So we all have plans. Right? Don't we try to get a handle on something as small as where we go for lunch or something as big as where we're supposed to live and work? As we've said earlier in other blog posts, Facebook status updates, and face-to-face conversations, we've planned a lot. So much planning goes into being a performing artist. SO MUCH PLANNING. We're not even a super popular widely known band (yet, we can hope) and we still have to do a crazy amount of planning just to make a show work. All of us in PS 7:17 are working college students, some of whom work 9-5, while the others work long evening/night shifts on the weekends. Time is a real factor in how we have to make band stuff work. We're forced to make good use of our time, practicing, playing, writing, listening, making lists, contacting people, making more lists, talking, scratching out stuff and narrowing down lists, taking care of business stuff, making more lists again, networking, doing internet promotion, planning on how to take care of future original material, and so much more we can't really think of right now. It's a lot. So we deal with all of this quite often while preparing for shows.
Last Saturday we planned for an outdoor show at a church where we were to be simply background music for people to faintly hear as they were enjoying ice cream and homemade Southern summer food (that may or may not have been an extra perk for us to go play). We had planned to have a canopy set up, our sound equipment going, full band set up complete with both acoustic and electric material as well as a violin and a keyboard as a sound experiment. In preparation for our set lists we started out with a 79 song list, then narrowed it down to close to a 40 something song set, then trimmed that down to around 20 something songs. We had made all of our plans but one thing was consistent the whole time: God had His way for how He wanted the show to go. Not our show that we were asked to play for, but His show where He got the glory.
Midway through our set, black thunderclouds rolled in and a loud boom and a flash of lightning let everyone know that outdoors was not the place to be within the next 30 minutes or so. We tore down our whole setup like maniacs and rushed it inside. Then something really cool happened. People had come into the church and sat down and wanted to hear some music. It didn't matter that we hadn't prepared for a show indoors in a small church with our equipment, God had His way. So we grabbed our acoustic guitars, a bass amp that wasn't planned for use, and a djembe, and rolled with it. And it was incredible. We got the opportunity to lead an impromptu acoustic worship session with songs we'd never played that way before with that particular instrumentation. Our originals that we had wanted to showcase became acoustic songs out of the blue. Our drummer Matt had never even played most of those songs before on djembe and he made up parts on the spot. We were able to do something that could not have happened without the Lord.
Bottom line: we had our plans again, but in the end God's are the ones that matter. If we all put Him first, everything that needs to follow, will. It's difficult for most of us as human beings to say that we're OK with being proven wrong, much less say that we love being proven wrong. As a band, we're growing to love when God proves us wrong.
Last Saturday we planned for an outdoor show at a church where we were to be simply background music for people to faintly hear as they were enjoying ice cream and homemade Southern summer food (that may or may not have been an extra perk for us to go play). We had planned to have a canopy set up, our sound equipment going, full band set up complete with both acoustic and electric material as well as a violin and a keyboard as a sound experiment. In preparation for our set lists we started out with a 79 song list, then narrowed it down to close to a 40 something song set, then trimmed that down to around 20 something songs. We had made all of our plans but one thing was consistent the whole time: God had His way for how He wanted the show to go. Not our show that we were asked to play for, but His show where He got the glory.
Midway through our set, black thunderclouds rolled in and a loud boom and a flash of lightning let everyone know that outdoors was not the place to be within the next 30 minutes or so. We tore down our whole setup like maniacs and rushed it inside. Then something really cool happened. People had come into the church and sat down and wanted to hear some music. It didn't matter that we hadn't prepared for a show indoors in a small church with our equipment, God had His way. So we grabbed our acoustic guitars, a bass amp that wasn't planned for use, and a djembe, and rolled with it. And it was incredible. We got the opportunity to lead an impromptu acoustic worship session with songs we'd never played that way before with that particular instrumentation. Our originals that we had wanted to showcase became acoustic songs out of the blue. Our drummer Matt had never even played most of those songs before on djembe and he made up parts on the spot. We were able to do something that could not have happened without the Lord.
Bottom line: we had our plans again, but in the end God's are the ones that matter. If we all put Him first, everything that needs to follow, will. It's difficult for most of us as human beings to say that we're OK with being proven wrong, much less say that we love being proven wrong. As a band, we're growing to love when God proves us wrong.