My Senior Year at Olathe Northwest

Here's a little glimpse at my Senior Year at Olathe Northwest:

I came into that Senior year really renewed by a summer camp I had attended with my local church youth group. I started out the year viewing my school as a mission field, and since this was my last year, I had nothing to lose.

My friend, Josh, and I were given leadership of the Christian campus ministry at Olathe Northwest, then called Club 121, from the youthfront days. On the very first day of school, Josh and I went early to the prayer room at our church sometime around 5 AM, then bought a bunch of cans of startbucks coffee shots and handed them out to strangers at school as a kind of evangelistic effort. After meeting people, we split up and headed to our first hour of classes. On my way to class, I turned a corner in the hallway to see that a classmate of mine had fallen down a huge flight of stairs and she was unconscious! A group of teachers gathered around her and called for the nurse and said she was unresponsive. As I passed by I prayed silently for her and once I recognized who she was I prayed for her by name and instantly she woke up. At the same time, my chemistry teacher from the previous year, who was one of the teachers tending to the girl, gave me the keys to his classroom and told me to go tell them what had happened and that he would be late. So, I went to his classroom, told them Jesus healed a girl that had fallen down the stairs and that Mr. So-and-So would be late! I heard the report from the school nurse that the student who fell was miraculously okay. No injuries of any kind! That was day one.

Day 3, I found out that I was scheduled to train a classroom of new students on some of the technology at the school. I had an hour every day with them for a week as my students. A few days later we had covered all of the material and I had one day mostly open to do whatever we wanted. The night before I felt strongly impressed by the Lord to share the gospel point blank with the room. So that morning I spoke to the teacher whose classroom I was using for this training and told him my plan. He agreed to stand outside the door and make sure I was undisturbed during my "presentation." I did it, while trembling, and invited every one of them to the dodgeball tournament at my church, and some of them came, but I didn't see any major fruit like an outward decision to follow Christ. But, I was obedient, and it caused a little stir. That was week 2.

A few weeks later, I got a call from my friend early in the morning and he had been strongly impressed by the Lord to share the gospel. The difficult part was that he wanted to share it from the top of a lunch table. I went along with it and we showed up to lunch and he was as nervous as I've ever seen him! He showed me his notes that he had with his Bible and he told me "If I get taken down by the teachers, can you try and finish it for me?" We counted to ten, and up he went. He shared for a good 5 minutes, but then as assistant principal came and asked him to come to the office, but he hadn't finished... As he stepped down, and people clapped, he looked at me and set his Bible with his notes down on the table. I then picked up his notes, stood on my chair and gave a brief (30 second) wrap up of his message as he was escorted to the office. I invited anyone to come to our table with questions or to come to our Bible study... but that was it and no one came.

We did a few other outreaches, invited tons of people to church, shared in front of a few more classrooms, continued to meet every week for Bible study without about 6 other students, but it didn't turn out quite like I expected it to in my mind. I even carried an 8-foot cross into the school on Good Friday, I made it 100 feet before being asked to leave. I thought through our zeal for evangelism that hard hearts would be made soft, and that lots of people would respond to our many outreaches, but we neglected prayer and missed most of the big picture.

My passion for high schools never left, however. I learned a lot from that year! And now I'm fully pursuing my assignment from the Lord to contend for breakthrough until that breakthrough comes. I've learned about the importance of prayer that precedes the move of God, and the big picture of what the Lord is doing on the earth in preparation for the return of Jesus. God has spoken many promises over the Olathe schools to area pastors, youth pastors, teachers and students, and I believe those promises are still to come and that every morning we wake up to pray at our schools is preparing the way for this mighty move of God.

The Measure of Music

I was recently listening to a recording of me playing in the prayer room from about a week ago, and I stopped to ponder the sound of my guitar. The quality of music is measured in so many different ways. From frequencies to personal taste, opinions run wild over what sounds good. I happened to think my guitar sounded pretty good, but I stopped to ask why. There were plenty of times I messed up, plenty of tweaks I would have made to my guitar tone or pedal settings in hindsight, but I had a certain respect for that set because of something that happened to me over a year ago. 

It was at the Onething Conference in 2009. I was playing with Justin Rizzo in the prayer room at Onething and I had been specifically seeking the Lord about my music and praying for 'melodies from heaven.' I remember standing on the stage, playing a simple rhythm and suddenly I felt the Lord's presents all around me, like I was in the grip of his hand. I was so shocked I stopped playing, and I listened as the Lord said "I love you." As obvious as those words seem, they pierced me in a particular way that day because I knew that the Lord was referring to my music. Then I heard Him say to my spirit, "Your melodies are as good as any others. What you play from your heart is what pleases me." I felt His delight so strongly that I started to cry right there on stage! In fact I went back later on the web stream archives and watched it again. I was just standing there as tears fell on my pedalboard. After a few minutes of just soaking the moment, I gathered myself and finished the rest of the set.

From that day on, I measure my music differently when it comes to sets in the prayer room. Of course I'd like to sound good, for the sake of everyone in the room, but even if I don't, I look back on those times with a smile because I know I played from my heart and it moved the heart of God. That revelation from onething 2009 was one of the most tender moments for me as a musician, and it set my perspective for how God sees my music.

Moral of the story: Tone and skill and gear are all secondary to heart posture. Those are all endless pursuits! All music boils down to who/what it worships and the authenticity of the worshipers. 

Crazy story... I'm done unless you want to hear a crazy way the Lord moves through music story. There was a time I was playing bass guitar on a ministry trip to a little church in Illinois. The whole worship team was quite rusty, just me on bass, my friend on drums, and another friend leading the worship from the keyboard. The sound system was awful, the acoustic of the room were awful. It was a sound nightmare, honestly. But, we were playing a little set on this ministry trip and I was filling in on bass. There came a moment during the set when the worship leader had an oracle (a sort of spontaneous song specified for that moment). None of us were doing anything special, I think just holding Bm, a single note. When the worship leader went into the oracle, something crazy happened like nothing I've ever felt before or since. The room, with less than 10 people in it, filled suddenly with the presence of God with a terrifying intensity! The Lord visited that room suddenly as the worship leader sang the oracle so much that I couldn't keep my eyes open or even stand up! I sat on a stool and looked at the drummer, and he could hardly move his arms! The presence of God was so intense I honestly thought I might black out! It was all I could do to keep my finger on the single note we were playing! Then, almost as suddenly as it came, the presence lifted after the worship leader ended the oracle. I remember finally looking up and thinking "What was that?!" When the set was over, we discussed the event in shock because we didn't do anything special! The worship leader was obedient to sing what she felt like God wanted her to sing, and I played a single note and the drummer was barely able to hit the drums, but we all knew God was there. We had all set our hearts on that trip to simply be tools for the Lord to use, empty vessels for the Lord to fill. We didn't care for glory and hardly for how we sounded, we wanted to be used by God, and we were! Turns out that night there was also an evangelism outreach that happened during our set that we prayed for, and lots of people were saved that night throughout the city!

Maybe some music is measured by the number of demons it scares...

The Beautiful Sound of Perfectly Measured Guitar Tone

Lots of people ask me about the gear and settings I use to get the sound I have out of my electric guitar. It is confusing to see a guitar running through two pedalboards and a laptop, but there is a method to the madness. 

At any moment, my guitar tone runs through a compressor/sustain pedal, modulation, dual delay, stereo reverb, another stereo sparkle delay, and then another stereo reverb after that! The trick lies in the careful selection of pedals (and cables) that preserve the original tone and the careful measurement of the effect of each pedal on that tone. There can be too much effect, or to little, but the trick is to find the perfect balance.

I am very picky about each pedal on my board and their settings. A lot of careful consideration goes into the pedals on my board. My goal is not to have a full pedalboard that looks cool with lots of effects and different sounds. I want the pedalboard arrangement that I am most comfortable worshiping with. So I limit the pedals on my board accordingly. The only reason for the second pedalboard is for the midi controller that gives me control over my software effects. Honestly, I hardly use it.

Recognizing that the goal of my musicianship is to worship changed everything about the way I play guitar. I am not just on stage to sound good and fill a spot on a team, I want to worship with the room. I am most comfortable on my Paul Reed Smith, so I never change guitars. I'm most comfortable with the pedals that I have, so I have nothing left to gain, just worship. I will say that I have had several dreams about guitarists who over-obsess about their tone and completely miss the worship aspect of their musicianship. To me those dreams have always served as a warning to keep my heart in check. It's all about singing and playing to Jesus, and that heart posture enables me to worship undistracted by my gear.

Update: The Point Of Life

The Point Of Life Outreach has been rescheduled to April. We had originally planned to hold the event on March 30th, but in order to complete the necessary planning and so that we can use the Performing Arts Center (pictured above). The extra few weeks will not only give more time to plan, but more time to invite people! The difficulty revolves around the schedule of the school plays, proms, and even ACT tests. Spring is busy! Please pray that the schedule irons out and that we maintain our favor with the school administrations and their schedule.

Praise Report: Many youth pastors have taken interests in the event and are going to come and pray with the students who would like to receive prayer or salvation. We've also secured the remaining leaders we needed to pull the event off! So far the Blue Valley schools have also given us favor to announce the event in every Blue Valley High School. It's all coming together, and now that we have a few more weeks, we can make it even better!