Randy Allison, doing an instrumental special from this past weekend ...

And this catches me up for the videos I wanted to get caught up on ...

Abel Orta, from this weekend. Sunday, 8:30 service to be precise. I'm informed that this is an original Abel Orta tune. In case it's not abundantly obvious, the guy's pretty good.

Again with the tardiness excuse, here's me catching up on some old video. This is from Darlene Zschech's visit to Lakewood on 11/8/09. As great as the full service with her was filling in for Joel, it was particularly wonderful to see her in the Spanish service.

Pardon the lateness, but I'm finally getting around to catching up on video from the past few weeks.

To start things off with, here's Janet Dokes from 11/1 ...

The things we do when Joel's out of the country. This week, for instance? We learned a little zulu ...

... and welcomed back Dr. Paul Osteen from his mission stint in Kenya with his family. Great to see him back at Lakewood and even better to hear his update on some of the work that was done while he was over there.

Just a heads up since I've only got so much patience for the previous video hosting service I used ...

I'm uploading a gazillion videos to YouTube over the next few days. Feel free to check the channel as often as you care to. I'm starting with a catalog of two of my favorites: Aimee Beard and Carrie Hodge.

For now, I'm just dumping the videos in. I'll clean up the date, titles, and other stuff probably Sunday. All of your other favorite videos should reappear soon enough. If I somehow get a burst of productivity going on Sunday, I might even update some of the old blog postings with active videos.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Over 180 videos now uploaded! Yeesh, it seems like just yesterday when I started this nasty video habit ;-)

There's a few clips that exceed YouTube's 10-minute limit. I'll likely upload those to my own server and stream them from there. Some other minor cleanup of files is needed, but you've got the better part of a day or two to sift through the treasure that's there before I start getting more-or-less organized.

Apologies for the delay. Without further ado, here's a rerun that no longer qualifies as a "Summer" rerun. And also one that I don't think the congregation would mind doing far more frequently.

I tried to rip the video from my recording of the service, but it appears there was a hiccup in the video. It seems that the audio came out just fine. So until I find a way to pull the video cleanly, here's the new tune sung over the weekend: "Lead Me to the Cross."

UPDATE: Correction on the title, via Ndidi in the comments.

I'm taking a guess at the song title since I wasn't able to locate it in my massive five minutes of time spent looking. I trust there's several out there who can help out if I've gotten it wrong.

Beyond that, about all I can say is that, once again, Janet Dokes amazes all involved. Who's idea was it to stick her behind a desk, again?

The kids tackled Israel Houghton's "Just Wanna Say" this weekend. Always fun watching them take over the stage ...

This weekend, we were treated to Spanish pastor, Danilo Montero, performing the special - Israel Houghton's "I Know Who I Am." As cool as that was, I couldn't help but wonder if this would mean we'd have an English song as the Spanish service. As it turns out, they got a bit more of Danilo than we had. So I thought I'd clip a tune from Danilo's performance at the 1:30 service. This is "Bendito Jesus."

Danilo's latest CD is a live performance recorded at Lakewood. This is the video (courtesy of Integrity Music) of that performance:

I think I've kicked myself for the last time concerning a Spanish service with all praise & worship music thanks to this weekends' service. I'll share with anyone interested that Cindy Ratcliff has listed on her calendar, a Spanish Christmas service that looks like it's worth putting on anyone's personal calendar. Mark it down for November 29th.

Cindy is excited to be a Special Guest for the Live Recording of Marcos Witt's New Christmas Music Project... Event begins at 1:30pm. We Look Forward To Seeing You There...

Michael Mellet with another new-to-the-big-stage tune:

I'm in the midst of a rather fast-paced Sunday and wasn't able to do a good search of the song title. Anyone got an idea? I'll trade you a link for a heavy metal Christian band's take on Psalm 93 in exchange!

UPDATE: Title updated. Ndidi informs us that the tune was written by Michael. Good thing, because for a while I was sorting through whether this was another version of a Christian Heavy Metal take on Psalm 93 that's out there.

Aimee Beard, branching out from ballad territory and also giving us a new tune during the special ...

For downloadable tunage, there's Hillsong's version.

Another in a series of Summer Re-runs. This time it's Mayra Parrales redoing "Shadowfeet." Great to see her take another step out on the big stage. I think I can confidently state that we're nowhere near done seeing the full scope of young talent in the choir & ensemble (or, in the case of Janet Dokes ... the front office).

I know this song has not got some healthy mileage on it and we've all heard it a few dozen/hundred times. But I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've heard it with an homage to Michael Jackson in it. Wait for 2:26 and you'll hear what I'm talking about.

"God Great God" as performed by the Choir. If I didn't know any better (and there's a fair chance I don't in this case), I'd think the reason we're seeing so many encore performances of songs might have something to do with having another version to edit for a recording. Hmmmmm......

I'm obviously a week behind now that I've loligagged last week and spent a good chunk of this past weekend sleeping. I'm calling it by faith that someone thought enough of Abel Orta's special this past weekend to save me the headache of not having it preserved.

In the meantime, here's the encore performance that Janet Dokes did of "You Are My God." If you'll recall, this was the song that she first performed on the big stage and wowwed everyone with back in November. Safe to say, she does it again here ....

On a sidenote, the old videos that are now showing up as only a gray box? ... well, the fix for that is still underway. Apparently, the video hosting service encountered the glitch from older websites they serviced. Now, all of a sudden, we're outta luck. But so far, they're promising to at least return the files that were hosted so they could then be turned over to another service. Hypothetically, I could use their updated service, but I think it goes without saying that I'm burned out on them for now. I think it's YouTube from here on out.

Aimee Beard, armed only with a microphone and vocal chords ...

This is an encore performance from March of last year, which is just as well since that one isn't viewable (the video hosting service is still working on bugs ... grant me patience, Lord!).

In the meantime, I think I'm going to have to renew my insistent demands that Aimee be given a recording contract somewhere. Seriously, what's wrong with the world when I can't purchase a CD full of Aimee Beard singing?

Sunday's fun ...

That's "Happy Day" as performed by Tim Hughes. Lakewood's own, Aaron Rodriguez does the honors here.

Since the special this weekend as a repeat of a previous performance, I thought I'd pull a fast one and substitute a song that was previously done as a special, but now wasn't. I just love this song and the version that Cindy & Steve do is great.

The song is "My Life, My Love, My All" known best by Kirk Franklin ... a song that, for some reason, isn't available via Amazon's MP3 shop. Hope any iTuners wanting it have better luck.