Good Friday morning Church Requel!
After taking a week off from writing my Friday newsletter, I'm back. Yay! Did you miss me last Friday? I'm afraid I got the DCD - Double Candle Disease. Ever have that? When you burn the candle at both ends for so long that eventually something has to give? Between my normal pastoral duties, and then preparing tax returns, and then going to the March of Prayer each night (actually my fav activity of the day!), I think my body just gave out. I am mostly recovered, but some of the nasty symptoms do seem to persist. So your ongoing prayer for me is greatly appreciated. For those wondering, I did take a Covid test, but (thankfully) it came back negative.
New In-Ear Monitors For Our Worship Team. I am thrilled to report to you that our leadership team has decided to move forward with in-ear monitors. This will go a very long ways to reducing the total sound coming from our platform and will go a long ways to helping our tech booth sound crew to better mix our sound. We are hoping you as a congregation will see a big benefit once we get it all worked out.
What exactly is an "in-ear monitor" you ask? Each of our praise team members will wear earphones and will hear the other singers and instrumentalists through their earphones. These earphones will replace all the various speakers and amplifiers that are now present on our platform, thus greatly reducing the amount of sound that you hear.
It has not been lost on any of us that many of you prefer to sit in the back. And it may be that you just like the back seats. But it also could be that the sound up close is just too loud. We in the praise band have experienced this personally on many a Sunday.
The technology for an in-ear monitor system has been available now for about 10 years. The leadership team believed this was the next best step forward for our weekly worship experience.
We hope you will agree and will consider helping out with the added cost to the church. We have established a special fund for the sound system and will make it available for contributions through the end of May. If this is something you would like to support with giving above and beyond your normal contributions, use this special fund account. If you're giving at church, just write "sound system" on your envelope. If you want to give online go to give.churchrequel.com and click on the "designation" line and choose "sound system."
We don't often do this kind of thing. But when we have in the past, you have been so supportive. Consider the following worship extras that have been made possible by your past generous special giving: (1) the digital mixing board; (2) the electronic drum kit; (3) the laser projector; and (4) the portable round baptistry, just to name a few. Thank you thank you thank you!
We plan to do all the work in-house, which will save us labor charges. Rather than cluttering up the front of our platform with even more tech stuff, the opposite should be true in the end. All of the speakers and amplifiers and most of the cabling and power cords will disappear. The result should be much more pleasing to both your eyes and ears. We anticipate that this work will take us a couple months to complete, since none of us are experts or full-time audio techs. But hopefully by the end of May you should notice a big difference.
Sunday's Worship Plans. Here are the songs we plan to sing this Sunday: "Might Get Loud" by Elevation Worship; "King Of Love" by Jesus Culture"; "Next To Me" by Jordan Feliz; "Give Me Your Peace" by Gateway Worship; and "Ever Be" by Bethel.
Brian Betts has worked for a very long time to bring you the special music Sunday morning. Brian will sing AND PLAY HIS UKULELE the song, "Behold Our God" by Sovereign Grace. You read that right! We have another ukulele player in our midst! It appears that Pastor Paul's dubbing of our church as The First Church of the Ukulele might just have some validity. Ha! Thanks Brian for using your talents for the Lord Jesus!
Our sermon Sunday will be Part 2 of "God Works For The Good" from Romans 8:28-30. Last week we talked about that God works for the good in our lives. But exactly what is it that God does? Here are the 4 things we'll talk about Sunday:
First, we’re going to affirm that it’s God Who does the work. Second, we’re going to talk about the difficulty we have when talking about time. Third, we’re going to talk about the challenge of being conformed to the image of God’s Son. Finally we’re going to talk about the specific five (5) good works that God does in us, His children.
I promise that all the news Sunday will be GOOD NEWS! I don't know about you, but I am ready for some good news!!! So come prepared. If you can't wait until Sunday, you can read Sunday's sermon in your Bible app or you can click here: http://bible.com/events/48869321
For those of you watching from home, here or afar, you can watch the live stream on Facebook by going to the Church Requel page. You can also watch on YouTube. Here is the link. https://youtu.be/HwEXH-jIsgA
That will do it for this Friday morning. I hope you all have great plans for your weekend (in addition to Church Requel.) Personally Mary Kay and I and all my Sibs and their spouses will be throwing a big 91st birthday party for my dad tonight. I can't wait. It's going to be a good time together!
Love you all much! Pastor Mark
