The kids singing backing vocals

The show choir kids after recording – we paid them in pizza!

The engineer, Keith, looking super intense after the 17 millionth kids vocal take. 🙂

It’s official – we’ve finished all the recording for the Scripture memory project. We are calling it, very originally, “Scripture Memory Songs: For Kids and Families.” I had so much fun putting this project together, especially on the day the kids came in to do all the backing vocals. Since Toby is the perfect age for this (in fourth grade you still sound like a kid, but you can sing on pitch most of the time) we brought in most of his bestest buds, and had them sing backup. I also put my daughters on it, but kept them back farther. They are older, so I didn’t want their voices too present, but their pitch is awesome, and they kept the younger kids on pitch (tricks of the trade, my friends!). My oldest, Rinnah, also enlisted a number of kids from her show choir to come in and do backing vocals on one of the songs that I needed to sound like a Broadway chorus, and they did such a good job. It took all day, and I bought the biggest pizzas you’ve ever seen, but we got it done.

And now, we’re onto all the other stuff! Edit, mix, master, photo shoot, packaging, and manufacturing, but I can see the end, and I’m so excited to share the new music with you all!

Setting up at Pillar Community Church before service

130 of Ralph and Nancy’s closest friends

I just got back from Florida in February, and that is always a good thing, but this trip, while great, was bittersweet for me. I wasn’t planning to go down there now, but we have family friends, Ralph and Nancy who have basically known me since I was born, they are family to me, who are also struggling with cancer now. Ralph’s cancer is incurable, and he is getting to the end of his life. My mom and I decided to fly down to see them, and while we were there to see other dear friends, the Kusmers and the DeMarcos, and also my grandma and my uncle.

When we were setting up the trip, the Kusmers’ church, Pillar Community in Vero Beach, asked me if I would be willing to do their church services since I was in town over a Sunday. I was more than happy to, especially since this was a church plant only a couple of years ago, and we’ve been praying for them ever since – it was so fun to see how God has blessed them! The people there were absolutely wonderful, and we had such a great morning. The Holy Spirit was in that place! I was also so touched that our friends, the DeMarcos, drove all the way up from Delray Beach to see us! We were able to stop and spend some time with them too on our way to see Ralph and Nancy.

Ralph and Nancy had asked me if I’d be willing to do a “house concert” for them while I was there. I did that once for them several years ago, so I said sure – I was picturing 15-20 people in their living room. Well, they rented a space and had about 130 of their closest friends there! They’ve always been such an encouragement to me and in my ministry, and they are so proud – I feel like one of their kids. It touched my heart to see how much Ralph was enjoying it, and we felt so blessed that he still felt relatively well that week. Even today, just a few days later, Nancy tells me it would be too much for him now, but God was sweet to us all that week. It was so hard to say goodbye to them. But we know we will see each other again – it’s never really goodbye when we love the Lord. But it hurts – I will miss him so much until then.

We went and had some sweet time with my 96 year old grandma (for those who have been to a show, yes, she still rides her bike to the grocery store) and my uncle. Then home to the snow. I’m so glad I went, but it was a hard trip. Would love you to keep Ralph and Nancy in your prayers!

The Music Technology majors at Capital University filing in for my lecture on music business.

Yesterday I got to go and guest lecture for the Music Technology majors at Capital University here in Columbus. It’s a pretty amazing program that they’ve built – my friend Neal is a professor there and he asked me to come in and share some of my story and talk about songwriting and niche marketing and such.

Most schools have traditional music programs, and it’s pretty hard to find one with a major in music production which is basically what this is. They have about 200 majors in Music Technology, and if you’re in the field, you know it’s mostly male. So it was pretty funny to get up in front of the 175 or so who had come and see about 6 girls, and all the rest guys, most of whom were tatooed and pierced and dread-locked, etc. Basically, they were so much cooler than me!

While Capital has roots in a church denomination, the school is not considered a Christian school anymore, so it’s always a little tricky to know how to share. Several times someone asked a question about how I made a business decision or decided on the next project or whatever, and I had to stop and think, “Do I tell them it was really just because I prayed about it and felt that was how God was leading me?” And so, I did. 🙂 If God’s going to give you open doors, you ought to walk through them!

I miss teaching – I loved my years teaching at a University level – and it was fun to get back in there. Hopefully I’ll get to do it again soon!

Donna rocking her new wig after the going-away party for her hair

My Rachel before

And after

It’s been a really busy month. I’ve finished writing all the new Scripture Memory Songs, and we’re already about halfway through all the tracking for the project. Tracking is basically recording all the instruments and voices – you put each one on it’s own “track” so you can edit them later, making different things louder or softer or whatever. I’m really enjoying working on this project! I’ve been doing this one here in Columbus, so we’re working with different musicians and a new engineer and studio. It’s been challenging and also really fun to produce the whole thing myself as well. After this we go to editing, mixing, mastering, package design, and finally manufacturing and we’re looking at a May release. In total we’ll have 39 songs on this project! We’ll keep you posted!

I know many of you have been praying for my assistant, Donna, as she’s back fighting cancer. She’s had her first two sessions of chemo, and they had told her that given the kind she had and the fact that it’s stage 4, chemo was going to be “pretty brutal.” We’ve been praying so much that God would sustain her and let her do what she needed to do. Praise God, while she’s been really tired afterward for several days, she didn’t have nearly the nausea or side effects she was fearing! I am so grateful, and so grateful for your prayers for her – she’s so loved. She just had a “going away party” for her hair – she’s hilarious, and meets the challenge with such an amazing spirit. I’m thankful she’s my friend.

And in honor of Donna, my younger daughter, Rachel, decided to donate 12″ of her hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths which makes wigs for women with cancer. After we cleaned it up, she lost about 14″ and clearly, she still has a lot of hair, but I was so proud of her.

Just had another review posted about my book “Life Not Typical: How Special Needs Parenting Changed My Faith and My Song.” I especially loved reading this review because it’s by another special needs mom, and it’s always so encouraging to hear that our book was encouraging to her! God has been so good to us, and to our family, and it’s fun to watch Him use the book now too. You can see that here.

The gorgeous sanctuary inside The Barn Church – Liberty Presbyterian

Yep, I’m in there somewhere with all those poinsettias!

Okay, I admit this is a few days late – we had this thing called Christmas, went to Michigan to have Christmas with the in-laws, came home, remodeled a laundry room and half bath, and had New Year’s. Nothing like taking it easy over break!

Just wanted to say Happy New Year and post these pictures of Liberty Presbyterian Church. I got to sing there on Christmas Eve, and it was one of the prettiest churches I’ve ever been in. They call it the Barn Church because the original building is historic and tiny, and they weren’t allowed to add on to it, so they built a new sanctuary off the huge barn on the property. It’s a pretty amazing space inside, and the had a small orchestra, two 7 foot grands, a band, and even a hammer dulcimer player. Truly a beautiful candlelight service, and I was so glad I got to be there!

I had an article come out today on Crosswalk.com about how to help your family be more thankful at Christmas. Hope you enjoy!

5 Ways to Put the Spirit of Thanksgiving into Christmas

Christmas seems to come around faster every year, and with each new season, people seem more stressed. Whether it is not enough time or money, hard-to-please kids, or strained relations with relatives, it becomes more difficult to slow down and maintain meaning and gratitude at this time of year. Since retailers now decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving, it’s time we brought the Thanksgiving to Christmas! Here are five practical ideas:

Reach Out
The fastest way to increase thankfulness is to focus on others. It puts things in perspective. You could serve a meal at a homeless shelter or take your kids to visit people in a nursing home. You could offer to help stock the shelves at a food pantry or bring a meal to someone who is lonely or ill. Every year we pack shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child that are sent to kids in poverty all around the world. I have the kids pack things they would want themselves and then we send them to a child their age. This teaches our kids to serve others and be thankful for what they have, and it always reminds me of my blessings. We have also encouraged our children from a young age to give handmade or personalized gifts. One of the greatest joys for me is seeing that they are often more excited to give their gifts than to see what they received, because they spent so much time and thought on what others would enjoy.

Downsize
Christmas can be overwhelmingly materialistic. Take the emphasis off acquisition by giving the gift of experiences or time together, or gifts that remind your family of their blessings and the needs of others. Give your family a zoo membership or tickets to a show or game you can attend together. In our family, it’s become a joke that we always get practical things like socks and toothbrushes in our stockings along with little fun things, but it’s a reminder that we are blessed to have the things we need, and not to take them for granted. We often give the kids the gift of choosing something from Compassion International’s Gift Catalog such as clean water or emergency food for a family in poverty, and they love knowing they are making a difference for someone else. One good rule I have tried to adhere to when it comes to gifts for kids is, “Something you need, something you want, something we can do together.”

Draw In
If you don’t have any family traditions, this is a great time to start some! Every year we make a unique kind of cookie together and then drop them off on neighbors’ porches. We spend one day making a special coffee cake that is only eaten on Christmas morning. When I was growing up, we set out a “manger” and made it ready for Jesus by doing kind things for each other in secret, and for every good deed, you got to add a piece of hay. Since we have allergies to hay now, it’s evolved to pieces of paper, and this year we’re going to take it a step further and write on the paper which character trait we showed in our good deed like kindness, patience, or thoughtfulness. We have traditions for our little family, as well as traditions for our extended families, and that gives our kids a sense of belonging and connects us to a deeper experience of the Christmas season.

Re-Think
Things are not going to be perfect. Everyone is not going to adore everything you got them, and you’re not going to make an amazing Christmas dinner while keeping your hair flawless. Choose the things that are most important to you, prioritize them, and don’t be afraid to say no to the things that will get in the way. It’s okay if you don’t go to a fourth neighborhood cookie swap or agree to organize the church Christmas pageant while your whole family is in town. It’s okay if your Christmas tree looks crazy because you decided to decorate it all together with homemade ornaments rather than choosing the perfect color-coordinated scheme. And realize that saying no to some things allows you the time to really enjoy the things you have decided are most important to you.

Look Up
You’ve heard it before, but Christmas is not about stuff and Santa. Christmas is one of the holiest holidays on the Christian calendar. In the weeks before Christmas (called Advent on the Christian calendar), our family reads a page of our Advent book each night after dinner, every day telling a bit more of the Christmas story. On Christmas morning, we always sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus, and then read the story in its entirety from the Bible before we open presents. It’s a reminder of what this season is about and teaches our kids what we are actually celebrating.
Christmas can be overwhelming, but it is also an opportunity to love and care for others. If we can remember to be thankful, it will make it less harried and more merry.

Jennifer Shaw is a Telly Award winning speaker, author, singer, songwriter and five-time Top 40 Billboard artist. She is also a wife and mother of three whose favorite holiday is Christmas. Visit her online at www.jennifershaw.com.

Christmas Brunch at Cornerstone Alliance Church

Merry Christmas from our dogs – you would not believe how long we worked to get this shot – someone needs to train those dogs!!

I had such a fun time last weekend with Cornerstone Alliance Church in Marion, OH! This was such a sweet bunch of women, and a beautiful event. We had such a wonderful time with Sue, the coordinator, and her husband and team – very special people! They do a big annual women’s brunch, and since Christmas is my favorite time of year, it was so fun to really focus on “Immanuel, God With Us” and the true meaning of the season!

With fun things, though, there are often hard things. We also learned very recently that my assistant, Donna, has a new form of cancer and it’s very serious. She has had cancer twice before, and this is not a recurrence, but rather, a new kind. She had surgery this morning, and while she came through very well, they found in surgery that it has spread, and is officially stage 4. This is such hard news to hear – I just love Donna and her whole family, and we’ve been working together for years. Her last cancer was also stage 4 and they told her at the time that she only had a few months but tried an experimental treatment and 11 years later she is still here – God can and does heal, and we are praying. But I hate knowing that she has to go through this again. She will take this month off to heal from the surgery and then will start chemo – we would absolutely covet your prayers for Donna and her whole family!

In other news, I have started the writing for a new Scripture memory project. Over the years, many of you know that I have written several mini-albums of Scripture memory songs for kids – they are word for word from the NIV and include references, and we’ve always used them for a VBS curriculum along with a play that I write with my writing partner Terry every year. They’ve just commissioned me to write 3 more years worth of music, so I’ve got 18 new songs to do, and we’ve decided to publish them along with the other mini-albums in one giant Scripture Memory collection. I’m writing a song a day right now, so hoping to have them all written by Christmas and then we will start production after the New Year. They are fun and upbeat, and aimed at grade school kids, and we are really looking forward to seeing how God will use them!

Some of the over 100 clocks Christine used to decorate

Presenting “For Such a Time as This”

This past Saturday I got to present the life of Esther at Genoa Church’s women’s retreat in Westerville, OH just north of Columbus. It was such a great group of ladies, and I so enjoyed working with Amy and Christine who were organizing the whole event.

I call it “For Such a Time as This – A Study on the Life of Esther” and Christine went and found over 100 clocks and had them placed all around the room! They were centerpieces and hung on the wall and on stands and at the tables – it was pretty amazing. I so love sharing the Bible with people, and the history behind the stories which takes the people from characters you can read about impersonally to real people who lived and made mistakes and heroic decisions and everything in between. When we see the people in the Bible as real people, we can learn so much from their lives! Esther is one of my favorite, and I’m so glad they gave me the chance to share it!

Children dressed in the traditional costumes of the nine countries they serve

Presenting at the Remember Nhu benefit to aid children in danger of human trafficking

We got back from Nicaragua late Friday night, and Saturday morning I got up and drove up to the Cleveland area to do a benefit concert for the group we went to Thailand with two years ago, Remember Nhu. This is a wonderful organization, still quite young, but it is amazing to see how God is blessing their work!

Nhu is a Vietnamese woman who grew up in Cambodia and lived with her grandmother in profound poverty. When she was twelve, her grandmother sold her into the sex trade. Carl Ralston, the founder of Remember Nhu, heard her story from some missionaries who ran the school Nhu attended and felt that God had called him to “remember Nhu” and find her. Six trips to Cambodia later, he located her and was compelled to start Remember Nhu which seeks to stop the child slave trade through prevention. They are operating in nine countries now, and Nhu works with them and is just an amazing young woman. We got to know her well when we were in Thailand, and it was so good to see her again! I hope we raised a lot of money for their homes, and praise God for the children they are helping. Poverty is the number one reason for children being trafficked, and it is one of the reasons we feel so passionately about helping those in poverty and protecting the most vulnerable!