This is a short clip of “Revive Us,” recorded at our recent Combined Campus Night of Worship. It is one of the new songs that will be on our album Undefeated, releasing early in 2017.
Combined Campus Night of Worship
Sunday night, October 16 was an electric night of worship as all eight Family Church Campuses gathered to celebrate what God is doing among us. Our people sang out their praise with great enthusiasm to the worship songs, including three originals written by our Family Church worship team. We honored Pastor Bill Keith, who has ministered faithfully at our church for 40 years! Bill was the minister of music here over a long and fruitful season, and has left an amazing legacy of love and faith. We celebrated the launch of Family Church in the Farms, which had an amazing 396 people at their first Sunday, October 9. We also introduced our army of interns and church planting residents (from 13 different countries!), who are being developed as leaders. Here are some highlights:
Combined Campus Night of Worship Preview
Twice a year, our entire church network gathers for a Night of Worship, and the next one, on October 16th, is not to be missed! We’ll be honoring Bill Keith for 40 years of ministry service to our church. Bill led a thriving and influential music ministry here for a generation, and his influence is incalculable. Our entire worship ministry staff will lead worship that evening, including three original songs which will be on our forthcoming album, Undefeated: Revive Us, I Found Freedom, and Undefeated. It’s not very often that our entire team can minister together, but it’s going to be incredible! We will also introduce our church planting residents and ministry interns, and observe the Lord’s Supper together. Family Church Downtown, Sunday October 16, 6:00pm. Don’t miss it!
New Edition of Tell The Story Advent Devotional
We’re excited to announce that we are releasing a new edition of our Tell the Story Advent Devotional book for 2016! This new edition is specifically for churches to use as a ministry tool: to give away to members or guests, or to use as an Advent spiritual growth emphasis. The retail price is $12, but for a limited time, we are offering it for bulk orders for only $5 per copy, plus shipping. Full information and ordering can be found here: www.familychurchworship.org/advent. If you know a church or pastor who might be interested, would you do us the favor of sharing this page with them? Quick order: Complete the form below. (If the form does not display properly, try here.) We will send you an invoice, and once it is paid, we will ship the books directly to you. Orders can take up to two weeks to ship, so order as soon as possible to guarantee delivery by the beginning of Advent! Offer ends November 9, 2016.
Upgrades to the Downtown Worship Center
We’re excited about the continuing upgrades to the look and technical capacities of our downtown sanctuary. First of all, we now have stained glass inserts in the baptistry and on the sides. Check out the before and after: We are also installing beautiful new LED screens. The image will be clearer, sharper, and will be completely visible without lowering the lighting level in the room! And additionally, we now have LED, color-controlled lights on the front of the building:
New Worship Album in Progress
Family Church Worship is excited to announce that we have begun recording a new album! Over the past few weeks we’ve been in Legacy Studios with Angel Arce, our recording engineer, and Winner Olmann, our producer, tracking drums with Danny Marquez (the Mexican Sensation), with bass, keys, guitars and vocals soon to follow. The songs on this as-yet-untitled project are all originals written by Family Church Worship. We’ve begun using some of them in worship services across the Family Church campuses, and are encouraged by how warmly the songs are being received. You might have heard one or two of them before: Undefeated I Found Freedom Revive Us The Glory of the Cross Jehovah Winner Olmann is excited about how the new project is turning out: “I think this EP will resonate more with our people because it is OUR story and we wrote these songs because of what our church is going through right now. Our church is very Gospel and Ministry oriented and our church is very excited to see people being brought to life and that is definitely evident in the Lyrics of these songs.” Look for the new album to be released in February.
FC Worship introduces J.J. Esquivel
Family Church is proud to introduce J.J. Esquivel, who joins our team as worship leader for Iglesia Familiar Downtown! J.J. is teaming up with our current IFD worship leader, Junior Rodriguez. J.J. was born and raised in Guatemala, and grew up playing in church and helping with tech. In 1994 he came to the USA as a missionary. He was offered a job to help in the aftercare program at Summit Christian School, where he met his beautiful wife Leslie! (The rumor is that she chased him for two weeks before he woke up and smelled the coffee but you’ll just have to confirm that with him yourself.) J.J. and Leslie have four beautiful kids: Sammy, Christian, J.C. and Bella, who keep them on their toes! In addition to being a skilled worship leader, J.J. is known for his unique electric guitar tone, honed over years of service at Christ Fellowship Espanol and other places, a sound that has proven adaptable across many different musical genres. Several months ago, J.J. and Leslie felt the Lord stirring in them, and after lots of praying and conversation, they came to join our team at Family Church. Christian Ramos, our lead worship pastor, says, “J.J.’s ability to passionately lead people in worship, coupled with his heart for discipling and shepherding those under his care, make him an ideal member of Family Church Worship. His devotion to his family speaks volumes of the man that he is and the minister that he has become, and I can’t wait to see what God is going to do in his and his family’s life.” (Christian Ramos, lead worship pastor)
Talking It Out
by Winner Olmann I have never been particularly good at writing songs in a group setting. My natural tendency was to take an idea, leave the room, come back with a song and ask the group what they thought of it. Since this has generally worked for me in the past, I just thought that I was an introverted songwriter. In our last songwriting retreat in February I was challenged to write songs with a group. Needless to say, I was very nervous and was self-assured that this would not work out well for me. Fortunately, I was very wrong in my supposition. When we began with the session I discovered something that was groundbreaking: we didn’t start with writing a song. Instead, we took time to hear what was on everyone’s hearts and conversed about that. As we would do this, we would take what people were saying and added melodies to it and behold, songs were being birthed. Maybe you struggle with songwriting in a group like I did or perhaps songwriting in general is a challenge for you. I would like to take this time to share with you some techniques that I discovered from our last songwriting retreat that may possibly help you. 1. Start by talking • Fight the temptation to just get started with the music. You can come up with cool chord progressions or guitar hooks later. Talk about subjects that are important to you. Maybe you’ve been reading a portion of scripture that has been teaching you something. Perhaps your church’s core values could spark conversation. Consider this as a valuable part of the songwriting process. 2. Ask a question, answer it, write it down • One of the questions that we would ask when we would get stuck on a line is, “what are you trying to say?” As one person tries to answer this question, write down some of the key words and phrases that come out of the answer. You’d be surprised at the creative lines that can emerge from just letting someone say what’s on their heart. 3. Beat the line • Sometimes you can beat the line or phrase that you came up with. Toss the phrase around amongst the group. Consider replacing one word in the phrase with another. Sometimes you may realize that you can’t beat it but many times you can! I can say that I am a better songwriter now than ever before. I say this with confidence because I am not just depending on my own experiences to craft songs but the experiences and ideas of a valuable team. I hope these techniques can help you as they have helped me. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. As we say at Family Church, “we’re better together”. Winner Olmann is worship pastor for Family Church Sherbrooke
Songwriting as Mission
by Daniel Martin I have often questioned how the creative process of songwriting relates to Christian mission. Spending time away in a room with other worship leaders and focusing all of my attention on writing a song seemed almost selfish to me. I have always thought about my time in ministry in terms of serving the people God has brought into my life that need to hear the gospel, be loved on, encouraged, and poured into. Could songwriting actually be part of God’s mission? The short answer is, yes. And here’s why. God knows the words on our tongue before we speak them. He knows our thoughts before we think them. And that means He knows every single lyric of every single song that we will ever write before we write them. He has placed these things within us and wants us to prayerfully surrender them back to Him as praise and honor due to Him. This concept has been one of the most perplexing and awe-inspiring thoughts that I have had over the past few weeks of songwriting. After spending a week with professional Christian songwriters, I see more clearly than ever that God is very much at work within the songwriting process. It is similar to the art of sermon writing. God has ordained that the message of salvation be brought forth through preaching and teaching. A teaching pastor has to seek out exactly how and what scriptural insights God wants him to share to his congregation. In a similar fashion, He has given worship pastors the task of seeking out and writing the songs that God wants His church to sing to Him! It is humbling to think that He has called His church to write songs of praise for Him. It is also incredible to think that in all of our own creativity and effort, He already knows the finished product! He could write His own praise. He doesn’t need me to do it. But He determined that it be this way. Somehow, reflection on my experiences and meditation on His Word draw something out of me that He wants to use to encourage His church. He is literally using our team to write the songs that the people in our church need right now. God has given our church a mission: Push back the darkness in the world and share the gospel of Jesus Christ. He uses songwriting and musical worship as a major vehicle to spur on our church to accomplish this Great Commission. His Holy Spirit is sweeping through our region. He is calling people out of darkness and into light daily. His Spirit is stirring up great songs of triumph in us all, and He has made it very clear that He is using us as ministers of reconciliation through these songs in this rescue mission from Heaven. Daniel Martin is worship pastor for Family Church West.