Friend Day at GMA
It's too late to do this but it has been a great day. It started off in a morning worship time with Travis Cotrell and Beth Moore. The service moved me deeply and Beth's teaching was funny and powerful as usual. I was sitting with Sue Smith. When the first song in the set started, I leaned over and asked if she knew it;) It was one she had written with David Moffit... "Alive Forever, Amen" She didn't know he was going to use it. That was so fun. The worship team that works with Travis is just flat-out amazing and was having great time in the Lord...so contageous. The video produced to introduced and accompany the song was alone enough to ignite the place. I thought at first they had it synced it to a click track but the drummer wasn't wearing earphones and I talked to the tech guy afterwards- the fold-in graphics were triggered real-time using Iworship Flex. Cool stuff!
I spent much of the day in the booth turning the recordings of the workshops from CD into mp3's for those who will want to buy it that way. We are lunch at Jack's BBQ. MMMmmmm.
I ran into James Tealy and a brother from Africa this afternoon. We ended up going to the worship time at the Ryman lead by Smitty. Always good. After that we went to the BMI songwriter's showcase to see Joel and Sue sing their song. There were some other writers singing there. Somebody named Tomlin who was pretty good, and Leeland somebody:) It is always the highlight of the week for me to hear writers sing their songs. I ran into a bunch of friends there...Jaime Jam, Daniel, and Brian. Afterwards, Sue introduced me to Claire Cloninger who has been a part of so many great musicals. She asked me about collaborating. I said something like "Uub, glub, bberk, uhh, yes" She asked for my card! Her son also sang in the showcase. I gave Sue the signed contract for a song she is co-publishing with Brentwood/Benson before I left. It is destined for an choir octavo in the fall.
The recording crew loaded up and went to the McDonalds drive-thru (the only near thing open) before heading back to the hotel. The drive-thru line was long and slow so the people in the car in front of us turned up the hip hop music and danced around the car. They were having so much fun. So was everybody in the other cars watching them. I got half-way out of our car and did a little dancing motion to join the fun. Everyone got a kick out of that. It reminded me of the driving through the "storm of the century" on Spring break in Florida with a bus load of campus ministry students. It was a traffic jam on the highway so we got out and had a snowball fight with another bus load of students.
I'm fried, goodnight!