Well, once again I'm hitting the road. Leaving in a couple of hours for a 16 hour bus ride to New Orleans with a bunch of high school kids! We'll be gone until Monday afternoon, and it promises to be a great trip! As always, I'll be Twittering throughout the trip (hopefully with pictures this time!) - here's the feed:
Ok, we all love Twitter, but that doesn't mean we can't poke fun once in a while, right?
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1909386
Dozens of worship leaders post their set lists every Sunday on Fred McKinnon's blog. Click here to read more sets!
Centerpoint Church 4/26/09
Walk-In
-The Stone - Dm - (Jonathan Noel)
Opening Set
-More Than Ever - G - (Robbie Reider, Allan Fuller)
-Center - E - (Charlie Hall, Matt Redman)
-Unashamed Love - G - (Lamont Hiebert)
Closing Song
-Marvelous Light - A - (Charlie Hall)
We had a couple of technical glitches during rehearsal (including some very strange problems with my wireless mic), but everything ran smooth during the service. All in all, it was a very smooth, easy service this morning.
This was the third week of our "Dare I Hope?" series on 1 Peter, and Dave's message this morning was called "Dare I Hope For A Better Church?". That was a tough topic to pick music for! In the end, I decided to stay away from songs about "the church" completely... instead we sang an entirely vertical set, focusing on God's attributes and glory. It seemed to work very well.
We opened the service this morning with "The Stone" - a great tune from the original City on a Hill CD (Jars of Clay did the original). The band did a really good job with this one.
Wanted to post a downloadable version of my "Holiness" loop from yesterday - I know how much our worship has been enhanced by loops that other people have created and shared online, so I figured I'd return the favor. I'm hoping to start doing quite a few more of these in-house as time progresses, so hopefully this will get to be a pretty cool section of the ol' blog. Here's all the details:
Loop: "Holiness" (loosely based on Sonicflood recording)
Key: G
Tempo: 72 BPM (4/4 Time)
Form:
2 Bar Count-Off
4 Bar Intro
Verse 1 ("Holiness...") 2x
Chorus ("So Take My Life...")
Verse 2 ("Faithfulness...")
Chorus 2x
Verse 3 ("Brokenness...")
Chorus 2x
Tag 2x ("To Yours, to Yours...")
You can listen to the loop here...
...and download it here:
Enjoy!
Dozens of worship leaders post their set lists every weekend on Fred McKinnon's blog. Click here to check out more sets!
Centerpoint Church 4/19/09
Opening Set
-Everlasting God - A - (Lincoln Brewster Version)
-Glorious One - C - (Steve Fee)
-Holiness (Take My Life) - G - (Scott Underwood)
Closing Song
-From The Inside Out - Bb - (Joel Houston)
We had another great service this morning... we had a lot of content, so it was nice to have things running smoothly. No reprise of the strange click track issue we had last week, either!
Musically, we had a really good day. The band was solid and vocals were right on top everything. I didn't end up needing to play anything, and it was nice to just get out front and sing for once. We introduced Fee's "Glorious One" this morning (in C - D is just too high!) and the congregation responded to it really well. To be honest, I wasn't sure how it would go - sometimes our crowd really gets into the rockers, and sometimes they... well... don't. In any case, I was glad to see folks into that tune. We'll definitely be doing it again.
Another exciting musical element today was our first in house loop, for "Holiness". I know a lot of folks were done with that song a long time ago, but I still love it. I've also got a slightly different arrangement, so the loops that are out there didn't really work for us. I spent a couple hours this week, and I'm really pleased with the way it came out. It's all pad & strings, so nothing major, but it added a lot. Here's the loop:
Dave's message this morning continued our series on 1 Peter, and was called "Dare I Hope For A Better Me?" Personally, I really appreciated what he had to say today. It was really good stuff. Plus we opened the message with the intro from "The Six Million Dollar Man", which is just cool :-) We also had a testimony this morning, which is where we hit our one technical glitch. We were getting a lot of popping on that wireless lav. This is one of the issues that we really need to address - I'm honestly not sure if it's a matter of changing frequencies, or if it's just an issue with the quality of the system (fairly low end). In any case, we need to be careful to use our other lav first, when it's available, since it's signal has always been solid.
Great morning all around!
As always, this post is part of the Sunday Set Lists project at Fred McKinnon's blog. Click here to read more set lists.
Centerpoint Church 4/12/09
Opening Song/Walk-In:
-True Love - B - (Phil Wickham)
Opening Set:
-Marvelous Light - A - (Charlie Hall)
-My Savior, My God - D - (Aaron Shust)
-Oh The Glory Of It All - A - (David Crowder)
Closing Song:
-Mighty To Save - A - (Reuben Morgan, et al)
First off, we had an incredible time of worship this past Sunday! Folks were worshiping honestly and openly, and I couldn't be happier. That said, flexibility was the name of the game at Centerpoint this week.
Centerpoint is an interesting church because of its age and demographic, and so we typically see a decline in attendance at our Christmas and Easter services (yeah, I know that seems backwards... all of those "extra" family members that are crowding your pews... they came from our church :-P ) Because of that, we took into account a few more visitors than usual, and prepared/set for a fairly normal attendance. Boy did God have other plans! The warehouse was bursting at the seams on Sunday morning! (official count was 185) We ran out of bulletins and chairs! It was really a moving thing to see the people coming in during the first song... then seeing some of our regulars get up to stand in the back.
We made a last minute adjustment because of the crowd and moved Dave up to the main stage to preach (it's 8" taller than the "speaker stage" down front). He had to stand behind my keyboard, but it worked fine, and actually gave us a slightly higher gain before feedback ratio on his mic, which was greatly appreciated since the back row was about 15 feet farther away from the speakers! The message was the first in a new series based on 1 Peter, and was called "Dare I Hope For A Better Tomorrow". To make a long story short, I thought the message was great and I'm looking forward to hearing the rest over the next few weeks.
From a musical and technical standpoint, our teams were right on (although we had a very strange issue which I'll tell you about in a moment). The band played really well, and the mix was awesome (thanks, Jim!) We opened with Phil Wickham's "True Love", which is a deceptively difficult song to pull off, but it sounded very good. Our first congregational tune was "Marvelous Light" (a definite favorite around here... we rocked it a little harder than usual this week). This is where things god a little hairy... I turn, hit play to start the loop/click track for "My Savior, My God", and hear the countoff playing in the house. I figured something had gotten bumped on the board, and they would kill it right away, but I had lost my rhythm, so I stopped it and started again. Still in the house. Quick glance to the booth reveals some very puzzled faces, so we improvised. Stopped the click and played the song without it (no biggie). Played "On The Glory Of It All" without it's loop too (biggie... but we got through it fine).
Checking in with the booth during the message revealed that there were absolutely no incorrect settings, therefore it should have been technologically impossible for the click to be in the house mix! What's more, the "Mighty To Save" loop ran fine - again without changing anything! We spent a fair amount of time working on this one after church too... and never figured it out. We couldn't get it to do it again. I honestly have no idea what happened.
Having said all of this... I have to say a tremendous thank you to the band for rolling with some on-the-fly arranging. Except for the awkward pauses between songs, the absence of the loops wasn't even noticible from the congregation... Bravo! Overall, I couldn't be more thrilled with what happened in that warehouse on Sunday morning!
Christ is risen! What an incredible thing... we are purchased by His blood, and yet even the burden of all of our sins could not keep Him in the grave!
I'll be getting up in the morning, enjoying a cup of tea (very much! first non-water beverage in 46 days!), then heading over to Centerpoint for what promises to be a wonderful time of worship. After that it's a quick 24 hour mini-vacation at Grandma's. I'll be back Monday night to do Sunday setlists and other fun things.
Have a blessed Easter everyone! He is risen indeed!
The Saturday before Easter has always fascinated me. For a lot of us church-types, Saturday falls between a pretty major service on Thursday or Friday and what is arguably the biggest day of our year on Sunday. It takes it's place as either a day of rest or (as in my case) a day of reset. There's nothing wrong with that, but we also have the advantage of knowing what's still ahead. We know that Sunday is coming. We know what a great celebration that will be and we prepare. We know that the story isn't over.
I wonder what it would have been like to be a Christ-follower during that in-between time all those years ago. The great Teacher that they had followed, listened to, questioned and believed in was dead. He had been killed for upsetting the religious establishment. At that point, there were two possibilities - He was either who He said He was (which had yet to be proven), or He had fooled them all. The Bible says that some of the disciples had their doubts even after He had been raised & appeared to them, so I'm sure the conversation among the 11 was very interesting during this time. I wonder if it was a day full of anticipation, of hoping in the future? Or was it a day spent mourning and wondering whether any of it was true at all? Probably some of both, I suppose. Either way, they were in between chapters. The rest of the story had yet to be written...
Thank goodness we know the ending!
For our small group this past Wednesday, I was asked to teach about the differences between Old Testament law and Christ's "new covenant" in the New Testament. In the end, it ended up being very appropriate for this Holy Week. I want to share the last section of that teaching with you all today:
I do want to discuss one incredibly important change that came out of the new covenant, and it is one that gains particular significance in our thoughts at this time of year. I’m talking of course about the way we as humans are able to relate to and communicate with God. The Bible states that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NIV), but OT believers were left largely to their own merits to achieve redemption from that condition. God was certainly present and working in their world and in their lives, but most of ancient Israel’s direct contact with God came through intermediaries, specifically animal sacrifice and interaction with the Levites (priests). Access to the inner courts of the temple was extremely limited, and the central room (the Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of the Covenant) was off limits entirely except for the head priest, who was allowed to enter once a year. (It should be noted that this was not a job you wanted – the other priests would tie a rope to the head priests ankle so that they could pull him back out if he died… which happened more than once!) With Christ’s death on the cross, God changed this forever, and He did it with a striking visual display:
“And then when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”
-Matthew 27:50-51 (NIV)
I would give almost anything to have been in the temple that that moment – the moment when God literally removed the barrier between Himself and His people. From that moment on, anyone who has believed in Christ has been cleansed of their sin and given the honor of being able to stand in the presence of God, both now and forever. The sacrificial rituals and intermediaries of the OT are no longer necessary, because we now have a “direct line” through Christ and the Holy Spirit, and that is the essence of the new covenant – forgiveness and fellowship with God in love.
Obviously, it isn't Sunday, but Centerpoint did have a service tonight, and it took every bit as much planning and preparation (maybe even more!) than what we're doing on Sunday, so a "Sunday Setlists" style recap seems to be in order!
Centerpoint Church 4/9/09
Opening Set
-Your Love is Deep - E - (Jamie Smith)
-Give Me Jesus - Bb - (Jeremy Camp Arrangement)
Special
-On My Cross - Bb - (Jeremy Deibler)
Congregational
-Once Again - Eb - (Matt Redman)
Communion Song
-Mighty Is The Power Of The Cross - F# - (Chris Tomlin)
Closing Song
-You Are My King (Amazing Love) - E - (Billy Foote)
Tonight's Maunday Thursday service was very different than what we normally do. I wrote a couple of days ago about the way we changed our space and reworked our technical systems. As you can see from above, this was also a music heavy service. Our band tonight was very simple - 2 vocals, acoustic guitar, keys (lots of synth pad & rhodes), & violin. The band did a great job with some challenging music, and the arrangements came out very well!
Dave preached his message in three parts tonight - he did a great job of presenting some of the different Holy Week concepts in different ways, all leading up to communion (which was a very powerful time tonight, I thought).
Technically, our team did a great job of adapting to an entirely different system. We did have a couple of feedback issues near the beginning of the service, but they were resolved quickly and didn't end up being a major stumbling block.
All in all, I thought tonight's service served exaclty the purpose that it was meant to - to praise God for the sacrifice of His Son, and to remember the significance of that event. Now it's time to prepare for Sunday, when we will be celebrating the rest of the story that is still to come!
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