matmusic ministries

I am excited to announce that I will be part of a team that will be leading worship at our church on a monthly basis.

Beginning this Sunday, March 1st, I will be leading worship for both our 9 am and 11 am services in the morning. Then, that evening at 6 pm, I will be leading again at our night of worship and prayer.

I am honored to be trusted with this responsibility and am really looking forward to what God will do in this season at our church. Please pray for direction and peace and I prepare and actively lead people into the throneroom. Your prayers are coveted.

The next Sunday at which I will lead will be March 29th. I would love to see family and friends join us at Sojourn for any and all of the services.

Click www.sojournchurch.org for more information.

As part of this season, I plan to post the songs we do here with some notes on the service. I hope that this exercie will be a good way for me to vent, if needed, and to share practical insight to the thinking of a worship leader. Maybe you will be blessed too.

A few days after the post below about Dirk, The Dallas Morning news posted an interesting article about him. Eddie Sefko compared him to some of the greatest power forwards of all time. Below is part of the write up.

“…we thought it would be enlightening to see where Nowitzki ranks on some of the key statistical lists for power forwards.

These lists are confined to players who spent most of their careers playing power forward, though some might have also played center or small forward at times.

We used 15 power forwards: Charles Barkley, Tom Chambers, Terry Cummings, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Elvin Hayes, Jerry Lucas, Karl Malone, Bob McAdoo, Kevin McHale, Nowitzki, Charles Oakley, Bob Pettit, Jack Sikma, and Buck Williams. Players who specialized in one area (think Dennis Rodman) were omitted for this exercise. Nowitzki, Duncan and Garnett are still active.”

NOTE: For the sake of time, I have not listed all 15 players and their stats.

There are a few things I take from this.

1) Dirk is special. We are in the midst of greatness. He is not last on any of the lists and is middle of the way on most. And here is the thing: he is only 30. He has, barring injury, a LOT of basketball left.

2) I hope Dirk gets another chance to win a ring…preferably with the Mavs. Back to my previous post, please get Dirk some big-time help!

3) Karl Malone was good. He was 2, 1, 4, 10, 1, 1, 6, 1, 9 in the lists respectively. Only mark against him was 0-3 in Titles/Finals trips.

This was a fun topic, tell me what you think by posting a comment below.

I painfully sat by while the Mavericks lost all steam, blew a 15 point lead, and lost to the World Champion Boston Celtics last night.

Dirk had a monster game and drew a few chants of “MVP” from the crowd. In the end, though, all the Celtics had to do was to stop one person. And they did just that and secured the win.

Dirk’s performance made me think of other Maverick greats. There are, as you see in the picture above, exactly two Maverick numbers retired; the #15 of Brad Davis and the #22 of Rolando Blackman. Obviously, Dirk will be there someday. Does anyone else deserve to be there?

If Jason Kidd had been here for his entire career, you could make a case for him.
Mark Aguire? Given his icy relationship with the organization, I think not.
Jamal Mashburn? No.
Jimmy Jackson? No way.
Shawn Bradley? *laughing* Uh, no.
Jason Terry? Nice player but probably not (barring a championship in the next few years)

Any one I am missing?

*crickets chirp*

Which leads me to my final point…PLEASE get Dirk some help. Paul Pierce was a nice player until they put a superstar (Garnett) and one of the best shooters in the league (Ray Allen) with him. Now Pierce is a Championship MVP. Could Dirk be the same? I would love to find out.

I am part of a, for lack of a better term, discussion group about music that takes place around Grammy time each year.

This year, I actually took notes on the show last night as a watched/fast forwarded. Did you watch the show? What are some of your thoughts?

- U2 was great. What was Bono wearing on his feet? Frankenstein boots? Is he that short?

- How can a person not stop taking drugs for ONE night? Whitney is a sad story…thanks a lot Bobby Brown

- Justin Timberlake can really sing. His falsetto is incredible. (Al Green was great too, at that age, his falsetto is impressive too)

- Chris Martin (lead singer of Coldplay) is not a very good singer and turns out he cannot dance either…at all. He looked like he was in pain.

- Carrie Underwood or Jessica Simpson? Did Romo make the right choice?

- What exactly makes Country music Country any more?

- Coldplay are rockstars I guess that’s why they can wear those clothes. The Sargent Pepper’s comment was funny tho

- Kinda impressed with Kid Rock. Is that bad?

- I want Taylor Swift’s guitar

- Miley can sing. Great voice control.

- How in crap did Jennifer Hudson not win American Idol?

- Shouldn’t Katy perry have ridden down in a peach, not a bannana?

- I hope Kanye keeps rapping and quits singing through an auto tune modulator

- MIA outfit was hilarious. Glad she didn’t give birth on stage, I was starting to wonder (She is on par with the big rap boys…so confident in herself)

- Jay Z can flow

- Hip hop all stars was best performance of the night (Slight edge over Radiohead with the USC Marching Band.)

- I love Grohl on the drum skins. McCartney has still got it. I planned a derogatory comment about his age but I got nuthin’

- Between Amy Winehouse and Adele England has put out some soul singing white girls recently

- Radiohead and USC marching band. Brilliant. In awe of this band’s creativity time and again (I think they could have just ADDED the USC kids to the rest of the band, not replaced the rest of the band. Were they trying to save on airfare?)

- Surprised to find out that Neil Diamond did not have a number 1 song until this year. He beats me though.

- It’s the dang Grammy’s learn how to feed the lead guitar licks through the TV sound! I could not hear John Mayer’s lead lines and during JT and Al Green, we couldn’t hear Kieth Urban.

- Lil Wayne is lil. Was he wearing Nike mcflys?

- Will. I. Am and T Pain’s clothes. Why?

- The Carter 3. Really good album

- “…and the Grammy for Album of the Year goes to…” Cmon Radiohead…genuine anxiety here… DANG!

- Could the crowd have been less excited about the album of the year? I Don’t blame them…Snooze

In all, it was a good show for people who like music. What did you think?