Planning for Spring and Summer, the season of planting, fertilizing and weeding and growth unto a much larger harvest than what is sown is what farmers do in winter. They network with other farmers, they go to shows and meetings to learn from others before making their final plans for the year. What about you? Are you seeking the Lord and dialoguing with your brothers and sisters about the new year and what the Lord is putting on your heart? What kind of seeds are you planning to sow in the new year? As a worship leader, as a husband or wife, mother or father, what are you planning to sow into your family this year? What are the weeds that you tend to fight every year, what might consulting with the Lord and others in the Lord yield in terms of fruit so that you don’t simply repeat the failings and sins of yesteryear! And fertilizer, what kind of fertilizer and how much fertilizer are you willing to invest in this year to ensure the seeds you sow have the very best environment to grow in, making the hearts of those around you very fertile? I’m believing God for a very healthy and large harvest this year and want to do my very best in this season of bitter cold to search out the very best from the Lord and those the Lord has placed around me to do my part in working with the Lord to produce a large healthy harvest. Wouldn’t it be great if 2018 was a year that produced a healthy abundant harvest in the natural world as well as the world of human hearts seeded with good news of God’s love in Christ His Son?
As worship leaders our task is to seek the Lord about songs which help carry the body of Christ into God’s throne room and speak the truth we need to here to walk in freedom and obedience to God’s commands! May the Lord help you in this task that the body might be very fruitful and healthy this year!
P.S. – This was written earlier but I think it is still applicable cause it’s winter still:). I forgot to hit publish
I have returned from Breakforth One conference in Edmonton and I want to tell you a little bit about my experience there this year. As always I enjoy being on the prayer team. and the joy of ministering to the Lord Jesus in worship together as a team and in the large gathering of the body of Christ. We were reminded again we are a part of the Isaiah 61 mandate that Jesus began to us in His 3 year earthly ministry and continues through us to bring beauty for ashes, forgiveness, restoration, healing, in His name. Before I began praying for people this year I had the privilege of going to a one day intensive learning workshop called Healing Discipleship the next move of God by Pastor Ken Dyck from Vancouver. I was very impacted by his presentation and the great need there is for the church to receive healing on the inside and be a conduit of healing to others. But first it must begin with us. And so the long and the short of it is Kelly wants to go through a discipleship journey called Freedom Sessions soon and invite others into it with him:). If anyone has experienced this already I would appreciate hearing about your experience good or bad. Private message me on messenger or email me at kellyb.wiens@gmail.com. Thanks!
As I mentioned last year we continued to pray for people in the prayer room, pray in main assemblies for the ministers and the worshipping community there to receive from the Lord through His servants, and we continued doing treasure hunts aka roving prayer ministers throughout the Shaw Conference Centre. It never ceases to amaze me the intimate knowledge our Father has of each one of us and His love for us and desire to encourage, comfort and strengthen us. This year seemed to be a year of further growth in learning to listen to the Holy Spirit and learning to deliver what He is saying to others for their encouragement. I saw the Lord Jesus time and time again work so beautifully through members of the prayer team to see healing come to broken hearts and hurting bodies, burdens lifted, and believers exchanging lies for truth about our Father and His great love for us.
I also receive from the Lord often from members of the team and this year without fail the Lord was encouraging me to move forward to share deeply from my heart what He has put there and be unafraid to share it. So in keeping with that invitation from the Lord that has not only come through my siblings in Christ but from Christ to me directly many times I am going to share some things with you my readers that I hope will also bring freedom, courage, comfort and strength to you in your ministries. One is I want to begin to share my journey with Jesus with you one piece at a time, secondly I’m going to share some raw videos and recordings with you so you don’t just see polished finished songs and things but you get to see raw and unprocessed Holy Spirit moments. In doing this I am hoping to encourage you to be more authentic, and vulnerable in your ministry for the sake of encouraging and building up others and I want to encourage creativity. Thirdly, I am going to be developing some training materials in the coming weeks in February to begin sharing the training with you in the coming months starting in March God willing. One of those I hope to be is a slightly modified prayer training called Hands On Prayer Ministry by Mary Kassian of which I received her book as a thank you gift from my prayer team leads Art and Lorraine this year which seemed to confirm to me it is time to start giving away this training and multiplying the number of confident Spirit filled prayer ministers. The second training I want to do is in the area of training worship leaders to cultivate the prophetic gift of the Holy Spirit within them and their teams so that we have more bold and courageous worship leaders who sing the song of the Lord over His people, and the release of greater creativity in the church related to music in particular but also in all the expressions of art in making His praise Glorious and also communicating His heart of love to His people and those who have not yet tasted His love nor heard to good news!
On that note I want to share a little bit about a little chorus I started singing and recorded on my iPhone at Breakforth. This morning I listened to the 30 seconds I recorded at Breakforth and thought I would sing it again and see if more came. The perfectionist side of me would normally prevent me from sharing any such recording especially since I’m practicing a lot of chest to head voice flips in the song some of which are quite bad but for the sake of encouraging the creative Spirit led process in you I will let you the hear the raw heart and expression before the refinement comes. Have an enjoyable rest of your day! Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbour like Jesus has loved you!
Kelly
Here’s the song I started working on from a little melody at Breakforth. You are Mine
And here is a private video of spontaneous worship in key of G from this morning! Worship in G
I was born in Lucky Lake, July 7, 1970 because my mother wasn’t comfortable with the doctor at the time in my home town of Beechy. I came home to a farm 8 miles northwest of Beechy that my Father and Mother had been renting since 1965 I believe. I had an older sister Tammy (Tamara) who was 3 and 3 years later to the day I would receive another sister named Sonya on July 7, 1973. I have a few memories from those days on the farm, one that came back to me many years later when I gutted my first chicken at my sister in laws after I married my wife which was of my mom gutting a chicken on the kitchen table at this farm. The other memory I have is being stomach flu sick in my bedroom there which was shared with my sister Tamara at that time. My favourite memory by far was when my dad got me my first bike from Canadian Tire, it was bright yellow. I rode down the hill with training wheels at that farm and loved it.
A little less than a year after my younger sister Sonya was born, Dad and Mom got a chance to buy a farm in 1974 only 3 miles from town. So we moved there in 1974. I remember puddles everywhere in the yard as the previous owners the Driedgers had their auction sale in spring before we moved there. 1974 was a winter of much snow which took a long time to melt. It is this farm that I live on to this day with my wife and 3 youngest kids.
My parents were both believers and very active in our Mennonite Brethren Church on railway street in Beechy across from the Pioneer elevator where my dad hauled most of his grain. Dad was moderator of the church council often, led the church choir and taught adult Sunday school. My mom was the church pianist and played a lot for church services and the choir and she led the children’s choir. We did a lot of musical stuff growing up. We had a little family band where I played Tenor recorder in together with my sister Sonya who played alto recorder and my older sister Tamara who played flute together with my dad and my mom who accompanied us on the piano. All of us kids sang in the kids choir and did musicals a lot. Later I would start playing trombone in the band in Grade 5. My sisters and I all were started on piano before school started it seemed the the Kelly Kirby method of learning piano. In grade 8 we would join Dad’s choir at church when we became of age. I learned guitar for a year in school in Grade 9 but that was as far as it went for me in guitar as I found my wrist got sore holding guitar from the fallout of a broken arm in Grade 9.
My faith journey with Christ started when my mother shared a Good News booklet with me about what God had done for me through His Son in dying for my sins and being raised from the dead so I could be forgiven and have eternal life. I wanted to be forgiven as even at 5 years old , I recognized the lack of perfection in me at that time already and I wanted to go to heaven when I die and not be separated from God forever. I received Christ by faith into my heart at that time. I remember sharing my faith with a classmate from school underneath the sandbox in our kindergarten and grade 1 room. I was pretty pumped about Jesus at that time.
I was an academically inclined kid who found school easy and did very well in all my classes except Penmanship. My writing is very bad still. Be thankful I’m typing this. I actually was good at that, achieving 55 wpm on a manual typewriter while starting my training in Grade 10 with only 1 hand because of recovering from a broken arm at the time.
Although I had enthusiasm in my faith at school in the beginning I found that my desire to be accepted by peers generally trumped my willingness to step out and talk about what I believed with my classmates very often. And so I was quiet about my faith for the most part. I had a friend who shared my faith who I did a lot with whose name was Kevin. His presence was a great gift in my life helping to preserve my faith and to give me a friend I could do a lot of fun things with including fall prey to temptation with.
One of the things my parents taught me quite strongly was the dangerous influence of alcohol in ones life. Although I saw alcohol in my grandmothers fridge once I have to admit I was shocked because of how evil my perception was of drinking alcohol and the conviction that I had from my parents instruction that a Christian should never drink it. One day in grade 6 will forever be etched in my mind was a day a bunch of my classmates thought it would be a great idea to bring alcohol from home to school and drink it on the playground. I managed to avoid temptation number one when one of my cousins suggested I try drinking some of the “water” he had in a container. I wasn’t that easily deceived. However, later on that day when a certain female classmate came up to me with a 7up bottle in hand containing a mixture of vodka and 7up offered some for me to try, I had a much harder decision to make. Would I stay with what my parents taught me and within the school rules or would I try some to see what this evil substance tasted like and maybe not look so prudish in front of this pretty girl…
