I like to tell people, that before Hillsongs, before Israel Houghton, before United, before alternative rock became the part and parcel of today’s worship songs, there was Hosanna music. And in Hosanna music, a few names come to mind: Ron Kenoly for all the Israel Houghton aspirants of soul; Paul Baloche, the inspiration of many songwriters, who wrote Open the Eyes of My Heart and God of Wonders; Don Moen, to all those pianist-songleaders and to us, the guitarist worship leaders: Bob Fitts.

I recall listening to my very first worship cassette way back when I was about 12-13, about the time I picked up guitar. I played ‘The Lord Reigns’ so many times it broke. I spent countless hours learning the intricate chord transitions and strumming patterns of that song (D-A-D-A-G-A-G-A) etc, until I could lead it while playing the guitar.

To say Bob Fitts has been an influence would be a slight understatement.

It’s not that we hero-worship people, or we idolize them, but to me, it’s just extreme gratefulness that a person like him would allow himself be used by God, and in doing so, introduced me (and countless others) to worship and the joy of music. When I worship led the first time when I was 14, most of the transitions, transpositions, medleys were direct copies of the ones found in ‘The Lord Reigns’ album. It allowed me to set foundations, in which to build my own worship voicing later on.

Bob Fitts came down to Malaysia last weekend, and even if it was for one night and half a morning conference, the simple truths of worship leading were passed down, so simple that we sometimes miss it. Worship is a matter of the heart. We can’t force people into worship, the heart is a private place between man and God. All we can do is to ensure there is freedom in worship, the dispellation of fear, and the ever presence of God’s amazing love. And it starts with the worship team. It starts with us.

Last Year, Rev Dr Bernard Blessing came and we had a fantastic movement of the spirit in our Conference. He’s back again this year for the following sessions:
Thursday Night 28 August 2008 - Healing Encounter. This is OPEN to all!

Friday Day 29 August 2008 - Pastors & Leaders (Cell Leaders, Assistant Cell Leaders, Ministry Leaders, Cell Interns)

Friday Night 29 August 2008 - Healing Encounter. OPEN to all!
Saturday Whole Day - OPEN TO ALL!

Sunday Morning - OPEN TO ALL!

More Details:
Date: 29-30 August 2008
(with Rev Dr Bernard Blessing)

Thu 28-Aug: Healing Encounter (8pm) - Open
Fri 29-Aug: Conference (9am to 8pm) - For Pastors & Church Leaders
Sat 30-Aug (9am to 5pm) - For All Believers

REGISTRATION FORM, CLICK HERE!!

Venue:

Glad Tidings Assembly of God
6 Jalan Bersatu 13/4
46200 Petaling Jaya
Selangor, Malaysia
www.gtpj.com

Click on Map to Enlarge

Here are some feedback that I get on Cell Conference:
1)    Is this just another strategic change to try something?
2)    What so special about this new way compared to the old way?
3)    Why is this necessary?
4)    Is this a very regimented formula to get numbers into the church?

And a whole lot more.

I know some of you might have questions on this ‘strategic change’ in the church. Some may question the effectiveness of these changes. Some question why the church keeps having conferences and activities. Some question which direction the church is going etc.

It’s ok to have questions, really, and I’m sure our pastors welcome them. What’s not ok is to have a preconceived notion in your mind that this is just another conference without any thrust, without any direction, just there for the sake of being there. I think it’s very sad to find Christians, especially those currently in ministries, closing themselves from accepting God’s blessings and church vision. To me, that’s just pride, and I think it’s tough for that person to remain in ministry is he is not willing to catch the vision.

Cell Conference is simply about this: The Ministry of Reconciliation.

That’s right. It’s not about a set of things to do, or not to do. It’s about understanding why we minister, why we come to church, why we serve. Most of us don’t understand it. Most of us figure, hey, I’m paying back to the church for the good things it did for me. Or hey, there’s something I can do so I’ll slot in. Or hey, it keeps me on my toes in terms of spiritual walk. Or hey, there’s where my talents are. In fact, all of the above would be correct, but the encompassing reason why we serve isn’t about us, or the church, or the need, or the gifts. It’s about having the ministry of reconciliation.

In 2 Corinthians 5:18-20:

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

Here are the keys:

1)    God initiated the reconciliation

God changed the relationship between us. He made us friends again, not enemies. We didn’t do anything on our part to deserve it, and we can’t do anything to justify or reconcile ourselves to God. God accomplished reconciliation through Christ, not by anything we did. So when we serve and minister, it’s not about reconciling yourself to God. It has already happened! A done deal, at the cross. In v21, it says BE reconciled. The word BE means that the reconciliation has already occurred and we must decide to accept it. The offer is on the table, we need to just sign it!

2)    We must spread the news of reconciliation

This is not an option. This is a must. If God reconciled you, you must bear the news of that reconciliation. The reconciled becomes agents of reconciliation. Note, we do not reconcile man to God, but simply tell people about it. We are familiar with Romans 10:14-15:

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

As ministers, we are the bearers of the news. So when we serve, we shouldn’t be thinking only of hey, how can I use this talent? Hey, that’s a superb song I want to try out; hey, I just have to smile and shake hands when I usher; hey, I just want to help the kids and show what a great fellow I am; hey, I just want to offload my pastors a bit here etc.

As ministers, whatever you are doing, you are called to be bearers of the news of reconciliation. That means we need to find ways to tell them of the good news, to evangelise, to show Christ love. When we look at that fundamental, all the technicalities and questions of the Cell Conference will come down to: What can we do better to be more effective in our reconciliation ministry?

Until we understand that fundamental, we will be forever questioning our roles in life, the vision of the church, the direction of our leadership. We will serve and be tired, we will be uncommitted, we will lack the desire. That’s why spiritual parenting, mentorship are terms that are going to be vital as we grow. It’s not a numbers game to be the biggest church. But it’s about telling people about the reconciliation to God, and discipling them to tell others the same good news.

So I pray you will come to the conference with an open heart and mind and leave your preconceived ideas and prejudices behind, and I am 100% certain the Holy Spirit will impress on you personally. I will see you there! (especially my cell members haha!!)

Here are more pictures on the recently concluded Broken play I was part of. It was amazing fun working with the team!

The leaders (Karen - Producer, Hwee Yen - Director): Here are the two gals who made it all happen! Karen, as always, produced it and I think it’s a slightly thankless task, being the producer. She had to coordinate, schedule, get the props done, get the audio worked on etc and still have to bear with our silly whining about our toy guns looking too fake. I know its tiring, but she gets it done all the time! Yen of course, is the director, bearing the brunt of our nonsense. If Karen was the project manager, Yen was the executive, i.e the one most likely to be seen running around like a headless chicken. Super fun working with her, really, she was absolutely receptive of changes, but wasn’t afraid to stand for what she thinks will work/won’t work.

The main crew (Yatz - Pastor, Wai Ping - Steph, Derrick - Eddie): Yatz had his most challenging role as a pastor: a role requiring him to be serious and soft spoken. I prefer him as the half crazed, shouting Roman guard last easter, but he managed this role well! Wai Ping and Derrick of course really gave life to Eddie and Steph, and gave my pretty mundane dialogue the emotions to carry out the scenes.

The main crew 2 (Kenneth - Ken, Cheng Jin - Jin): Cheng Jin played his role perfectly, probably the exact way I had in my mind as I wrote the character. And of course, Kenneth blew everyone away with his acting. He gets all the best lines and even gets to scream at someone’s face!

And here are some additional photos for the road!

The ThreeDs Entourage in Broken!

This is the real feeling towards the cell leader who yaks past 11 pm on Friday

Posing with the Romans. Jason’s face (circled) will go down as one the classic faces of all time.

Datuk Lee and his bodyguards

And finally, here’s the classic of classics:

Notice all roman guards salute at the end. One of them (hint, the circle one) is obviously lost with the program. In case you can’t see him clearly, here’s the culprit, in a world of his own:

Thanks all for being a part of this! Really means a lot to me!

What a weekend! 2 over months of intense practices, juggling with work commitments and coordinating the easter cast, finally came down to last weekend. We had a total of 3000++ people over the past two days and overall, the feedback had been very encouraging.

Of course, looking back, we, who have been involved in almost every facet of the story, could see there were scenes that didn’t turn out as we wanted or could have been done better, but that’s stage production, I guess, there are no second takes.

Here are some little ‘bloopers’ that you might not have been aware of (I guess it’s safe to publish it since Broken is over!)

1. The Devil’s Grammar

In the first line of Broken’s narration: “I may have lost the war, but the battle for souls rage on…” is incorrect grammar, since the subject here is the singular battle, hence, should be ‘the battle rages on’. I was wondering whether to correct my script for Day 2 but thought maybe the devil character itself wasn’t that articulate, prone to have grammatical errors when excited, especially when he’s talking about souls. So we left it that way.

2. Bullet Time Mis-Stunts

In the first scene on Day 1, the shoot out all went well, until Jin came out and the cops fired 4 shots at him and he just looked back at us, before falling over after a few seconds of delay. Also, when I came out to be shot by Eddie ( I was the dead cop), we both stared at each other and I was ready to take the ‘bullet’. When the sound effects didn’t kick it, I was seen dancing a little jig, expecting to be shot. Karen mentioned it was quite funny…

3. Harassment of Eddie

Apparently, the team leader of the cops (the one not in uniform, with a holster, our very own assistant cell leader), came out and shouted his lines “Arrest Him!”. Probably it was the mic or a rush of adrenaline, as the words that seem to come out were “Harass Him!”

4. The invisible Ken

On day 2 shootout scene, the police rushed in too quickly, before Ken got a chance to get away. The cops all had their guns pointed at Eddie, even though Ken was still on the scene. None of the police noticed Ken (since in practice, Ken was not supposed to be there anyway), who quickly got away, rushing past the oblivious police.

5. The Mic of Horror

Ken’s mic came loose after the first scene on Day 1, and we did a quick swap backstage. His mic wasn’t turned off and it picked up some chatter backstage, that went like: “Joker lah…what lah…etc.” I was with Yen (the director) at the AV console and I think we both had the look of utter horror on our faces. It was sorted out and all parties told to shut up back stage! Ken’s swapped mic wasn’t turned on as well, so we lost a fair bit of conversation from the play.

6. The missed cue

Ken and Jin missed cues on the second day; where Ken didn’t talk about ‘partners’. This caused a long pause between their arguments before Jin recovered by blurting out, “What about our partners?!”. Great acting…

7. Flipped Dress

Apparently, nobody told Steph how to wear her dress. It was corrected in Day 2 (right)

8. Walk through Walls

Also, some people got confused at how easily the pastor walked around the jail cell out of the jail during some of the scenes, at at some other points, even bringing along Eddie! Unfortunately, our church doesn’t have rotating floors, so we have to imagine that it was a symbolic reference that they were still in the cell, but required a bigger space to cater to the crucifixion scene.

9. Roman Soldier becomes Ultraman

Apparently one of the Roman guards in the crucifixion scene came out with his helmet backwards. Nobody noticed till the whole scene was over, and he was found lounging backstage, still with his helmet backwards.

10. Thief adjusting mic

Apparently on day one, while crucified, one of the thieves managed to dislodge his hand from the nails to adjust his mic, and obediently nailed himself again. To be fair, it was already dark and he did it quite discreetly, but couldn’t escape a few observant people =)

11. Stunt double lost his pants

On day one, I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t find my pants. (I was the stunt double that got hung). The dressing room backstage was so messy, someone relocated my short pants I was supposed to wear, similar to Eddie’s. It was finally found somewhere in the corner and I changed just in time.

12. Stunt double dies too quickly

I didn’t realise people could still see me on Day one (I had a black hood on!), and nicely dropped to the ground when the lights were still on me during execution. D’OH!!

There’s a song in a famous musical that goes like this:

Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!

Today is good Friday, and as we all have prepared for the Easter Drama, it’s time we took stock of the journey of Broken, and what it really meant.

While I will be the first to admit, that our little production stands very small in the Universe of Musical Wonders, ruled by mega projects like Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and all the Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff that has been conjured up over the years; that our very own GTPJ production stands comparatively small even by the side of our local musicals/plays found in KLPac and the rest–I still think Broken is as relevant, if not bigger, when measured on a different scale.

And what scale is that?

There are no sales, no money, no endorsements to measure with. The effectiveness of any production born out of a church is only dependent on one thing: that through the process, through the journey, through the making, it had been the direction of not the ones producing it; but of the Holy Spirit. More than any other thing, the Journey of making ‘Broken’ would give a glimpse of the final result of ‘Broken’. If we want the result to be souls and recommitment , then the journey has to be filled with prayer and constant seeking of His will. No amount of practices will replace that. I believe that tonight, God is already preparing hearts and souls to respond, and there’s nothing left for us to do but to pray and do the best we can. It’s His show, not ours, so let’s reflect everything back to Him!

It’s been a great Journey, and I’ve really really enjoyed working with the team in the last 2 months, from that rainy day in Karen’s place where we brainstormed for a plot till today, a finalised (although raw) product in our hands. Here are a pictures and kudos to the team!

Here we have the very very first draft of the cast we scrawled out on the board in our first official meeting!

The Chans, gracious enough to offer their home for our brainstorming session and of course, Karen, our producer and the one who came up with the initial plot.

Kim Ann, on the left, our ‘Drama Coah’ (I never knew that portfolio existed!). She has been invaluable in teaching everyone how to get their act together, mostly using the ancient art of arm twisting of the unfortunate soul on the receiving end. Nah, she did a superb job!

The other girl is Hwee Yen, our director, who spent hours working on getting everything together and being patient with everyone, including me. I’m sure she wanted to use the Roman guard’s hammer to pummel me at times, so thanks, Yen, for restraining =)

So, from accidents like the jail bars falling on the actors; the cross nearly crushing our drama coach and director, to our main actor breaking his finger doing stunts, we’re finally here, Good Friday and Easter Weekend.

From everyone at Broken, we hope you enjoy experiencing the production as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Tomorrow is the big day! Details of the easter drama 2008 as follows!

BROKEN
An Easter Drama
March 21, 2008 (Fri) @ 8.30pm &
March 22, 2008 (Sat) @ 5.00pm

No 6 Jalan 13/4
Petaling Jaya, Selangor [ map ]

Join us also for….
Easter Sunday Service
March 23, 2008 (Sun)
8.30am & 11.00am
Maranatha Hall, GTPJ

I dug up some old initial scenes just for fun and man, we’ve really improved from our outtakes!

1. This is the original reading of the main roles Eddie (then called Warren) and Steph (then called Sharon). In fact, this was the very first audition!

2. Here’s one of the first few runs we tried for the previous scene, named “Steph’s Plea”.

3. Not getting it right, we decided to sit down and walk through it!!

4. Here’s one of my favourite scenes, and our drama coach scolding them for getting carried away!

5. The same scene, called “The Debt & The Deal”.

With 2 more days till Broken, here’s a couple of initial (non-edited) recording of some songs. The final versions are a little different, but this is just a glimpse of where and how the songs started from.

The first version of Hwee Yen’s How ‘Hard Could It Be’ . Liang on vocals, trying to come up with the initial tune….

Hwee Yen’s take on ‘How Hard Could It Be’, trying some changes to the first version….

The group trying to come up with the initial tune for ‘John 3:16′. Liang on vocals, and all of us trying in vain to reach his key.

3 more days till our production on Friday. I suppose I’ve been a little more hands on in this production compared to the previous ones. I recall 3 years back in the Christmas production I was a dancer (!!!) in the shopping scene. Then in Windows 2006, I composed one of the songs and got more involved in the production in terms of music and scripting. I kinda enjoyed Easter 2007 as well, where I got to play Peter and got beaten to bits by the roman guards, and in Indescribable 2007, I played a nice Keh Leh Feh as Joseph, all I had to do was to smile at Yen (Mary) and pretend the doll was baby Jesus.

They gave me a bigger role this time around (yes, I am moving up in the Keh Leh Feh ranks), and I got to contribute a little to the script as well!

Anyways, just for fun, here’s some trivia for the Easter Script, see if you can figure them out. There’s a reference to a musical, a movie and a real life event. Watch for it in the play and in the blog!

1) Eddie’s prison guard, in one scene, says: “24601, please step away from the door.”

2) In one intense scene, Eddie, under pressure, says: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

3) Eddie and Jin works in Ken’s company, called Jukt Micronics. - From the blog entry http://broken2008.blogspot.com/2008/03/ken-tai-ko-and-jin-jokester.html

See you guys on Friday or Saturday! Or both!

I knew Jin back in high school. He and Eddie went to an all boys school down the road from my all girls school and I suppose, being curious about the opposite sex at that age was inevitable, so somehow, we all became friends. Jin and Eddie were always close, along with another boy named Alex (who has left the country). Even back then, Jin came across as very rude, very boastful and quite annoying. None of us liked him at all, no, but he was always tagging along Alex and Eddie, so what do we do?? However, he is fiercely loyal to his friends and at one time got into a huge fight with some school gangsters to defend Eddie over some misunderstanding. That was either extremely brave, or extremely daft, because he was beaten up quite bad. But from that day, I knew I could count on him to defend his friends to the very end.

One thing about Jin: He is an absolute genius with numbers. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he is very very intelligent. While Eddie works hard and slogs, Jin would just cruise through his maths and accounts exam (while failing the others because they were ‘boring’). It’s so frustrating sometimes, to know that he could be so rich and successful if he wasn’t so lazy! He’s only interested in cars and drinking and girls, and doing the absolute minimal to get by…

He improved a lot after knowing Ken. Like Eddie, Jin really looked up to Ken as his ‘tai ko’ or big brother. He became more polite, less preoccupied with himself. But still clueless when it comes to girls….

A funny episode was when he tried to go after my sister, Sharon. After one evening with him, she came back so angry, I asked her what happened.

“He took me to the race track!”

“After dinner?” I asked, stifling a laugh.

“NO! We ate burger at the side of the road after that and he shared with me a can of Carlsberg! What a cheapskate!!! What a waste of time!!”

And so ends that romance. That’s our Jin.