Intern Introductions - Will Kim

Here’s our Intern Introduction #2 - Meet Will Kim:

1. Where are you right now, and what are you up to?
- Working…

2. Where are you from, and where do you live now?
- I was born in San Gabriel, CA… moved to Ontario, CA 1st through 8th grad, then moved to Walnut, CA from 9th to 10th grade… then went to Cal State Fullerton and stayed in Fullerton ever since.

3. What is the most recent album you’ve purchased?
- Andy Davis - Heart Break Yellow, awesome album.

4. What is your most unique, but potentially useless talent?
- My thumbs are hitch hiker thumbs… so I can bend back my thumbs pretty far.

5. How did you get into leading worship?
- Started in High school, 10th Grade… My youth pastor at the time taught me guitar then he asked me to lead on a Sunday… rest is history.

6. What instruments do you play?
- Not a lot of people play it… it’s very different from what a lot of worship leaders play… It’s called an Acousticoh Guitariooh [the acoustic guitar] Yep. I know…. while most of the musicians at RH play like 318923758923 instruments, then adding pedals upon pedals…. I like to keep it old school… just stick to the one and only. :)

7. How did you end up becoming an intern with RH Worship?
- Long story short… I was looking for opportunities to grow and randomly found that RH was looking for Worship Interns specifically… It really happened so fast! But it’s been one of the most rewarding aspects of my life being with everyone here.

8. What is your most memorable worship blooper?
- oh man…. well… I believe I was in college at the time.. and we were singing “I see the Lord” and on the bridge, I really felt the spirit was moving.. so I decided to repeat the bridge an octave higher… that was BAD. NEWS. BEARS… my voice ended up cracking. Cracking like the rooster crows at dawn.. Like, cracking as if I was Xina the Warrior princess… it was bad… Couple of my friends had to walk out of the room because were laughing so much… really bad. :T

9. What has been a highlight of your internship so far?
- The highlight has to be the deep found relationships that I have been blessed with. Honestly, God really placed specific people in my life. I believe these people be apart of my life for the long run. It’s only been a few months but sometimes… that’s how God works.

10. What do you dream to be doing in 5 years?
- I dream of getting to be apart of investing, mentoring, and walk with the future worship leaders. To be able to pass on to the next generation. To be able to be apart of a group of movers and shakers.

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Why Wednesday - why we have interns

In light of these posts on getting to know our interns, I thought a good topic for this week’s “Why Wednesday” would be - “Why we have worship interns”

So, here’s the main heart behind why we have worship interns at RH…

At RH, we really believe in the idea of developing leaders - across every ministry, not just worship. In worship, it seems pretty clear that skilled, passionate, Spirit-led worship leaders are needed not only within our church, but across the kingdom of God. The thing about worship leading is, that it is very difficult to teach through simply passing on information - it is not really something that is learned best in a classroom or through books. We think that the best way to prepare someone to be a worship leader, or a worship pastor is for them to spend time around other worship leaders and pastors - those who have been doing it a bit longer than they have. It’s best learned through experiencing, watching, and doing - and this is exactly what our internships aim for.

So each year, we look to take on between 3 and 6 interns, who have a love for Jesus, a passion for worship and a hunger to grow as disciples, as leaders, and as worshippers. Then, we do our best to involved them into every aspect of our worship ministry - everything:
- developmental meetings where we talk about our relationships with God, study theology, run through practicals on our instruments and singing,
- church staff meetings where we grow as part of a church leadership team
- discipleship through doing life together, having them into our home, sharing meals, etc.
- leading for various gatherings across the church, like life groups, child dedications, youth services, etc
- co-leading with staff worship leaders at various services across all of our campuses
- coffee meetings with worship pastors from other churches
- the administrative aspects of leading a worship ministry - like scheduling, emails, calendars and chord charts.

We do all we can to expose them to every aspect of ministry we encounter, in hopes that they will learn, be inspired and ask questions.
Another of the important reasons we have interns in our worship department is because they inspire all of us to keep learning. No one on our staff claims to have the art of worship leading mastered. Each intern comes with a unique set of gifts, experiences and questions, and interacting with them keeps all of us hungry to grow, and stirred up in our passion for Jesus.

Personally, I am so thankful for this year’s interns - the ways I have seen them grow, the ways they have caused me to grow, and the ways they faithfully and courageously serve our church. My prayer is that they will become the next generation of worship leaders and pastors that influence the kingdom of God toward passionately worshipping Him.

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Sunday setlist

(oops, I forgot to post this yesterday)
Sunday’s setlist from our huntington beach campus -

At your name
Nothing compares
Worthy you are worthy
Everlasting God
I give you my heart
Everything
Living for your glory
Be thou my vision

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Intern Interviews - Peter Berg

Introducing Peter Berg…

We interviewed Peter with some questions about himself, so read on to get to know him a bit…

1. Where are you right now, and what are you up to?
- I am in my home, on a lunch break.

2. Where are you from, and where do you live now?
- I was born in Anaheim, but spent over a decade in Wisconsin for both my High School
and College years. I am now back living in Anaheim with my wife.

3. What is the most recent album you’ve purchased?
- I have been borrowing a lot of new worship music from my friends, so I havent technically
purchased much music of any kind recently, but I have been listening to a lot of Rock Harbor’s Worship CD’s, John Foreman’s solos stuff and a fair amount of Hillsongs.

4. What is your most unique, but potentially useless talent?
- I hold the NCAA Div. III statistical title for most sacrifice bunts in a single season (In case you keeping score at home, that is .54 bunts per game.)

5. How did you get into leading worship?
- My youth pastor in High School asked if I could help out and slowly over time I gravitated
into the leadership type role. It started with a lot of meetings in his office and prayer, but it was a natural progression given our circumstances and I am extremely thankful.

6. What instruments do you play?
- Acoustic Guitar

7. How did you end up becoming an intern with RH Worship?
- God did it. I remember walking up to Keri, sort half embarassed and half kidding
asking about worship auditions, and out of the blue she says, “would you like to try out for our worship internship position?” WHAT?! I don’t think Keri even knew I played, she just asked. Needless to say I tried out and here I am responding to this! AWESOME!

8. What is your most memorable worship blooper?
- Forgetting the words always sucks, but I remember the trifecta happening once - broken
string, overhead projector light out (yeah - no projector - old school baby), and forgetting the words!

9. What has been a highlight of your internship so far?
- My favorite
part has been the Wednesday morning gatherings. It is a time were the 5 or 6 of us can sit together and reflect on the week that was or the week to come and also learn from one another in our own experiences.

10. What do you dream to be doing in 5 years?
- Serving the Kingdom of God. (How vague is that?!!!) For me, that looks like raising
foster/adopted children with my wife, having a job that I love (preferably involved with geography) and volunteer at my local church in their worship community.

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Why Wednesday #2

This week’s “Why Wednesday” Question:
Why do we have a time of worship at the end of our services?

If you’ve been to one of our weekend celebration services, you’ve probably noticed that we spend a significant chunk of our gathering in worship. Most church services begin with worship, but not all end with an extended time of worship. You might wonder, after we’ve already sang a few songs in the beginning, and heard a message from God’s word - why would we worship again?

I’m happy to say it is much more than a way to transition, to fill space, or to end the service on a happy note. The decision to end with worship is based on a theological value we are deeply committed to: that worship IS response.
To put it simply, God reveals and we respond. Dr. Mark Roberts says, “If true worship is really a response to God’s initiative, then worship leaders should focus less on getting people to do something or feel something and more on pointing them to God’s revelation of Himself in Christ and in scripture.”

Response looks different for everyone. God reveals Himself through His Word, through prayer, through creation, and even through conversations. As God reveals His power, we respond in wonder. As God reveals His holiness, we respond in confession and awe. As God reveals His grace, we respond in humility and gratitude. As God reveals His purpose, we respond in surrender and commitment. There are so many ways to respond to God, but our response should always be marked by sacrifice and surrender.

So if we believe that one of the ways that God reveals himself is through the teaching of his word, it makes sense to us that we would create space after receiving the message to respond to what He is doing in us. In this space we can pray prayers of thanksgiving, respond with praise, repent, reflect, listen or rejoice. I think for us, worship as a response gives us a real freedom to respond individually and authentically. God is revealing Himself to each of us uniquely and as a result our response will be our own.

Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge You, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship.”

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Introducing RHW Interns

Today, we wanted to take a minute to introduce you to this year’s RHW interns. From left to right: Will Kim, Joy Oladokun, David Sorensen, and Peter Berg.

We run a yearly worship internship program where interns serve about ten hours a week in the worship ministry from September through June. They participate in all kinds of worship-related things like: weekly intern development meetings, participation in RH staff meetings, planning and leading worship gatherings and events, spending time with other RH worship leaders, leading worship for various services at various campuses, reading books, writing papers, and more.

This is the most interns we’ve had at once within RHW, and it has been a blast so far! They have not only been a gift to our church, but it’s been a great time of learning from each other, and growing in passion and skill in leading worship.

Over the next week or so, we’ll be posting some info about each intern, so come back and get to know them a bit.

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Sunday Setlist 1.15

We get a lot of emails each week asking what songs we are singing these days, or what songs were played on Sunday at church. So, we will highlight a service from one of our campuses each week and post the setlist so you can see what songs we are leading at the moment. Enjoy!

Central Campus 9am
-cannons
-this is our God
-we exalt Thee
-heart of worship
-Lord I give you my heart
-only you can satisfy

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“Why” Wednesdays

Happy 2012! I know it has been a long time since the last post, but what is a better time to reinvest in the blog than New Years? So, here’s to rekindling the blogging fires at RHW for 2012!

We are going to kick off the new year with a new weekly blog series called “Why” Wednesdays. Each week we will post a discussion on why we do some of the things we do within worship at RH. The questions will cover a broad range of topics from “Why do we co-lead?” to “Why do we have worship at the end of our services?” If you have a “why” question about worship at RH, email it in to worship@rockharbor.org, and it just might become the question we highlight in the next week’s post.

So, for our very first “Why Wednesday”- the question is: Why do a “Why Wednesday” series?

The longer I am in ministry, around other leaders, and especially the longer I am here at ROCKHARBOR, the more I realize how important it is to have clear and strong vision and values. Clear, God-inspired vision is what gives purpose and direction to all aspects of your ministry, and with that, values shape how vision is played out practically and consistently. Here at Rh, we are constantly encouraged to reevaluate our vision and values to make sure we are effectively heading in the direction God is leading us, and that we are able to take others with us. The more clear and well-articulated your vision/values are, the easier it is to inspire others toward what you are up to.

So, the “Why Wednesdays” are a means of communicating vision/values and the intention behind what we feel God is calling us to within RHW. It is not a guide to the best ways for all aspects of worship leading in every scenario, it is simply a window into why we are doing what we are doing here. I believe knowing the “why” behind an action is incredibly important and brings a depth that isn’t found when you are doing something “just because.” For me, this is especially true with what goes on in church, and our spiritual lives. For example, knowing the “why” behind the practice of taking communion transforms that act into an interaction with the living God, a celebration of our freedom from slavery to sin, and an act of spiritual significance - so much more than a tiny sip of juice and a soggy cracker. Hopefully these posts will help us articulate and communicate some of our values and also shed some light on the heart behind the decisions we feel led to make as we seek to be a worshipping church.

See you next week!

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Its Here! STRONGER// Live Album

Alright folks, the time has come! Here is the release of our newest live record, Stronger. This album is a live collection of songs that God has been using in some amazing ways at Rockharbor. We are excited to share it with you all!

Check out the record HERE!

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