Creating an Environment

So let's start at the very beginning (it's a very good place to start). I started this post immediately following my last post regarding Simply Christmas eve service. Because to someone who doesn't understand the vision I would imagine they're wondering why in the world a bunch of people would spend collectively 297 hours over a 24 hour period? So why do we do what we do at Lifepoint, why do we have people showing up at 6:00am on a Sunday mornings and then spend several hours working?

Have you ever heard the story of the three men laying bricks? They were asked during their labor what they were doing. The first replied, I'm making fifteen dollars an hour, The second replied I'm laying bricks, but the third man replied, "I'm building an amazing cathedral"

So first what we do: We're creating an environment conducive (big word for me) to learn about, and accept the message and gift of Salvation through Jesus the Christ. Everyone is preaching the gospel in the best way they know how through the talents and gifts that they have, it can vary from directing traffic to worshiping on the stage. (I had a much longer part earlier regarding every team, but I was a) bound to leave someone out, and b) probably boring you the reader). I suppose a term that would work well here Synergy, the whole of the team working in unison is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

And why we do it? To see lives changed for God's glory. Or as I like to put it, to change forever, someone's eternal destination.

~Matthew Furukawa

...And this isn't even my music notes...

Okay, I've had a full day to 'decompress' after a phenomenal (and yes that's spoken with extended accent) Christmas Eve service. I wanted to take a day to come off of the emotional highs regarding the service so that I could make clinical comments regarding such. (Okay, everyone who actually knows me, you can pick yourselves off the floor now, it's not THAT funny... Come one I'm waiting, take slow deep breathes to calm down, that's the kind of laughter that gets painful after a while).

I've seen a nice email regarding the service, and Jeremy's Blog as well, so you might want to read his in addition/instead of mine. It's bound to be more informative.

First lets take a glimpse into what went into this one night. Planning for this service began somewhere in mid/late October / early November, details fell in place around late November, and then the final push began the second week of December, here's my completely unofficial stats. (Some of which are fairly accurate, some of which are a wild guess based on inductive reasoning, ie I know about how many people where there for about how long a time.)

Totals man hours of planning during programming meetings: (Because I can' even begin to fathom how much time everyone spent individually planning for the service) 38 hours

Total Man Hours Spent During Set up/Tear down of the service: 105 hours

Total Man Hours Spent by technical/worship team during the run practices/service: 68 hours

Total Man Hours by Decorating Team: 60 hours

Total Man Ours By Parking/Greeting/Usher/Refreshment team: 60 hours

Number of hours it took the Video to compile: 20 hours

Number of hours it took Josh to Put together said video: I have no clue, but it was quite a few

Number of hours to build the loop for the song in the video: 4 hours

Number of barrels of food collected for food bank: 5 (from Jeremy's Blog)

Number of Injuries to myself: 2

Number of sticks I broke while playing: 1

Number of cool new gear I got to buy for the service: 1 new pair of stick/mallet combos.

Amount collected for Simply love (Donation to Hope house and Thurman Brisben center): Over 10k (Again from Jeremy's Blog)

Number if Times Jeremy Acted Grinch-ish: 3 (Mostly during initial planning, see this post for details)

Number of times I acted Grinch-ish: (Way more than 3)

Official Number of lives who have forever changed their eternal destination: 25 (At least according to Jeremy's Blog)

Unofficial Number of lives who have forever changed their eternal destination: Unknown, but higher than the above number based on the hands that went up.

Amount of pride I feel from those last two stats: Immeasurable.

And really those last two items on the list are why we do what we do. Yes I love music and drumming, but that's not why I play for our worship team, if it was just about music I'd be working as a session drummer and/or gigging at clubs on nights and weekends it's about seeing what God is still doing in and around us, it's about seeing lives changed, and it's an amazing feeling.

Matthew Furukawa
Post Christmas Eve Service Reflections (Is that proper use of that word?) 2007

The Greatest Generation

Something of an introspective posting, I'm currently "reading" a book I picked up from our local used book store, it's the Congressional Medal of Honor Library, World War 2, Volume 2 M-Z.

The world war two generation has often been called America's greatest generation, reading through this book is a strong testament to this fact. Now I don't want to cheapen the deeds by our military personal who served, or are serving in other times, but reading this book literally chokes me up. Most of the entries in it end in the phrase "He gallantly gave his life for his country."

The scripture in John goes something like "No greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." I've read where men threw themselves on grenades knowing they would die to protect their squads, I've read where men would run out alone under severe fire to grab a man left behind, I've read where a pilot stayed at the controls to make sure his crew had enough time to escape a burning plane only have it explode before they themselves could make it out.

A part of me can't help but wonder what's going on now with our men and women waging a war against on terror on foreign soil so that we don't have to face one on our own. And I wonder why the deeds of selfless courage that are doubtless happening don't get reported, or what the real story behind some of what does get reported is.

It doesn't help that I've been watching band of brothers lately.

It's Christmas morning and I hope everyone stateside has a chance to spend it with family and friends. And when you see someone in uniform, thank them, because they are why you can. In fact, between the presents and the food, and whatever traditions you have, say a prayer thank God that you live in a country where you can freely celebrate his son's birthday, then ask him to protect the men and women who are keeping it that way.

To our armed service personal, I offer my thanks and gratitude and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Safe return,

God Bless.
Matthew Furukawa,
Christmas 2007

DHL gets Coal this year,

Right, I just finished a long ranting (it was at least two pages long) post about shipping companies and Christmas, but I'll sum it up as such, DHL is getting coal this year, and next time place your orders 3 weeks in advanced, and next day shipping apparently isn't, even when you have an entire week to get it.

I deleted the rant by the way, I just felt like venting.

Acoustic Set

Oh the Irony.

A few posts back I mentioned our awesome acoustic set and the fact that my wonderful percussionist was out that week.

Ever get that feeling?

Because Said percussionist is at home with their family for Christmas, now I knew this was going to occur, twas planned for months, well I'd guess about 3 weeks ago we decided to make this Sunday another Acoustic set to help expedite Tear-Down and packing as we're in a larger facility for Christmas Eve. (Side note, if you're in the Spotsylvania Area for Christmas come on by we'll be at MAssapponax high school Service Starts at 6:30 sharp, I would recommend getting there around 6:00 so you have time to park, etc).

The short version, hand drums for me again tomorrow. Thankfully the set we have is one that should be much easier on my hands. We're doing Joy to the World, Enough and Welcome to our World, the last of which has no drums at all, hopefully my next post will say how it wasn't near as bad as last time and that my hands don't hurt at all. (Cue hysterical laughter here)

Right,

Current Stats:
Reading: The Ant and the Elephant (I'd misplaced my copy and I'm finishing it up now)
Listening to: Something be Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (Not sure what the title is, yay internet radio)
Watching: Band of Brothers, (though not at this very moment).

Simply Christmas!

Our current series at Lifepoint leading up to Christmas Eve service is Simply Christmas, with all the commercialism, and general business of this time of year, it's a chance to focus on the real reason for Christmas.

For me every Sunday has been a good refresher, between practices, work, Christmas parties cooking and baking for said parties I know for a fact that I needed that.

3 more days till Simply Christmas, Spotsylvania's Christmas Eve service!

I can't wait I'm so excited to see what God is going to do this year.

I have an earlier version of this song on my BOCA humor CD, but I thought it'd be appropriate for only a few days before Christmas.

~Matt

Monday evening Reflections

I guess I should Call it Tuesday Morning, at this point.

I'll post later when I'm more coherent, but I wanted to say that yesterday's worship set was amazing.

Angels we have heard on high (A slightly modern-fied version by Jeremy, our worship pastor)
Go Tell it on the Mountain, The Big Daddy Weave Version, (which is now my favorite Christmas song to play)
Amazing Grace, The Passion/My Chains are gone arrangement (Now THIS was a God thing, we had no idea that Pastor Floyd had renamed the service simply amazed until after we had already finished this song!)
finally we did
I Celebrate the Day by Relient K

The entire service was, simply amazing.
More when I'm not existing on Caffeine

Friday Afternoon Leadership...

I wanted to post a few notes from the Leadership Conference I was at this past weekend, but life has been in my way all week. (In point of fact I'm staring at the sea of chaos that is my office that I'll be ORGANIZING this evening), but I digress.

7 Laws of Critical Focus (I believe taken from the book Critical Choices, which is now on my To Read list)
1) Our Most Recent Experiences influence what we focus on.
2) What We Focus on determines what we believe
3) What we Believe Determines what we expect.
4) We see what we expect to see.
5) We tend to filter out what we don't expect to see.
6) The more we see the more options we have available.
7) We have the power to choose what we focus on.

Ever notice how people who expect bad things to happen seem to have more bad things happen to them?
How people who focus on things going right seem to have things fall into place?
Doesn't this explain a lot?

Or for laws 2-5 tell me if this isn't true.
Think about when you last bought a car.
Now Since purchasing that car have you noticed that the same make/model of car is EVERYWHERE?
Case in point. I used to drive a Mazda Protege, and saw them all over. After buying my Alero, (Which up to this point I had never seen another Alero on the road period) they were everywhere, including two others in our neighborhood, one which is exactly the same as mine! (Two door, white with a wing). Now did two other people run out the same day I did and buy an Alero at the same time selling their proteges? No, the only difference is that my focus shifted, and I naturally began filtering out what I used to focus on.

I've got one more set of notes I wanted to pull out but I'll save them for a later Post, for now I have an office taunting me.

Recent Stats:
Listening To: Go Tell it On the Mountain by Big Daddy Weave
Reading: In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy day.
Watching: Clip of Gavin Harrison and Porcupine Tree from Drummerworld dot com

Snicker

For the Record this was emailed to me and I had to share it.
For My Liberal Friends:

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."

For My Conservative Friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Forget Milk, Got Rice?

I'm all about improving my vocabulary, and this site that I got off of the Gadling blog not only helps in that aspect, but apparently donates rice to needy (I read starving) areas. Normally I'd question and research a "donate food to the needy" website (especially before mentioning it on my own blog, or linking to it), but in this case there's no money involved. Just brain power.