National Worship Leaders Conference Day 3

Today was a great end to an incredible conference.  The morning started with a time of praise and worship lead by the following people.

Christy Nockels

As Watermark, Christy and her husband, Nathan, recorded five albums with Rocketown Records. They composed a journey full of songs, 7 of which were #1 radio singles. They also had numerous Dove Awards nominations, including Christy's nominations for Female Vocalist of the Year, and their album A Grateful People was up for both Inspirational Album of the Year and Praise & Worship Album of the Year. After 5 albums, Christy and Nathan felt led to end their Watermark season to focus on other areas of ministry giving Christy more availability to focus on leading worship, teaching at various women's events, but most importantly, time to pour in to her most treasured legacy, her three children, Noah Luke (9), Elliana (7) and Annie Rose (2).

Christy and Nathan have also continued to serve Passion Conferences for the past 12 years and in 2008, they moved to Atlanta, GA to be a founding family of Passion City Church. As an extension of that church family, Christy and Nathan enjoy collaborating with their long time friends Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman, and the two are often seen on the road, singing, accompanying and supporting their fellow worship leaders. Along with the move to Atlanta, Christy has joined the sixstepsrecords family and released her first solo worship project, "Life Light Up", produced by Nathan, in June of 2009. Christy's heart through leading worship and song writing is to help people communicate intimately with the living God, and to leave a legacy of proclaiming Jesus' fame to this generation.

David Nasser

Born in Iran, David and his family escaped when he was nine years old with hopes to find a new life of freedom in the United States. A few years later, David met true freedom through a new life in Christ at age eighteen. Part speaker, author, visionary and ALL minister, David Nasser's greatest passion is to connect people to the living God. David uses relevant methods to communicate the life-changing messages of the Gospel to over 700,000 people annually. David's next book which will share his personal testimony and struggle with religion releases in October 2009 from Baker Publishing. www.davidnasser.com

After the morning worship and message I attended the following educational tracks.

Leading Worship In-Between the Songs

Worship Leadership Track

Curt Coffield

Are you afraid of speaking or praying in-between songs? Do

you find yourself fumbling nervously through the moments

in-between? In this workshop, Curt will give practical instruction

on crafting and delivering brief teaching moments within worship

services. Often worship leaders can fall into the trap of being

more “lead singer” than “worship leader.” Concise teaching

moments and segues that effectively connect the themes in

worship can add much depth to the experience. Come and grow

in your ability to assist worshipers in engaging their hearts and

minds in moments of worship. This class will assist you in being

an even more effective pastoral leader of worship the next time

you lead.

A Crash Course in Reading Music

Worship Leadership Track

Tony Guerrero

Ever wonder what all those black dots are on the page? Feel like

a fish out of water around other musicians? Or do you just want

to further your skills as a worshiper, musician, or singer? Even

if you have never read a note of music before, Tony Guerrero

guarantees that you will walk out of this class several giant steps

closer to being a music-reading pro! Tony eliminates the

theoretical details that slow you down and gives you the practical

basics that will get you further down this road than you might

have believed possible.

I took this class because I thought maybe I would learn a couple of tricks that would make things easier for me.  Well no such luck, it became clear that I knew all of this information and a ton more, having read music since about the age of 8.   I guess it just comes down to practice and practice and practice no magic bullet it is not the reading of music that is that hard for me, it is the transferring of what I read to the instrument that I am playing that takes the most practice.  I was surprised at how many people attended the class that really didn’t read music, they are serving God in churches all over the country out of obedience to him and he is equipping them with what they need to do his will.  Regardless of if they read music or only chord charts or play by ear,  we are justified by Christ and those that are justified by him will be equipped by him to do his work.  The fact that people were attending shows their commitment to honor Christ by continuing to learn how to serve him better.

Songwriting

Worship Songwriting Track

Paul Baloche

With well over 200 recorded songs to his credit, including “Open

the Eyes of My Heart,” “Hosanna,” “Above All,” and “Your Name,”

Paul will give a personal overview of his approach to writing

songs and choruses. Learn to hear “the song of the Lord” and

how to craft it for others to sing easily.

For the evening worship and speaker we had the following people

Paul Baloche

As a Dove-Award winning songwriter, Paul has written hundreds of songs that have been featured on a variety of albums including the platinum selling WoW Worship CD's and the Time Life - Songs 4 Worship series. He has written many popular songs including "Open the Eyes of my Heart", "Above All", "Praise Adonai", "Offering", and "My Reward". For fifteen years, he has served as the Worship Pastor at Community Christian Fellowship in Lindale, Texas and is not only a songwriter, but a musician, clinician, recording artist, and producer.

Buddy Owens (PA)

Buddy Owens is pastor of Spiritual Growth at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. He is the author of The Way of a Worshiper: Discover the Secret to Friendship with God, and the General Editor of The NIV Worship Bible.

Buddy had a pretty powerful message about being filled up with the spirit and used a great visual example of how we get bogged down with filth and other distractions.  Buddy brought BEER and actually opened it in the Church (it was used in his illustration but I couldn't help thinking some people I know would loose the entire message right at that point and spend the rest of their week just rambling on and on about a beer being brought into a church and how many ways that point could have been made with out it, blah blah blah)

It was a great conference and a wonderful night to end the whole experience.  I find myself a bit perplexed by the things that I hear over and over again at this conference and hear being echoed over and over again by leaders in many of the materials that I read and listen to that I just don’t hear at home.  I am still trying to figure that one out.  I pray and ask for spiritual wisdom and direction and discernment from the Holy Spirit.

I have much more to pour through and present in many ways over time.  There are a bunch of notes on each of the classes that I attended with a tremendous amount of information that I will try and give highlights on.  I will say that anyone that is interested in Worship there is something here for you.  There was training for Senior Pastors, Youth Pastors, Worship Pastors, Creative Ministries, Technology and how to steward that in a Christ honoring way, much much information and a great opportunity for anyone.  I am already looking at how, my wife and I, might attend next year.