new year

Hi! I thought I'd post one more little one before the end of the year.

You'll read and hear a lot about new year's resolutions, turning a new leaf (which I claimed to do with blogging a few months ago) and the like this week. You'll read about new diets, new financial help plans, new self-helps of various kinds. Many of you will resolve something or other that you've been meaning to make a habit for some time, and many of you will find success for a time. Some of you will succeed long-term. I've been wanting to run more, drink more water, read the Bible more, make some decent recordings, etc. Chances are, some of these things will happen for a while but then I'll hit the natural downs of life and feel silly or disappointed in myself or like a failure.

Chances are, most of you have gone/will go through these same things. We've all heard this before and we've all experienced it so I don't want too many unnecessary words. But I want to ask: what will it take to break the cycle? Is the cycle meant to be broken? Do we have any hope of ever actually changing for the better and accomplishing something good?

I certainly don't have all the answers or even a few of them, but I think a few things to keep in mind, like perspective, might help. Making attainable goals and going bigger from there. God asks us to be faithful with the small things so He may entrust us with the larger things later. Look back on the last few years of your life and evaluate it a little: what have you done that you're proud of? What have you done that you're not proud of? That you never want to do again?

I try to take things, rather than a year at a time, a day at a time. One of my favorite songs is by the band Five Iron Frenzy and it's called 'Every New Day.' It's better with music of course but the end of the song says:

Freedom means love without condition, without a beginning or an end.

Here's my heart, let it be forever Yours; only You can make every new day seem so new.

Cameron's Nov/Dec 2006 prayer letter

Here's my monthly prayer letter to supporters of the ministry...

A PICTURE’S WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

I thought I would give you a letter mostly full of pictures this time so you can get into my world a little more easily. So.zo continues to be an awesome place in which to work and make connections with people and present spiritual ideas in a non-threatening way. I think it’s so important for the Christian to continue to make himself or herself available to non-Christians. I’ve heard that the trend for most people who become Christians is to lose connection with almost all their non-Christian friends within 2 to 3 years after their conversion. This shouldn’t be! Jesus was called a ‘friend of sinners,’ and what a beautiful title that is. After all, we were all dead in sin before He made us alive in Him. Pray that I and everyone who works at so.zo are known as friends to all.

Here, in my opinion, is a big part of the ‘cool factor’ of so.zo: the couch in the window. We have this old brown couch that’s been the consistent favorite of most who’ve been to so.zo or even the Waterhouse, ’cause we made use of it there as well. When we came to so.zo, it just so happened that it fit perfectly in the little raised window section that’s to your right just as you walk through the door. With plenty of electrical outlets and an inviting ambiance, it’s become the most popular place to study or hang out during the day. Though we plan to keep upgrading our furniture and appliances, I wonder if this couch will be with us for a long time to come. The big poster that is hanging on the left side of the window has our name and logo on it, and the smaller posters display our current weekly events: h2o, Open Mic, and International Student Tutoring.

This is the left wall as you come walking through the door. So.zo is a long narrow store-front space, so we have both walls lined with tables and comfy seating in the front part. It’s kind of a café/study lounge in the front and a performance/event space in the back. I’m actually sitting and typing right now on a couch opposite what you see in this picture.

We also keep various original, local artwork and photography on the walls, as you can see. So.zo was actually a stop for a Downtown Morgantown Artwalk in September, giving us some great exposure and allowing us to join the local art community. Karen Gergely, a member of the h2o leadership team and part of my canvas group Exsatio, is our art ‘curator’ and so handles the research and installation of the pieces. Please keep praying for all the events of so.zo and the people who run them.
The chalkboard is another aspect of so.zo that people really seem to enjoy. It’s on the right side after you’ve come through most of the café-type seating. It’s actually just a piece of drywall that was attached to a little office that was part of the previous business in the space and that we demolitioned when we moved in. We bought chalkboard paint, slapped it on there and put a frame around it and it looks like it’s been that way forever! As you can see, it provides a creative way to sign up for Open Mic and serves as a ‘suggested donation’ guide for refreshments, which are all in front of the chalkboard.

We don’t actually have a business license yet so we aren’t able to ‘sell’ anything, but the donation can has made it so we get to at least try to break even with some of the costs of running so.zo daily. At this point we’re typically open 4 hours a day, something we’d like to keep expanding with each semester. Pray for the future manager and employees/volunteers of so.zo, that they become known as the friendliest in town and are able to use their gifts to make people feel at ease.
This last shot is basically from the middle of the length of so.zo, looking down at the far end, which houses our stage. The chalkboard is to the right of this picture’s perspective, and to its left is our soundboard area. This was taken at an Open Mic when my friend Dirk Mercer was performing. It’s a small stage, set up more for acoustic acts, but we hope to bring in more of those and do concerts with some regularity in the spring. This is also where we do the h2o service. It’s been a neat thing musically this semester to refine the quality of our ‘acoustic’ worship leading since we don’t have room for a full drumset (nor would the room be able to handle the sound probably). So we have more percussion than drums, and we also have generally stopped using an electric guitar, going more for a rhythm acoustic and lead acoustic setup. People seem to have really enjoyed this. We still stay quite upbeat, and the h2o community sure loves to sing! But the whole environment provides for a more intimate atmosphere, which has been an advantage over the Waterhouse. Please pray this ‘good vibe’ continues to make people feel at home, whether it’s at h2o, Open Mic or any other event we hold at so.zo.

We’ve got one more h2o service on December 10th and then we’ll break with the students until they come back. I can’t believe the Christmas season is here once more! Merry Christmas to all of you. May I take a moment again and tell you how grateful Sarah and I truly are for you? Though I don’t get to see some of you as much as I would like, I think about you often and I want you to know that your cheerful giving to GCM blesses our lives abundantly.

I do want to ask all of you who give on a less regular basis, like quarterly, semi-annually or annually, to check and make sure you’re still on schedule from when you first started giving. It would be so beneficial for my GCM account if you were able to catch up this month, before the end of the year. One big thing is that I’m waiting for a large reimbursement from my training costs that will expire at the end of the month, meaning I won’t be able to receive it if all your pledged support isn’t given to GCM in the next few weeks. THANK YOU for allowing me to remind you!

Love in Christ,

Cameron

podcast

It seems I don't do a post for a while and then I do two in one day. This is one of those days!

I want to remind you all of the H2O MORGANTOWN LIVE free podcast we do of the h2o message each week. It's a great 'audial' way to stay connected with me and my little campus ministry world that's more interesting than just text. Billy Williams does most of the messages, but I have given a few (one of which was podcasted a couple weeks ago) and Brian Shope, our CCO staff guy, gives some as well. If you have iTunes, you can go to the podcast page of the iTunes Store and enter 'h2o morgantown live' into the search field and find it that way. Or you can go to the H2O MORGANTOWN LIVE website (linked on my blog here to the right) and subscribe from there.

Yesterday was our last h2o of the semester (the third service in our Advent series) and we sang carols (including Silent Night by candlelight!) and had a Christmas dinner afterward as per our tradition of the past few years. It was great. We were able to record almost all of the service, including the band doing the carols, and as the band leader I'm really excited about that! I hope we get to do it more in the future with the worship songs we do. Of course you can hear the little mistakes that are inevitable with any live show, and of course listening to it on a recording can never capture the live experience, but I still think it's fun. If we do it more in the future, maybe we'll start stepping our quality even more, but I'm really proud of these guys (and gal) for the quality they bring with only a couple hours of practice a week. Enjoy!

ideas

You know, I think one of the reasons that it is difficult to keep a blog updated regularly is that every time you connect to the internet, unless you are an incredibly focused person, there are so many things to distract and entertain you that soon seconds, mintues and sometimes hours go by, at the end of which you're exhausted and you realize you didn't accomplish anything you set out to when you first got on.

I enjoy learning about other people's lives, what they're doing and thinking, seeing what is in the mind of the creative human. I've never been able to see so many neat ideas and projects. But at some point, I've got to be able to contribute something myself. It's one thing to have beautiful dreams in your head, and some people need to begin there, to rediscover the wonder of a child. However, I think that one of the defining characteristics of becoming an adult is being able to put your hand to something skillfully and diligently and see it through to completion with excellence. To take an idea and produce something from it.

I think this is the struggle for most people about my age, including myself. I recently read an article by Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars, some of the finest guitars in the world, and he was talking about ideas:

I wouldn't want to say that ideas are a dime a dozen, because they're not, but the truly hard part is taking an idea and turning it into a legitimate product and business. Once a person experiences both risks and rewards, they usually have a different viewpoint about how important the idea is.

What do we do with all the ever-increasing amount of information and ideas that is at our fingertips? Do we have the correct filters in place to sort through it all effectively use it? Do we have a good measure for being able to determine what ideas are important?

link updates

Just wanted to give you the chance to see some other music projects I'm involved with if you haven't already.

This is Ryan, me and Bernd (from Germany), 3 of the 4 members of 'Of Things to Come,' a little jam foursome (Billy Williams is the fourth and vocalist with traditional and original chants out of his Shawnee heritage). As you can seek, I try to provide ambiance with the keyboard but I think I'm usually outdone by Bernd who loves the reverb effect for guitar. Ryan gives us the beat on the djembe. So check out our myspace!

Also, me and Ryan get together and record some songs of ours (his words and my music) where I play guitar and he plays percussion, usually his (and I'm not sure how to spell this) kahon that Bernd actually made for him. It looks like a box and has a little pad on top he sits on. He beats it on various sides and it has some things within that make different sounds. We call ourselves 'O Rise Above...' and we also have a myspace. Enjoy!

Christopher's site

Hey. My brother Christopher (that's him with his wife Alice and dog Bob) just made a website to keep up with all us other siblings with sites! He's a Mac user (which I'm growing more and more envious of) and so got a Dot.Mac, I think it's called, software and created a website for people to be able to keep up with what's going on with them. They're a fun couple enjoying the city life in Knoxville, TN. Sarah and I love getting to see them whenever we can! We all got to go to Pittsburgh and walk around and eat last Friday, it was great. I've added his site to my 'Friends and Family' links to the right.