Passion Play Ideas

So, every once in a while, someone will ask me where I get my ideas for the Passion Play.  I wish I could say that I come up with all of them all by myself, but that’s not even close to being true.  In reality, I get most of my ideas from one of two places.  The first is from a man in the church I grew up in, in South Carolina.  His name is Ron Burcham. 

I think of him as the Passion Play Guru.  He wrote, directed, and produced Passion Plays at my home church for 25 years.  He is a GENIUS!  He gave me a lot of great ideas for last year’s play.  In fact, I even credited him in last year’s program as one of the writers because I used a couple of scenes exactly like he wrote them.

The second place I get ideas from is a place called the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida. 

It is a Christian theme park 10 minutes from Disney World.  I have been there a few times over the past 7 or 8 years and decided to go for another visit a couple of weeks ago to get inspired with more ideas. They don’t have any rides or roller coasters but they do have a lot of neat exhibits and a number of really well done plays.  But the big thing that first drew me there was that they do a live Passion Play every day. 

When I first went there they did the Passion Play outside.  Here’s a picture of the cross that they used to crucify Jesus each day.  The two crosses on the side (for the thieves) have been added since they moved the play inside).  You can even go up there now and look around.

Here’s a picture of the tomb that they used.

The stone is permanently rolled away now so that you can go inside and see where Jesus’ body was laid.

After the resurrection took place each day, the crowds would move over to the Temple area for the closing scene where the heaven scene took place and Satan was cast into hell (this is where I got our closing scene idea from).

They have since built and moved into a new building, the 2,000 seat Church of All Nations.  

I didn’t take any pictures from inside the building because cameras weren’t allowed.  But trust me, it’s nice (as long as you like mirrors everywhere, and I mean everywhere-bathroom stalls included!).

Here are a couple of other pictures from around the park.

This is from just inside the park gates.  It’s made to look like the Jerusalem marketplace.  Guess what idea came from that?

This is a picture of the Scriptorium.  It houses a 55 minute automated tour that shows how we got the Bible and has authentic Biblical artifacts from around the world.

These were all over the park.  It’s a metal cutout of the main person who plays Jesus in their plays.  I can’t believe we didn’t have one of these made of Kelly.  That would have been AWESOME!!!

Here’s the backside of the outside tomb.  If you look hard enough you can see a skull for Golgotha.  

So, it’s a pretty neat place and once again, I got some new ideas for next year’s Passion Play.  Hopefully, you’ll get to see them in action during next year’s play.

Worship Big!

Brad

What's Next for Recording? Part 2

    Last week, I talked about a few things we have in store for recording.  To re-cap a bit, we will be using a new software with the ability to record multiple instruments at a time and using the real drum kit to name a few.  This week, we will talk about a few more ideas in the works for the new recording year.

    First off, we'll be incorporating what's called "multi-tracks".  As Brad explained a few weeks ago, multi-tracks are a lot like split tracks, but you could say they're a little more sophisticated.  Basically, they will allow us to use more layers of sounds (pads, synthesizers, loops, etc) for stage use. Whoever is controlling this on stage will also be running the click, insuring we are all together with the track.  The beauty in this is that we can also use them for recording, again adding more layers to our tracks.

    Second, we will be looking at how we do vocals.  The big thing I want to focus on with our next project is layers.  Layers, layers layers.  As long as they all work together, it will give the sound a very deep presence. For example on the song "Victor's Crown" on our last album, we had 27 tracks, not counting vocals, and a few more pads or synthesizers wouldn't have hurt, just to add depth.  So to help with depth, not only will we be adding more instrument and pad tracks, we may be adding even more background vocals.  Each Sunday, we incorporate our worship choir in our worship sets.  Not only does it give the choir a great opportunity to help lead, but it adds more sound to the music.  For our new project, we would like to mic the choir and get that in our recording to give the songs a hybrid sound between live and studio.  Regarding multi-tracks, this will also be beneficial when we write and arrange our own music.  Writing our own material is also something we will be attempting this year.  Not too much on that just yet.  :)

    The last thing I'll mention is allowing the recording/CD ministry to be an ongoing, year-round thing.  Right now, we are planning on our next album being completed, copied and in hand by around Thanksgiving.  With that being said, we are looking to start on scratch tracks by around May.  I say May just to be safe due to the learning curve on the new software and recording multiple instruments. If this is the case, there will be what I'll call an "off-season" between December and April.  During this time, I'd like to keep a small project or two going. We have a few other musical groups in our congregation like the Children's Choir and Ladies Ensemble that perform for our special music times that would be neat to record and make an album for.  This would only expand the ministry and give others a chance at that opportunity.  

    With all of these things said, it should be a pretty exciting year for recording.  These are only a few ideas and there will be more updates in the future.  I'll keep you posted!

Peace,

Justin

What's Next for Recording? Part 1

   Over the next couple of weeks, I'd like to talk about what's next for our recording ministry.  As mentioned in previous posts, we had our last album to release in December 2014. I was happy with the overall results,  although, the whole process was a huge learning experience for us and there were definitely some great takeaways.  Now, when listening to the album and going back and looking at the tracks, I can spot things I would have done differently in recording and mixing that I will be incorporating in our next project.  To be honest, I'd be worried if I didn't find things I would do differently.  

    One thing I love about MPBC is that I feel we are always progressing with the goal of reaching people in mind.  The same is true for recording this year.  As far as changes go, to mention only a few, we will be using a new recording software this year called "Reaper" instead of "Cubase 5" like last year.  Since we won't be recording vocals for Alicia Keys, I feel that Reaper will be plenty for us. :) No unnecessary thrills, just good, easy to learn and use software. 

    Next will be the way we record drums.  (Hey Martin!!)  For our previous project, we used what's called "v-drums".  For the player, v-drums are set up similarly to a real drum kit, but do not generate any sounds by themselves.  When each piece is hit with a drum stick, it triggers a sound to try and mimic that of a real kit. We were able to use software to beef up the sound a bit. However, this year, we will be using the real drum set. This will provide a more natural band sound and the dynamics will be MUCH better this way. Nothing beats the sound of a real kit. 

    Another thing we want to be able to utilize is the ability to record multiple instruments at a time.  For the next project, we will be able to record a full drum kit, bass guitar and whatever lead instrument for the song (i.e. acoustic guitar or piano).  This will provide a much tighter groove and should be a huge time saver. 

    Now, with these changes, what are the plans?  First things first are new album ideas.  After running over different thoughts, we really like the idea of including new songs that the Praise Team has learned within the past few months, including a few songs that are older but our congregation really enjoys and maybe even writing a few songs ourselves.  Song writing is something that we have tried before, but would like to re-vamp in the future.   

    That's it for part 1.  We have more on the horizon for our recording.  Check out the blog next week to see what's up next!


Peace,

Justin

Worship Concert Highlights

A couple of weeks ago when I last posted, I mentioned how excited I was about the worship concert that we had coming up on Sunday, January 25th.  Well, the concert has now come and gone, and it was AWESOME!  I believe that people really enjoyed it and that God was glorified.  We had a wonderful crowd for both services and there was a true spirit of freedom in the room to worship.  I would like to personally thank the praise team, praise band, worship choir, and technical team for all of their hard work, patience, and dedication.  Below is a video of highlights from the concert.  To watch the entire concert go to www.mpbc.ws/media and pick the music from 1/25/15. 

Also, if you are interested, here is a list of the songs we did at the concert and at what time in the full video (link above) they can be found:

0:00– In Jesus’ Name

5:01 – God’s Not Dead

9:13 – The Rock Won’t Move.

14:03 – The Greatness of our God

18:22 – Strong God

23:08 – This I Believe (Creed)

30:35 – God, You are my God

35:57 – Victor’s Crown

45:57 – Promises

47:07 – The Great I Am

52:23 – Jailbreak

Worship Big!

Brad

Real Truth

"You can never be the same after the unveiling of a truth. That moment marks you as one who either continues on with even more devotion as a follower of Christ, or as one who turns to go back as a deserter" - Oswald Chambers

I came across that quote the other day, and it impacted me greatly.   I mean, I honestly never thought about that before. I know we can either accept or reject truth, but I never thought deeper.  Deep enough to realize that the way our conscience responds to truth instantly marks us and we are marked forever.  We are marked either as a devoted disciple, servant of Jesus Christ, or as a deserter who rejects truth and attempts to pursue things to fulfill a complete life.  Unaware that it can never be obtained...not without the greatest Truth.  I thought deeper upon those words and God began to reveal much more to me. He caused me to question, what is truth?  Ultimately I think the “truth” Chambers referred to was Christ Himself.  Christ is the one truth we have in the world today revealed in the pages of the Bible.  John 8:31-32 says, "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free".  In Jesus we are free, so why would we not wish to serve Him? 

On Sunday mornings we sing and play in worship to God.  He is revealed to us every time we start the music. We sing about truth, and we sing about going free, but do we mean it?  Every Sunday there is always a moment that I just take a look around and I feel an overwhelming sense of peace and the presence of God Himself. It is extremely humbling because He is the reason I do what I do. He is my truth. In John 14:6 Jesus said "I am the Way the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by Me"  So, the next time we start worship, whether it be at church or when you begin your day, why don't we take a moment to thank God for the Truth He so graciously blessed us with..... Jesus Christ.

In His Truth,

Maddie

What's Next-Part 2

With my last post, I wrote about some plans and ideas I have for 4 of the different teams within the Creative Arts Ministry here at MPBC.  The teams discussed were the Praise Team/Band, the Drama Team, the Children's Choir, and the Worship Technologies Team.  You can check that post out here:  http://mpbcworship.blogspot.com/2015/01/whats-next-part-1.html.  With this week's post I am going to share my plans and ideas for the other 5 teams/ministries within the Creative Arts Ministry.

The first one I"ll discuss is the Worship Choir.

1. We have a wonderful choir that LOVES to lead worship.  They are truly a blessing!  One of the things I'm really looking forward to is the worship concert on January 25th.  In the past, the Praise Team/Band has always done the concerts, while the choir focused more on the Passion Play.  Now, the choir gets to participate in the concert and I'm really looking forward to what they will add to the worship experience.
2. With the choir now participating in our worship, one of the things I would really like for them to do, is be a part of our next worship CD.  I think that they would be a GREAT addition to the overall sound of the next project.  Plus, it would definitely make the CD sound a little more like our Sunday morning experience where the choir helps to lead in worship.
3. My next plan for the choir is to do another Passion Play in 2016.  I'll discuss more about the plans for our next Passion Play in the following section, but as always, the choir will play a major role in pulling it off.
4. Finally, we are always looking for new members in choir.  So, if you know of someone who can sing and loves to worship, send him/her our way.  We'd love to have them!

The Passion Play

1.  As many of you know, we have performed a Passion Play each year at Easter time for the past 7 years.  Well,
   
   this year I needed a break from the chaos, so we aren't doing the play.  I'm taking this year off to gather some ideas for potential scenes, but the biggest thing I'm doing is looking for someone new to play Jesus.  For 7 years, we've had the same person play Jesus and he has done an incredible job!  But the burden of playing Jesus is a lot, and I told this man that I would not ask him to do it again.  He and I both believe it's time to pass the baton on to the next person.  So, I'm looking.  And as soon as God reveals who this next man is, I'll start making definite plans for next year's play.

The Ladies Ensemble

1.  I've started working with this group of ladies and I really enjoy the music that they sing.  Three part harmony for women just sounds nice.  And the only real plans I have for them are to expand the group from 6 ladies to 9.  That would give us three 1st sopranos, three 2nd sopranos, and three altos.  I believe it would really strengthen the overall sound of the group.

Music Lessons

1. We currently give lessons in acoustic guitar, piano, voice, and drums.  I'm hoping to incorporate some other musicians and expand into other instruments (i.e. violin, mandolin, etc...).  This would allow us to reach and equip even more people musically.  Plus, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, the best way for us to get new musicians is to teach them ourselves.
2. I've also got some ideas on how to possibly organize this ministry a little better, but I've got a number of things to figure out before any potential changes are made.

The Blog

1. First off, I would just like to say how proud I am of our worship team here and the job they have done of contributing to our worship blog.  This post is the 73rd post from our team in the last 17 months.  Recently, I looked online for other worship blogs to get some ideas and to compare how they did things.  I think I looked at around 20 different worship blogs and I would say that 18 had only 1 or 2 posts.  And most of those posts had been made at least 2 years ago.  Apparently a lot of people had the idea to start a blog but then abandoned them within the first few weeks.  So, thank you team!  Thank you for being diligent and sharing what God has shown you and done through you in the area and ministry of worship. 
2. So, for this year, I'm hoping that we can continue the blog.  I'm also hoping to find a way to get even more people to read it.  Currently our blog has been viewed well over 5,000 times, but I believe it could be a place of great encouragement to other worship teams and leaders if we can just find a way to make them aware of it.
3. I'm also hoping that our worship team will continue to "dig" into what the Bible says about worship and how we can all continue to be better worshipers and worship leaders.  This is a great place to share with each other the insights we have gained about worship.
4. Finally, I'm hoping that we can get some of our members who have yet to write a post to get involved.  I believe every team member has at least one good post in them.  Even if it's just to explain why or how they got involved.  I always enjoy reading those!

So, those are the plans for 2015.  I'm sure that some of these will work out perfectly and some will have to be postponed or changed in some way, but that's the way ministry works.  And that's especially the way that Worship Ministry works.

Worship Big!

Brad

What's Next-Part 1

Hello everyone and welcome to 2015!  With the start of every new year, I always get asked, "What's next for the Creative Arts Ministry of MPBC?"  So, I thought that with this week's post and next week's I would put down some plans and ideas I have for the different teams within the Creative Arts Ministry. 

Now, if you go our church website, www.mpbc.ws, and then click on the "Creative Arts" tab at the top of the homepage, it will take you to a page of links for each of the different teams within the "Creative Arts" ministry of MPBC.  We have the Praise Team/Band, the Drama Team, the Children's Choir, the Worship Technologies Team, the Worship Choir, the Ladies Ensemble, the Passion Play, our Music Lessons, and the Blog ministry.  This week's blog will cover plans for the first 4 teams mentioned above and next week's post will cover the remaining teams/ministries.

Let's get started with the Praise Team/Band.  

1. We have a worship concert coming up on Sunday, January 25th, and I believe that God is really going to show up in a powerful way that day.  Concerts are always fun and they are a great tool for inviting family and friends to church that don't normally attend.  So, I hope we have a great crowd that day.
2. We just completed our 2nd worship CD ("Greater Still")
   
   and released it last month.  The response has been very positive.  Because of this, I'm hoping that we can record another CD this upcoming year.  We learned a lot about the process this time around and I believe we can do an even better job with the next one.
3. Currently, the band and a few singers are on our Aviom
   
   in-ear monitor system (this allows each individual person to set their own monitor volume levels).  I'm hoping that over the course of 2015 we can continually add Aviom units until everyone on the Praise Team has them as well.
4. One of the things I would really like to incorporate this year is the use of multi-tracks.  They are kind of like split-tracks that people use when singing a song in church.  Only, for us, the are run off of a computer and the band would play along with them. The multi-tracks still have the "click" that the band has grown to love but they would also give us the freedom to add pre-recorded extra instruments and layers of sound that we don't normally have.
5. And finally, I'm always looking to add depth to the musicians that we have.  In church work, you can never have enough musicians.  My goal is for us to eventually be able to rotate 2 complete teams from Sunday to Sunday.  We're getting there, but we are still lacking a couple of instrumentalists. 

The Drama Team

1. The Drama Team just presented it's now "annual" Christmas Play and did a wonderful job!  You can see it here:  www.mpbc.ws/creativearts/drama.   I'm planning on them doing another Christmas Play next year.
2. One of the biggest ways that the Drama Team contributes here at MPBC is by doing monthly skits.  They really add a lot to our Sunday services and I'm planning on them continuing them and incorporating more and more people.
3. One of the things that I'm really hoping we can pull off this year is a Dinner Theater.  We're currently in the process of finding the right script to use.  I believe this could be an incredible outreach for the church and an opportunity for the Drama Team to do something big and exciting.

The Children's Choir

1. Over the past few years we've transitioned the Children's Choir program from doing seasonal musicals to learning and presenting worship songs on Sunday mornings.  Part of this was done because of a lack of practice time, but the biggest reason was to help prepare our kids to be worshipers and hopefully for some of them, to one day be worship leaders within the church.  To help accomplish this, for every song they learn, at least 2 kids get to lead it vocally, 1 kid gets to run sound for it, and 1 kid gets to run the lyric slides.  I'm hoping that this puts a desire within them to want to be a part of our worship ministry as they continue to get older.  The plan for this year is to continue giving them opportunities to lead on Sunday mornings and for us to keep equipping them to lead and serve within the worship ministry as they get older.
2. I do have a couple of other ideas for them, such as another kid's worship camp (like we've done in the past) and even having them perform their songs with the band playing with them (I think the kids would really like that), but we'll see how those things work out as the year progresses.

The Worship Technologies Team

1. This might be the most talented team within the entire Creative Arts Ministry.  What they do on Sundays and Wednesdays with our sound, lights, video, and projection is unbelievable! 
   
   So, for 2015 they will be looking for new ways to enhance our services, plays, and concerts with new technologies and equipment.  The possibilities for this team are truly unlimited!
2. Just like every other team within the Creative Arts Ministry, the Tech Team is always looking for more dedicated team members.  So, hopefully this year we can add a few more members (camera men/women are always needed).

We'll, I hope you've enjoyed getting a little bit of a sneak preview of what 2015 will look like here at MPBC.  Don't forget that Part 2 will be posted next week.

Worship Big!

Brad