It's just that kind of world.

I know I've been a little lazy with the blogging lately, and that even when I have been posting, it's been lots of links and other boring stuff, but I just couldn't pass this up.

First, I ran across this article. It's not that long, but in case you don't want to read it, it briefly describes a trip that Matt Damon (who is really awesome at pretending to be somebody else and admittedly does an awesome impression of the world's worst actor) and Wyclef Jean (who is really awesome at producing songs that actually waste lyrics to announce the names of whoever is singing the song somewhere during the intro section) took to storm-battered, insanely-poor Haiti. The people of Haiti are facing bleak, mind-blowingly harsh conditions, and that shouldn't be ignored. But that's not actually the point of my writing.

I'm getting to what the point is...

One quote from the article:

"Damon and Jean are encouraging more people to help the United Nations raise more than US$100 million for an estimated 800,000 Haitians in need of aid after four devastating tropical storms and hurricanes since mid-August."

Cool. Thanks Matt. Good work Wyclef. Glad you guys are trying to raise money. And gee whiz, a hundred million bucks is a lot. Right? Right?

Well, maybe not.

Thanks celebrities. You've really helped me put it all in perspective.

If my house concert career were a sentence...

I suppose you could call this a semi-colon.

As of a few weeks ago, I have taken an almost full-time job with these people. It’s a long story, but here are the basics.

They bought the building that Community Church meets in. They didn't kick us out, but instead fixed the place up and said "let's all meet here!" Then they came to me and offered to pay me good money to help them out. They wanted to pay me to not travel for a while. They said they’d give me real, actual money to mentor/train/teach the people in their worship ministry to be a little better at their jobs and a little more certain in their callings. After 13 years of being basically self-employed and full-time-traveling-the-country, this is kind of a dream job for me. Most of you know that I’ve kind of always considered myself a “shepherd” type of person. I like playing music and pretending to be a rock star and all that, but my passions are writing songs and exploring the vastness of the Kingdom with others. The fact that I can make money doing those things is so great it almost feels scandalous.

So this job is, at least at this time in my life, a great thing.

A steady pay check (something I've never really had) means that Staci and I can pay off debt. It means that we can adopt more babies. It means that I can sleep in my own bed with my wife a lot more. It means that my sons don't have to say "please don't leave Daddy" every weekend.

Anyway, they’re totally cool with the fact that I still live with and co-lead these people. How about that for a Kingdom of God perspective? Two churches getting along, sharing a building and a worship leader? I'm working for and helping to lead both of these groups of believers. That’s where the “almost” in my “almost full-time” description above comes in. Since we all meet in the same building (but at different times), it actually works out really well.

It’s officially an “interim” position. I don’t know how long it will last, but once it’s over, I’ll probably go back to doing more traveling.

So, as you may have already guessed, that means I’m going to be doing a lot less traveling for now. I’m not done traveling. I’m not done with house concerts or leading worship for other churches and ministries. But I am trying to devote an appropriate amount of energy to the job that I’ve been hired to do.I’ll be blogging and explaining more as things progress, but I felt it was only fair to let my dozens of adoring fans know that my calendar will be looking a little different for a while.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in booking me for something, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m still in.

Questions?

But then again,if you need to recalibrate the system:

There's always stuff like this.*

*No holograms were used in the making of this story.

I'm not sure what discourages me more:

This article, or all the Christians that will defend their favorite celebrities when they read it.

I can't imagine God would be happy about this.

Producer's Corner

One of my many jobs is producing/recording records at this place (we don't update the site very often, because we're too busy churning out hits). I've been doing it for many years, and I've had the great privilege of recording some killer projects, like this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, to name a few (basically, I just gave you a link-list of great CD's that you should most definitely buy). What a cool job.

From time to time, I've thought about writing an occasional article/story/etc about my experiences in this field. I'm no expert, but I have been making inexpensive, decent-sounding independent records for a while now. So I guess that qualifies me to at least wax philosphical or whatever.

Anyway, the bad news is that I still haven't written anything. The good news is that my current first-call drummer (and good friend and co-laborer in the kooky lovefest that is Community Church), Michael Steele, has written something on his blog. I like what he has to say for several reasons. But mainly I just like how he explains, in simple, easy-to-understand language, what a new/aspiring session musician can expect when getting into studio work. I don't know how many of you will find this remotely interesting, but I thought I'd send it to you anyway.

One added bonus is that the article links to new music (recorded at The MixLab) by this dude, who is extremely talented, and a cool guy to boot.

Something somebody else said

This is so worth reading (thanks Johnny). Obviously I don't agree with every word of it, but it sure is interesting to hear these kinds of thoughts from someone who thinks some of the same things that I've been thinking. I, too, am pretty sick of all the slickness and kitsch and plastic posturing that we do in the name of "reaching" people. And I suspect that much of the world sees right thru it, the same way they see thru the spin-doctor game-playing of politicians or the "reality" of reality tv. Anyway, there's no reason for me to elaborate. I'll let her do it.

By the way, as an experiment, I went to google images and typed in the phrase "trendy pastor," and this was the very first picture that came up. I'm not saying it means anything. I just think it's interesting...

In other news, they gave me "name credit" on that cool video that I referenced a couple of weeks ago. Did some of you harass those poor (but creative) folks? I really hope not. They seem like nice people, and they make really good videos. Either way, I can no longer use this particular situation in building my case as a misunderstood, underappreciated, brilliant victim. And that just makes me feel sorry for myself. Why me, Lord?

In the "I'm not famous but my song almost is" category...

I present you with this.

A "fan" sent me the link not long ago. The video is nicely done, which is a bonus (the sidebar on youtube revealed a couple of less impressive efforts, which I won't link to out of respect for the well-intentioned-but-not-very-talented among us). But more interesting than that was the number of views. Something in the realm of 21,000 and change. That seems sort of significant, I think.

In classic "Ross King's Career is So Sad" fashion, there's absolutely no mention whatsoever of me, my website, or any other way to throw money or fame my way.

This could easily lead into a longer story -- one which I used to recite to myself daily, making me extremely bitter, and now it only makes me a tiny bit bitter -- about all the times in my life that this kind of thing has happened. Some of these could possibly even be qualified as RBT stories, because they are so ridiculous and yet so true.

A few of these stories might have titles such as:

That Time I Met The Most Successful CCM Producer in The World in the SkyCap Line, Gave Him One of My CD's, and Never Heard From Him Again Because He Was So Unimpressed

or
That Time That I Led Worship For the Largest College Bible Study in The History of America, And After 5 Years Most People Still Knew Me Only As "That Stuttering Guy Who Plays Acoustical Guitar for that Band That Shane Barnard's Drummer is In, and By The Way, Shane Strums Way Faster Than That Guy"

or maybe
That Time I Wrote Lots of Songs With a Guy for Several Years, and Now He's the Most Famous Christian Musician in the World, and I'm Still Just a Doofus on a Blog, and People Think We're Pals Because One Time We Did a CD Together, But Really I'm Pretty Sure He's Forgotten My Name Even Though He Once Borrowed One of My Shirts To Go Out On a Date, So Now There's No Way I Can Exploit Our Former Friendship For My Own Gain, Which Sucks Royally

or, my personal favorite
That Time that Grassroots Sold Several Thousand Dollars Worth of My CD's Only to Go Bankrupt Before Paying Me

I'm still working out the kinks in some of those titles.

Anyway, when I'm really in my sanest place and walking in the Spirit, these stories make me laugh, and then I usually feel like a moron for even complaining at all, when lots of people in the world never get to have such a cool job like me.

I guess, if nothing else, I can hope for the day when Christian Music is cool enough that it will have it's own VH-1 type channel, and maybe they'll have a show that could feature me and a bunch of other sad wanna-bes and never-wases. The show could be called "Have You Ever Wondered Who Wrote that One Song That Lots of People Heard But Nobody Had Any Idea Who Wrote?"

I'm still working out the kinks in the title.