response

The Creative Process of our new Genesis set ...

I’ve had the best time over the past several months working and brainstorming with our team on how we could change our Genesis set as we move into the temptation and fall of man. We’ve all been really proud of the set that has been up for the past several months and wanted to find a way to continue using that set but turn it into something that is “not quite right.” As we began to study how the fall of man changed the nature of our relationship with God, we wanted the set to symbolize that as well.

Following that train of thought we threw around several ideas including one of shredding the flats to show how mankind destroyed what God had created. Thinking “practically” ... since the flats we have are so versatile we really didn’t want to ruin them! Instead we decided to turn them on their sides. Just like in the garden, what was is now different—what was vertical has become horizontal. They’re the same flats but now they are situated in a way that was not the original intent.  

The creative process is always a learning process, and over the past couple of weeks I’ve been learning more about my position with God—who I am and who I was created to be. It’s sounds funny to say that I’ve gained spiritual knowledge from some cloth, paint, wood, and a video projector, but it’s true. Although I am fallen, because of Christ, I am redeemed and being restored.

- Joe Blair, Director of Production

How We Got Here (the story behind Fellowship Songs)

It was May of 2008 and Jennifer and I were spending a week at her family farm near St. Louis when Rob Howard phoned me to ask if I would lead worship at Fellowship the following weekend. All four of the leaders were out of town and he’d gotten my name from Dennis Worley as a possible guest leader. I sensed the Lord telling me this was something I should do so I drove home early to be able to accept. A few weeks later Rob asked me to lunch, and over fish tacos in Franklin, explained that Nathan and Christy were being led to Atlanta and that he’d like me to consider becoming a Worship Leader/Artist-in-Residence at Fellowship. It had been over a year since Jennifer and I (and Hutch) had been back from our six months in Africa and we’d been waiting for the Lord’s leading into what was next for our family. We’d been praying through every opportunity that life presented, each time sensing the Lord’s answer was “no.” We knew we were right to wait, but we had no idea what we were waiting for. This time things were different and I told Rob, fighting back tears, that I was finally sensing Yahweh say “yes.”

A few weeks later Ronnie, Carl, Jason, and I met with Rob at Jason’s studio to discuss the next season of worship music at Fellowship. We had a nice time of planning and prayer and agreed to meet regularly on a monthly basis. Our next meeting was a month later and Rob had just returned from the Catalyst conference in Atlanta. Visibly emotional he explained how he longed for the Fellowship community to go much deeper in our worship together. We agreed that it needed to start with us so we decided to commit to one morning a week that November to get to know each other and seek vision about the future. 

During those four weeks something bigger happened, something we didn’t expect. We didn’t talk about worship but instead we talked about our families, our childhoods, and our hardships. As the four of us shared our lives with each other we realized how similar our fears and expectations are. God gave us to each other as a gift and we recognized it quickly. At the end of November we decided to continue our weekly breakfasts together and over the next 52 weeks we met together each Tuesday to grow deeper.

Fellowship Songs is a result of the friendship and affinity those mornings together created. A recording was never on Rob’s agenda for us as leaders. It was birthed out of a deep friendship and spiritual bond between four guys who had been vulnerable with each other. During our time together God planted in us a desire for Fellowship to have it’s own songs, a way to express our unique heart as a body. Exactly a year after those first breakfasts we were in the studio recording those songs for our church, and last week you got a glimpse of where we’ve come and where we are going.

If you happen to be at Cracker Barrel at 7:30am on Tuesdays you’ll still find us there, center section, third table by the window, Lori filling our coffee cups. We probably won’t be talking about worship. Most likely we’ll be talking about our kids or our wives or our jobs. And in that time God will be doing something new underneath, something we can’t see, something sure to surprise us later.

-  Jeromy Deibler

Fellowship Songs: Volume 1

About a year and half ago the worship leaders (Carl Cartee, Jeromy Deibler, Ronnie Freeman, Jason Ingram) and I began using the language “a worship vocabulary that’s unique to Fellowship” as we talked about worship songs. It is our desire to sing songs about our experiences as a church--what God is teaching us and how we’re growing. Also, it’s our desire to sing songs that are written by our leaders as they’re living this journey with us and their hearts will often reflect ours. Over the past year, the majority of the songs we’ve been teaching were written by our worship leaders. Several times a week we get emails or voicemails wondering where a recording of one of those songs could be found. Finally, that’s possible! This weekend we release Fellowship Songs, Volume 1 … five songs written by our worship leaders … a worship vocabulary that’s unique to Fellowship.

Our first priority in making this CD is to put these songs into the hands of Fellowship. We’re excited for our church to be able to carry the songs with them throughout the week. We’re also praying these songs will be used to edify the Church. I can’t wait to share them with Worship Pastor friends of mine. Above all we pray that God is glorified and our offering to Him is pleasing in His sight.

---  Rob Howard

Join us this week as all four worship leaders are together to lead worship, and as Fellowship Songs, Volume 1 releases. The CDs are available for $5 and contain the songs: “The Saving One,” “Forever Reign,” “Bless the Lord,” “The Greatness of Our God” and “All Things New.”

 

Worship & Arts Greece Mission Trip 2009

We returned a few weeks ago from a worship mission trip to Greece--a team of eight of us (Stephen Rush, John Mays, Rob Howard, Colton Hammond, Mark Hammond, Chad Cates, Carl Cartee and Dan Vorm). We spent nine days with Hellenic Ministries in Athens leading worship and a worship retreat with thirty young adults, teaching and equipping. [check out some of our pictures in the W&A Greece Trip 2009 gallery]

I was knocked out to learn that Greece is such rocky soil. These missionaries we met have been digging in the trenches for God for years--faithfully giving their lives away--yet there are only an estimated 20,000 believers among the population of 11 million in Greece. We started our week by playing a concert for 200 Muslim refugees. The ministry feeds a love meal and offers showers every Monday night. They invite the refugees back for a Bible study on Wednesday. They average about 20. One of the missionaries, Heath, from Canada, said he's been teaching the intensive Bible study for two years. When we asked him what kind of fruit he's seen he said no one has come to faith. Then he said, "We're just sowing seeds, the fruit takes a long time to produce."

The faith and trust of the missionaries was contagious. They told story after story about God's faithful provision. They have a 70-foot sailboat and when we asked how they got it, they couldn't tell the story fast enough. The leader of the ministry, Jonathan, told about his father who received a call from a couple that wanted to join the ministry. They said they felt God was leading them to carry Bibles to the Greek islands--they only had one problem, they didn't have a boat. Jonathan's dad said to join the ministry and God would provide the boat--that simple. They did, and not too long after they got a call from Santa Cruz, CA offering them the 70-foot sailboat.

I wrote down so many stories they told, and they left me wanting more--to live a bigger story, to tell the stories God is doing, to live in a way that those stories are seen--that God is seen clearly, live to risk it all, live that my kids would see us living a bigger story and desire that in their lives too, that they would live to tell their own.

I'm still asking the question--like the boat and so many other stories from our friends in Greece--what will I trust God for this year? What will you trust God for this year? He is faithful. We saw that firsthand in Greece.

- Rob

The Beginning - Amelia Moore

A Moment. In time. Creation.

Photograph Creation. Simple Assignment. I experience and interact with the world around me everyday. Flowers, squirrels, trees, clouds, grass, people. I’m used to photographing children running about or the hustle of an event. Stuff standing still, easy enough!

But as I began to look for ways to capture the Biblical account of Creation through photography, I realized that what I experience today is so unlike the raw, majestic, beauty of pure creation, untouched by man. Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of man: Cornfields orderly growing in the sun. Horses grazing in fenced fields. Puddles by construction zones. Light from candles, flashlights and fireworks. Cut grass. Piles of fruit. Animals at the zoo. Even flowers in a flowerbed. That’s not the “creation” I wanted to photograph. Would I have to travel to the middle of a forest to find what I thought I wanted?

So I questioned “The Beginning”: Where did light come from? Were there clouds at the beginning of creation? What was the sky like? What was weather like? Creation didn’t know storms. Earth was untouched by footprints and fires; by disasters and mountains. What would it have been like to explore, stand, breathe, listen, see, and witness GOD as HE CREATED?

I was humbled. I am incapable of understanding “The Beginning.” Of capturing this profound truth that I take for granted every moment: for the miracle of life and world that sustains it.

So I put down my camera in defeat. This assignment was too big for me. I wanted to capture something that depicted the raw moments of creation. But God prompted and I tried to listen. I read and re-read, outlined and looked again at The Beginning. “God, what do you want me to learn?”

The creation story is very abstract when you really think about it: Light coming from darkness. Man created from dust. God resting. How could I represent those moments? So I had to get creative and put into practice some of photography’s technical techniques I don’t get to use often: long shutter speeds to capture the movement of light (for light around a man, fireworks and lighting). A tight depth of field to isolate a raindrop on a leaf. And a macro lens to fill the frame with colors.

What I so love about Photography is that it allows me to slow down and explore, ponder and create; to capture moments of time that are otherwise fleeting and lost. It the midst of a busy life, I have to stop and look and think before I take a photo. I have to walk somewhere; stop my car; get down on my knees or climb a hill. I have to look at details, find the right light or try again. So that’s what I set out to do: really look at my world, The Creation now, to capture moments around me that reflect the creation I know: wheat, water, eyes, color, rain.

And in those still moments, I got to witness God create.

-  Amelia Moore
www.mintandsage.com
www.ameliajmoore.com