Never the Same

In my current work with charities (ideaPraxy) it is amazing to see how God is working through various organizations partnering together over the years and presently. There is one church with many parts. May we constantly be reminded of the impact of using our gifts as diligently as we can to share the good news of Jesus Christ.


Never the Same from Pioneers-USA on Vimeo.

After A While..A Thought

After such a long break from posting here I would be very surprised that many would be checking back.

It has been an incredibly interesting year since I last posted. For all intents I have retired from truly pursuing a professional career in music. The occasional "gig" is still happening and I have begun to look at Logic again and see what I was in process on when I took a break, but ultimately there are no plans for anything significant.

The one constant is leading worship at my local church, and I do hope to continue doing that until I am no longer relevant - hopefully many years from now.

As I reflect on this past year and all of the interactions I have had with different leaders within different churches, my main concern is still around the lack of biblical grounding in our opinions on worship. I largely do not care about style conversations, liturgy conversations, or tradition conversations, either positively or negatively, until I hear the "calling" to any such an approach from someones interaction with the bible. Why do worship? How do we organize? What standards on skill and personal walk do we value and enforce? There are many more questions to answer.

To me, if one has a desire to lead worship in a church, I think that desire should be formed from a passion to fulfill what scripture has asked us to do in that area. What is God's heart on the matter?  If we are not able to articulate that passion clearly and succinctly with a spiritually discernible authenticity, what are we doing again?

I Must Do

I must do what I say and believe most deeply, at least as much as I say it, I must do it. I must repent and turn from the dark, I must understand and live the light....I must do.....

Right Versus True

It is often better to be at peace than to be right. Arguing with a fool won't change their mind. Now standing up for truth and justice is a completely different thing, but it still needs to be done in a way that measures conflict.

Jesus was confrontational and revolutionary, but often he simply stated the truth and walked away. When he was wrongly given over to be killed, he didn't fight, he didn't have a plan B to have his supporters come in and rescue him, he simply stated the truth about his identity.

The problem with "being right" all the time is that it is a lonely place. In the end you come out the bully. Steadfastly but humbly standing for truth changes the world, often more quickly and quietly than those who proclaim their rightness.

State of Christian Music in Canada

Developing? Growing? Improving?

I think it is all of those things. One of the challenges facing the Canadian scene is the lack of strong churches that are capable of being their own production house, and sustaining it. When you look around the world at the way the industry works there are really two models.

One is the still the traditional record industry model that signs bands, produces music, markets it, tours and tries to garner income from the various channels available to them. Nashville is the hub in the USA for that industry.

The second is large churches that have created a quality production houses. Most of them integrate with the traditional industry at the distribution level. The creative part, the Nashville part is the church itself. I think the behemoth in that category is Hillsongs, it used to be Vineyard with some serious Canadian content.

I think the next phase for Canada is getting more semi-professional production houses going, as well as churches who sustain writing and production. I also think there needs to be some form of Canadian distribution, digital or otherwise, that makes it easy to get your Canadian fix.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts. Love to hear some feedback about your thoughts....

What's Your Deserve Level?

I am simply passing on learning here, I am not an authority or originator of this concept. You may have heard the phrase "Your net worth will only ever be a large as your self worth." Cheesy? I don't think so.

Another concept that I have learned from this month's success magazine via Joel Harper is deserve level. Do I think I deserve to be in shape? Do I think I deserve to succeed in life and family etc?

Something to think about. In my life there are certain things that I value so highly, that I think I deserve, or my family deserves, that I do what it takes to get it or give it. Pragmatically, Joel talks about finding a way to transfer that deserve level to areas of your life where for some reason or another you have not accepted it.

I really do not think this is an easy one, but I do think it is incredibly important. Think about how you can raise your deserve level in an area that you are unsatisfied with.

Why "Do Overs" are ok

You have heard a little of this before on this blog, and maybe this is simply more self-justification, but I must say I believe in do-overs. Maybe I mean start overs, maybe I mean start a new, maybe I mean just starting late.

I have an aunt who I respect greatly. I would say that she has not had the easiest pathway, and at one point needed to do over, in her 40's. So she did. Got a law degree, became a lawyer, and is now, and will retire a judge. Nice do over!

When I was 16 I wanted a studio. I wanted to record my own music, I wanted to be that guy. Well it wasn't until about 5 years ago that I finally got one, and I feel like every song I produce I am getting better and closer to doing something of the quality I dreamed of all those years ago.

One thing I will tell you, is that you need support. In life you need encouragement, and it is important to surround yourself with the delusionally supportive (my children really think I am famous!), the unconditionally supportive (my beautiful wife speaks the truth in love) and the constructively supportive (I have a few voices that have generously critiqued my progress these past few years, and they are helping me get better). I would suggest none of the purely critical, it is hard enough sticking to things when you receive good feedback, negativity is just hard.

I can't encourage you enough. If you have found it and are doing it, good for you. You are blessed, keep doing it and get better!! For the rest of us, start now. Do over from scratch. Find a way to do your passion. I am not talking about being reckless and quitting a job. I am talking about being passionate and chasing a dream.

Yes it is a roller coaster and perspective is everything. Find ways to keep perspective. Last night I was up far too late, tired and bleary eyed, producing the next song, and it was great. The process was great, I kind of felt like that guy, even if just for a while.

How To Do Good

One act at a time. One of the themes that runs through my mind and I think this blog is trying to overcome obstacles that keep us from moving forward whether it be spiritually, physically, or relationally etc.

Obviously a big piece of my life is my day job at Speroway, the children's charity I work for. One of my daily challenges is trying inspire, awake, educate, and advocate for and on behalf of children who can't speak for themselves.

But how can you or I make a difference? How can we make a start? It really is one act at a time. No matter what you are trying to do in life, find a very small way to make a start and do it. A $10 online donation to a charity of repute, volunteering somewhere close by your house, dropping a meal off to an out of work neighbour, you get the idea. Pick one thing and do it. It will lead to another, it just will.

New Canadian Countdown

It has been several years since I last charted anywhere, and it was of course because of the great support I received from this blog. If you recall it was through Indieheaven in Nashville where I spent some time at number 1. If I recall it was for the song "We Cry Out" from my Noticing the Sky CD.

Well I just was interviewed on the New Canadian Countdown last Saturday night with James Kurtis. Great time! I will post the interview this week sometime. In the meantime if you click on the link above you can vote for my new single ("I Will Bless The Lord") to see if I can get in the top 6 at 6 this Saturday. If I get in I get more plays, if I don't then it is one and done....like the March Madness basketball tourney. I would love your support.

Look for interview in the next couple of days...

Why The Church In Canada is Failing

I could talk about several things that I think are generally wrong in most churches today. I could talk about leadership, a lack of excellence or vision, but these are well documented issues. I do not think these are the root of the problem. The mission of the church is to "preach" or share the gospel, but do we? What is the gospel?

I would suggest the gospel in its purest form is this: Mark 1:15 ¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ¹⁵ “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” This of course echoes John the Baptist in Matthew 3:2.

Do you hear that in your church often? Ever? Accepting that Jesus was a real historic figure is not accepting the gospel. Accepting Jesus in your heart, whatever that means, is not the gospel. We must realize that we are sinners. We are imperfect, and that to be in relationship with God requires us to actually feel and acknowledge we are wrong. We don't hear that often or ever because the real meaning of repentance is harsh. It feels so 1950's hell fire and brimstone. The word repent rubs us wrong. It requires is to humble ourselves, to turn from our wicked ways.

But we don't see ourselves as wicked do we. News flash, we are. I am. You are. So what is really wrong? People outside the church look at us and see wicked people. Proud people, who think they don't need to repent. A few of them might even feel they need God so they check out the church and hear, well, self-help sermons. Feel good sermons. The problem with that of course, is that they need a remedy. They need to deal with the wickedness they are feeling. They need to hear the good news, that they can repent, turn from their wicked ways, and know God.

How will they hear, if we don't tell them? Who else is going to proclaim the glorious and difficult message, The kingdom of God is coming, repent and believe the good news! Just saying.....

Radio Interview This Saturday Night

I am looking forward to an interview this Saturday night at around 6pm EST on JOY1250 to talk about my new single "I Will Bless The Lord". I am being interviewed by James Kurtis of New Canadian Countdown fame. Listen to it locally or use the link to listen to it online if you are from out of town.

Why You Have to Keep Moving

I have been consistently working out for a few years now, around four years. One of the things I discovered was that I can take one week and not work out and not lose my motivation. I can take two weeks and workout only two or three times per week, and again that would not knock me off my game, but if I hit a third week of inconsistent exercise, it feels like starting over. I lose the best part of my forward progress, and I start to move backward.

I believe this is true of the human condition. If we don't move forward purposefully, our best case is we stay status quo, but more often than not we move backward. Notice I did not say aggressively. Life is a marathon, and "sprinting" takes too much effort for the gains that you will get. Purposeful, reflective, forward movement will garner great results. The enemy to this kind of movement is no movement at all.

The Toughest Thing About Leadership Is...

People are following! Whether they should be or not, whether you are actually leading or not, people are following. With all of the leadership teaching on the planet, you would think we would have come further than we have. Leaders have this awesome responsibility and privilege to inspire, to advocate for integrity, for justice, to create a fair playing field, to cast a vision for hope and actually lead there.

But all too often our leaders, our school principals, our pastors, our executive directors and presidents, have taken the stance that they have arrived. That they paid their dues, that they suffered, and now you must suffer. They haven't learned from the experiences they have had, they attend conferences and hear, "you are the man" or "exercise your authority", even though what was said was "be a humble servant", "bring out the best in your people", "care for them".

Unfortunately what I see over and over is a wake of followers who are uninspired and often bitter, because they see the hypocrisy. They know the heart, or lack thereof, behind their leader. Jesus Christ said that "wisdom will be proved right by her actions". Interesting.

The tough thing is next steps. What if your leader is letting you down, big time. What should you do? For starters...leave. Find another job, find another church. Harsh, maybe, easy, no. But as a follower, it is the only thing of integrity you can do. Don't fight, don't criticize, follow someone worth following, or lead something yourself, but be warned....this blog is for you should you take that route. Don't let history repeat itself.

If by some chance you are a leader reading this, and you are failing, repent to all and change your ways, it's not too late.

The reality is this, many are terrible followers, not because they should be leaders, but because they are proud, arrogant people who don't want to admit that anyone does or should have rule over them. Many are terrible leaders, becuse they don't want to admit they don't care about anyone but themselves, and they are intellectually overmatched and have been since they landed at the top.

Those that are offended by either of those statments are most likely guilty of one of the charges. To the rest who have gone into some version of self-assessment, I wish you well...at least you are humble enough to think you could be either!

3 Songs in 4 Months is not bad....

It has been a good year on the production side, but 3 songs in 4 months was not the goal, a song every month was. I know I will be able to release an extra song somewhere along the line here, because I have a very sparse production song planned for this year, but I need to pick my moment. This month will be another worship tune. I really like the song and now that I have started producing it, I am very excited about the direction is is taking - different again. I am learning a lot too. I have a couple of industry people out there who are critiquing the production and the songs as they come along, so I feel like I am definitely growing.

That being said I am very pleased with how things have come out so far (all links to iTunes for a listen):

January: Beautiful For You a song about the opportunity we have as the church to serve God by serving those without parents.
February: I Want To Tell You - hey it was February, I had to record a love song!!
March/April: I Will Bless The Lord - The first worship song of this year's singles, but certainly not the last. Remember lead sheets can be had for free here.

I will admit, the production of a song a month has proved somewhat grueling, but I do feel like it is taking me down a path towards the goal of creating better more impactful music.

Posted via email from Cliff Cline

Co-Writing Is Not That Scary

I attended the Ontario GMA Canada seminar last Friday. I was excited to re-connect with an old acquaintance Chris Vacher of Worship Rises fame. Chris founded Worship Rises to encourage the Canadian church to write songs that speak to what God is doing in our churches and our lives. He sees as a worship leader, and I agree, that there really is no significant voice in Canada right now. I think that speaks to two things: 1. a lack of Biblical passion for what song writers and creatives should be doing to encourage the church, and 2. the ominous and probable possibility that we are not letting God do enough in our lives, hence no powerful songs to sing. There is actually one other thought, we need a mechanism, like an industry but not, that allows us to freely share good quality worship songs with each other. I don't have an answer for this today, but certainly Chris is trying to help with this.

One of the things that Chris does is set-up song writing clinics for worship leaders across Canada to get things moving. They already have an EP released with the fruit of that labour. I went through a crash course and co-wrote a song with an artist named Derrick Drover. He apparently sang the song in a showcase last Friday night. I have co-written songs before with my old band mate Fraser McCulloch of Heart Mind and Soul fame, but sitting in a room with someone and pounding out something from scratch is quite another thing. I am actually looking forward to finding a way to do this again soon, in the end it wasn't that scary, but I am sure that speaks in part to Derrick's patience!!

Posted via email from Cliff Cline

Are You a Hoarder, No really?

Our family has had an interesting ride over the years in terms of living arrangements. In terms of expectation we have never hit mine. I really wanted to live in a larger home than we live in, have space for, well anything I deemed necessary. Our first townhouse was almost as big as our current detached home. Of course there is the small difference of 4 more family members in the form of amazing children. It is also smaller than our last semi. So what Cliff, what's your point?

I suppose the thing that has been remarkable to me is how much we have purged, how little is coming into our home, and how 3 plus years after moving into a smaller space I still feel like I have too much stuff. Even though we have purged I still feel myself holding onto things. Trophies from when I was a kid, school projects, old music recordings and videos of live performances and TV appearances.

Lately, I have been in purge mode again. This stuff has been weighing me down. I want a simpler "cleaner" life. I need to right size my stuff to fit my space. Although not of the epic proportions of some reality TV shows, I am a hoarder, and it is time to purge once and for all. David Allen of getting things done fame talks about how important it is to take the weight of your mind to reduce stress and actually allow you to get things done.

A sidebar, I have very recently started using TeuxDeux on my desktop and iPhone to help get things out of my mind and on to a task list. Having the sync ability and the portability of the iPhone is helping immensely. I will let you know how sustainable I find this latest foray into organization and control in digital list form.

Posted via email from Cliff Cline

Quitter

I am not exactly promoting this book or even Jon, I have never met him or seen anything else of what he has done, although now I plan on exploring. I happened upon him via the twitter world, he actually followed me first, which is saying something, because I have very few followers. Anyway, I love the vibe and message of the video, which is what his book is about I guess. A little change up for the blog today. I think it is kind of inspirational.

Posted via email from Cliff Cline

Is There Any Room for Space?

I was just reading a post by Sara Groves on information overload. She was commenting on how there is a fatigue that comes from the constant connection we have to technology and information etc. One of her points was that it drains energy to the point that creativity is stifled. One of the biggest challenges to most creative endeavours is having the space to fashion your art. In the end you have to make room in your life to have space.

As a part-time artist with a young family and a full-time job I get it. Technology can often be a friend, helping reduce costs and distribute the music in ways that could never be done before. But the universal access to many broadcast platforms causes a reverberation of white noise that one is always trying to break through to be heard.

I am not sure what the balance is, but I know I need to spend more time in the "quiet" of my writing space, unplugged, free to clear my mind of the dull roar of the social network sphere to write and produce. I am sure you have your music equivalent. Are you struggling with creating room for space? How do you try and create those art fashioning times?

Posted via email from Cliff Cline

Why Sunday Morning Matters

There is a massive difference between getting your Sunday morning service done, and getting it done well. As a pastor friend of mine noted, Sunday morning comes relentlessly every week ready or not. So how do you infuse energy and excitement into something that has become a routine? How to you cast vision for greatness for a service that is already, well good. How do you tell people that good, is not good enough?

As a fellow leader I will tell you, it is all on you. If you are not pushing yourself to grow spiritually, as a speaker or as a worship leader you won't and neither will your church. We must also be careful not to mistake doing something a little different (re-naming sermon series and creating a new graphic/video) for growth.

For the sake of argument let's assume you are committed to excellence, but, maybe as a team you are not there yet. Pragmatically, what are you doing to push yourself and your team to actually become better, better than good. If you cannot define that clearly and measure KPIs (key performance indicators) that are helping your people move forward don't kid yourself, nothing is happening.

Spiritually, what is God doing in your life and the life of your team and leadership. What are the KSIs (key spiritual indicators) that are visually showing growth in your church. This point is more important than the one above, because if the relationships in your church are not deep enough to allow you to know what is happening the lives of each other than that is not good enough according to the Bible, and let's be honest, if you can't verbalize what God is doing in your life right now, there is a very good chance it is because you are not letting Him do anything.

Sunday morning matters because it is the rallying point, the celebration for believers. A time to share, inspire, and encourage each other to worship God and grow in Him. A time to repent yet again, accept forgiveness and move forward together. A time to disciple, by living out this process in front of the young in faith and our very own children. Sunday morning matters because it holds the power of gathering in it. Where we as humans are influenced by each other of our own free will. We come to hear, to be taught, to investigate, to find love and acceptance, to meet God!! Sunday morning matters because it is the beachhead for the hard work of being the church every other day. Sunday morning is not the church, oh no, I know that very well, but it really matters.

Posted via email from Cliff Cline

Your Best Laid Plans

I could have also called this lemons to lemonade. The hardest part of accomplishing something is accomplishing it. Huh?

Traveling down a path to your goals can often be defined by a set of steps, planned and executed, that lead to the finish line. My experience is that, often, things get derailed and you have to problem solve. The worse case can be that an opportunity is missed, and it evaporates. It is like commercials in the advertising business, if you didn't sell that commercial spot for last night, it's too late.

So what do you do when something just doesn't work out? I think you make banana muffins (from over ripe bananas). Sometimes the best thing to do is completely change course and make yourself useful, perhaps in an unrelated way. Meeting plans get canceled, go home and spend that time with your family. Hit the gym and burn off some frustration. Make lost opportunity found time. You tried, it isn't procrastination to re-boot your mind and soul so you can pick up the plan tomorrow. When we keep on moving we get those other days, those days where we can't believe everything went so right!!

Posted via email from Cliff Cline