haven’t yet received my gift. I was thinking of giving you all $50 gift certificates to iTunes or something like that but that seemed all to impersonal(and valuable). Then I found a video that just expresses my admiration and love for you all so much better than any expensive gift could have.

So I present you with this video of a, ummm, a dude singing O Holy Night in a creepy female voice and with an even creepier come hither stare. Note to Nick, Celine Dion didn’t write O Holy Night.

But WAIT you’re not done unwrapping this gift yet, there’s more. Here’s All I Want for Christmas is You, and to add to the creep factor…a nice green sweater vest. You can send me your thank you cards in the comments.

What’s better than classic Christmas songs done 8-bit Nintendo game style? Definitely beats the awful Kenny G Christmas music my mom used to play. Still haven’t forgiven her for that. You can’t pass up this free offer with tracks like:

• We Three Konami : 

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• Super Jingle Bros. :

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• Icarus! The Angels Sing :

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[via Synthtopia]

This is what my Christmas service nightmares look and sound like.

I’ve always admired Bono for his take on many things. I as many in the Christian community are always interested in where Bono finds himself in the journey. I find his honesty refreshing and there is no doubt that God has used him in many powerful ways. Here is a great quote from him on his revelation of Christmas in a St. Patricks Cathedral:

“The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in sh*t and straw…a child… I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry … Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.”

Originally posted on blog.worship.com.

Christmas is my favorite time of year!! I try and put my decorated, over priced, christmas tree up as early as possible and leave it as long as possible. I truly squeeze the holiday of all it’s worth. One of my joys durring this season is the ability to listen to Christmas music so freely and regularly. If you were to come across me in my car, house, or even working out at the gym with my IPOD you would most definitley find me avidly listening to some Holiday tune. Music moves me and I find Christmas music moves me even more. I was litening to Natalie Grant’s Believe album. It is filled with Christmas goodness. As I was driving home last night track 8 came on which is a medley of 3 different songs, Silver Bells, Savior Came for Me, and O Holy Night. The song is over 8 minutes long. But it is a beautiful rendition and as I had my heater blazing and my teeth chattering from the cold, track 8 rounded the corner of the final tune, O Holy Night. I suddenly found myself turning up the volume until it was as loud as I could physically stand and I simply listened, before I knew it I felt something wet on my cheeks and realized tears were falling down my face. I was taken aback by my response because I have listened to this song many times before, but I believe this was the first time that I not only listened with my ears but with my heart (as cheesy as that may sound). As the music built with anticipation and a full string orchestra blared in the background, the words echoed on, “Christ is the Lord, Oh praise his name forever. His power and glory everymore proclaimed. Fall on your knees & hear the angel chorus, oh night divine, oh night when Christ was born, oh night divine… oh night, oh night divine.” I was moved to pull my car over and get out on my knees in adoration for my Heavenly King.

I know Christmas music can be cheesy and definitley over done, but I would hesitate in being so quick to label all Christmas music in such a way because I believe there are songs such as the one above that describes the importance and greatness of what Christmas represents, that will cause all who hear to acknowledge the divinity of our Saviour who was born on that blessed Christmas morn. As I am observing as of late, some Christmas songs have lyrics that should not simply be reserved for one part of the year but should infiltrate all other genres of music because they are powerful and true!

I was sent Sovereign Grace’s latest Christmas Album, Savior, to review by Worship Matters blog. I’ll be honest, my expectations were not that high considering the genre. Christmas music is most often a broad road of lyrical cliche surrounded by cheesy instrumentation and bad group vocals. There are a few exceptions to that terrible generalization and thank God for those exceptions. So I tried to clear my head of any expectation and listen with an open mind and heart. I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard. I’ll give a song by song blow, and then my overall summary. I go with a 5 star system, 5 stars being great, 1 star being not so great.

1. Christ the Lord is Born Today – Pleased to hear a good acoustic guitar mix, recorded very well. Production on this song is really spot on, the Christmas bells weren’t over used, I think they really helped the song. Vocals are great, harmonies are well placed and the melody is interesting while remaining singable. Lyrics are a traditional rejoicing in our Savior’s birth, glad there’s only 3 verses and didn’t go way traditional with 8-9 verses. Mission accomplished on this song, glad to start this record off on a good note, let’s hope it continues. (4 stars)

2. Hope Has Come – Dang, why did they use that drum sample. It sounds straight out of a Casio keyboard Radio Shack gives away in their business card drawings each month. And not in a cool, retro, “yeah we were trying to get that sound” sort of way. Really any sample but that would have done. Mercifully they stop it at verse 2, now I can get back to seeing if the song is good. The chorus is nice, it’s not terribly interesting, but it’s pleasant and engaging. Here come the group vocals, sounding pretty good at first, wish they would have only sung on the “Alleluia” lines, got a little over bearing there for a bit. The ending to the song is very strange, doesn’t seem to fit the progression or vibe of the song, a little out of left field. (2 stars)

3. Emmanuel, Emmanuel – 3rd song in a row with an acoustic guitar into. Hoping this pattern breaks soon. Like the pianos on this song, strings are borderline over used. Not quite ready to say they are yet, but dangerously close. But overall the production is good. This is quite lyrically jam packed, a lot to get out in the verses. Chorus gives a nice change of pace. I like the melody on the final “Emmanuel”, wish that would have been more of a centerpiece in the chorus. (3 stars)

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