The conference ended last night (late), and I didn't get time yesterday to comment, so here's a quick recap:

1. Morning worship time with Christy and Nathan Nockels--amazing.

2. Workshop on loops and multi-tracks in worship--quite cool, with freebies!

3. New Song Café--more intimate setting with Nathan and Christy Nockels and Leeland, with whom I had a pleasant chat before the session started; the artists performed some of their newest material and talked about the songwriting process--way cool.

4. Evening worship time with a whole bunch of people, including Glenn Packiam, Vicki Beeching, Freddy Rodgriquez, Donnie McClurkin and many others--very cool (but very long :-)

5. Great conversation at dinner with worship leaders from Texas and Minnesota

6. Best of all--on the morning of Day 2, God set things up so that I "happened" to park right next to a dear friend whom I haven't seen in several years, and we got to hang out together for the next three days of the conference. Thanks, God!

Next year there will be four National Worship Leader Conferences, in different parts of the country, all shortened by one day except for the Kansas City conference (yes, they're coming back!), which will be the same length as this year! If you live in Southern California, New Mexico, Pennsylvania or here in the heartland, you'll have a conference relatively nearby to attend, and I recommend you plan to attend.

National Worship Leader Conference site

Writing from Day 4--a full day behind, of course, because each day has been jammed with activity. Yesterday at the conference was a great day--three worship times, some really great breakout session content, and I have been blessed over the last couple of days to hang out during the conference with a very dear friend whom I have not seen in a long time.

The day began with a worship set from Travis Cotrell, who I believe leads worship from time to time for Beth Moore teaching events. His music was heavily-laced with Scripture, and he is a great worship leader. I was drawn in from the word "go." The worship set was followed by an amazing talk by Marva Dawn, who brought the other side of the coin that Leonard Sweet had flipped the previous day--while he contended that the image was going to be the dominant communication medium of the near future, Ms. Dawn encouraged us to not neglect the power of words, and of the Word.

Later in the day, we had another worship/teaching time, led by Michael W. Smith--it was just Smitty and his piano, and it was pretty cool. This was followed by teaching from Scotty Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Franklin, Tennessee. (I'll confess that I was in a bit of a lunch coma at the time, so I was having a hard time tracking with him. But in my defense, I didn't get much sleep the night before, either :-)

I attended a really interesting session on a new way to create worship music charts for the worship team--I can hardly wait to begin converting our charts and using the new system.

The evening worship concert was opened by Matt Maher and his band--I had attended an acoustic guitar workshop earlier, led by Matt's guitar player--and he played a very good set. I was unaware that Matt Maher had written "Your Grace is Enough," yet another song that seems to have been made much more popular by virtue of having been recorded by Chris Tomlin.

After a brief set by newcomer Meredith Andrews (who has an impressively powerful voice), I really enjoyed the worship set led by Paul Baloche and his band. Baloche is a bit goofy on stage and times, and that is both entertaining and disarming, and I enjoyed hearing again some of his more recent worship songs--two or three of which I had heard for the first time in this very same auditorium about nine months earlier.

Good day.

I'm writing this on Day 3, actually, because I was so exhausted when I got home last night that I didn't even crack open the laptop (a relatively rare thing for me), and connectivity at the conference yesterday was not great. Today, however, I've managed to get a decent connection at the conference, so I'm writing while waiting for the beginning of an afternoon workshop (on new media and the online church, as it turns out).

When I came to NWLC, I fully expected, after looking at the lineup of worship artists that were to perform, that my favorite worship leader of the week would be David Crowder--that turned out to be true, pretty much, until last night, when Laura Story did a set. She's the author of "Indescribable," made popular by Chris Tomlin--her version last night was the best I've heard.

Although I haven't exactly been able to put my finger on the reasons why, she struck me as perhaps the most authentic worship leader I've heard in a while. This is not to say that DCB was not authentic, nor that the other folks on the schedule yesterday (Aaron Schust, Chuck Girard, Jeremy Riddle) weren't authentic, but I guess I was just able to connect with God better during her set. That might have as much to do with where I was, spiritually, but whatever the reason, it was a moving set.

After Laura played a few songs, Mac Powell came out with Trevor Morgan, Bethany Olds, Brian Taylor and guess who--Laura Story, on bass (both electric and upright). They played some stuff from Glory Revealed and the new Glory Revealed II, and theirs was also a great set.

Earlier in the day I heard a general session talk by Leonard Sweet ("Be There"), and attended several workshops--one of which was pretty lame (which surprised me); the others were good. I won't tell you which one was the lame one, but the workshops I attended were on ancient/future worship, the technology of art in worship, and biblical perspectives on songwriting. After I've had a chance to review my notes, I'll try write more about the content of those talks.

I'm attending the National Worship Leader Conference (NWLC) in Leawood, Kansas, July 20-24, presented by Worship Leader Magazine. I'll try to write about my experiences there as the week goes on. This evening was the opening night of the conference--the next three days will be all-day affairs, quite literally, beginning at 9:00 a.m. each day and concluding (theoretically) at 9:30 p.m.

Since I live within about an hour of the conference site, I'm not staying there--I'm driving back and forth each morning and evening (bummer), but at least I get to sleep in my own bed, and the cost of driving every day is nowhere near the cost of lodging.

I've been to three worship conferences before this one--the first two were Willow Creek Worship Arts Conferences in Chicago, several years ago, and the most recent one was a Worship Leader Institute last fall, at the same site as the NWLC--the Church of the Resurrection (CoR) in Leawood, Kansas, a southern suburb of Kansas City.

I like conferences, generally speaking, because even though they rarely provide content that can't be obtained from other sources, they also provide the attender with an opportunity to get away from the normal routine long enough to actually sit down and learn something new. If I weren't attending this conference, there is no way that my normal work schedule would allow me to spend this kind of time "charging my batteries," as it were.

But the very thing that makes these conferences so rich is also a liability, in a way--there is so much content presented in such a short span of time that there is virtually no way to benefit properly from everything you hear and learn. About the best one can hope for is that a little bit of what you learn at such events will stick with you long enough for you to get home and apply it. So each day I'm going to be looking for the one or two most important things that I can take home.

Tonight was the opening session--a Night of Worship with a very diverse group of worship leaders. The evening of worship was opened by Evie (you've got to be a certain age to even know who that is), who was followed by Bill Batstone, Anthony Evans and Tommy Walker. Pastor Greg Laurie preached a very good message, the chief point of which is that even when we don't feel much like worship, worship is exactly the right thing to do. Pastor Laurie spoke from painful personal experience, having lost his 33-year old son last year in an automobile accident. The final part of the evening was a worship set led by David Crowder*Band.

All of the worship artists were good--some (most notably Evans and the DCB gang) were really excellent. Pastor Laurie's message was also excellent.

The next three days will be a flurry of general sessions, break-out workshops, and three more Nights of Worship, featuring a variety of artists and speakers--it's really an amazing line-up of people, and I'm looking forward to hearing Mac Powell, Christy Nockels, Paul Baloche, and Micheal W. Smith, among many others, including Dr. Leonard Sweet, David Nasser, Sally Morganthaler, and many, many more.

One of the hardest things about attending one of these events is the vast collection of resources that is always available at the book tables. CDs, DVDs, books, t-shirts, hats, and a variety of other kinds of resources tempt me to whip out the plastic and have a hey-day, but I usually try to resist, figuring that if there's something I really can't live without, I can always get it cheaper from Amazon. But tonight, I couldn't resist--I bought a book by the Midnight Oil guys about creating visual imagery for worship--it includes a DVD with various tutorials, and I can hardly wait to dig in.

The theme passage for this years NWLC is Psalm 90, the Psalm that Isaac Watts drew on for his hymn, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past." Several of the workshops in the line-up are related to the notion of intergenerational worship, or a revival of very ancient worship styles and such, so it is an appropriate theme for worship--past, present and future.

A mere six and a half hours from now, I will be on the road back to Kansas City for Day 2--so I'll wrap this up for now. (If I can ever get a decent wireless connection at CoR, I'll try to blog directly from the conference site as the day goes on.)

I'll keep you posted!

I'd love to move our worship team from conventional floor wedges to in-ear monitors (IEMs), but after a few hours of research, I realize that I've got a lot to learn about this stuff. If you're in the same boat, read on, because later in this post I'm going to give you a list of links to online resources for information about in-ear monitors that might help you figure out what's right for your team.

I've been both playing live music and mixing live sound off and on for about 30 years, and if I had to pick one thing that has the potential for making things frustrating for everyone, it would almost have to be monitors. In all of those years, I've never had the opportunity to use anything but floor wedges for monitoring. Anyone who does this knows that monitors can be a source of great frustration for everyone involved, because it seems like they're never quite right, and about all you can hope for is to create a monitor mix that doesn't completely suck.

I'm probably overstating that, but if you've been on either side of that equation (as a performer or sound tech), or both, you know what I mean. It seems virtually impossible to mix monitors to the satisfaction of all the performers on the stage, or the monitors interact badly with the mains, or the EQ on the monitors is impossible to get right, or...you get the idea.

In-ear monitoring systems can potentially solve some of these problems. In-ear monitors can:

• Reduce overall stage volume for performers
• Provide each performer with a more customized monitor mix
• Eliminate problems with montors/mains interaction

That said, there are issues with in-ear systems as well:

• They're expensive, starting at around $600 per person
• They can be a little complicated to configure, compared with traditional stage monitors
• They can make communication between performers more difficult

I'm still learning about this stuff, and I've got a long way to go before (a) we're ready to jump into IEMs and (b) we're able to afford IEMs. You might be there, too, so in the meantime, here are some places you can learn more about this technology. Some of them are manufacturer-specific, so you'll want to take some of the content with a grain of salt, but there is still a lot of useful stuff in this list.

ABC's of Configuring a Personal Monitor System
Shure Guide to Personal Monitors (PDF)
January 27, Aviom Web seminar on Digital Snakes (and the Aviom monitor system)
In-Ear Monitors: Advantages and Disadvantages
The Art of Monitoring and Mixing with Headphones
Let's Hear It: Introduction to Personal Monitoring Systems (Shure)
Making the Wedgeless Transition
Focus Mode for In-Ear Monitors
Houses of Worship Podcast: In-Ear Monitoring
Grinning from Ear Bud to Ear Bud
In-Ear Monitor Tutorial (PDF)
Audiology Online: In-Ear Monitors for Musicians

If you've got links to other resources, please share them!

If you're a regular reader of this blog, and particularly if you have registered to be a logged-in user, I wanted to let you know that I am making some changes, and your login will be going away soon. When I began this blog, I had envisioned a certain direction for it, in which there would be members-only content and privileges, but as it has turned out, it doesn't seem necessary any more. Many of you have had accounts that have been essentially unused because there really wasn't any particular benefit.

So, I've decided to do away with the user accounts and simply encourage you all to subscribe via the RSS feed--just click the big blue feed button at the top of the right sidebar. This will simplify things for me and for you, I think, and if you subscribe via something like Google Reader (or your favorite news reader application), or even via e-mail, you'll always know whenever there is new content here.

Making this change will also (I hope) reduce the number of bogus account registrations I have to deal with--spammers drive me nuts. Comments will be moderated--that's just how we'll have to do it for now, but I'm hopeful that won't discourage you from contributing your ideas.

Some content that is here, such as the audio content from the Bible teaching I've been doing in recent years, may be moved to a new site at some point. I'll let you know if/when that happens.

Thanks for reading!

(Photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives)