Brandon Gilliland

I have always been a golf enthusiast. Every chance I get to play, I am out on the course. There are a few things about golf that are essential to play a great game: endurance, management, and mentality. There is no doubt that each of these qualities (or practices) are necessary for playing a strong game. The same applies to our Christian life. In order to stand strong as a Christian, the qualities of endurance, management, and mentality must be present. These qualities must be developed.

Endurance

In golf, physical endurance is key. If you are not physically in shape, playing golf will be pure torture. Of course, you can always get a cart and ride, but that is not true golf! You have to walk to get the full experience!

The Christian life brings many challenges. You have to be physically in shape to be  a strong ambassador for Christ. When time in the Word is forsaken, our physical endurance can quickly become diminished.

Hey everyone! Today marks the day for the release of Phil Wickham’s new singalong CD. Make sure you grab a copy of the record. It is FREE for the first month.

This CD is a live singalong version from his concert. Phil’s concerts are always excellent, so make sure you pick up this awesome worship album!

Thank you Phil for releasing this!

Also tweet about the CD when you get it, so others know about it!

It’s time for our first interview of the series “Interviews On Worship”! I’m excited to have my good friend, Brandon Kittridge, answer some questions today. Brandon is awesome because he has the same name as me, but he also has a heart for God. He plays bass guitar in our worship band.

I asked him to answer a few questions…so here it goes!

Icebreakers:

1. Describe yourself in 3 words.

- Musical Jesus Freak

2. What are your favorite hobbies?

- Playing any instrument I have/can find, learning more and more musically, listening to Christian music, failing to attempt not to waste time sometimes, writing lyrics, writing other things (like guest posts or messages from the Bible)…

3. What are your favorite bands/artists?

- Top 2: Leeland and Phil Wickham, you guys are the best! There are a whole lot of other Christian bands and artists I like too, but that’s a long list that would be hard to rank and name haha!

Thoughts On Worship

1. Why do you lead worship?

I have been trying to come up with a different type of series. One thing that I realized was that I have never done interviews on my website. To test the waters, I decided to interview each member of the worship team I lead. First, I gave them a few questions to answer on worship. If this series goes well, we might do video interviews next!

Starting this Monday, I will be interviewing our bass guitarist. You do not want to miss it! Every Monday for the next few weeks, I will be interviewing some of the members of the worship band. Depending on where that goes, we might start video interviews, but this is just a trial run.

So what do you think of the new series? Any thoughts or ideas that I didn’t mention?

Over the few years of leading worship, I have found that it’s hard to lead when others are disengaged. If you did not know, I lead worship for my youth group. It has been an amazing journey, but it has not been a smooth one. I have experienced many trials while trying to be a servant to this ministry. In fact, I am in the middle of several trials at the moment.

In a youth group setting, you have those who desire to worship God and those that could care less. It is hard to try to lead worship with an audience that consists of individuals on two entirely different wavelengths. For the past year, this has been my battle.

The band and I practice every Sunday night after church, and we meet sometimes three hours before the Wednesday night service starts. We pour a lot of time and effort into the ministry, and sometimes it feels like it is all for nothing. This is exactly what Satan wants us all to believe. The devil wants to wear us down and try to convince us that our time and efforts are worth nothing. It is a lie!

“Pray without ceasing.”

-1 Thessalonians 5:17

A simple command, but so hard to fulfill. I have found that when I have an attidude of prayer throughout the day, the overall day is better. I feel more productive, grow closer to God, and develop better relationships with others.

Challenge for today: Have an attitude and mindset of prayer throughout today. You will be amazed at what god can do when you constantly talk to Him!

Time is valuable. Where you choose to spend your time reflects your priorities in life. There are many things that want to steal your time. Although social networking is great in many aspects, it can also be a major time consumer if it is placed in front of other more important things. The fact is that this world wants to distract us with other things that will keep us away from serving God.

Everyone has 86,000 seconds in a day. In reality, you have less than this amount of time because a good portion of it is spent sleeping. Our time is valuable. How you use the time that you are given each day reflects your priorities. It is hard for me sometimes to get away from the things that steal my time. I’m sure it is the same for you.

In 1st Corinthians, it says:

“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

-1 Corinthians 10:31

April was a busy month! Some major things happened. I finally moved the site to a self-hosted platform. This was one of the best blogging decisions that I have ever made (besides purchasing a domain). Moving here was and is a big risk. I am still somewhat nervous about the investment here, but I think that it will be great in the long-run.

Besides moving domains, platforms, and everything, the site experienced a lot of growth. The email subscribers are slowly coming back up to where they were on the old site. The good thing is that half of them are brand new! Traffic has also been steady with close to a 400% increase in visits!

Top Posts

Our Perfect Plan Is Not Always In God’s Agenda

Moving Forward When Your Website Grows Stagnant

A White Flag Surrender

Quantity vs Quality Time

If you have not checked out these posts yet, you can click on them. Discussion is always welcome on any of the posts!

Just wanted to let the readers here know that I set up my twitter account this afternoon. I have been asked for awhile now to get one, but I had to wait until I finished my current semester in school. Well, that ended today! So, I will be posting updates there as well. My twitter name is: b_gilliland.

You can follow me @b_gilliland! With twitter, I can now share more with the readers here. Plus, it will allow me to post more quality content here on the site.

Stay tuned for more posts!

A common fear that almost every musician has when it comes to live performances, involves having some piece of gear fail during a live set. I have had many things happen to me when I have played live. Most every musician who  regularly performs live can testify to this fear.

I have:

• broken strings (this is bad because your whole guitar goes out of tune, and you can not play the same chords)
• fried cables
• dropped picks (this always happens when my picks are not easily accessible!)
• had a guitar break
• short-circuited pedals (bad…just bad…)
• had mics go out
• had tubes blow (this is always bad because the sound can not travel out of your amp)

Out of all of these things, I am glad to say that I have not fallen on stage…only at practice! The point of mentioning all of things things is that they can not be controlled. No matter how much one prepares or insures that the gear is quality, these things can still happen. Learning to deal with these situations properly is important.