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Saturday at Briefing was a week ago now, so I figure I should finish these posts. It feels worlds away now that “life” has been happening for the past five days.
Saturday’s morning session was a workshop, which meant that we had a choice as to which speaker we wanted to hear. Bryan, Antwon and I went to Mark Foreman’s workshop entitled “Transformed People Transforming Their World.” Essentially he gave us a summary of what his new book Wholly Jesus is about. “We need to stop letting society tell us how big our Jesus is,” he said. The implications of “unboxing” (my term) Jesus extend from evangelism to recovery & character development to changing the world.
We had some awesome free time after that, which included ping pong, hanging out at the lake, and some famous Forest Home milkshakes. It was a long day so I don’t completely remember everything we did. I just know it was fun. I did write a song though. That I remember.
We (Antwon, James, Tiana, and I) also got to talk to Tucker, guitarist for Urban Rescue, quite a bit, since he is friends with James. It was really inspiring to hear how he & the band view doing music as a career for God, holding it loosely so that if God asked them to stop and do something else, they would. He talked about the awesome opportunities they’ve had to play with Future of Forestry & Phil Wickham, and the surprise of having 500 people show up for their headlining worship concert. (Side note: it’s so weird hearing about Phil Wickham nowadays, because I went to school with him at Calvary Vista back in the day. His older brother was my junior high pastor. Strange when you know people before they’re famous.) I didn’t realize it at the time, but I honestly am very inspired by Urban Rescue. Tucker gave us permission to “burn the heck out of” their CD, which Antwon has done, thus I am proceeding to wear the heck out of it with constant listening.
Albert Tate spoke again at the night session. He talked about dysfunction, and though I don’t remember exactly what he said (because it was the only message of the weekend for which I didn’t take notes), I do know that I finally surrendered to God the dysfunction that had been weighing heaviest on my mind. It was a truly epic night though, with lots of tears shed and truly heartfelt worship. Albert did a good ol’ fashioned altar call for those who were surrendering things, but I didn’t go up (I should have). My chat group was again awesome afterwards, and the night concluded with Coffeehouse (where I sang three songs a-capella) and sleeping under the stars.
(So…I’m pretty sure this post would have been a lot more fun to read had I not written it a week after the events actually occurred. Oh well. Sorry.)
I PROMISE the next posts I write after this will be Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of Briefing 09.
Something is happening to me. It’s sneaking up on me in the most peculiar way. I’m beginning to write songs in my head all the time. I’ll just think of a topic and start singing in my head to a melody that unfolds with each new word that comes to me.
This is an answer to prayer.
I’ve written songs on and off in the past but never had to capability of putting them to an instrument. Now I’m not letting my lack of knowledge or skill with the guitar hold me back; I’m going to write as many songs with G, C, D, Em, A, and Am as I can until I’m absolutely sick of those chords and never want to play them again. And then I’ll put a capo on and write some more.
I mentioned earlier in the week that God totally messed up my plans for my first EP. Part of that messing-up involves the very exciting fact that I won’t be doing all covers on it. It’ll be all my own songs. I’ve written 2 songs since Forest Home and probably have 8 more percolating in my brain. Most of what I will write will not end up on the EP, but my favorites will. I’ll make Youtube videos of the rejects. The good rejects, at least. (Speaking of Youtube videos, soon I’ll be covering Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” and Howie Day’s “Collide.”) It won’t all be worship music, and it won’t all be Christian music (gasp!). Some will be crossover (think Switchfoot songs & Future of Forestry’s “If You Find Her”).
Also, last night I played one of my worship songs at a service for the first time. It was my IHOP-style prayer song, and it was well-received! Praise God. A girl at the service apparently really enjoyed it because she came to me afterwards, and after telling me how beautiful it was and that I was really good (made my heart soar! encouragement is so needed for musicians), she told me she does graphics and album artwork for bands and would love to help me out with my EP! I’m excited to connect with her and see her work.
I can’t believe this is really happening!!! God is too good.
The only way I can think to clearly communicate what God did in my experience at Briefing this year is to write one post per day spent at Forest Home; thus, here is Friday (September 4).
Friday was a rough day for me. For the past few months I have been the Briefing coordinator for my church’s college group. That meant I was the one to whom students would turn when they needed to know anything about Briefing. I was in charge of announcing the retreat, collecting payments, reserving spots, sending the money to Forest Home (thankfully Jim’s assistant Heather ended up doing that for me), organizing rides, sending packing lists and driving directions, etc. The whole week leading up to Briefing, I was more stressed than I have been in a very long time. I don’t get stressed often or easily, so the week took me by surprise, and my reaction was not pretty. As my brother Mike will tell you, stressed Courtney is not a nice person.
After a few obstacles we finally made it up the mountain, my car arriving last thanks to our complications. The tension on the way up (caused by my stress & bad attitude) had been relieved by worship music and Kids Camp songs, so when we finally joined the rest of our group my passengers & I were in good spirits.
The first main gathering was that night, and our main speaker Albert Tate talked about the most fundamental part of our faith: the gospel. We began the weekend thinking on Jesus’ death for us; as Albert said, “Someone has DIED!” We can’t go on living the same old way, living for our own selfish agendas, when someone has died. God began His weekend-long processs of wrecking me during that message and incredible time of worship. He convicted me of my failure to steward the gift of my mind and follow through on His call to be in school. He broke my heart over my failure, and I repented and surrendered it to Him.
After the message, we broke into our chat groups. I really loved my group; we had some great discussions & bonding times over the course of the retreat. We closed that night in prayer, going around the circle with each of us taking a turn. I prayed second, and apparently the Holy Spirit took me over when I did. Everyone commented afterwards on how great & complete my prayer had been, and I credited it to God since I pretty much had no idea what I had said. The one thing I do remember praying, however, was that God would break us down over the weekend.
Boy, did He follow through on that.
P.S. Soon I’ll have links up so you can listen to all of Albert’s messages from the weekend :)
Personal theme song for Friday:
