WELCOME TO ELEVATE WORSHIP MINISTRIES Hey everyone, please visit our official website for Elevate Worship Ministries. ELEVATE exists to see the fire of worship restored to the creative arts. This website is dedicated to our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ, & the advancement of His Kingdom on the earth. Feel free to roam around and listen to some tunes (just click on the player above)! Also, you can subscribe to this site & be notified immediately of all the latest ELEVATE news ...And oh yeah, we'd love to hear from you! Please contact us at this site & we'll write back! Also, be sure to visit our Family Life Church/ Frontline Worship website at www.myflc.org. Worshipfully, Steve & Kathy Anderson Pastor of Worship & Arts Family Life Church

Church’s message is outdoors Family Life Church will provide a contemporary worship service at the GFU amphitheater Photo by Laurent Bonczijk/Newberg Graphic Cathy and Steve Anderson (center and right) jointly perform as pastors of worship and arts at Family Life Church. Dave Benson is the lead pastor. By Laurent Bonczijk Christians in town will have plenty of activities to choose from during this Old Fashioned Festival weekend. Not only does Sunday offer them the chance to participate in a hymn sing, but Family Life Church will hold an open-air service. Pastor Dave Benson said that ever since he had seen the amphitheater at George Fox University, he has wanted to use it for ministry. "It's just such a great venue," he said. Sunday, starting at 6 p.m., his wish will become reality with a worship service from the church's Elevate program. Elevate is open to all but is mostly intended for core Christians. Unlike Sunday morning worship, where Benson tries to reach the Christians and non-Christians alike, Elevate focuses on those who already have a personal relationship with Christ. "That doesn't mean that it is antagonistic towards others (though)," he said. Pastor of worship and arts Steve Anderson said that about two years ago he and Benson realized that FLC didn't really have a program for Christians who wanted to focus upward rather than horizontally. Consequently the church started to host Elevate once a quarter. Because of its popularity, the church began last year holding it every other month; it will be a monthly event at FLC starting this year. Benson said that the Elevate program grew organically and that now about one third of his congregation participates. Anderson said that the advantage of holding a worship service in open air is that "there is something that can be somewhat foreboding about a church." Additionally, "whenever the church can be together in nature and creation it's another dimension of the greatness of God." Neither Benson nor Anderson want to "steal" churchgoers from other churches, but they hope that passersby will join in the worship. The style will be contemporary Christian pop, Anderson said, adding that those familiar with FLC will recognize the church's trademark worship style. He didn't intend for the worship to overlap with the hymn sing (ending at 6:30 p.m. in Memorial Park). This Sunday simply was the one date George Fox had available.

Writing songs for congregational worship is a real challenge. That was one of my goals in writing "With All of My Heart!" I was thinking about what God would want to hear out of the mouths & Hearts of our congregation. The result is this song declaring the greatest commandment!

Hey everyone! I just posted a new song entitled, "We are Believing!" Lyrically it's loosely based on Hebrews 11:1 & other scriptures that remind us of the faithfullness of our God! Musically, it is influenced by my love of the guitar driven pop-rock song! I can hear strains of many of my influences (Doobies, Poco, Eagles, Orleans, & a million others) in the arrangement. As with most of my songs it started very different than it has ended up but i'm happy with the results. I'll probably re mix it a bunch of times but it's really close at this point. Most of the electric guitar parts are played on my Tom Anderson hollow Cobra (Center in the photo) although there's a rhythm Fender Telecaster (clean with a slight phase shifter on it) in there somewhere! I played all the electric guitars through a Line 6 Pod XT. The acoustic is my Taylor 310 through an AKG 414 (Right in photo). The bass is my Musicman stringray 4 string straight into the board. The piano & B-3 are from my Roland XV-5080 module. All my vocals are mic'd with a AKG 414. Drums are a comination of a 125 bpm loop from "Drums on Demand" series 1, and a trusty old Alesis SR-16 drum machine. The whole song was recorded on a Roland 2480 CD workstation. Hope you enjoy! SLA

In my family, fried oysters were an occasion! We’d have these huge oyster feeds, invite family & friends, play hearts, and laugh ‘til we cried. I loved these parties, the people, the games, the good times! I loved everything about them… except the oysters! That’s right, I was the oyster odd-ball in my family. I’m sure the ridicule and scorn has permanently scarred me in ways I’ll never know! I have to admit though, as I’ve grown, I’ve come to appreciate oysters, no I still won’t eat those nasty things, but I appreciate them. There’s a lesson to be learned from those spineless, rubbery, squishy, scary looking (and, I imagine, scary tasting,) sea creatures. The lesson? Oysters turn problems into pearls. A pearl begins to form inside an oyster when a grain of sand gets inside the shell, and begins to irritate it. When this happens the oyster begins to produce a substance which slowly coats the irritant. Over time, this substance builds up transforming that annoying grain of sand into a valuable pearl. Like oysters, you and I can also turn our problems in to pearls. We do it with praise! Ephesians 6:12 reminds us that… “Our struggles are not with flesh & blood, but spiritual in nature.” In other words, the devil has declared war on you and I… on our hearts and minds, on our health and relationships, on our finances, even on our faith! Satan not only wants to irritate us, he’s out to destroy us! But, Psalm 8:2 promises that, “Out of the mouths of babes and infants, (you and I) God has ordained praise, because of our enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.” The word ordained suggests authority, silence means to shut up! The next time the devil begins to get under your skin, starting lifting your praises to God! You see, God has given our praises the authority to shut the devil up! Oh yeah…and as we see God at work in our lives, we learn to trust Him more and more. Before you know it the very thing that began as an irritation in our life has been transformed into a priceless pearl of faith. Now, c’mon, how cool is that! So, stop whatever you’re doing right now & give God a praise!