Eighteen Inches

My name is Steve Birss and I am an elder at my church, The Gate. I also lead worship in a band every other week. I am a carpenter and a father of two young girls. I've been married to my beautiful wife Kindra for five and a half years. I have been a Christian my whole life, and I am trying my best to figure out what that means. I'm a sinner, just like you. Sometimes I swear to much. Sometimes I think terrible thoughts. Sometimes I wonder why God would ever love a sinful wretch like me. Most days I feel that I failed as a Christian. I don't say this to seem self defeating or falsely humble, I say it so that you know that I'm just like you, someone who is doing the best they can with what they've got. Eighteen inches is the distance from my heart to my head. It seems like the longest distance I can possibly travel. All I can do is trust that the Holy Spirit is working in me making me more into the image of Christ. And lately I've been feeling like I'm falling in love with Him all over again.

My church has gone through some rough times over the past few years. A major church split, and 2 fallen pastors left The Gate in shambles, and for awhile it felt like we'd never stop picking up the pieces. But we've now come to the place where we are a healthy church, looking forward instead of back. We are looking to Christ for our direction and I'm excited where He's leading us.

The Gate used to be full of some of the most creative people I've ever met. We had so many musicians and artists we didn't know what to do with all of them. But because of circumstances and time, most of our congregation has gone in different directions. In the middle of the hardest time for our church, we had 2 worship teams, but we only had one drummer. So we did what anyone would do in our situation, we started doing electro worship. I've been making electronic music for about 10 years, and with the absence of a drummer, it really only felt natural to fill that spot with drum loops. So that's what I did, I started programming loops for worship. Our worship team consisted of 2 people, myself and Greg. I've been writing and playing music with Greg for about 14 years. We've been in countless bands together and recorded probably 10 cd's together at least. So Sunday morning would be me behind my piano with a couple of synths and my iPod, and Greg on Guitar. I was really nervous the first sunday we did it, but the congregation really seemed to like it. At first I was very cautious about the loops I wrote. I didn't push boundaries much, but over time I've gotten more and more creative with my worship loops as The Gate has gotten more used to it. We now have 7 people on our band but we're still doing electronic worship, just because it's SO fun! What started out as necessity has turned into something that our church really responds well to. I love electronic music, but I know that not everyone does. I never really thought that synth heavy hymns with a distorted hip hop beat would go over well in church, but apparently I was wrong.

I want to make this blog a resource for the loops I create for my church as well as a place to talk about God and worship and synthesizers. I am going to upload my loops in the future as well as talk about techniques I use to create my sounds and loops. I am also planning on recording some worship EP's with Greg and some other musician's from The Gate, so when those are done, they'll be up here as well.

I hope this is a helpful and encouraging blog for all you's out there on the interwebs!
- steve birss