my tilt-shift perspective

A few months ago, I happened across a band’s blog where they had these really unique looking photos. When I first saw them, I thought I was seeing pictures taken from the Mister Roger’s Neighborhood intro (you remember how the show had all those miniature houses leading up to Fred’s house). This mystery effect causes full-sized photos to appear as pictures of miniature scale models simply by “shifting” the perspective in a photo.

Interesting.

Later, I googled it and found out that this effect is actually called tilt-shift. So later that night, I went on a bit of a tilt-shift binge (thank you flickr!) obsessively searching for photos. The next day I was so taken with tilt-shift that I completely forgot about it….

Until yesterday – I was doing some work, and suddenly the interweb took over and brought me to this site – artandmobile.com – and their FREE TiltShift app for your computer (you can also purchase their app here, if you have an iPhone). So I took a regular old photo from my Blackberry, and turned it an über-cool photo using the TiltShift app.

Here’s the before photo:

huskers_normal

And here is the after (using the TiltShift free app):
huskers_tiltshift

Pretty cool, huh?! I showed theses pictures to a few friends, and it opened up some interesting conversations regarding perspective and life. I won’t give you the long drawn out versions of our talks; I’ll just give you the thoughts and questions that drove these conversations:

1. Go Huskers! Okay…that was actually just my thought. Here’s a few others:

2. Maybe all the life issues that seem HUGE today would actually be quite small if we stepped back and took a different perspective on our situations? Or maybe if we took on someone else’s perspective? Or maybe if we just let the little things (the ones that take too much of our attention) fade out, blur, and take a back seat to the central focus of our lives?

That’s just my perspective – what’s yours?

Sunday [09.27.09]

setlist 09.27.09

We had a good, but different day at Heartland Academy Community Church yesterday. In both services, we had guest speakers (due to our Pastor having just had his achilles operated on this past week) and they were both powerful sermons. Then, at the end of the second service, we prayed over a lovely family from India – the Aldo Vargheses – who are returning home today.

Thanks for stopping by to check out our setlists from yesterday’s services. I have posted both our sets (below) complete with links to the songs –

am
1. (D) All Creatures Of Our God And King
2. (D) Let The Praises Ring
3. (G) Shout To The Lord
4. (D) Blessed Assurance
5. (D) Jesus, Name Above All Names (New Life Worship version)

pm
1. (D) Sing Sing Sing
2. (E) Forever
3. (F#) Greater Song// (Ab) My Romance
4. (F) No Sweeter Name// (G) Holy & Anointed// (A) Your Name

one last note: Later this week I will be putting out a new video to teach a cool version of a hymn we played last week – “Victory In Jesus”! Please stop back by to see how it comes out, and have a great week.

This post has a brought to you as part of the fun over at Fred McKinnon’s blog carnvial.

Sunday [09.20.09]

Unfortunately I did not get this linked to Fred McKinnon’s site for the Sunday Setlist fun, but I did want to post our set because it really was a great morning.

We replaced a few chords in “Victory In Jesus” to start the morning off and it came out very cool. Later this coming week I’ll post a video that shows how we played it. The rest of the set is listed below. Hope your week was great & be sure to check out what we did, leave a comment, or just look around.

1. (G) Victory In Jesus (video later this week)
2. (B) Counting On God
3. (B) Blessed Be Your Name
4. (E) I Surrender All
5. (E) Surrender (teaching video later this week)

Sunday [09.06.09] – guests galore

This must have been “Bring-Every-Guest-You-Know” Sunday because we had so many visitors in the morning service. We had family visiting us and we even had a visitor/guest musician today on the team. Let me introduce you him. His name is Steve Phillips…..Steve – everybody. Everybody – Steve. Now that you know each other, let me tell you a little about him. Steve is an accomplished saxophone player based out of Kansas City and playing each week at Kansas City Baptist Temple as the artist-in-residence. You can find out more about him on his website or on facebook or by listening to him on iTunes.

Sometimes with so many guests, worship can be a little difficult with people not knowing the songs or just trying to figure out what we are doing – But – worship was really great this morning. We started out a little “old school” on the first song and then just gathered people from there. Steve ended up playing a great intro-solo on the hymn “The Solid Rock” and just added a great feel to the morning. I hope your day was great too. As always, this setlist (see below) is part of the Fred McKinnon Sunday Setlist fun. Feel free to leave a comment, question, or just have a little redonk-u-lous saxophone player envy.

Sunday am

1. (D) This Is The Day/He Has Made Me Glad
2. (D) Majestic
3. (E) The Solid Rock
4. (E) You Are My All In All
5. (F) Saviour King

this is what we’ll be doing tonight….sunday evening setlist:

1. (G) I Saw The Light/I’ll Fly Away
(G) Happy Song (optional)
2. (G) I Have Found
3. (G) This Is Our God
4. (G) How Great Is Our God
5. (G) No Sweeter Name

Sunday [08.30.09]

I have taken a little break from Sunday Setlists the past two weeks as I have been busy between studio work, office hours, and leading our worship department. But this week, I’m jumping back in. Unfortunately, during my absence, I missed the opportunity to introduce/welcome one of my friends and mentors, Harold Forbis. He has recently joined in the setlist blogging over at Fred McKinnon’s site, so be sure to stop by Harold’s site to meet him, see his setlists, and check out his teachings as well. Now for the setlist fun…

We started off our Sunday evening service with Let It Rise as a slow chorus (with lots of keys/synth pad) and then kicked it up for a night of high-energy praise! We introduced Shout Praise (from CompassionArt – a great project!) and the congregation jumped right in and learned it quickly. At the end of the song, we accelerated into Shout Of The King and then ended it with a loud shout. It was a powerful moment for our church and it stretched them to continue their praise as the band dropped out. This continued on for a little while (again, definitely a stretching moment for our church family) and from there, we went into a great time of being with God in worship. Below is our setlist for our evening service and all the links will take you to previews of the song. Be sure to check out the video (below) of another church leading “Shout Praise”. It’s a great song and one you may want to consider in your upcoming setlists.

1. (F) Let It Rise

2. (G) Shout Praise

3. (G) Shout Of The King

4. (G) Everlasting God

5. (D) At The Foot Of The Cross

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to say hi, leave a comment, question, or just enjoy reading through our setlist. Be sure to check out Fred’s site and have a great week!

– danieljohn



Sunday [08.09.09]

Welcome to another recap of the Sunday setlists, sponsored by Fred McKinnon. Now for the recap – great morning set today! I was encourage because we had our younger band playing together with our new(ish) worship leaders and they did a great job together. Right from the outset they challenged the congregation to truly worship and yet still maintained a real posture of serving.

I have been continuing (due to a large number of visitors in our morning services) to choose songs that are a little older and more familiar for our visitors. What makes this fun for us is now we are beginning to arrange/re-arrange theses songs with chord changes, voicings, and variations in melody lines. Then, in the evening services, we normally “pick up the pace” and put together a set geared towards our church family.

Below is our setlist for the day and each song has a link that will take you to the versions of the songs we attempted today. As always, thanks for stopping by and be sure to say hi, leave a comment, or just look around. I also (like Fred) decided to add a little behind the scenes of our tv studio from the evening service! Enjoy!

tv studio

Sunday am

(G) Trading My Sorrows
(A) Lord I Lift Your Name On High
(D) We Fall Down

(G) New Doxology
(G) The Lord Is Gracious & Compassionate

Sunday pm

(E) His Love
(E) Enough
(A) Glorified (w/ impromptu Awesome God bridge)
(A) Yearn

(F) I Will Love

communion

(Ab) The Wonder Of The Cross

Sunday [08.02.09] // No “Little” Thing

I have been absent for a while now, but felt it would be good to get back in the flow of the Sunday Setlists hosted at fredmckinnon.com.  I hope this post finds you (and those you are walking with on this journey of faith) well.  It might just be me (being sappy), but I have felt the need this week to say “thank you” and “I appreciate/love you” to many of my friends this week.  This is how it started…

Last Friday we found out the sad news that our sound man and long-time friend John Emerson had passed away after his bout with a failing liver.  I’m quite positive his Sunday Setlist recap would be more than we could even comprehend.  Knowing that I was joining in with heaven’s worship was a comforting thought for me today, but still we will dearly miss him.

After sitting back, and looking at John’s life, I realized how much he did just by being consistent week in and week out.  This in turn led me to think of the rest of my family, friends, & worship team – to see how incredibly faithful they are to the little details that make up this wonderful thing called life.  I know I forget to be thankful for these “little things” (that are truly the most important of things).  So, in honor of my friend’s life – would you take a moment, during this week, to thank those around you for being there, for being faithful, and for doing the little things?

To all of you who are reading this  – thank you –  for your friendship, your service, and your faithfulness to doing what God has set before you.  What you are doing is important and it truly makes a difference in the lives of those around you.

Below is a recap of our Sunday sets.  You can preview the versions of the songs we did by clicking on the song titles:

am
1.  (Eb/F)   Forever
2.  (F)         No Sweeter Name
3.  (F)         Jesus, Name Above All Names w/Here In Your Presence

4.  (C)         It Is Well
5.  (C)         Great Is Thy Faithfulness



pm
1.  (Ab)       Filled With Your Glory
2.  (Ab)       We Cry Out
3.  (Ab)       Son Of God

4.  (D)        Lord I Seek You
5.  (D)        Cry In My Heart