Rick Muchow and the Encouraging Music team spent quality time at The 28th Annual MUSICalifornia Conference for Church Musicians and Worship Leaders. Rick taught 2 sessions to standing room only attendance, while Encouraging Music sponsored our first ever booth at the event.

Rick's teaching sessions covered two topics: 1) Music For The Purpose-Driven Church and 2) The Seeker-Sensitive Service - Putting It Together. The sessions included live, participatory worship with members of the Saddleback Worship Team including Troy Kennedy and Lyndsey Wallace (vocals), Jason Mills (guitar), Greg Vail (saxophone) and of course Rick led the team. The worship segments served to open the sessions with the right focus, and also to demonstrate the use of Midi in an actual live worship setting.

For those who may not yet have heard Rick teach at MUSICalifornia or at a Purpose Driven Church Conference, his style is very fluid and casual. . . filled with humorous stories that give you direct insight into the experience of this genuine worshipper. After each session, Rick stayed to answer questions and take comments.

Rick also spent a lot of time at the Encouraging Music booth personally talking to conference attendees. Many people came by to register for the free giveaways, sign up for the Encouraging Music Email Newsletter, and listen to the newest recording since last year's event - All About Love.

Encouraging Music Consultant Kathy King seemed to know every person at the event, and spent a lot of time with Rick in conversation with various conference attendees. One such conference was with Pine Lake Music's Scott Revo. Watch the Pine Lake offerings for the debut of Rick's worship resources very soon!

Other great conversations were had with Steven V. Taylor, Byron from Cloud Ten Productions, Randy Elrod, Don Moen (Integrity), David Guthrie (Word), and of course event host, O.D. Hall. We were all excited to meet Trish Carlson from Worship Leader Magazine and Susan Riley from Spirit-Led Records. Trish told us that Worship Leader Magazine/Song Discovery had relocated their offices right in our backyard down here in San Juan Capistrano, CA.

Some great old friends stopped by as well, including John Lugo from Bethel in San Jose, Doug Lawrence from Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, The Dyers from Willow Creek, and Joel Allen from Denver.

According to Rick, one of the week's highlights was becoming reacquainted with Bryan Duncan. Evidently back in the day when musician Rick Muchow had become Christian Rick Muchow only a year earlier, he went to a Sweet Comfort Band performance in San Jose, California and met Bryan. Rick jokes that when he asked Bryan about becoming a Christian musician, Bryan's response was "If you can do anything else, do it." From the looks of it, neither Bryan nor Rick could do anything else all these years later.

Rick's material and the Saddleback choirs were involved in several musical debuts at the event. Rick's song "Wonders of God" (from the Songs of Saddleback album) is included a new collection titled Offering of Praise from Lifeway/Genevox that Kirk Kirkland introduced. The Saddleback Children's Choir premiered "We Are United" by Pam Andrews. Vangie Gunn and the joint High School and Jr. High choirs debuted Steven V. Taylor's "No More Walls".

For Rick, the supreme highlight of the event was the steady stream of old and new friends. In his words, it was the "blessing of watching ministries grow over time, seeing faithfulness, and seeing these people who working in the trenches." It's the relationships that make each year's MUSICalifornia the worthwhile event it is. For more on MUSICalifornia, visit http://www.musicalifornia.com.