When I was a kid, my absolute favorite place to visit was Showbiz Pizza Place. For you old school Knoxville people, you'll remember it was next to West Towne Mall where Texas Roadhouse is now. My dad took us about once a month (often as a reward for good report cards) and we would eat pizza and then me and my brother each got $5.00 in tokens. The highlight of the night though was a certain little house band that rocked Showbiz Pizza on a nightly basis. So please, understand my excitement when I found out a movie was being made all about the Rockafire Explosion.
PS. This is real. It's a real movie coming out this fall... and I can't wait to see it.
I just realized that I haven't really actually WRITTEN anything here in quite some time. Not that anyone is asking but a blog just isn't a blog if I don't actually tell everyone what is going on with me lately. Here it is in convenient, ordinary bullet point format.
1. We're going to Taiwan! No, our adoption hasn't progressed or anything but we've decided to visit our future daughter's homeland now. Our initial motivation for this was a desire to know our way around Taipei a little bit before we're handed a 6 month old baby and told to take good care of her in a country where we don't speak the language and don't know our way around. Spending a week there with no one else to take care of will give us a great chance to get to know the culture and learn our way around.
That was the initial motivation for me to suggest the trip to Jessica but it's turned into a lot more. When the actual adoption happens, we'll go into the orphanage and pick up our sweet little girl, say thank you, and leave. The more we thought about that, the stranger it seemed. We won't know anything about the people who are going to be raising Claire for her first few months of life. We're treating this trip as a "thanks in advance" to the folks at Cathwell Orphanage... we're going to be spending at least 2 days there working with them and serving them in the orphanage. We're also planning on collecting supplies for the orphans who live there at church in the months before we leave and taking them with us. Our hope is to build some friendships, encourage the workers, provide them with some much needed supplies, and hopefully let them know that we deeply appreciate what they are doing in the name of Jesus.
We are flying out of Nashville (cheaper airfare) and leaving early in the morning of Saturday, December 27th. We'll be back on Sunday, January 4th late at night... we'll get to spend New Years Eve in Taipei which should be pretty wild. My dad reminded me that I'm going to miss Tennessee's bowl game more than likely... on second thought, cancel the trip!
2. We've been having a lot of great family fun this summer. It's really nice when Jessica is off in the summertime and she does an awesome job of making everyday fun for Connor. You can keep up with all of their adventures over on her blog. They're my 2 favorite peeps and we always have a great time. Just last night we went blackberry picking and it was awesome... you should see these blackberries! My cousin Alan owns a U-pick blackberry farm and he let us take all we could carry. We took about 3 gallons of blackberries. Pies and cobblers are in our future. Life is good.
3. Work has been going really well lately. We just hired Jesse Watkins as our new tech / creative arts guy and I've been having a lot of fun getting to know him and working with him. He's only working a couple of days a week right now but hopefully that will become full time sooner rather than later. Jesse and I are going to be working closely together to supervise all areas of contemporary worship and technical / creative arts at Powell.
The band has really been clicking lately and we've worked in some great new players. It's been really exciting to get to work with and get to know them a little bit and I'm hoping to keep that going. My brother Adam has been playing drums with us along with Jeff Bills who used to play with a really great band called the V-Roys. Dave Eckman has been sitting in on saxophone sometimes and Rose Williams has been playing violin a bit with us. It's also been good to get to play with Skip Tanaka again as he's been joining us a little bit on electric guitar (and also his giant wooden tambourine).
On that note, this coming Sunday is BLUEGRASS. I love bluegrass Sundays! We're opening with a Dolly Parton song! If anybody wants to say anything bad about Dolly you better come say it to my face because we love us some Dolly Parton in the Adkins' household.
4. Not much else going on... one final thing I've been enjoying is free wi-fi at Starbucks! They just started offering it a couple of weeks ago and since my office is 15 minutes from the nearest Panera and about 1 minute away from a Starbucks, I'm in heaven. I've been hoping for a good place to get out of the office and work and now I have one... I've found I can be a lot more efficient if I can get out of the office for a couple of hours every day. This is a great place to work... no distractions and lots of caffeine = Greg being productive.
My songs have been used a handful of times in churches that I'm aware of... songs like "Be the Body" and "Come Lord Jesus" usually. This past week a song that I never thought would be used for much of anything was used to begin a service over at Crossings (or as they are also known "The Crossings Church of Knoxville").
They began their service with an obscure little song of mine called "The Ballad of Beverly Brown". If you watch the whole thing, they actually have a guy come out dressed as Beverly Brown... he's in drag. They tell me that he was forced to do this as punishment because the week before he was the guest preacher and he used the word "balls" in his sermon which apparently is something you should never do, especially if you don't want to end up in a dress. Enjoy.
We tried out this song by Aaron Niequist this past week. I really like the lyrics a lot... it's hard to find good worship songs that move us beyond the walls of our churches and into action. I especially love the lines about "help us to worship more than singing" and the choruses are just awesome. Anyway, I haven't heard many leaders using this song and I know that I always hearing about new songs that are working for other worship teams so hopefully this song will work for some of you guys out there. Thanks to Aaron Niequist for writing such a great song!
In Jesus’ name I’ve been changed, I’ve been filled
I’ve been found, I’ve been freed, I’ve been saved!
In Jesus’ blood I’ve been loved, I’ve been cleansed,
And redeemed, and released, rearranged
But how can I show You that I’m grateful?
You’ve been so generous to me.
How can I worship more than singing?
And live out Redemption’s melody.
I have been blessed – now I want to be a blessing
I have been loved – now I want to bring love
I’ve been invited – I want to share the invitation
I have been changed to bring change to bring change
In Jesus’ name we are changed, we are called,
We are chosen, adopted, and named!
In Jesus’ blood we are loved, we are healed,
We’re forgiven and free of our shame!
We want to show You that we’re thankful
Flooding Your world with hope and peace
Help us to worship more than singing
Giving Redemption hands and feet
We have been blessed – now we’re going to be a blessing
We have been loved – now we’re going to bring love
We’ve been in-vited – we’re going to share the invitation
We have been changed to bring change to bring change
We have been changed to bring change to bring change
Thank You for this new life, thank You for the invitation!
God, we want to live it loud enough to shake the nations in Your Name!
We have been saved – we’re going to shout about the Savior
We have been found – we’re going to turn over every stone
We’ve been empowered – to love the world to Heaven
We have been changed to bring change to bring change
We have been changed to bring change to bring change
Just a heads up to all the Powell folks reading this. I don't usually give a heads up on what the band is going to do each week (for a couple of reasons... either I don't know yet or I don't want to ruin the element of surprise) but a number of folks have asked me to let them know in advance when we are going to do...
Bluegrass Sunday. July 6th. Both services. Yee-haw.
Muxtape is a really cool new website that allows you to make a mixtape for everyone right over the web. Just upload some MP3s that you like and anyone who wants to can go to the page and listen to the tunes. I've enjoyed scrolling through other muxtapes (although there is a bit more indie rock than I can really stomach on most of them) and have found some interesting music.
We had a GREAT week this week... the band was just rock solid and these songs just seemed to go really well together. Here's what we did:
Opener
"Saved" - Bob Dylan
Worship Set
"Glorious One" - Steve Fee
"God of this City" - Tomlin
"The Stand" - Hillsong United
"Let it Rise" - heck, I don't even know who wrote this.
Altar / Closing
"Changed" - Aaron Niequist
I'll have more on that last song later... it's not a very well known song but it's really, really great. Aaron is the worship leader at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids (yes, Rob Bell's church). If the video turned out okay, I'll share a youtube video of us doing that song for you other worship leader types to hear.
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