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Here’s a really interesting article on the new space telescope set to go up in 2013. Over the past couple years, I have enjoyed visiting the Hubble site and checking out all the high-res images of it’s deep space photos - they are pretty impressive. Looks like this new telescope may allows us to look even deeper into space and get a closer view of some of these incredible stars & galaxies that are billions of miles away.

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Here’s a great site for all you graphic designers - free vector art (we all know how hard it is to get your hands on that!). Vecteezy.com is a new sister site of Brusheezy.com - a free Photoshop Brush site, there’s another tip. Have fun designing!

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Passion is at it again - talk about staying relevant and offering something that could really speak to people in their time of need. They have released an album called “Hope for the Hokies: Songs of Restoration and Hope”. It’s a free download - check out the heart of passion and download the album here.

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The guys over at www.worshippl.us have put up a “Worship Leading Essentials” list with some really great links and articles. I am making my way through them as we speak, but it looks right on. The first one deals with Life Journaling, which I have just started this year, and while consistency is the key, I have been really encouraged by it and it is becoming a habit that I don’t want to break. Check it out here and leave some comments on what you think.

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If you were into 722 or Passion in the earlier days, you might remember Candi Pearson (now Pearson-Shelton). She was, and continues to be an incredible worship leader, and amazing vocalist. Where’d she go? Well she has been busy in California - check this article out at CCM. It’s a great read to catch up with her and also an encouragement to any worship leader who wants to make a name for themselves to remember who we should be trying to promote.

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Dave Barnes - Balumtine’th Day

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This morning as I was reading through Psalm 2, I noticed a very cool write up in my Life Application Study Bible (NLT), here’s what it says:

“God’s Word was written to be studied, understood, and applied, and the book of Psalms lends itself most directly to application. We understand the psalms best when we “stand under” them and allow them to flow over us like a rain shower. We may turn to Psalms looking for something, but sooner or later we will meet Someone. As we read and memorize the psalms, we will gradually discover how much they are already a part of us. They put into words our deepest hurts, longings, thoughts, and prayers. They gently push us towards being what God designed us to be - people loving and living for Him”

I thought that was pretty cool.

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Erik Mongrain Tapping Guitar

This guy is amazing, a real unique, soulful acoustic guitar performance.

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Ok, admit it… You’ve driven down the highway with the windows down singing this song at the top of your lungs and incredibly off key. It’s a great American tune! Happy Tuesday!

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Free Fallin’ (Denver)

[via FoxyTunes / Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers]

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Being responsible for the order, timing, and flow of the weekend worship service and trying to inform everyone of what is planned can be a tall order week after week. I can’t even count on two hands the amount of times I’ve attempted creating a planning template for weekend worship services & presenting it. The over-zealous planner vs the fly-by-night worship leaders, teachers, pastors, announcers, and any other additions thrown into the mix.

Then I stumbled upon www.planningcenteronline.com - I can’t even remember how I found it! It must have been divine intervention. This is an online planning center that is totally web 2.0 looking - very easy to navigate through and packed with features designed just for the church. Plan your service from start to finish. Include preservice activities, worship songs, announcements (yuck!), videos, teaching, communion, offering, etc. As you add elements to your services, a running total adds up the time each event takes and keeps an updated total time so you can see how each addition affects the overall time.

This doesn’t just keep the events of a service organized, it is also a volunteer organizer, helping you keep track of your teams, scheduling and automatically emailing them & reminding them of rehearsals and services that they are scheduled for. Better yet - when they confirm their position, they can view the plan online with all the details - the songs, keys, charts, videos, etc. Did I mention that this becomes your worship leaders song database as well? Add songs to the schedule, upload the lead sheets, the mp3’s, make notes on arrangements - as you add songs to your database, planningcenteronline shows you how often you play songs, when the last time you played it, etc.

If all this is not making you drool all over your keyboard, there is also a matrix view that let’s you look at weeks at a time so it becomes super easy to plan songs, videos, promo’s, teams, speakers weeks in advance. You can also look back in time to see what has happened in the past weeks - remember you did that really cool new song? You forgot to do it again! Let’s plan it for this week!

Check it out here - you can sign up for a 30 day FREE trial, after that you can sign up for plans from $10 or so per month.

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