Today was hard.
It was one of those days where it starts to hit you that something big is happening.
I was driving out to Wasilla to mow a friend’s lawn while they’re out of town and You Hold Me Now came on my iPod.
I was singing and worshiping and during the midst of that song, it started to hit me that in a few months I’m going to be leaving here.
I have no idea when I’ll be back.
I’m not second guessing anything.
This is just that this is the biggest and hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
There will be more days like this.
But I don’t doubt for a second that this is what I’m supposed to be doing.

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Last night, I was helping at a little, mini-retreat for the group of student leaders that is starting up for our senior high youth group. One of the best things of the overnighter was choosing to sleep outside under the stars. My humble setup was on the deck upstairs.

I fell asleep to this…

… and woke up to this.

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There was no youth group yesterday, so I committed to playing big church with Autumn. Kristian, the drummer I’ve been fortunate to have also filled in on drums. Our set this week looked like this:

Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee – Passion version
Hosanna – Brooke Ligertwood (Hillsong United)
Father Let Me Dedicate – Passion version
Take My Life – Traditional/Tomlin (Passion version)

This Sunday was quite different as there was a lot of talking about ministry opportunities throughout the church and ways to get involved. There were also videos and interviews of people that show how God can take simple ideas and turn them into reality. Next week, it’s back to youth group as we kick off the new school year with our “move up” Sunday.

It’ll be good.

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part of Sunday Setlists at FredMcKinnon.com

Over the last few days, I’ve been working pretty diligently on crafting a song that I’ve had floating in my head for a while now. I found a neat program called Guitar Pro that lets you write the music, and then it’ll actually play it back for you so you can see how it sounds. (See how is sounds? Whatever.) It’s great for writing down multiple tracks and then listening to them all together without spending a lot of time in GarageBand recording and editing them to fit over each other.

I used this program in the past during high school in my wanna-be-metallica-style-show-how-good-we-are band and liked it a lot. I found it again and decided to try it out again, this time on a Mac, and I now remember why I liked it so much. It makes writing so much easier, and you can get a much, much better feel for how everything sounds together. It also fuels musical creativity since you have a lot of control over arrangements and styles that you wouldn’t normally try. You can even write drum tracks in it. One of the fun things I’ve also been able to do is find some old tracks of my high school band that we wrote on Guitar Pro and listen to them again. They were really awesome, in a really lame sort of way.

What fuels your creativity?

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This is one of my favorite songs from the new Hillsong album. Take a few minutes and listen to this song and just be.

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I got this package in the mail yesterday from Centricity Music. In it was the five CD’s I won in the Sunday Setlists 1 Year Anniversary Celebration. Three of the five albums are not in stores yet.

Of the four artists included in the pack, I was most excited about the two Matt Papa records. His music was recommended to me a few years back but I never got around to buying one of his albums. The album I’ve been listening to first, the new one called Your Kingdom Come in stores August 25, is thoroughly amazing. Quite a bit of the lyrics to the songs on it are straight up scripture, and it’s arranged in a really neat and fresh way. It also has a few short tracks between songs similar to the David Crowder Band’s A Collision. I’m stoked that the CD’s are here and I really want to listen to each one in detail since I’m not very familiar with any of the artists.

Is there any new music you recently found that you’re totally digging right now? Who?

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The new Hillsong live album, Faith+Hope+Love, came out today, (or last night for those in Alaska) and I felt that it might be a good thing to chime in with some of my initial thoughts on the album, having listened to it all the way through.

It’s also a slow day as far as ideas go to keep up with NaBloPoMo.

There’s a lot of high expectations around this album from the guys down under. After the awesome-epicness that was This is Our God.

I think that off the bat, my favorite song on the CD is I Will Exalt You. Brooke Fraser sings it (that’s enough of a reason right there) and it has a beautiful and simple feel to it that build intensity but never reaches a full on anthem sound like Hillsong does so well.

I also really, really like You Hold Me Now at the end of the CD. This song is also on the United CD that came out this year, but the combined placement and arrangement of the song on this album made for a truly awesome time of worship. There’s also the time at the end singing a part of the Lord’s prayer, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

The one little thing about this album that you’ll notice in contrast to the last few live albums if the flow of songs. This album was recorded on separate nights as opposed to one night like previous albums. This leads to a few spots where it abruptly changes and goes to the next song. Other than that though, I really like this album.

This is the 18th live worship album that Hillsong has done and it doesn’t show signs of stopping soon. Their songwriters continue to write incredible songs that people across the earth can worship to. This CD, like most, will get better the more it’s listened to and I’m excited for the new songs to sing to our Lord.

Go buy this album.

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Yesterday was a sad night. It was a good night, but it was also sad. It was the last youth group for our seniors who graduated this year, and thus it was the last time that the team that I’ve been blessed to lead for the last fourteen months got to play together as two of the team members graduated this year. For our setlist, we talked as a team about which songs over the past year have been our favorites to do and which ones felt like they had the most impact. We talked and decided that our set would be:

The Time Has Come – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)
Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
How Deep the Father’s Love For Us – Stuart Townend
From the Inside Out – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)

Yes, The Time Has Come is a pretty new song, but it’s one that we’ve really taken a liking to. It was also good to play it again this week as it got a little more ingrained in the memories of everyone. Like I’ve mentioned before, Marvelous Light has gained a lot of momentum in the months that it’s been a part of our list of songs. I still think that this song has the best pre chorus ever in saying, “Sin has lost its power. Death has lost its sting. From the gave You’ve risen victoriously.”

As a team, we’ve only done How Deep the Father’s Love for Us once, and that was when we led all three church services back in May. But it was a song that we liked, and it’s a great song to take a deep breath and just rest in the words of the song. We did it in a way that allowed a seamless transition into From the Inside Out, and Inside Out is a song that our team could play with our eyes closed and no preparation we’ve done it so many times. It’s definitely one of the top songs in our youth group and pretty much has been since introduced almost two years ago.

I’ve been amazingly blessed to lead this team and am very thankful for the time we’ve had to play and worship together. I pray that God will do big and mighty things in the lives of our seniors as they head off to college in the next few weeks.

The first youth group of the new school year is in two weeks and we’ll be in the process of raising up younger musicians to be a part of the team.

I’m excited to see what’s to come for this team.

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I was reading the student handbook for Hillsong College and came across the vision statement for Hillsong Church written by Brian Houston. It’s written more as a poem and is titled The Church that I See. Below are some excerpts.

I see a Church whose heartfelt praise and worship touches heaven and changes earth. Worship that influences the praises of people throughout the earth, exalting Christ, powerful songs of faith and hope
//
Yes, the Church that I see is so dependent on the Holy Spirit that nothing will stop it nor stand against it. A Church whose people are unified, praying and full of God’s Spirit.
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I see a Church so compassionate that people are drawn from impossible situations into a loving and friendly circle of hope, where answers are found and acceptance is given.
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I see a people so Kingdom minded that they will count whatever the cost and pay whatever the price to see revival sweep this land.
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I see a Church whose head is Jesus, whose help is the Holy Spirit and whose focus is the Great Commission.

My favorite line is that first one, worship that “touches heaven and changes earth”, because that’s exactly what our praises do. When we fully worship, we acknowledge that God is bigger than anything else in this world or in our lives. Darkness is pushed back when Jesus is lifted high.

Lift Him high today and change the world.

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In case you’re unfamiliar with the term NaBloPoMo, (and I don’t blame you if you are), it stands for National Blog Posting Month. It’s about getting in the habit of daily blogging, which given my constant feeling of, “What am I going to write about?”, I felt it would be a good idea to take the challenge of posting something, anything, everyday of August. I’m doing this challenge along with my good friends, Sarah and Mindy. I have no idea what I’m going to write for every day this month, but I’ll do my best to put something. This post will count for August 1.

Here’s to the next 30 days…

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