What's up, everybody?!

Hello from Macedonia! I just posted up a video on Google video to say hi to you all back in the states! Just click the play button below!

Missing you all!

Chris

Here's a copy of my prayer calendar for my Eastern Europe tour!

I covet your prayers, so please, please, pray for us! Thanks so much friends. I'm getting really excited now 'cause in less than 24 hours I'll be on the plane!!!

Blessings and see you in April!

Labels: Tour

We're leaving for tour tomorrow! ahhh!!

I'm still a little stressed out, but as I'm plowing through my task list and checking things off, my blood pressure is slowly decreasing :) It's wonderful to see that happen. :)

"So what will our audience be like in some of the places you will go?" you might ask.

Here's an e-mail excerpt from some of the Crusade staff in the region:

Bulgaria (Plovdiv, Smolian) – Smolian – strong Muslim presence; Plovdiv – the idea of a personal relationship is very foreign to them, Christianity=relgion=tradition; pray for the extra concert to come through in Smolian

Kosovo – strong Muslim tradition; hostility toward Serbia

Macedonia - Macedonians have an Orthodox background (like Greek Orthodox). Essentially it is a spiritual tradition but has become devoid of any relationship. Easter for example is a totally party weekend. You can draw a lot of parallels to Jesus’ response to the Pharisees. They were so committed to traditions that they had lost the concept of relationship. So it goes here in Macedonia. I have even heard students say they are “Christian atheists”. It makes sense to them because their tradition has also become their cultural identifier. They are Christians and not Muslims.

Most people believe in God. They know about Jesus dying on a cross. They don’t have a clue why that is the case. They might have read some of the Bible but since they have only been exposed to old translations it was really confusing for them. Besides, only the priest can read that. There is also an irony here. They are really committed to being “Orthodox” but they really don’t trust the priests. They see all kinds of wealth and scandal and think all the priests want is money.

If you talk about true faith, connecting with God personally rather than just through tradition, being dissatisfied with life and finding satisfaction and significance in Christ. I like to talk about the women at the well. Jesus told her that one day people would worship in “spirit and truth”. What does that mean?

• We are hoping to use this as a outreach to generate new contacts
• We are trying to target the concert to reach students who are from Skopje, the capital city, rather than just students from outside the city.
• We are also going to try and target those that are more socially strong leader types. (How do you say that in a sensitive way?)

Serbia - Ok, some things about the audience. Most of them will be people that have an idea about the main things in the Bible ( God, creation, sin, salvation, Jesus, afterlife and so on...) but it doesn't mean they believe in that. And again, most of them would say they are Christians but also believe in reincarnation, read horoscope or coffee, don't believe that the Bible is entirely authentic - you get the picture. Also the "personal relationship with God" is VERY foreign to almost everybody here.

They also believe that the orthodox church is the only one that is good ( Catholics and old protestants are ok too) but all the rest is cult.

As you can see, there is a lot of traditionalism, and the idea of God being a real person who wants to be in a relationship with them is a very foreign idea.

Pray the love of God would break through the fallow ground of their hearts and that His Word would take root.

Pray the light of Christ would shine on them and rescue them from the kingdom of darkness and bring them into the kingdom of light.

In Ephesians 5:14, it says,

for it is light that makes everything visible. That is why it is said:
"Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you"

Well, I finally have some tour pics up on this site.

I've been meaning to post them up for a while now but with the rest of our tour happening, rehearsals, and now preparing to go overseas, it's been quite busy around these here parts!

Anyways, without further ado, check out pictures from our gigs at San Luis Obispo, Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, and Michigan State University.

Enjoy!

San Luis Obispo

Ft. Huachuca, Arizona

Michigan State Pictures

I can't believe I didn't post this up until now!

For those of you who don't know this yet, Chasing Elvis will be leaving for Eastern Europe next Wednesday!

Here's a link to my recent ask letter including all the dates of our tour overseas:

Chasing Elvis Eastern Europe Tour

PLEASE pray for us as we have MANY, many preparations to do before we leave next Wednesday!

Thanks to all those that have already given and are praying for me. We've got two more full-day rehearsals on Thursday and Friday and then two days of tour prep before we leave for our flight at 1:40p.m. on Wednesday afternoon.

I CAN'T WAIT to taste some great chocolate, play for hundreds of people in six different countries, and sip the YUMMIEST coffee in the world!

Night y'all

It's 2:11a.m....I just finished practicing our new songs for our upcoming Eastern Europe tour. WOW am I exhausted...I need to get to bed.

One of the songs we're doing is "Everything Little Thing She Does is Magic" by The Police and MAN! WHAT A STINKIN' HARD DRUM PART! GEEZ! Stewart Copeland! Yikes...for you drummers out there, you know what I'm talkin' about.

Yes, we are taking it old school and also playing that good old school U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Lookin' For". Talk about a contrast in drum parts!

I charted out both drum charts for each song, and one page is covered with black notes everywhere with accent markings-32-nd note even!-and the other has lots of white space with very few notes. It's just funny to me. But maybe this is musical jargon isn't making any sense to you non-music geeks.

Everything Chris said = Playing both very hard and very easy drum parts = LOTS OF TIME PRACTICING!

PLEASE, PLEASE pray for me...I really covet your prayers at this time of "crunch time" for rehearsals and all the preparations that need to take place before we leave for Eastern Europe. I can't believe we only have a week and a half left before we go! CRAZINESS!

Pray the Lord would bring together our music, help us to gel well, and to also spiritually prepare for the journey He's leading us on. It's going to be a long one and very physically, emotionally, and spiritually demanding. We need to be prepared!

We've gotta get our Tetnis shots (hope that's how you spell it), and a Hepatitis A shot for going overseas. We've also gotta make sure all our passports are up to date, do our taxes, get all our funds in place, pack properly, put our equipment together, learn 4 new songs in 4 days, and yeah, we're supposed to sleep, but somehow I don't have a feeling we're going to be doing too much of that in the next week and a half. I'm still up at this hour!

I'm rambling now, so I'll go. The main point, please pray! Thank you friends!

I'll be posting up our tour dates on here very soon. God bless you and have a great Monday, though I know they're usually drudgery to face!

Chasing Elvis will be playing tonight at the Barley Island Brewing Company at 11p.m.!

No, that is not a typo. 11p.m.! We'll be half asleep while playing, but I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun and we'll have a blast.

Two bands are also playing: Three Piece Suit, whom I know nothing about and Serebro, two members of which are a part of Keynote. They're great, so I'm really looking forward to being able to play with all those guys as a part of a concert lineup.

I wish we could all do a number together and just rock out at the end, but I don't think that that's going to happen. :) Next time!


Sorry for the discoloration of the poster! I'm not quite sure why that happened because the colors are normal when I open up the .jpeg on my computer. We look like large smurfs.

In any case, this is our concert invite for tonight. Pray for us!

Have a great weekend!

We just got back from Bowling Green, Ohio where we played last night!

Chasing Elvis played three songs as a part of Crusade's seeker-oriented meeting. The topic they discussed for the night was entitled "Coffee Talk" and the topic of choice was "Why would a good God allow evil and suffering in the world?"

I'm sure you've never wrestled with that one :)

The meeting was much more casual and fun so that non-Christians would feel more comfortable being there. Two staff members sat in love seats on stage, sipping "coffee" (it was really water in coffee mugs) and talked about the topic in a conversational style to simulate a coffee shop type of environment.

Both shared some very personal experiences-one about a close friend's death and the other about a best friend's betrayal. They talked about the faith struggles they had in reconciling with God's purpose in these hard times and how they dealt with it. It seemed very natural to talk about and didn't sound too forced or preachy at all, which I think was really great and translated well to the audience there that night.

There were about 300-350 students there and about half of them were non-Christians! The staff said there were a lot of new faces and that a lot of the students there were part of the Greek community on campus. Praise God!


One really cool thing about what's happening with the Cru movement, is that the staff there are making their students leaders be actively involved in a non-Christian community or organization on campus and befriend non-Christians as part of their commitment to being a leader in the movement.

The staff "require" each student at the start of the school year to go and just make friends with non-Christians. For the first few months of the school year when they go out and witness, they are not allowed to bring any "Four Laws" booklets and are just there to make friends with non-Christians, share their lives with them, love them and build relationships.

Of course, the eventual goal is to see them brought to Christ, but the staff really want to emphasize the importance of loving them for who they are and sharing their lives with them, so that these non-Christians aren't just projects that they need to work on and convert into Christians.

They want their students to be "out there" in the world, being salt and light to their campus, and making a difference by being friends with the lost, first and foremost. That is amazing.

And after all, isn't that what Jesus would really do?