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Youth Summit 2014 Update: Registration Extended!

The Registration for the Youth Summit 2014 has been extended 'til December 15, 2014!

To register, follow the mechanics below:

1. Deposit your payment to BDO account name KKB-CYN International Foundation Inc. and account no. 1230033295.

2. Inform your Area Youth Coordinator (AYC) of the deposit details such as date, time and amount paid based on the deposit slip.

3. The AYC will inform the RegCom Representative assigned to the region/area of the deposit details. He/She will email a scanned/image copy of the deposit slip to the RegCom Rep.

4. Wait for the confirmation of the RegCom Rep of the receipt of the deposit and the corresponding seats.

For more information contact 09175279814
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Vocal Warm Up Tips by Dee Uluirewa of Hillsong Church


Hi there, my name is Dee, and I've had the honour and pleasure of serving on team for about 11 years. I volunteer as a vocalist on our team and feel extremely blessed to be a part of THE best team on the planet, hands down!

Here are a few practical tips that I’ve found to be helpful.

1. Repetition Strengthens.

Warm-up your vocals on a regular basis. These help to strengthen or get the elasticity in your cords, which in turn helps you to connect/bridge your different registers. I try to spend about 10-15 minutes warming up, even longer if I've been unwell or haven't sung in awhile. I find it takes longer to get the voice back to where it was.

Warm-ups: Apart from doing vocal exercises on ascending scales, I find descending scales critical, especially if I'm reaching up to certain notes. The Seth Riggs warm-up CD and the Vocalize U app are the two main tools that I use. Brett Manning is another Vocal Coach who has great resources for vocalists.

2. Vocal Cords Work Off Memory

Practice singing songs at service level. This is a must for me whether at home or in the car. Don’t worry about the traffic, If you get any curious folks staring at you just throw up the 'V' sign = The Voice, lol!. Doing this helps me to work out where a song sits vocally for me, particularly when songs are in male keys, which register to sing in, where to breathe, the dynamics of the song, projecting my voice and working on my tone i.e. making sure I don't get nasally.

If there's a certain part of the song that I am struggling with, I'll apply a vocal exercise over that melodic line to iron out the problem and then slowly bring lyrics in.

The same way a musician practices their parts on their individual instrument, whether it be fingering, different sounds, or inversions, vocalists should also be learning more about their instrument.

3. Turn up to Sound Check – Mic Check: 1, 2, 3...

Early morning starts are not the easiest for the voice, so for me it’s imperative that my voice is awake and able to sing at service level when I rock up to sound-check... not whisper in sound-check and yell during P&W, lol.

Proper preparation = proper execution.

Sound-check/rehearsal allows me to set my in-ear levels. Endeavour to get a good in-ear mix of what I need i.e. what instruments/band, worship leaders and other vocalists. It’s really important to pay attention to the arrangements of the songs and to LISTEN to where the worship leaders want to go.
For those who use foldback monitors, always have a melodic instrument to pitch off in the foldback, either an acoustic guitar or piano, or both... not just all vocals.

Important Note - Since there is so much happening on the platform during soundcheck, there's a tendency to have spillage into mics, in particular those standing in front of the drums or guitar amps.Solution? Keep the mic close to my mouth, not fifty feet away, lol, and keep my vocals solid (singing at service level, not yelling) - this in turn helps the FOH engineers.

(No-No: I try to avoid turning my pack up or singing louder because this will only cause me to push and thus strain my voice)

4. Worship Service

Move as a unit: Phrasing is really important. The KEY is listening and locking in, be careful not to over enunciate. Listen to the Rhythm of the song and look at the whole line/phrase and not just individual words.

Watch cut-offs - I tend to taper off at the end of phrases rather than end abruptly... big vowels create a rounder/nicer sound and takes away from lazy singing.

Note: You want to create a nice wall of sound which helps the FOH engineers and this in turn encourages the Church to sing... you can make a HUGE difference!

Breathing - Breathing at the end of the phrase before I start the next line eases me into the next phrase and allows for a smoother delivery. Breathing provides great support for my tones and most importantly helps me stay on pitch! A lot of singers make the mistake of breathing just before the line starts and usually find their voices cracking or straining unnecessarily. 
Controlled breathing is Important, the air comes out the same time as the note.

These are just some of the practical things that I've applied over the years, whether at home or on the road. I try my best not to allow frustration to kick in when I'm experiencing technical difficulties, or if someone is over-singing/louder than everyone else aka not blending, maybe the guitars are too loud, cymbals are making my eardrums bleed, lol... this can hinder me and take my focus off what I really need to be doing…worshipping!

Hope this has helped you and your Team in some way, shape or form. Praying you guys have the most amazing weekend.

Take Care,
Dee





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JIL Church San Ildefonso Celebrates Two Decades


From a small  bible study in the early '90s, Jesus Is Lord Church San Ildefonso Chapter continues the journey of declaring the glory and salvation of Christ that is being manifested through its ministry.
For two decades now, this ministry that is founded in the heart of Bulacan is a living testimony of the miracles by the miracle-working God.

Join the celebration on the 16th of November 2014, Sunday, 8 AM, at JILC San Ildefonso Chapter, Malipampang, San Ildefonso, Bulacan.

Come and be blessed, be healed, be freed!

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Songwriting According to Charles Wesley

One of the attractive things about the Bible is how honest its characters are with God. The corresponding wonder is how gracious God is in dealing with their frankness. In Bible stories, people complain, lament, question, repent, cry out in pain, pester, and otherwise deluge God with candor. And time and again, God reveals the majesty and humbleness of love in his response. If you have hit any speed bumps in life at all or deterred into any ditches, you know how wonderful it is to find folks in the Bible who have hashed out with God all our same emotions in difficult times. And you know the relief in seeing how well God cares for them in those moments.

How can songwriters capture some of this same dynamic of honest expression yet do so in a way that is not simply self-indulgent? One possible answer is to root in biblical stories our songs to God. Eighteenth century songwriter Charles Wesley—an Anglican priest, co-founder of Methodism with John, his brother, and one of the most prolific worship songwriters of all time—often used two poetic techniques in his songs that allowed worshipers to express a wide range of emotions before God and to do so in ways connected to biblical stories. Seeing his techniques is helpful for sparking lyrical imagination today.

Intensely Corporate
One poetic device that he used was to sing a story from the inside out. These songs placed the worshiper in the shoes of the biblical character. Singing a biblical story from the inside allows the worship song to be intense but, because it comes from the book common to the whole Church, the Bible, it avoids being too private.

Consider the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30ff.). Following a long history of interpretation, Wesley placed the worshiper into the shoes (sandals?) of the traveler who is robbed, beaten up, and left by the side of the road in desperate need of help. In Wesley’s piece, this experience becomes a way of speaking about being waylaid by the ravages of sin, leaving the worshiper acknowledging her or his utter helplessness. Even short excerpts show the passion of a sin-sick worshiper’s cry:

The thieves have rob’d, and stript, and bound… / My putrid wounds stand open wide, My head is faint, and sick of pride, / And all corrupt my heart.[1] After Wesley explored how legalistic religious righteousness (the priest and the Levite in the story) don’t provide any comfort, the desperate worshiper notes the approach of another who can and will help (the Samaritan who represents [drum roll, please] Jesus Christ): But Life I see in death appear! / The good Samaritan is near…/ Bind up my wounds by opening thine, / Apply the balm of blood Divine.

The Great Source
Some of Wesley’s best loved pieces used this poetic device of singing a biblical story from the inside out to give worshipers the words for prayer which were deeply personal and intense and yet also common to Christians. By placing worshipers in the shoes of biblical characters, he could provide the Bible as the source of language for songs which prayed the agony and the ecstasy of what it means to be saved and encounter God. A great example is the song below—a relentless prayer that depicts the worshiper wrestling with God in order to gain an understanding of Him. He frames this struggle as that of Jacob wrestling for a blessing from God in Genesis 32. Eventually persistence in prayer pays off as Jesus is revealed as the one through Whom the blessing of God comes:

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

In vain thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold;
Art thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of thy love unfold:
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

‘Tis Love! ‘Tis Love! Thou diedst for me;
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure Universal Love thou art:
To my, to all, thy mercies move—
Thy nature, and thy name, is Love.[2]

Need Inspiration?
Where can modern songwriters go to find the words for prayers that lament or complain or cry out to God in pain? Consider a biblical story where that’s the posture of the worshiper before God. What would David have prayed as he fled from Saul in the desert? Jeremiah as he endured the siege of Jerusalem? The woman caught in adultery under threat of being stoned but saved by the intervention of Jesus? Place the singer in their shoes.

Another poetic device Charles Wesley used to provide vivid language for worship songs was to fudge with verb tenses in recounting key events in the life of Christ. Although, strictly speaking, these events should be portrayed with past tense verbs, Wesley often grabs the potential of poetry and uses present tense verbs so that the worshiper is right there before Jesus, whether at his manger, his cross, or his tomb. This playfulness with verbs often came with an invitation in the song for the worshiper to see or sense what was happening with Jesus. The result was a startling immediacy:

See the slaughter’d Sacrifice,
See the altar stain’d with blood!
Crucified before our eyes
Faith discerns the dying God,
Dying that our souls might live,
Gasping at His death, Forgive![3]

Poetic Narrative

Such encounters could lead to intensity in the words stirred in the worshiper who had been transported into the biblical story by the song’s fudging with verb tenses. And so, instead of writing some generic statement about feeling broken before God, Wesley allowed the startling gravity of sin to sink into the singer by placing him or her at the foot of the cross. There one finds the proper cry as the worshiper encounters the “dying God” directly and sees the crucifixion in “real time” as it were:

Beneath my load He faints and dies.
I filled his soul with pangs unknown;
I caused those mortal groans and cries;
I killed the Father’s only Son![4]

What would we say to God if we stood at the foot of the cross or the manger? What about if we watched Herod’s killing of the babies in Bethlehem, gaped into the empty tomb, or observed Jesus healing the blind man?

In the Bible, God does not seem repulsed or angered by honest prayer, whether complaint, ecstasy, lament, or sorrow. Charles Wesley’s poetic creativity in songwriting shows us ways to dive into this book as a source for singers who still need to pray as honestly today.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Lester Ruth is a historian of Christian worship with particular interests in the early church and the last 250 years. He believes that careful reflection on the worship of other Christians—whether past or present, whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox—can serve to enrich the church today. He is the president of the Charles Wesley Society, a professor at Duke Divinity School, and he teaches at the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies in Orange Park, Florida.

Follow his latest research on Twitter @jl_ruth.



[1]The full text can be found in S. T. Kimbrough, ed., Charles Wesley: Poet and Theologian (Nashville: Kingswood, 1992), 114-8.

[2]This hymn can be found in many hymnals under the title of “Come O Thou Traveler Unknown.” It can also be found by looking for “Wrestling Jacob” in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742)at http://www.divinity.duke.edu/wesleyan/texts/cw_published_verse.html, which is an excellent site to find Wesley’s published songs.

[3]Look for Hymn 18 in Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (1745) at http://www.divinity.duke.edu/wesleyan/texts/cw_published_verse.html,

[4]This text can be found as verse 11 in “A Passion-Hymn” in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742) at http://www.divinity.duke.edu/wesleyan/texts/cw_published_verse.html.
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SOURCE
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Harvest Youth Conference (With Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff)


Pre-register now for the Harvest Youth Conference happening this November 2014! When you attend the Conference, you are automatically entitled to attend the 4REAL Worship Concert featuring Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff! This event is for FREE! Bring your family and friends.

Conference Schedule
November 28 (Friday)
1:00PM

On Site Registration Lobbies
2:00PM

Plenary Session
Auditorium
3:30PM

Youth Fair
Parking Lot
7:30PM

4Real Concert: Cindy Cruse Ratcliff
Auditorium


November 29 (Saturday)
12:00PM

On Site Registration Lobbies
1:00PM

Plenary Session
Auditorium
2:30PM

Youth Fair
Parking Lot
6:00PM

4Real Concert: Cindy Cruse Ratcliff
Auditorium


November 30 (Sunday
1:00 PM

On Site Registration Lobbies
3:00PM

4Real Concert: Cindy Cruse Ratcliff
Auditorium


 PRE-REGISTER BY CLICKING HERE

The conference is going to be held at Cathedral of Praise, U.N. Ave., Manila
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Album Review: All Sons And Daughters

Leslie Jordan and David Leonard, the duo behind the group All Sons and Daughters, have given us great music since the release of their debut EP “Season One”. In 2013, they have released their first ever live album; and this year, they’re back with a self-titled project; giving us just the same vibe of folksy-woodsy worship. It features co-writes with Francesca Battistelli, Jason Ingram, Stu G, Derek Webb, Paul Mabury, and Sandra McCracken.

Unlike any other albums, All Sons And Daughters is unique because each track compliments each other. Every song has the same mood, all are emotional. It is just relaxing to listen at; and simplicity is the main element of the record; simple setting; simple musicality. The album just lacks some upbeat songs—a perfect opposite of Rend Collective’s The Art Of Celebration, which has the same genre. Vocally, the songs were given a very good treatment. The vocals of Leslie and David are distinctive, breathy and soothing.

Musically, the songs are pretty interesting, melodious, and elegant. The Victory, the seventh track, is the only upbeat song on the album and it justifies its title, but it also lacks a little more energy. Piano-laced Great Are You Lord is the most congregational, along with You Will Remain, and More Than Anything.

Lyrically, All Sons And Daughters don’t really break any new ground. There is no rise above the often-used generic worship lines for God. King Of Glory (You Restores My Soul) is Psalm 23-inspired, and it is my favorite track on the album. It speaks of the hope in Christ when we are in the valley. Other stand-out tracks include the vocally-creative and harmonious For Your Glory and My Good, and the Christmas message-inspired God With Us.

All Sons and Daughters’ self-titled album may not be on my top albums of 2014 list, but its beauty, class and elegance is stunning. There’s just one thing that I don’t like about the album: the lack of variety and diversity in musicality. Songs fall on a common ground: slow and lonely, making it “slownely” in mood. But in the end, I commend the creative mix of folksy vibe and powerful vocals. A very good record, but not for those who are into upbeat, energetic cuts.

Disclosure: A review copy of All Sons And Daughters was provided for review by House of Praise, from whom you may purchase the album.

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