andrew dodson

The past two nights, I’ve gone to Crossings @ Cedarmore to hear Brent Gambrell speak. He was the camp pastor at my first Crossings experience (Jonathan Creek two years ago). To date, he’s the only man – aside from my Dad & brother, and maybe a bully or two growing up – to bring tears to my eyes.

He’s a very powerful & engaging speaker. He engages both students and adults. When I first heard him, I was still a “baby” Christian. After two years of spiritual growth, it’s been interesting to hear him speak again. Especially now that I tend to put speakers & authors to a theological “test” whenever I hear them. Maybe this is wrong, but I always listen for keywords & phrases that may reveal whether they’re reformed (Calvinist) or not (Arminian). This isn’t to say I pay too much attention to theological issues and not get anything out of their message.

I love to hear him challenge today’s church. Issues ranging from kids not being able to find the book of Thessalonians in their bible to not teaching the true meaning of “soul, body & spirit.” Considering how much the church has lost touch with society, we need voices like Brent to bring us back to fundamental, B-I-B-L-I-C-A-L teaching.

Thus far, I’ve only heard repeats of messages & bible studies that I heard him give at J-Creek two years ago. Somewhat disappointing, but I’ve still enjoyed hearing him. What’s exciting is the fact that a large number of kids came to know Christ tonight, and the entire camp is in for a wonderful experience with Brent as camp pastor this week.

I probably will not get to hear him speak the rest of the week, even though I will be there again on Thursday night with the Josh Martin Band.

I’m slowly falling in love with the idea of podcasts.  I’ve discovered in the past few days that podcasts aren’t just for talk (news, interviews, etc.).  Two of my favorite bands – Umphrey’s McGee & String Cheese Incident have podcasts of concerts available.  I’ve subscribed to both bands’ podcasts through iTunes, which may be the best podcast-management software available right now (aside from being the best audio-management software altogether).  Podcasts are free, which is always good.  The only drawback to music podcasts is the fact they are one, big, long audio file – not separated into tracks like CDs.  However, since they’re free, can I really complain about it?

I’m currently subscribed to a few other podcasts – John Piper’s Desiring God Radio, Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz), Derek Webb, the Vine (Southeast’s young adult worship service), and a few more.

I spent yesterday creating a podcast for The Point’s weekly sermons.  The feed is available through the media site, and will be on iTunes in the coming days.

Next, I plan on doing monthly podcasts through this blog.  I’ve lined up my first two podcasts, but I’m not sure where we’ll go from there.  In the case of the Josh Martin Band, I’ve considered podcasting each one of our performances, depending on how well the recording turns out from each show.  I think the whole idea is fabulous.

I just created an anonymous blog. All I can say is that it’s a Christian-based blog. It’s my hope that it will reach people who may be able to relate to what I post there. Don’t bother asking me about it, because I’m not going to answer any questions about it after this post. Sorry

Don’t you feel like I just said, “I heard the FUNNIEST joke! I’ll tell you later…”?

The new JMB website is done – complete with online store, wallpapers, sound clips, and more. Go check it out…

> JMB website

Pardon the lack of blogging the past week or so… several things have been in the works, and I’ll be bloggin’ about ‘em soon…

1. Spent the evening working on the new JMB website. Should be ready-for-operation by tomorrow night, including a web store to order t-shirts, CDs, etc.
2. The new JMB album is in the very final stages of mixing (I promise). Plan on doing some minor tweaking tomorrow & Wednesday, and that should hopefully put it to bed.
3. Some *potential* big news on the horizon. (hint: I’ve blogged about this sort of “big” news before – long, long ago). Should know more by the end of this week.
4. Been doing LOTS of reading lately – Kyle Lake’s “Understanding God’s Will” and “(Re)Understanding Prayer,” Donald Miller’s “Searching for God Knows What,” and Piper’s “Desiring God.” Not to mention, the book of Hosea, and various readings from the Gospels. Learning a LOT from this experience – more to come on this.
5. Gonna help out my Mexican friend’s baseball team in the coming weeks. I’m looking forward to getting back out on the diamond and helping them learn the game of baseball.
6. Currently listening to Keane’s new album – upon first listen… eh. “Is It Any Wonder” is the best song I’ve heard in a long while, but nothing else has caught my attention just yet. However, it usually takes a few listens before some songs hit me.

More to come….

As I type this, I’m listening to what I think is the final mix of the new JMB album – Not So Easily Pleased. I’ll give copies to the guys at our gig tomorrow night and see what they think. We’ll see….

What an awesome experience for this kid. John Clay has the full story about the chance-of-a-lifetime. While I was too young to remember it, it reminds me of getting my picture taken with Johnny Bench with my brother.

> Read the full story

I’ve put together a drum set consisting of acoustic and electronic drums.  I’m not the first drummer to ever do this, but it did take me this long to figure out how to go about it.  I was able to use it for the first time last night at Cedarmore with the JMB.  The general consensus is that it sounded good.  Here’s the setup:

• Acoustic bass drum
• Acoustic snare drum
• Electronic toms
• Acoustic hi-hats
• Acoustic cymbals
• (1) electronic cymbal pad

I think what makes the system “work” is using the rack system that came with my electronic drums.  It’s given me serious consideration to buying a rack system for my acoustic drums (especially now that Brad’s Music Center is a Gibralter deal – they are know for their drumset racks).

I would love to pull off using this setup at church, but I’m not sure the small room would be able to handle the volume of the acoustic parts of the set.  Probably would be too loud.

And, yes, for those of you wondering – since it’s a hybrid, it does get better gas mileage.

I’ve wanted to blog about this for a while, but I’ve taken my time to make sure I have “good theology” in what I’m about to say. To some of you, this may be a no-brainer. To others, this may be a huge deal. Still to others, you might not care. From my perspective, I consider this issue drastically serious in our walks with God.

I’ve come to learn that interpretation of Scripture is a huge issue in Christianity. What sounds the alarm for me is when I hear someone say, “this is what this Scripture means to me.” Once I hear this statement, I pray and hope that everyone gets the same meaning from that Scripture.

Here’s my reasoning: God is not a god of contradiction. He would never intend to cause confusion among His believers. Our confusion arises because of our human nature, and not fully understanding God. If we all understood God perfectly, that would put us on the same level as Him. When people have different interpretations of the same Scripture passages, it’s simply because one or both parties are not fully understanding the text.

Luckily, in my waiting period of gathering information for this post, I came across a quote from Dr. R.C. Sproul’s The Agony of Deceit (pp. 34, 35):

Although tradition does not rule our interpretation, it does guide it. If, upon reading a particular passage, you have come up with an interpretation that has escaped the notice of every other Christian for two thousand years, or has been championed universally by heretics, chances are pretty good that you had better abandon your interpretation.

Amen, brother.

I spent this evening filling CD orders I’ve collected over the past month. They are for the Georgetown College Symphonic Band’s Spring Concert, and the Central Kentucky Concert Band’s Great White Way concert.

While I enjoy recording, I don’t enjoy the process of filling CD orders. Sure, it means I’ve made money if I have a lot of CD orders. However, it’s a mundane process once the recording is completed – make copies, create a CD label, print labels, stomp the labels onto the CDs, make mailing labels, print mailing labels, put labels on CD mailers, put CDs in mailers & seal. At the end of the process, I send an email to everyone to let them know they’re order is ready to ship.

In total, the process (aside from editing the recording) takes about three hours when I have a lot of orders to fill. Since I’m lazy and like to procrastinate, combined with the fact that I don’t enjoy mundane work, I usually put this process off for as long as possible – although having a busy schedule doesn’t help matters. Before I know it, a month has gone by since the concert, and I still haven’t had a chance to mail the CDs. I end up having to “squeeze” it into my schedule on a free evening.

It’s for this reason that I don’t expect to do this much longer. I’ll say it again – I love recording. I just don’t enjoy the process of filling orders, anymore. I’m going to give heavy consideration to doing this for another year (2 GC band concerts, 3 CKCB concerts, 4 LBB concerts – all in the fall and spring), and call it quits. At the same time, I’m entertaining the idea of speeding up this process and calling it quits before the upcoming concert seasons begin. We’ll see….