Heard Anything New Lately? It's A Good Time

Before you read on this is the best thing for me to do right now:


To the Family at Sunridge (and those who are extended family at other churches and other places),

After five plus years as the music director at Sunridge, I believe it is time to step away from that role in the Worship Ministry.

I feel, see, and hear God moving me into a different direction in ministry.

My hope is that I will still be able to play bass, acoustic, electric guitar as much as I am able and invited to play. I would like to be just a bass/guitar player … period – no more production meetings or involvement with scheduling, etc. In other words, I want to be able to worship God without the distractions of being “in charge”.

I cherish all the blessings that the worship ministry has provided to me and my family through friendship, encouragement and the ability to reach others to find and follow Jesus.

In Christ,

Mike Dalton


PS... I'm not going anywhere unless God chooses for me to.

Sunday Look Back On Monday

I love Sunday’s!
I didn’t play any where on Saturday night and I felt like I missed something.
I need to go to bed on Saturday night’s earlier.
7 am rehearsals are still odd to me, even after all these years.
First service for the last couple of weeks is rocking, second service seems less connected, need to think about it.
The Kyle blows my mind on the drums pretty much every week, the guy rocks!
Pre service music, it doesn’t need to be a join in song, it just needs to be a song that rocks! Lesson learned I hope.
The outro of Beautiful The Blood says it all and always moves me to tears, it doesn’t have to be quiet to be emotional.
I decided to not have a HUGE bday party, I looked back at the last 6 years and made a guest list of who are my CLOSET friends who have been at my side through it all and had a party.
Danny’s BBQ was as good as any place we could have gone to! I ate so much I couldn’t suck in my gut.
Sat and listened to a ton of Hillsong United stuff with Bob, Jason, The Kyle and Wible- NEED TO DO MORE HILLSONG UNITED!
Refocusing on simpler things and not over thinking about stuff I don’t need to think about.
Corn on the cob with butter, mayonnaise, parmesan cheese and hot sauce is just love from God.
Combining Life Group’s was a great idea, thanks David for leading last night, and thanks Jeremy for being the human Bible, you freak!!! Awesome.
I feel every bit as old as I am- 43 years of torturing my body with so much fun and sports is catching up, need to quit a few things and start working out, I don’t want to as if I look fat in these pants any more
High school worship team is turning a corner.

See ya

Volunteerism Part Two from a Volunteer Hero

This is straight from one of our "Superstar Volunteer Leaders" here at Sunridge Community Church. The only edit I did was take out names. This person rocks beyond belief in my opinion, most effective in bringing up the future of our church- YOUTH!!! If you don't raise up the youth then your church will die of old age. We know we don't live forever here on Earth.


Three points below: Time, Effectiveness and Letting Go.

Time: I think TIME is a big consideration for volunteers. For some
volunteers, I try to accommodate them by letting them come in a few
minutes before the service rather than coming early and then standing
around. When kids are involved, asking them to come early means asking
their parents to come early too.

Consider the irony of showing appreciation for a volunteer's time by
requesting more of their time.

Effectiveness: I think many people would serve willingly if they felt
they were contributing something worthwhile. Sunridge does a great job
of expressing verbal appreciation to volunteers which provides
volunteers with a sense of effective contribution. Idleness and
standing-around has an adverse impact on a sense of worth.

Letting go: It's usually easier to do work than to let go and
encourage somebody else to get involved. Two helpful mantras: [1] If
I'm touching a piece of equipment, I'm depriving somebody of the
opportunity to get involved. [2] If I'm worried about something
(including 'perfection) then I'm not relying enough on others to help.
I love the fact that Sunridge values involvement over perfection.

Here's a Tweet- I don't Give a CR**

This is from a guy I know and think that he is one of the best writers (well honest at least) out there. His name is David Pingree and he pretty much hit it right on the head about some of you Twitters out there. I don't give a rip about your meal, what you are drinking (unless you are recommending an ale of some kind) or that you are watching a movie with your main squeeze. All of the above I am guilty of in the past and most likely will be guilty of in the future BUT, I don't care about the last dump you took so don't Twitter about it (even tho I did 2 bathroom Twitters in the past- one during an earthquake and one when I had to use single ply toilet paper). Go ahead and keep it up but I will most likely get rid of you on my Twitter account.
Here's the link to the original post and I copied and pasted the one post below.


http://www.racerxonline.com/article/ask-ping-5-1.aspx




Ping,
How’s it going? Dude, r u as sick of hearing about twitter as I am? Where in the he** did this crap come from?! Like anyone cares what people are doing every hour on the hour. I can see how it may be beneficial for traveling buddies, certain business issues, etc., but give me an effing break. 2 months ago I had never heard of it. Now, Larry King, Ashton Kutcher, Mario Lopez, and everyone else in the free worldacts like it's the Holy Grail. I'm so burned out on hearingthe word twitter! Overkill is an understatement.
Anyway, I just wanted to vent a little and I'm hoping u'll go off on this as I'm sure ur as clueless as to what the actual point is of twitter as i am.
By the way, I'm impressed with u and ur team. It seems ur doing a great job.Keep up the good work!
jimmy
p.s. free j-law



Hey, here's a Tweet! ... I don't give a crap.

Dear Jimmy,
Thanks for the compliment on the team. We have an amazing group of people working in our race shop and I think we are going to continue to impress people. It’s funny that you mention Twitter because I was just listening to Ryan Seacrest go on and on about it the other day on the radio and I couldn’t understand the point of it. Apparently, from what I gather, it’s just a bunch of verbal diarrhea about any and everything that happens to a person throughout the day. And each of these pointless expressions are called “Tweets.” Wow. That is the most obtuse, self-serving bunch of horse crap I have ever heard of. Could this collective society be any more in love with itself? We already have Facebook and MySpace pages so we can show photos and videos of ourselves doing all kinds of cool things to impress whomever it is we try to impress. Now we can follow any person’s journey through each and every single day. Guess what? I really don’t give a crap. I’m not interested in my own life enough to spend the time to set up these self-worship websites and there’s no way I’m taking the time to tell the few nut-jobs that are crazy enough to sit around and read about every single detail of my day, every single detail of my day. These people spend so much time telling and showing everyone what they are doing that they don’t have any time to go out and actually do anything. Look, folks, this crazy train has officially derailed. I don’t give two squirts of piss what Oprah did last weekend at home with her live-in boyfriend. I don’t care what cool new restaurant Ryan Seacrest ate at over the weekend. And when James Stewart “tweets” that he just got back to his hotel after the race and gives his two cents about how his night was… you guessed it- I don’t care. Just because we have the technology to do something dumb like Twitter, doesn’t always mean we should.
P.S. They’ll free your precious J-Law when he stops breaking the law. Pretty simple, really.
PING