Why House Concerts?

The house concert format is an interesting thing to me. There are so many variables that come along with it some incredible (level of intimacy with the audience) and some quite distracting (kidding– can we throw the lady with no rhythm and a tambourine into the closet?) I’ve had the pleasure of hosting several house concerts as well that have always been a great success in building community and introducing others to our circle of influence.

House concerts have challenged me musically to rethink how I will play all of my electronic music acoustically or “unplugged”. I’ve heard rave reviews of this format how important it was for people to here the songs in their singer-songwriter format. One thing that disturbs me is how if I stop playing, the room falls silent. I’ve played with bands for years and I’m not sure if I will ever feel comfortable being the only playing musician in the room. This has lead me to use different instrumentation that would allow me to talk over simple instrumentation. I love to talk and share stories about what inspired these songs or the passage of scripture they are written from.

Playing in front of a small group is incredible in that you can see and hear immediate feedback and response from people. They often have the opportunity to respond to you in conversation after a house concert like I have never seen at a larger show. Something about a stage creates an unnatural barrier that I’ve always had to fight past to establish the sense of intimacy that is indigenous to the house concert format. The longer I make music, the more I want my music to initiate real conversations between me and those listening to my music. I want them to try it on like a sweater… to interact with something I’ve made. I love this.

Another beautiful thing I’ve seen come about from some friends who led worship at someone’s house, was how this really became an easy opportunity for the host to invite all of their personal friends to get touched by the grace and ministry of someone who has ministered to them. I’ve also seen the amazing context of a night of prayer and worship as a night to lift up the arms of those too downtrodden and weak to go to a fellowship to be ministered to. This brings the intercession into their own home to leave a deposit of hope and healing in a way that often cannot or does not happen within the context of larger congregational gatherings.

Grand Rapids FFM 09 with Aaron Stumpel

Aaron Strumpel, Todd & Angie Fadel, Todd Berger

I just got back from a trip to Grand Rapids, MI where I played with Aaron Strumpel (Woodland Park, CO) and Todd and Angie Fadel (Portland, OR) at Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Music. My friend, Aaron Strumpel, won the bandspotting competition that my other friend, Ryan Lott, won last time around. I caught a landmark Lupe Fiasco interview by Cornel West. Not only were the sessions thought provoking, inspiring, and challenging, but we also got to hear some fresh new music from thinking artists allowing life’s challenges to influence their faith and art. Saturday night we opened for Julie Lee and the Berger’s long time fav, Over the Rhine. The following morning we joined the worship team for Palm Sunday at a local Vineyard in Grand Rapids to worship with a beautiful group of believers. If you’d at all be interested, you can subscribe to the free podcasts here.

Todd Berger 2/7/09 Record Release Concert

Todd Berger RECORD RELEASE CONCERT
playing with Dee Jay Doc, Lee Harrill, Grayson Latimore, David Gaddis, Emcee Malek, and Mike Jones

Event Info
Host: Fairmount Presbyterian Church
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009
Time: 7:00pm – 9:30pm
Location:
Fairmount Presbyterian Church
2757 Fairmount Blvd
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118 [Map]

Contact: 216-321-5800
Email: toddberg@gmail.com
Details: Todd Berger and friends will perform songs from his new recording “And Have Not Love”. Tickets are $10/advance* and $12/door (price includes one copy of the new CD). Don’t miss this special night where you can hear everything LIVE for the first time!

*ADVANCE TICKETS HERE: http://tinyurl.com/a464cs (Paypal)

salvation without love?

Todd’s thoughts on 1 John 4

Dear Friends,
Let us love one another, for love is from God, everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Is everyone who is capable of loving also born of God and do they bear witness to God in some firsthand basic way? Maybe this is not basic but pretty much everything– to receive God, is to receive the author of love. Can you administer love, child of God, but reject the one from whom your instinct to love comes from?

If you don’t love, it is obvious that you do not know God. If you DO love, than it is obvious that you are a witness to God and his instincts are embedded in you, his creation.

And God took everything lofty and philosophical about this conversation and brought into a practical and tangible, first hand experience for humanity, when he incarnated Himself among us in his son, Jesus, so that we might live through love.

This is love, not that we responded by loving God, but just that He loved us by atoning for every one of sin’s shortcomings— thus welcoming us and fully accepting us by God’s love in action, Jesus the Christ.

Sin is real. From God’s perspective, our shortcomings were obviously coming between us, so God did what only he could do to make things better on both sides of the relationship between God and humanity.

OK, so now that we are restored to God, we had better be unified through our love for one another. We can see God in eachother manifest through our love for each other. Nobody has seen God, but when we love each other, we manifest his measurable properties that he is present.

God lives in us for this purpose– to complete us by or willingness to participate in him and with him by loving him and each other. His love in us makes himself known to the world and makes him measurable like wind given form when harnessed in a sail. We are the sail for God, and by love our sail is filled for action, momentum, wholeness, healing, salvation, truth, life, and all of the qualities of love (see 1 Cor. 13). Because of love, people will like us and not be turned off by Jesus and will choose to be restored to God.

How can anyone come to salvation if they do not love God? Can any of us be saved if we have not love? This is why Jesus will say on the day of judgement, yes, you did a lot of stuff in my name, but I do not know you– he has no relationship with us outside of his love. We cannot discover and know him without loving each other. (see 1 John 4:19-21)

“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement, because in THIS world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not mde perfect in love.” 1 John :16-18

Village Thrift’s Todd Berger releases solo Worship project “And Have Not Love”

I wanted to let you know about the perfect stocking stuffer! Todd Berger of Village Thrift has just released his solo worship album entitled “And Have Not Love” that is available as an MP3 Gift Card. If you’re like me, it hard to find good gifts under $15 for your friends. Well this MP3 album sells for only $9.99. If you order now, you’ll get FREE SHIPPING on your MP3 gift cards! Your gift cards can either be shipped to you direct or be giftwrapped and shipped directly to the recipient of your choice. Follow the link to Todd’s personal reverbnation page where you can preview “And Have Not Love” now in it’s entirety or you can order now. This is a very limited offer to the first 100 gift card orders.

-Village Thrift
http://www.reverbnation.com/toddberger

Todd Berger Concert Booking

View Todd Berger’s Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

For information on booking Todd Berger, click here.

Todd has a passion for ministering to students and loves to partner with campus leaders to encourage them in their local work of establishing God’s kingdom and identifying their place in the family of God. Todd and his wife, Laurel, are missionaries through Wake Arts Collective, a local non-profit organization releasing artists to evangelize through the arts. Todd also is also a Worship Leader at Journey Community Church in his hometown of Cleveland, OH.

Todd has collaborated and performed throughout the U.S. and traveled to Brazil with resident Cleveland artists. He enjoys creating multi-arts events, playing conferences, and intimate house concerts. He is comfortable performing solo, with a small music team, or creating a large multi-arts collaborative team where a fusion of electronica, dance, turntablism and multimedia are combined. Todd loves to unite diverse cultures through creative collaboration, while fostering synergy between artists and a harmonious fusion of their indigenous art forms to example what it is to be a part of the family of God.

Todd Berger is a recording artist featured on Worship Circle Record’s electronic Village Thrift series that he pioneered alongside Ben & Robin Pasley (100 Portraits and Enter the Worship Circle), Ryan L. (Son Lux), and Dee Jay Doc (2% Milk) and has lead Enter the Worship Circle events since 2003.

pickup “And Have Not Love” before it hits the stores Nov.30th

 

My new recording, “And Have Not Love” will be released November 30, 2008. Did you know that  you can buy an advance copy today at toddberger.com?!  The whole album is available for $9.99 or Individual MP3’s for .99/ea.  These make great stocking stuffers for Christmas, hint hint. If you would like to buy a gift card for one full album download, than go here to purchase and drop me a note with your order to whom & from whom you would like it sent and I’ll throw in postage and handling for free and either directly mail it to your recipient or to yourself! 

>>IMPORTANT: To ensure Christmas delivery, please get in your orders no later than December 15th!

-Todd Berger

http://www.reverbnation.com/toddberger

Writing and Recording “And Have Not Love”

After releasing Enter the Worship Circle’s electro-pop hybrid Village Thrift on Worship Circle Records, I began writing songs again (about April 2006). In reading scripture, I found my surroundings gave me a new lens of experience through which I started revisiting familiar scriptures. A recurring theme that I found in these new songs were themes of God’s love and the love we should all have for those in the world around us. When Ben and Robin Pasley encouraged me to step out and record these songs on my first solo recording, they asked me to encapsulate what the over all theme of this project would be. After combing though the songs, I was able to pinpoint a passage in scripture that had profound influence on me during the song writing process. 1 Corinthians 13 speaks clearly to the motive in our hearts as believers. I’ve done a lot of things in my lifetime in the name of God, I’ve said a lot of things because I thought they were right or in the moment, needed to be heard, but the most challenging thing to me now is, if I do not do, say, act… or live out of love toward God and others, it is near worthless to God. People in our present day American culture often look for successful formulas for everything in order to see a profit for their endeavors. We can build a thousand Godly organizations, buildings, or whatever formulas we buy into, and even see fruit in it, but Paul raises a challenge to us in 1 Corinthians 13 with, but if love is not our motive and process, it does not count… or to put it more bluntly, we have failed.

A few years ago I had this ongoing prayer/meditation/discussion with the Lord that was all about, why is there such a chasm between the people of God and those who do not know God? After praying about this for about 3 months and not coming away with an answer that brought peace to my heart, I got my answer that was SO obvious and in the foreground, that I’d missed it all together… LOVE. Love breaks down walls, love spans any chasm, love disengages conflict, love welcomes people through doors that were locked by our judgement, love gives us the equation that every one of us is a lost cause in our own damnable sin had God not so loved us. He sent His own Son– Christ Jesus who loved us so, that He would lay down both holiness and glory to carry the profaneness of all humanity on His own body of the cross. And never gave up. And loved each person the entire way to His own death. And is well informed of and fully owns up to every one of my shortcomings because of the unfaltering resoluteness of His adopting love for me.

So I’m pretty much humbled by God’s love and I want to know how to love others the same way. I Corinthians 13 gives us a mode of operation, though not an express formula nor map for walking in God’s love. We each know in our own hearts how much of our self that will need to die in order to walk out in and through love as redeemed children of God. The songs I’ve written for you are all inspired by my journey to understand how to walk forward in love, and in spite of being hurt by others, to find hope again by making the choice to move forward in God’s love. I pray these songs invigorate your spirit with the word of God, from which these songs were all written. I pray that God’s word, that cannot fail, will bear much fruit in your life and through these songs, His word would get locked into your heart to give you an anthem to sing for years to come. Oh yah, and love never fails.

Testimony

“You guys have equipped me again in ways, to worship Him truly. Thanks for your ministry, you all helped me ignite the spirit of worship , that was broken in me.”