Hi guys...I have been posting regularly at my MySpace page. It seems to be an easier way to let folks know what's happening with video included.
Check it out at:
http://www.myspace.com/billcs
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Summer in the Upstate...And Ministry Updates
Well, it's summer and the birds are chirping, the flowers are all blooming, and if we had a rainy season this year the grass would be growing! Right now I still pretty just mow dirt and weeds! It's also mid to upper 90's and sunny just about every day which is nice, as long as you can go take a dip in the lake or get in air conditioning from time to time.
Things are progressing on the promotional DVD from H.O.W.I. http://www.heartofaworshipper.com/ , and I just can't wait to get it finished and sent out to as many places as possible. I have been working with Hamilton at the studio http://www.greatwaves.com/ in an effort to wittle down the many hours of video footage we have from missions trips. We have gotten down from over 40 hours, to 40 minutes, and now less than 20 minutes. The DVD will probably only be around 4 minutes long though, so we still have some cutting to go! I can finally see a glimpse of what the video will look like, and that gets me fired up!
We are getting ready to send some music gear to the country of Malawi for the first time, and I am excited about that too. I'll give more details on that when I ship. I have been in touch with a Pastor from there for a while now, and the only thing holding us back from helping them has been funding. We do have some gear for them now though, so I'm planning on getting it there soon somehow! Another Christian ministry has contacted me through e-mail from the country of Pakistan, so we will see how that progresses over time.
I started the serious re-design of the H.O.W.I website today. It's gonna look completely different and more professional. More along the lines of the one I built for http://www.scmountainlakeliving.com/ . That takes soooooo long. But it'll be worth it to have something new and fresh.
Since Sarah and I started working at the new brokerage, we have met some new friends. Two of those are a couple named Ricky and Niki. God has called them to ministry as missionaries to Africa, and they are moving there full time to work as missionaries through the Southern Baptist Missionary organization. Wow! I think that it is just awesome! How many people have you met who are willing to actually move to the mission field? Many of us have traveled their in various places, but these guys are moving there. Please send up a prayer for them from time to time. I am hoping that we can organize a team to go and work with them through H.O.W.I. in the future. They are moving to a country in Africa where we have never worked, and didn't have any contacts in until now! Yeah baby!
God is still teaching me lessons in my personal life about His provision, and being satisfied with what He provides. That's a tough one for me apparently :) This lesson has been going on for a year and a half now! I long for the day when we can get caught up on our finances and have some regular income again. That's probably why I consider getting a full time Worship Leader position again - because that would provide a steady income. Not really a great reason to be a minister though. I know...I know...:)
Hey...If you a have a regular job that you can rely on...Let me tell you something. DON'T TAKE IT FOR GRANTED! Thank God that you have the job and income, and if you want better, then just continue praying and believing for better and take the steps you need to to reach those goals. We are trying to do that in our personal business life, and in our ministry life. Easier said than done. But we're workin on it!
I also still struggle just a little bit with whether or not I should just get a full time Worship Leader position in a church somewhere again. I've had offers of that sort, but didn't feel God leading me to take the offers. At this point in my life, full time worship leading isn't something I am shooting for, but ya never know what doors God may open up. I've been there and done that for pretty much 14 years straight before taking a break. Right now I am a backup to the current leader at Foothills, so basically I lead whenever asked like if the current full time leader is gone or sick or something. Our family loves our church, so it would be so difficult for us to leave, and to be honest, I just don't want to go somewhere else and lead, so we will stay put for now. I know the main calling God has upon me is for H.O.W.I. ministry anyway, and I consider helping out leading worship at our church and other churches a part of that.
So there's my heart on that subject! Well...My wifey-poo should be coming back from Greenville and Whole Foods pretty soon, so I'm gonna sign off in hopes to get some good organic food.
Talk to ya'll later!
Bill
Things are progressing on the promotional DVD from H.O.W.I. http://www.heartofaworshipper.com/ , and I just can't wait to get it finished and sent out to as many places as possible. I have been working with Hamilton at the studio http://www.greatwaves.com/ in an effort to wittle down the many hours of video footage we have from missions trips. We have gotten down from over 40 hours, to 40 minutes, and now less than 20 minutes. The DVD will probably only be around 4 minutes long though, so we still have some cutting to go! I can finally see a glimpse of what the video will look like, and that gets me fired up!
We are getting ready to send some music gear to the country of Malawi for the first time, and I am excited about that too. I'll give more details on that when I ship. I have been in touch with a Pastor from there for a while now, and the only thing holding us back from helping them has been funding. We do have some gear for them now though, so I'm planning on getting it there soon somehow! Another Christian ministry has contacted me through e-mail from the country of Pakistan, so we will see how that progresses over time.
I started the serious re-design of the H.O.W.I website today. It's gonna look completely different and more professional. More along the lines of the one I built for http://www.scmountainlakeliving.com/ . That takes soooooo long. But it'll be worth it to have something new and fresh.
Since Sarah and I started working at the new brokerage, we have met some new friends. Two of those are a couple named Ricky and Niki. God has called them to ministry as missionaries to Africa, and they are moving there full time to work as missionaries through the Southern Baptist Missionary organization. Wow! I think that it is just awesome! How many people have you met who are willing to actually move to the mission field? Many of us have traveled their in various places, but these guys are moving there. Please send up a prayer for them from time to time. I am hoping that we can organize a team to go and work with them through H.O.W.I. in the future. They are moving to a country in Africa where we have never worked, and didn't have any contacts in until now! Yeah baby!
God is still teaching me lessons in my personal life about His provision, and being satisfied with what He provides. That's a tough one for me apparently :) This lesson has been going on for a year and a half now! I long for the day when we can get caught up on our finances and have some regular income again. That's probably why I consider getting a full time Worship Leader position again - because that would provide a steady income. Not really a great reason to be a minister though. I know...I know...:)
Hey...If you a have a regular job that you can rely on...Let me tell you something. DON'T TAKE IT FOR GRANTED! Thank God that you have the job and income, and if you want better, then just continue praying and believing for better and take the steps you need to to reach those goals. We are trying to do that in our personal business life, and in our ministry life. Easier said than done. But we're workin on it!
I also still struggle just a little bit with whether or not I should just get a full time Worship Leader position in a church somewhere again. I've had offers of that sort, but didn't feel God leading me to take the offers. At this point in my life, full time worship leading isn't something I am shooting for, but ya never know what doors God may open up. I've been there and done that for pretty much 14 years straight before taking a break. Right now I am a backup to the current leader at Foothills, so basically I lead whenever asked like if the current full time leader is gone or sick or something. Our family loves our church, so it would be so difficult for us to leave, and to be honest, I just don't want to go somewhere else and lead, so we will stay put for now. I know the main calling God has upon me is for H.O.W.I. ministry anyway, and I consider helping out leading worship at our church and other churches a part of that.
So there's my heart on that subject! Well...My wifey-poo should be coming back from Greenville and Whole Foods pretty soon, so I'm gonna sign off in hopes to get some good organic food.
Talk to ya'll later!
Bill
Friday, May 18, 2007
No May Showers...New Update
So here's an update for May so far. Around here, we haven't gotten much in the way of rain. It seems like our spring rain season just past us right by. Talking to my parents, it looks like Florida is the same way. It may be a long hot summer!
Aside from the weather, I have been pretty much focusing on work and ministry this past month. I lead all the worship services at church a few weeks ago, and am now trying to focus on getting the promotional DVD finished for Heart of a Worshipper International. We are just about out of funding for HOWI, so God has to kick in for us soon, or we can't help anyone else this year until we make more money that we can give personally to the ministry, and let the monthly donations add up for a while.
Real Estate is also a big focus for both my wife and I right now as a team. We have switched to a new broker in working real estate, and now have an office and website. The website is at: http://www.scmountainlakeliving.com . The broker we work at is a Christian company and the office is much closer to our house which makes it better all the way around for us. Come on everybody. You know you wanna move to beautiful Upstate South Carolina and buy a house through us! Give us a call :)
I have been reading several books which have been very interesting. One is "Refuting Evolution 2" by Jonathan Sarfati, and it is complex, but very interesting. The author makes excellent points from scripture and science and it is a good read.
Another is Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki, and it is a great book for offering a different mindset to keep regarding money, jobs, and making money in this life. I love books like this, and the times when I have made the most money in my life, have been times when I kept the proper mindset about money, and how it fits into my relationship with God.
The other book is Within Heaven's Gates, by Rebecca Springer and it is a wonderful book that I have read many times, but come back to every few years. It's a woman's testimony about how she died and went to heaven for what seemd like years, and then returned to her body. It's really interesting, encouraging, and just makes you feel good when you read it. You have to take any book like this with a grain of salt, but heaven is real, and so sometimes it's just fun to read what heaven may be like.
We have had some annoying setbacks and some injury drama in the past few months that I can share in the next few months, but we really just need y'all to pray that God will open up His doors financially for us, so that we can be in a position to give more away and help others. HOWI has such potential if we just could raise the funding, and we do still have a bunch of ministries on our list that we need to get gear and Bibles to this year. Hopefully our DVD will help raise some funding.
On that front. We have some great news!!!! We came across a Great connection and because of that, our "To Worship You" CD and each individual track is now available on iTunes, Napster, Sony Music, Rhapsody, eMusic, and Musicnet, and that could mean more funding for our ministry. If you have any of these music source programs, then you can go to your software such as iTunes and just search on Heart of a Worshipper International, or "To Worship You" and you can download the entire album or single tracks for .99 each. Even if you don't buy anything, please go and listen to the sample tracks and it will increase our popularity on these music sites and possibly cause people to buy more which will raise more funding for us.
So that's about it for now. I'll post more again soon. Bill
Aside from the weather, I have been pretty much focusing on work and ministry this past month. I lead all the worship services at church a few weeks ago, and am now trying to focus on getting the promotional DVD finished for Heart of a Worshipper International. We are just about out of funding for HOWI, so God has to kick in for us soon, or we can't help anyone else this year until we make more money that we can give personally to the ministry, and let the monthly donations add up for a while.
Real Estate is also a big focus for both my wife and I right now as a team. We have switched to a new broker in working real estate, and now have an office and website. The website is at: http://www.scmountainlakeliving.com . The broker we work at is a Christian company and the office is much closer to our house which makes it better all the way around for us. Come on everybody. You know you wanna move to beautiful Upstate South Carolina and buy a house through us! Give us a call :)
I have been reading several books which have been very interesting. One is "Refuting Evolution 2" by Jonathan Sarfati, and it is complex, but very interesting. The author makes excellent points from scripture and science and it is a good read.
Another is Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki, and it is a great book for offering a different mindset to keep regarding money, jobs, and making money in this life. I love books like this, and the times when I have made the most money in my life, have been times when I kept the proper mindset about money, and how it fits into my relationship with God.
The other book is Within Heaven's Gates, by Rebecca Springer and it is a wonderful book that I have read many times, but come back to every few years. It's a woman's testimony about how she died and went to heaven for what seemd like years, and then returned to her body. It's really interesting, encouraging, and just makes you feel good when you read it. You have to take any book like this with a grain of salt, but heaven is real, and so sometimes it's just fun to read what heaven may be like.
We have had some annoying setbacks and some injury drama in the past few months that I can share in the next few months, but we really just need y'all to pray that God will open up His doors financially for us, so that we can be in a position to give more away and help others. HOWI has such potential if we just could raise the funding, and we do still have a bunch of ministries on our list that we need to get gear and Bibles to this year. Hopefully our DVD will help raise some funding.
On that front. We have some great news!!!! We came across a Great connection and because of that, our "To Worship You" CD and each individual track is now available on iTunes, Napster, Sony Music, Rhapsody, eMusic, and Musicnet, and that could mean more funding for our ministry. If you have any of these music source programs, then you can go to your software such as iTunes and just search on Heart of a Worshipper International, or "To Worship You" and you can download the entire album or single tracks for .99 each. Even if you don't buy anything, please go and listen to the sample tracks and it will increase our popularity on these music sites and possibly cause people to buy more which will raise more funding for us.
So that's about it for now. I'll post more again soon. Bill
Monday, April 9, 2007
A Long Day but a Great One!
Hey Guys,
It's been a long time since my last post. I'm gonna try to start posting at least once per week, and not every day or every few days like I was, because when things get busy, I just can't ever seem to get to it (like for the past 3 weeks :)
Yesterday we spent the day playing and singing in the Easter services at Foothills Community Church, and hanging out with friends (The Altstatts) doing lunch and having an Easter egg hunt for the kids. We had 5 services. 4 in the morning and one at night! The first service started at 7:15 A.M., so we had to be there at 6:00 A.M. to run through the songs. Everybody was pretty much running on coffee for that first hour!
Things went well and I haven't heard the numbers yet, but it looks like we had somewhere near 2000 people show up. One of the services was totally packed and they had to bring out folding chairs to seat people.
Our song set for all 5 services was:
All Because of Jesus - from Steve Fee
Jesus Paid It All - from Kristian Stanfill (Passion)
Mighty to Save - from Hillsongs
Marvelous Light - from Charlie Hall
Feature Song: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - from U2
Another exciting thing is that some of the steel showed up for the new building and if you look in the field beside the church, there are now big beams and things ready to be used to start building our new building. Yeah Baby! Full-on construction is gonna be starting soon.
I have also been working a lot on H.O.W.I. stuff, including the promotional DVD, and especially working on getting the taxes ready for our accountant. After personal and business tax season is over with, I will be hitting working on the DVD hard.
Please continue your prayers for us and our ministry here in SC. We need a financial break-through from God for the ministry. There are a lot of people who need our help this year, but lack of funding so far has been the limiting factor.
It's been a long time since my last post. I'm gonna try to start posting at least once per week, and not every day or every few days like I was, because when things get busy, I just can't ever seem to get to it (like for the past 3 weeks :)
Yesterday we spent the day playing and singing in the Easter services at Foothills Community Church, and hanging out with friends (The Altstatts) doing lunch and having an Easter egg hunt for the kids. We had 5 services. 4 in the morning and one at night! The first service started at 7:15 A.M., so we had to be there at 6:00 A.M. to run through the songs. Everybody was pretty much running on coffee for that first hour!
Things went well and I haven't heard the numbers yet, but it looks like we had somewhere near 2000 people show up. One of the services was totally packed and they had to bring out folding chairs to seat people.
Our song set for all 5 services was:
All Because of Jesus - from Steve Fee
Jesus Paid It All - from Kristian Stanfill (Passion)
Mighty to Save - from Hillsongs
Marvelous Light - from Charlie Hall
Feature Song: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - from U2
Another exciting thing is that some of the steel showed up for the new building and if you look in the field beside the church, there are now big beams and things ready to be used to start building our new building. Yeah Baby! Full-on construction is gonna be starting soon.
I have also been working a lot on H.O.W.I. stuff, including the promotional DVD, and especially working on getting the taxes ready for our accountant. After personal and business tax season is over with, I will be hitting working on the DVD hard.
Please continue your prayers for us and our ministry here in SC. We need a financial break-through from God for the ministry. There are a lot of people who need our help this year, but lack of funding so far has been the limiting factor.
Monday, March 12, 2007
First Assembly fun...
Well hello everybody :) We are home again. I hope everyone had great worship services yesterday and that God moved in people' lives in your churches. Our trip to North Carolina went by very quickly. We ended up taking the whole family since it was just the next state over. Both our kids got sick, and slept alot over the weekend, but they hung in there. I like to have my kids with me to watch me minister whenever possible, so that I can be an example to them. As a kid it was very hard for me to get in front of crowds of people and do anything that had to do with having a lead role. I want them to see that it's not something to be afraid of, and that if old Dad can do it, they can too.
So in North Carolina, I was scheduled to sing a feature in the Sunday morning service at First Assembly of God in the city of Andrews, NC. When I got there, Mike Barres, the Senior Pastor, graciously allowed me to sit in for the whole worship set, including their communion songs, and ending songs. First Assembly has a nice website at http://www.firstagandrews.org/ . Check it out! We had a great time playing songs like My Savior Lives, Blessed Be Your Name, How Great is Our God, and Healing Rain, and even an oldie -Oh Lord You're Beautiful. The who
le service had a very real Jesus focus, and by the time we got to my feature song, I knew that God was really moving in some people's hearts. I ended up playing and singing "Love Song" from Third day, which is a song written from Jesus' perspective which fit right in. It was well received by the crowd, and I could tell that some of the people were really touched by the song. One guy in particular, stood up right after I sang the first verse, and just had his head and hands lifted to the Lord the whole time in worship to the Lord, as he stood there. I love that sorta stuff! The whole reason we even bother to minister, is to just allow God to use us to point people to Jes
us, and to exalt His Holy name as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So I love it when people just close their eyes and shut themselves off from any visible distractions that I may bring.Pastor Mike preached a great message on the Holy Spirit which I thought was right on, and at the end of the service he gave an alter call as he played guitar and led the team in the Healing Rain song and other songs again. We kept singing and playing as a whole bunch of people came up to the alter and were on their faces. I wanted my wife Sarah to take a picture, but she was so caught up in worship, that it was the last thing on her mind. I knew when I saw her with her hands raised and tears streaming down her face that I could forget about pictures :) They are probably used to this sort of visible movement of God in their services at First Assembly, but it really touched our hearts, and we were just glad to be a part of it.
We ended up hanging out with Pastor Mike and his wife Betty ( see picture) over Chinese food at lunch after church, and also with my sister and her husband, and their friends Sam and Shannon and their kids. It was a good time of fellowship with new friends and family. It looks like we will be scheduling a full Worship Night service at First Assembly, where I bring the band, and we just have a great night filled with praise and worship. I'll keep you up to date on that. It should be a total blast.Pastor Mike and Betty are fun people to be around, and they are just very real (much like my own Pastors here Greg and Liz Oraham.) And also similar to our church -First Assembly in Andrews, NC has acquired land to build their new building on. I drove out to see it, because I believe that God is about to do something big with the ministry there. Can't wait to go back and worship with them again soon. Anybody wanna go with us next time? :)
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Prep time...
For some reason, this has been on my mind, so I'll post it...Have you ever been in a situation for a long time, and just felt so bored and over it that you just wish God would move you on? You know...you are stuck in a job, or stuck in a ministry...or just plain stuck in life, and you just wanna see some change? Man I have been there in the past, so I can totally relate to any of you who may feel that way now.
One thing that is good to keep in mind when you are in a situation like that, is that there may still be something you can learn, and something valuable you can gain from being in that place. Look at your situation without being jaded and see. I know for me personally, those times when I just wanted out were times when God still provided opportunities for me to be effective...and that has been at work in secular jobs, and in ministry. For me personally, it seems like the only times when God really has moved me on from those situations is when I have just given it over to Him, and basically said "O.K. Lord, if this is where You want me, then this is where I'm gonna stay, and I will just choose to rely on You for contentment in this situation." Then when my heart was truly given over to Him in that situation guess what? He moved me on by opening other doors.
That happened to me when I was traveling with Dave Roever years ago. We were on the road so much doing crusades, conventions, school assemblies, and camps, that it just wore me out after a while. It was so awesome seeing 200 people get saved in the meetings some nights, but I just got so tired of living on a bus and all that traveling. I loved everybody in the ministry like family. Heck, I lived with them on the bus, at home, and ministered with them too, but I just new that so much traveling wasn't for me long term. God still kept me there for a while after I started feeling that way, cuz he just wasn't done with me there yet. Then when I gave it over to him, he released me to move on.
I've been in that sorta situation several times over the years with the same ending. Take a look at the situation you are in, and see if God still wants to use you in it for a while longer despite how you may feel about getting out of it. Being given over to Him is the best place to be anyway. For me...that is something I have to work on everyday and sometimes multiple times a day. Some days are better than others :)
On the ministry front. We are still going to North Carolina this weekend and hope to make some more new friends and ministry connections as we did in Florida this past week. I'll update with info on the church and meetings on Monday. I appreciate your prayers as we get out there more and continue to develop the ministry of Heart of a Worshipper International. So many people need our help that it can be quite overwhelming at times. We are being contacted more now than ever.
Please don't forget to pray for us and support us in any way you can. TTYL
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Finally back...
Hey Guys,Well I'm finally back home. That 8 hour trip to central Florida is just long enough to be a bit too long if ya know what I mean. I got in yesterday afternoon and didn't get to post on the blog, because I was busy hanging with my family.
The trip to The Gathering Place church in Orlando (http://www.tgpworship.com/) was great. My friend Dennis graciously let me stay at his house for a few days, and introduced me to so many people at the church, that it was hard to keep up. Dennis...you know a lot of people man! I was able to meet and talk with Pastor Shaddy Soliman about Heart of a Worshipper, and he gave me some n
ew ideas to pursue, and has some great church and ministry connections that he is going to put us in touch with. He ministers often with churches overseas in Egypt, and also told me that he is a good friend of Ron Kenoly and will let him know about our ministry. Hopefully we will be able to help some of those ministries in Egypt. That is an area where we haven't really had any big connections. Well...that is until now! The worship and atmosphere were wonderful that Sunday and Sunday night.
Another meeting I had over breakfast, was with Nick who is one of the worship leaders at TGP church. Man were those pancakes huge! This restaurant gave me pancakes that actually were as large as a dinner plate. They tasted great! I only ate about half, because we ended up talking so much. I really felt like Nick and I clicked right away, because we like to do the same types of music, and he has a real heart for intimacy in worship. That's a subject that I talked a lot about when teaching in Kenya, Africa and that is near and dear to my heart. We talked about how there just isn't time for it in the structure of most church services, and about how Nick had been doing special services just for intimate worship, and how God was blessing that. Nick has also had some back issues , and is also a Broker/Realtor, so of course we had those things in common too. At some point I can see us doing some ministry together. Maybe a worship conference or intimate worship times. We'll see!I love to network with other worship leaders, and to hear their hearts. It was great to meet someone else who just longs to worship the Lord in quiet intimacy, and to lead others in doing the same. We made some good connections on this trip, and I believe that God will turn those connections into friends over time.
I spent the last few days of my trip hanging out with my parents where they live in a place called The Villages, Florida http://www.thevillages.com which was good. To me, that place is like one giant go-cart track. They have golf cart trails everywhere, and you can literally drive for 20 miles in your golf cart on roads and trails to Wal-Mart, Publix, restaurants, and just about any place you would want to go. even Circuit City. The Villages is a huge retirement golf community and like it's own self sufficient city. The golf cart trails even go under major roadways through tunnels. Amazing. They also have over 20 golf courses! Can you believe that? The place is huge!Well that's about it for today. I will try and update with info on our trip this weekend tomorrow. It should be a fun one to North Carolina!
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