andrew dodson

Howdy y’all (That’s Kentucky for “hello”).  It’s Derby Week here in the Bluegrass, and to be honest, I don’t care that much.  I always hate to say “I’m busy” because everyone is busy this day and time, but that would be more true right now than any other.  Seems like spring time is always my busiest time of the year.

I’m working on several recordings right now.  I recorded a southern gospel concert a couple of weeks ago, so I’m moving on to the mixing stage of that project.  I recorded last week’s Georgetown College Symphonic Band concert.  That recording should be wrapped up this weekend, since it was just a few mics.  Mixing will go quickly on that.  But, I turn around on Sunday to record the Central Kentucky Concert Band’s spring concert.  On top of all this, I’m beginning the process of picking songs for The Point’s first worship album.  It’s really more of a glorified “bootleg” concept.  I plan on recording all the services from now on, and every few months, making a low-budget CD of 10-12 songs.  I’ll manufacture all of them myself in small runs of about 100.  It’ll mostly be a good outreach tool, I think.  We’ll see.

I’ve been digging in to some new graphic design techniques as of late.  I’m a self-trained artist, so I still have a lot to learn.  Mostly, I’ve been digging into Photoshop a bit more to create stuff for web and print.  The majority of my time is usually spent in Illustrator designing shirts.  But, I’m doing more graphic work for The Point these days, and I’m looking to expand BADmedia some more.  So, I think learning more in Photoshop will help.  Mostly, I’ve been playing around with new brushes and the like to create the ever-so-popular grunge and distressed looks that are “all the rage” right now.  I feel like I’m jumping on the bandwagon, but I’m learning new stuff, so that’s always good.

I’m not doing a whole lot of web stuff for the time being, but I think that will change as I move into the summer months.  I have a few sites in desperate need of redesigns, and as mentioned, I’m working on getting some more clients.  I’ve struck up a small partnership with another local business that might lead to some new web clients.  More on that to come.

Tonight was PCG night, and our group went through the study fairly quickly.  It was a good study and I think we were all surprised that we hammered through it in under an hour.  So, I find myself with some free time that I don’t normally have.  Hence, this novel of a blog post.  I’m off to enjoy the rest of the evening…

The Conversion Story

Somewhere in the middle of playing drums at Evergreen, visiting Crestwood and starting to play drums at Crestwood, God saved me.  I had been having weekly conversations with my friend Jeremy.  He lured me in by making great mochas.  He started sharing the gospel with me.  I had heard it a thousand times, but this time, the irresistible grace offered by God grabbed a hold of my heart.  One evening, while driving to his house, I had the urge to pull over.  It was at that moment that I accepted Christ.  I showed up at Jeremy’s house and the first thing I said was, “I did it.”

How funny is that?  The first thing out of my mouth as a Christian was completely heretical!  See, all I did was stop resisting God.  He did everything else.  He sent Christ to the cross for my sin.  Christ endured the cross for my sin.  All of this so that I could be justified by having faith in Christ’s work on the cross.  For the work He did, I am now saved.

Post Conversion

The past five years have been the most fulfilling years of my life.  I’m a part of a wonderful church.  I have great Christian friends and mentors.  I’m a part of two extremely talented bands.  I’ve been able to use the gifts and abilities God has given me to glorify Him.  It’s become a relief to no longer live for myself, but live for someone else.

Conclusion

This Friday is Good Friday.  The day Christ endured the cross for our sin.  This Sunday is Easter.  The day of Christ’s resurrection - the day He defeated death and sin for eternity.  If you’re a Christian, I hope that you will be a part of services remembering and celebrating the glory of these two events.  If you’re not a Christian, I pray that you will think about attending a service at a local church.  I pray that you will give the story of Christ’s death and resurrection a chance to become real in your life.  Is it time for you to stop resisting God too?

Wednesday is generally for random blogging around here. I’m taking some liberty today and passing it off as random blogging. Have you all tried iGoogle and the rest of Google’s way cool features yet? I’m pretty convinced that Google has a plot to take over the world, and so far, they’re succeeding.

I just started using iGoogle today, and it’s slowly becoming an idol in my life. I will likely have to repent from spending too much time on it. See, I’m a big geek and iGoogle is like a geek’s playground. It’s basically a home page that is fully customizable to suit your needs and tastes.

Next up, I started using Google Calendar today. I try to keep a good, accurate calendar and agenda each week. But, I use several computers, a cell phone and other gadgets, so I always feel like I have my dates, to-do’s and appointments in several places and they’re never all the same. With Google Calendar, I can set up reminders via email and text messaging, have a daily agenda emailed to me each day, share my calendar to my multiple computers via iCal, and always be synced up.

Google Reader seems to be a pretty cool answer for keeping up with all the blogs I visit. I’d been using endo for a couple of weeks, but - once again - I have to have multiple copies on multiple computers and they’re never in sync. I can now just log into Google Reader on whichever computer I’m using at the time.

I try to stay pretty organized and all the features that Google offers seems to meet my needs. At minimum, I can centralize all the information in which I need access.

It dawned on me last week that I had never posted the story of how I became a Christian.  I’ve decided to break it up into a two-part series.  Today, you get the first part, and you’ll have to check back next week for the conclusion.

Romans 10:9-17 (Listen)

9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Part One: Pre-Conversion

I was born into a Christian home.  In a sense, my conversion came easy.  I don’t have the testimony of a former drug addict or prostitute that came to know Christ.  Brace yourselves.  I have a boring testimony, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My parents are both Christians.  Nearly every Sunday for the first 18 years of my life, I was in church.  Mostly, Nazarene churches.  I’ve always been a fan of music, and some of my earliest memories of music are Kids Praise and Carmen.  I was a big fan of both.  I wore out the song “Radically Saved!”  My other musical memories are of suffering through car rides listening to southern gospel!  Just kidding.  Sort of.  My parents were big fans of Gold City, The Cathedrals and more.

I knew of God and believe He was real, but I never placed my faith in him.  My mom was the strongest example of Christianity during my childhood.  I would often see her with a Bible open on her lap, or praying.  She would play hymns on the piano and sing.  My dad always seemed to know a lot about Christianity and the Bible, and was a great father and provider, but he wasn’t as strong of an example as my mother.

During high school, I started to lose any desire I had to go to church.  Up to that point, I at least enjoyed it because of friends at church and occasional youth activities.  I never experienced a church with a strong youth program, though.  In high school, I was envious of other kids my age who went to churches with strong youth groups.  I lost my desire to go.  Mom would successfully drag me out of bed each week to go, however.

Once I got to college, I was free!  Not having mom to wake me up each week was quite nice.  Sleeping in on Sundays was a new and enjoyable thing.  Despite going to a fine Baptist institution (at the time), having plenty of opportunities to be involved with campus ministry groups, and churches in town that catered to the college crowd, I passed up getting some Jesus in my life.  I avoided it pretty strongly, in fact.

Not long after I graduated from college, God started to work on me.  I was asked by my high school band director to play drums occasionally at Evergreen Baptist.  Sadly, I mainly did it because it paid.  But, God knows my weaknesses!

It was during this time that I went with a group from Evergreen to see Michael W. Smith and Third Day at Rupp Arena.  We had second row seats, and I was center stage.  In fact, at one point in the concert, I was front and center on the big screen.  I was amazed that I actually enjoyed the concert.  I enjoyed Christian music!  How could this be?

After playing at Evergreen on-and-off for about a year, my friend Jeremy started telling me about Crestwood.  He told me about how it was different, and how this Rick Long guy was a really good preacher.  They had a good band that played good, upbeat music and there were a lot of young people.  I decided to go on the Sundays I didn’t play at Evergreen.  I liked it!  After about a month of visiting, their drummer announced he was leaving the church.  God had opened a door for me.

(Tune in next week for Part Two!) 

The remainder of my week will be fairly jam-packed.  I have a lot to get done before I leave for Seattle at the break of dawn on Saturday.  Just to fill you in (since I know you’re on the edge of your seat), and to wrap my head around what I have to do, here’s a breakdown:

Life at CLS

After a slow January, work is picking up at CLS.  A couple of days last week were fairly busy, and today got a little more hectic as the day went on.  I’m hoping to have a really productive day tomorrow to stay on top of things.  Not only do I need to stay on top of things, but I also need to get ahead, since I’ll be gone all of next week.  To top it off, I need to post over thirty new t-shirts designs to our Got The Shirt site, as we try to finally get that project off the ground.

Life at The Point

I’ll be missing the Sunday service at TPCC for the first time in a very long while.  I really don’t remember the last time I missed.  Tomorrow night, I’ll go to the Habakkuk bible study, but then I get to go home.  I won’t have to stay for praise band rehearsal since I won’t be there on Sunday.  This actually helps, even though I hate to miss.  Not having to go to rehearsal will give me an extra couple of hours to get some things done.  One of those things being preparing for my PCG on Thursday night (and cleaning my apartment!).

Life at BADmedia

My goal by the end of this week is to have completely finished rough mixes for the Polston recording I did a couple of months ago.  I still need to get with a couple of groups to do overdubs, but I hope to have the project completed in the next few weeks.  With moving and everything else, it’s taken me longer than usual to get around to mixing, but I’ve finally found the time.  I hope to use my free time tomorrow evening to mix down a couple of the group’s performances.

On the website side of the business, I did a quick site update tonight.  My only real issue is The Point’s media site, which has been down for two weeks.  iPower is working on the issue, but it’s out of my hands - very frustrating!  I hope the issue is solved by the time I return from Seattle - hopefully sooner!

Other

I’m really excited about the Seattle trip.  It’s funny - a few weeks ago, we were all wishing it would hurry up and get here.  Now, it’s finally here and I wish I had another week!  A lot to do in very little time, it seems.

I finally got my internet up-and-running at my apartment tonight.  Since I have a wireless network, I went into my router settings and restricted access to only my computers.  This is my first time living in an apartment building, so I haven’t had the need to do this before.  But, I also don’t want people leeching off my connection.

In my quest to blog more often, I’m considering a schedule of some kind.  Like, Saturday would be YouTube video day, Sunday would be blog link day (linking to stories on other blogs - some people call this a blog carnival), Friday would be PCG Notes day…you get the idea.  I’m also considering have guest bloggers from time to time.  Anyone got any other ideas?

Some people say the only guarantees in life are death and taxes.  I would say that snow on February 11th in Frankfort, Kentucky comes pretty close to a guarantee.  Nearly every year that I can remember (I’ve lived in Frankfort since I was about seven years old), there has been snow on the ground for my birthday.  The past few years have been hit-or-miss, but, this year, we have snow.

I’m a fan of snow, so I’ll take it!  We’re expected to get 2 to 4 inches tonight, and that’s just fine by me.  The more, the better.

Twenty-eight years ago today, my mother gave birth to me at Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington.  Yes, today is my 28th birthday.  I’m accepting monetary gifts for those of you that are interested! 

I’ll be celebrating my birthday today by working at CLS, dinner at Penn Station with a couple of JMB guys, and then we’re having rehearsal tonight at The Point.  Yes, I go all out for my birthday celebrations.

Today, I spent a second Saturday in a row in Lexington.  The purpose today was to take back the couch I originally bought last weekend, since it didn’t fit up the elevator or stairs at the new apartment.  While reading my receipt, I read the dreaded words “no refunds.”  I figured I had a pretty good case and they might take it back - especially since it was still in it’s wrapping & padding.  No dice.

I still need a chest for my bedroom, so I was hoping they’d have one of equal value to the couch.  There were a few options that were good, but they were either out of stock for six weeks, or had issues such as drawers not opening easily (is it bad when the salesman suggests using a bar of soap to make their product work?).  I settled on a recliner.  Since I couldn’t fit the full size couch and had to get a love seat instead, I figured I could use the extra seating for when I have company.  In one way, I’m glad to have the extra seating and a nice recliner, but in another sense, I’m bummed that I had to end up getting something I didn’t technically need - all because the store wouldn’t give me a refund.  Oh well… and so it goes…

Thanks to some borrowed internet from a couple of floors below my apartment, I thought I’d celebrate with some random blogging (thanks Jeremy!):

Giants Win Super Bowl

No, this isn’t a news flash.  I’m a couple of days late on congratulating the Giants on their Super Bowl win.  I did want the Patriots to win.  After all, how many times will we get an opportunity to see a team go undefeated in the NFL?  It’s only happened once, so it’s not an easy feat.  But, Eli played great, the Giants defense played great, and they made plays when they needed to make them.  It is cool to see a Manning win the Super Bowl in back-to-back seasons.  I venture to say they may be playing each other in next year’s Super Bowl.  Finally, I thought it was a pretty punk move for Bill Belichick to walk off the field before the game was over.

New Apartment

I’ve settled into the new apartment, at long last.  My new love seat arrived today, so I finally have a place for people to sit!  I’m still debating on getting another chair, but for now, it’ll have to wait.  Next on the list is a dresser.  I’ve got my eye on one at Another Man’s Treasure.  I just hope it’s still there when I go back in a couple of weeks.  My old roommate certainly rubbed off on me.  His sense of style is pretty good for a bachelor.  I’ve found myself thinking like him while picking out stuff for the apartment.  No more hodge-podge of stuff that doesn’t match.  I want this place to look good!  Once I get settled in a bit more, I’ll take some pictures and post them.

 Current Reading

I’ve yet to start a book for February.  With the move, life’s been a little hectic.  I’ve kept up with my daily Scripture reading (barely), but that’s all I’ve had time to read each day.  Next on the list will be one of the following:  When I Don’t Desire God by John Piper, Faith in Future Grace by John Piper (re-read), or The Practice of Godliness by Jerry Bridges.

The moving process is underway.  I finally signed the lease on my new apartment yesterday, and was given the keys.  I took a load of stuff down there last night, then headed back home to finish packing.  My roommate is allowing me the use of his equipment van, which is a big help.  I’ve loaded all of my furniture into it, and I’ll load up my mattresses this afternoon.  I’ll probably still have a load for my CRV (clothes, electronic stuff, etc.), but then I’ll be ready to move.  Tonight, I’ll stay at the new apartment for the first time.

Blogging might be difficult next week.  I won’t have internet at the new apartment until the 13th.  I’ve lined up a few draft posts that I’ll post one-at-a-time starting on Monday.  That should buy me a little more time until I can have internet at the apartment.