RLS Podcast #6
From the studio, made courtesey of Amy Bartholomew.
hey, that kinda rhymed. enjoy.
Red Letter Statement #6 from Sean Pritzkau on Vimeo.
From the studio, made courtesey of Amy Bartholomew.
Today was the third and final day of our stay in pennsylvania. First off this trip was a blast, and I’m so glad I could be apart of it. ok..
I was very happy to be woken up by Larry this time and not Krystal. What a better way to start your day! We arose and got all our stuff together and headed out. We got to church and had some bagels and doughnuts. I haven’t mentioned in the past few blogs how weird it was being in a small church. I’m not used to it, I never really have been in a small church like TFHF. But I didn’t not like it, it was just uncomfortable a bit. But I got used to it and really enjoyed the people we were with and the relationships we formed.
For worship we did several of songs we did the previous night, mostly our songs plus “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Tomlin. We also added in “How He Loves”, which is my favorite worship song. I really loved hearing the congregation sing out that song. After we did our praise set, we sat down and Larry’s Dad, or “Big pimpin” got up to speak. He gave everyone a look back at how their church was formed and the hardship they’ve overcome over the past year. It was sad to hear about everything that has went on in that church. A split between the church, sicknesses, broken marriages, and people losing their jobs has been very burdensome. But through all this, Larry spoke on how they’ve been praying for God to refresh them and renew their passion. Larry and the church leadership team was convinced that us coming down were the answer to their prayer. I wasn’t expecting that. Did God really send us to “refresh” this team? It sounds pretty wild, but I believe it as much as Larry does. They expresses so much thanks to us, and I am honored and humbled by their generosity that they shown us. After his message we did a worship set and their were some more spontaneous speaking. I really enjoyed it. After this we hung out with our friends and ate some dinner. We formed some awesome relationships with these guys and I am incredibly thankful for them. Like Mitch said in his blog, I really do believe we came for a purpose. Not only do our churchs have basically the same name, but our message is the same, and our hearts are aligned with Gods. Much that has been laying on our hearts were laying on theirs. It was God. Period. After we said our goodbyes we headed back for a long 6 hour drive back home.
One of my favorite parts about the trip was I got to spend a lot of time with Mitch. If you don’t know him, head over to his blog. He’s my drummer and best friend. He’s been blogging about this trip along with me.. so go on over to his blog and encourage him to keep it up ;)
So this it what went down day numero dos of our roadtrip to pennsylvania. I guess we were supposed to wake up around 7:30 or so, but we woke up to the annoying sound of krystals voice around 8:30. Once we got up and around we headed to the church. When we got there we worshipped God with a few songs while I played acoustic, and then I led a devotional. I talked about how we ultimately choose how our days go simply by turning to God in the morning. If we seek Him above all, everything will fall into place how he wants it to. I gave some examples from the past two Thursdays I’ve had that sucked majorly, but turning to God made everything work out somehow. I didn’t talk about most of what I wanted to talk about, because I left my notes back at home. I wanted to talk about how as christians we’ve almost forgotten about God’s model for repentance and righteousness. Seriously. We don’t understand that God knows that we’re going to fall short. He knows that we aren’t perfect, even though he demands perfection. Really, it’s hard to go one day without screwing up somehow. Thats why at night before we go to bed it is a good idea to reflect on the day before you and repent for the things you’ve fallen short from. When the sun arises, breathe in God’s breath of righteousness. Seek Him and enjoy being completely blameless before God. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world.
After I spoke we ate an amazing breakfast. Ski eggs are AMAZING. And french toast with apples somehow in them. After breakfast we started rehearsing our songs and it somehow turned into a worship session. Sound was still kind of poor, but I was more focused on thinking about the words we were singing and asking God to consume me. Scott did a teaching after we did worship. It was about worship and it was really good. And honestly, really long. I lost him about half way through and then got back on track somehow. Following his teaching we went to DINO’s and had lunch. I had twenty of the best wings I’ve ever had. yum. Then we went back to the house and Mitch and I took a nap. I slept for about an hour, but it felt like at least 4. Then I heard that sound again that made me wake up.
Time for church again. We went and did some more rehearsing and sound checking, then Larry did a teaching. I love hearing Larry teach. He talked about how we as christians struggle with identity. He showed us today that we should not claim to be sinners saved by grace. We should not be defined by sin. We should be defined by the grace that saves us. That sound so similar but if you think about it they are completely different. Again, God knows we aren’t perfect. Only He is. But we are redeemed by His grace. That is who we are.
Then we started our worship set. We played 15 songs, which took about two hours. It was one of the longest sets I’ve ever played. We played a lot of the songs we usually play, but also did a lot of Scotts (TFHF’s worship leader.) It was a lot easier to engage in our songs, but we enjoyed playing a variety of music. I’ve never played so much Chris Tomlin songs in my life.. nor do I want to. Worship went really great and I was happy with it. It did take a lot out of me though. Following the worship night we went to Larrys familys house for a bit and then came back to the house. Time to crash!
So we’re just about to crash after our first day in P.A. It’s been a lot of fun so far. First of all, we’re going down to Derry, PA to lead worship at our worship leader Larry’s church back home. Ironically, it’s called “The Fathers’ House Fellowship”.. and our church we serve at is called The Fathers’ House.
We all met at Larry and Andrea’s this afternoon around 12 and loaded up our vehicles. I drove with Mitch. We had a blast on the ride there. Lots of rocking out to the ipod. Lots of dancing. Lots of twittering. Some points got scary, but they were funny. I took about a 45 minute nap.. I hope Mitch wasn’t too bored. We got there in pretty much record time.
We arrived around 5 oclock to TFH Fellowship. This building is a lo
t different to what we are used to. It’s a lot smaller of a room with very different acoustics. I already could tell that we would have to adapt to what we have and do our best to not be selfish. We’ll have to remind ourself a lot this weekend that we are here to serve. We spent some time getting to know the worship leader and pastor of the church and started sound checking. We still have a lot to do with working on songs and sound tomorrow. Mitch is in his own little separate room to the side of the stage. It kind of sucks, but it is really funny looking to my immediate right and seeing him in there. Sorry Mitch.
The church ordered us some pizza tonight and we all ate together. Then after some more sound/song stuff. Now we are at a man named Jim’s house to spend the night. He has a pretty awesome house. I should probably go to sleep not though, since its 1 and we have to be up around 7. And it’s dark and Mitch is sleeping. And Adam, even though he’s blasting United on his ipod. Crazy kids. More later. Much love!
This past sunday was our first ever “worship getaway”. It was pretty awesome and we had a lot of people. It wasn’t quite what we expected (the cabin we had reserved got flooded with water), but we made the best of it. We hung out, ate some food, smashed each other in the snow, did some visioncasting and worshiped a bit. Really excited to roll out these worshiper training groups. Alex Aiezza provided us with some laughter as you can see in the video below.
Wow I haven’t posted anything that matters in a while. My last two posts were mobile, wow I’m lame. Here’s the latest update on all things me.
New band! About five weeks ago we started a band called Red Letter Statement. It is a few members of our worship band put together. We played our first show for the C4 battle of the bands, and it went very well. We’ve put together about 6 songs so far and we’re writing some more. We’re looking to record with Jesse Sprinkle in the late winter/spring.
Check us out [add us!] on:
Last Wednesday I got the opportunity to share a message with the junior high [Fuse] group of Overflow. It was my first time speaking at church. I spoke on the topic of worship. It went pretty well, really showed me what I have to work on.
Worship has been really good lately, new things to come in later posts!
Overflow;
It’s been awesome every week, not sure much more to say about it. I’m looking forward to changing some things up.
Collide;
It is extremely hard to worship when something as bad as what happened to me pops up. I really tried not to let it get to me during worship but it did. Eventually I broke free of that and ultimately worshipped Him.
Overflow;
I’m really starting to love acoustic worship. Not even just playing it but listening to it. I love the sound of it, and I’m sure God does too. This week we started off with How Great is Our God, which was a bit odd, but it got us into worship mode right off the bat. I liked it,
Collide;
I enjoyed not playing Saturday night and going to the big church service. Worship was awesome, and they did a new song by Israel Houghton which rocked the house. Check out this video here. Pierre’s message was off the chain too.
Sunday was pretty good. Worship has changed a lot because of this secret series. Getting really pumped up for oxygen night next wednesday.
Number two of my weekly worship week blog posts..
Sickness is seeming to get the best of us. Wednesday night was kind of weird, because we didn’t really plan it out as well as we should of. People, songs, practicing, etc. Even thought we didn’t have it planned out.. God sure did! Worship ended up being great and we got a new band member out of it ;]
Each of our weekend services this week were vastly different from one another. The theme for this weeks secrets series was sexual secrets. Luke talked about how if we don’t get them out of our hearts now, and don’t let God heal our hearts, they’ll be in there for a long time, causing decay. You could tell people were dealing with some stuff, and those that were brave enough walked to the side of the room and received prayer.
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16 NIV
