This post is part of "Sunday Set Lists" at The Worship Community.  Click here to see more sets!

CenterPoint Church 3/7/10

Opening Set
    -Meet With Me - A - Lamont Heibert
    -Song Of Hope (Heaven Come Down) - A - Robbie Seay Band
    -Amazed - D - Jared Anderson

Offering Song
    -Reckless Love - A - Eric Frisch, Mark Homkes, Tina Baker

Closing Song
    -Reckless Love - A - Eric Frisch, Mark Homkes, Tina Baker

This was a fun week at CenterPoint.  We introduced our songwriting project to the congregation and played the first complete tune, "Reckless Love".  The song is based in the story of the Prodigal son (which we've been studying now for about a month).  It was very cool to be able to do an original tune, and the congregation responded to it very well.  Hopefully this will be the first of many songs that come from this project.

Dave's message this week focused on the part of the story that often gets overlooked: the elder son.  He talked about parallels between the elder son character and the Pharisees that were listening in Jesus' time, and also related the idea to our modern day Christianity.  It was definitely an important message, and one that I think we all forget about far too often!   To help drive the point home, we opened the message with a clip from "The War".  I wasn't familiar with the film until we decided to use it, but the clip was right on point.

The band did a great job this week, especially with the new tune.  The rest of the set was pretty familiar, and we also repeated "Song Of Hope", which we taught last Sunday.  I thought the mix was excellent this Sunday, as well.

This post is part of Sunday Set Lists at The Worship Community.  Click here for sets from all over the country!

CenterPoint Church 2/28/10

Opening Set
    -Marvelous Light - A - Charlie Hall
    -Song Of Hope (Heaven Come Down) - A - Robbie Seay Band
    -My Savior, My God - D - Aaron Shust

Special
    -When God Ran - C - Benny Hester

Closing Song
    -Fields Of Grace - D - Darrell Evans

Sorry for the delay in getting this up... The Worship Community has been having server issues this week and the blog carnival just got posted this morning.  In any case, here's what we were up to this Sunday at CenterPoint...

We're still in our series on the Prodigal son story.  This week's message focused on the characters we usually focus on in that story: the son who runs away from home and the father who takes him back.  This was probably the more "familiar" message of this series for folks, as the rest of the series focuses on aspects/people that we don't often dwell on.  We did an in-house drama this week about actors shooting a movie of the son's homecoming.  It was pretty funny, and it really drove the point home that many people would have a lot of trouble with the kind of love, forgiveness and acceptance that the father shows in this passage.

We also accented the message with the song "When God Ran".  I did it solo at the piano, and I think it went pretty well.  I had a great time getting it ready and putting my own spin on it a little bit.  Aside from that tune, our music was pretty upbeat and rocking this week.  The band did a great job and the mix in the house was fantastic.  We introduced "Song Of Hope" for the first time and got a good response to it.  We also used a loop with "Marvelous Light" that we haven't had before.  I thought it added a lot, and will definitely hold on to it for the future!

Great service as we continue in this series.  Looking forward to this week!

This post is part of the Sunday Setlists project at The Worship Community.  Check out more sets here!

CenterPoint Church 2/21/10

Opening Set
    -Everyday - B - Joel Houston
    -Creation Sings - A - Eric Frisch
    -Center - E - Charlie Hall

Closing Song
    -Came To My Rescue - Bb - Joel Davies, Marty Sampson, Dylan Thomas

Another great service at CenterPoint yesterday!  This was the second week of our series on the prodigal son story.  This week was actually centered on the two parables that Jesus tells before the actual prodigal story in Luke 15:1-10.  Since both of these parables involve leaving behind many to find one that is lost, we decided to have a little fun at the beginning of the message.  When Dave got up to preach, he "noticed" the absence of one of our members, then asked the congregation to hold tight for a minute and walked out the back door.  As he did, this video started to run:

Unfortunately, I had to reduce the quality to get it to fit in Weebly's upload limit, but I think you get the idea!  People cracked up.  It was a great piece and an excellent way to illustrate the point of the message.

Musically, we had another excellent week.  Timon lead worship, which freed me up to play keys (and a little bit of electric guitar).  The band was really grooving this week, and the vocalists worked together well.  Our set ended up being several songs that are well liked in our church, but haven't been played in a while.  We had a great response, which is always a blessing to the team as well as God!  We used a loop for the first time on "Came To My Rescue" thanks to this site.  It really helped fill out our usual arrangement and made it so that I didn't have to play the pad through the chorus.  Good stuff!

Looking forward to what we have coming up for the rest of this series!

This post is part of the Sunday Setlists project at The Worship Community.  Check out more sets here!

CenterPoint Church 2/14/10

Opening Set
    -You, You Are God - C-D - Walker Beach
    -Holy Is The Lord - G - Chris Tomlin

Communion Song
    -Your Love Is Extravagant - D - Darrell Evans

Closing Song
    -Your Love Is Deep - D - Jami Smith

This was a fun week!  We celebrated both baptism and communion this Sunday, so I decided to cut a tune from our opening set for time... this was also an acoustic week for us, which is also a good time.  Just two vocals, congas, acoustic guitar, and ukulele.  Good times!  That said, the band had a little trouble locking in in rehearsal yesterday.  Once we got to service time, everything ran smoothly.  I also thought that the team did a great job of navigating the on-the-fly transitions during communion and the flow into the closing song.  Everything felt really good.  This was the first week in a LONG time that we used floor monitors instead of in-ears (always a fun time for the sound folks :-P).  I thought Jim's mix was really crisp and clear... actually all of the technical elements of this service seemed to flow smoothly, as well.  No complaints!

Pastor Dave started a new series yesterday about the prodigal son story.  This series is going to be 6 weeks long, so it will take us right up to Palm Sunday.  We have a lot of really cool creative elements planned, which I've very excited about, but yesterday we kept it pretty simple (especially since we had both sacraments).  The message was basically just a retelling of the story, a set up for the rest of the series.  I'm really excited about what God is going to do with this one!

It was a unique and refreshing time of worship!  Lenten post coming later today...

Wanted to let everybody know that I finished another loop last week for the song "Your Love Never Fails".  This loop follows the Chris Quilala/Jesus Culture arrangement, but has been transposed to G (their recording is in Bb).  This has been posted on the "Media/Store" page, as well.  Enjoy!

Loop: "Your Love Never Fails"
Key: G
Tempo: 114 BPM (4/4 Time)
Form: Follows Jesus Culture recording on Your Love Never Fails

Listen:

Download:

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CenterPoint Church 1/31/10

Opening Set
    -More Than Ever - G - Robbie Reider, Allan Fuller
    -Glorious One - C - Steve Fee
    -From The Inside Out - Bb - Joel Houston

Closing Song
    -Came To My Rescue - Bb - Joel Davies, Marty Sampson, Dylan Thomas

First, apologies for not being around on the blog the last couple of weeks.  There has been a LOT going on and life has just gotten a little too crazy to facilitate writing much.  That said, I've got lots of good stuff coming up in the next couple of weeks, including posts about new and exciting gear, great new music, spirituality in Avatar, Haiti, 40 days of water and more.  Stay tuned!  Now, on to the matter at hand...

We had a great time of worship yesterday to close our four week "Just Walk Across The Room" series.  I know I've stated this in previous posts, as well, but I really have been impressed with this series from Willow Creek.  The prepackaged materials, combined with Pastor Dave's insights and stories, have made for a very dynamic series with practical, real-life content.  Great stuff.  This Sunday focused on "Grander Vision Living", basically the idea that even our greatest moments of human life are eclipsed by what God offers us, and by what we in turn can share with others.  It was a very powerful message and I hope that our folks will really take the suggestions to heart and use them in their lives!

Musically, it was a pretty standard week, but the energy in the room was really great.  We've been working on getting our FOH volume levels a little more standard.  We use a SPL meter, and have had a high range established for some time now, but the last few weeks I (and other leaders) have noticed that we're running awfully quiet, so we're trying to get a basic minimum volume policy in place, as well.  Since we play on a "silent" stage (in-ear monitors, electronic drums, amps in isolation cabinets offstage), it's really important to have a certain amount of sound headed into the house.  It really helps the feel of the set when we get to a certain threshold.

I've noticed a definite increase in the preparedness of our team lately, which has been a really good thing.  Our rehearsal time is very limited (~1 hour, right before the service), so when everybody comes in ready to go, things run much smoother.  I know a lot of it has to do with the fact that people just have more time this time of year, but I'm definitely hoping that it continues!

All in all, yesterday was a great morning.  I'm looking forward to meeting with the Creative Worship Team tonight and putting together our next series, which is going to be based on the Prodigal Son story.

Check out dozens of other sets at The Worship Community!

In addition to the regular CenterPoint recap, I'm also sharing my set from Cedarville last night.  Yesterday was our first service of the year down there.

CenterPoint Church 1/17/10

Opening Set
    -I Am Free - C - Jon Egan
    -Your Love Is Deep - E - Jami Smith
    -You Said G-A - Reuben Morgan

Closing Song
    -They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love - Gm - Traditional

We ended up skewing a little older yesterday... it was actually pretty fun.  We didn't have a lead guitar for this service, so things were very keyboard driven.  The band was really on yesterday... simple arrangements, but things were really locked in well.  We closed with "They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love", which is not at all the type of tune we usually play (even when we do hymns), but it was so perfect for the theme (see below) that I just really felt we needed to do it (in light of the week's global events, that tune and "You Said" both became even more poignant, although they were planned earlier).  We put a nice big heavy backbeat on it and it worked just fine.

As I mentioned last week, we're working through Bill Hybels' "Just Walk Across The Room" materials right now.  I'm definitely liking this series (a lot more than I've liked any of the other "series in a box" stuff we've done over the years).  Yesterday's message focused on what it means to build authentic, loving, Christlike relationships with those around us.  Really solid stuff.

The Spirit was really moving in the room yesterday morning.  Everything flowed very smoothly, but there were several times in the service where we felt the Spirit direct things in a slightly different direction than we had planned.  It ended up being a very powerful time of worship, and God's presence was really felt.


Cedarville United Presbyterian Church - 1/17/10

Opening Set
    -Lord, I Lift Your Name On High - G - Rick Founds
    -God Of Wonders - G - Marc Byrd, Steve Hindalong
    -We Fall Down - E - Chris Tomlin

Closing Song
    -How Great Is Our God - A - Chris Tomlin

This was the first of 2010's monthly Bread & C.U.P. services in Cedarville.  I've been playing there for a couple of years, but leading now for about six months.  The congregation and I are definitely starting to get more comfortable with each other... I'm inspired by their singing and passion for praise.  Definitely looking forward to what God is going to do through that group in the months ahead!  Yesterday I went down a little early and did a percussion clinic of sorts for some of the kids.  Showed them some different instruments and how to play them, and then wrote some very simple parts for them to play along with me on "Lord, I Lift Your Name On High".  Normally, I can't stand that song, but it worked well for this.  It was also easy to work them in since I normally play without a band for this service.  It was definitely a fun night!

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CenterPoint Church 1/10/10

Opening Set
    -Your Grace Is Enough - G - Matt Maher
    -Blessed Be Your Name - A - Matt Redman
    -Breathe On Me - G - Clint Brown

Closing Song
    -You Are My King (Amazing Love) - E - Billy Foote

Yesterday we started a new series based on Bill Hybels' "Just Walk Across The Room" materials.  So far, this seems to be some really solid stuff about practical, relationship based evangelism (something that I'm all about).  Dave's message focused on "The Single Greatest Gift" - the idea that telling someone about Christ (in an appropriate way) is the greatest gift we could give them, just as it was likely the greatest gift that most of us received.  Good stuff.

Josh led worship this week and did a good job.  I love leading, but it's also really nice to just be in the band from time to time, which is what I got to do yesterday.  I was on keys, and it was nice to be able to focus a little more on creating some different textures, instead of pretty much just clunking along on the chords.  We had trouble locking in with the click track for "Your Grace Is Enough" (both in rehearsal and the service), but other than that, the music went really well.  We played "Breathe On Me" again (we just taught it a couple of weeks ago), and the congregation really seems to be connecting with that song.  Really cool to see!

If you read yesterday's top ten list, you now know a little bit about The Fold.  I meant to share this video, quite a while ago, but never got around to it.  Today seemed timely.  The Fold have done a hilarious parody of Miley Cyrus' "Party In The USA".  Worth your 3 1/2 minutes:

Well folks, here it is: my fifth (I think) annual top ten albums list!  This year's list is a little late in coming, because honestly, it was hard to put together!  Initially, I thought I'd have trouble coming up with 10... but when I actually started looking back, there were quite a few great records this year and I had to whittle down quite a bit!  This year's list focuses more on full-length records, but just like last year, there were a couple of EPs that were just too good not to include.  In any case, the rules are the same as they've always been: as long as the record was released in 2009, and I purchased it, it's in the running.  Here's this year's list:

10. Kate Micucci - Songs (EP)

When Kate Micucci showed up on Scrubs this spring with her ukulele, I knew I needed to find out if she had any music available.  She's done a fair amount of collaborative work (including the ridiculous duo, Garfunkel and Oates), but this (really) short EP seems to be the extent of her solo catalog.  It takes about 10 minutes to listen to all five tracks on this lighthearted, fun record, but it's definitely worth your time.  It lands at number 10 because I just want more!

Standout Track: "Just Say When"

9. Jars Of Clay - The Long Fall Back To Earth

I love Jars Of Clay.  This is not in debate.  They've been my favorite band since I was in middle school, and they're on this list every year.  That said, this newest effort doesn't quite stack up for me.  It's a great record, don't get me wrong, and it continues the constant musical evolution that makes me love JOC so much, but it lacks the "wow" factor that came with some of their earlier efforts.  Ultimately, I come back to individual tracks instead of the whole record.  Still a solid effort, and it lands at number 9.

Standout Track - "Boys (Lesson One)"

8. The Fray - The Fray

The Fray was in serious danger of falling prey to the dreaded "sophomore slump".  Their first record was phenomenal, and there wasn't a lot of argument to that point... everybody fell in love with The Fray.  Their second album was really going to have to deliver to keep them from being forgotten.  I'm happy to report that it does!  This record spent a great deal of the first part of the year in my car's CD player, and I would dare to say it may be even better than the first.  The band's sound is more mature now, and lyrically this record has a lot of depth.  An excellent release for a spot at number 8!

Standout Track - "Enough For Now"

7. The Fold - Dear Future, Come Get Me

You may recall that The Fold's previous LP, Secrets Make You Sick was #1 on this list two years ago.  Since that time, they've parted ways with their record label, reportedly over some creative and stylistic differences.  I think that's interesting, since Dear Future, Come Get Me seems a natural extension of their previous work.  Where Secrets Make You Sick was preoccupied with death, this newest release comes off as a celebration of life and love (with all the joy, confusion, and pain that come with those things).  The Fold continues to be an innovative and inspiring group of musicians, and this one is definitely worth checking out at number 7!

Standout Track - "I Know Where I'm Going"

6. Abandon - Searchlights

Abandon is a band I wasn't sure about at first.  Their first single, "Providence", got major radio airplay, but I didn't really care for it.  Fortunately, that track is the low point of this first full length release.  The band has a very modern, polished, radio-friendly sound and it works well for them.  Great lyrics (most of them very uplifting) round out the package.  A solid first effort at number 6.


Standout Track - "Be Alive In Me"

5. Straylight Run - About Time (EP)

I was worried about Straylight Run for a little while.  They're a brilliant band, and I've loved them ever since they first came out, but with the departure of Michelle DaRosa last year, and the disappointing Un Mas Dos EP that followed, I was afraid it was time to put this band on the "has beens" list.  Fortunately, John Nolan and Co. came back this year with a vengeance!  About Time's four tracks are expertly crafted and sound more like the bands early days (a good thing in my opinion).  The music still wants for the female vocal that it now lacks, but this EP accomplishes one major thing: proving that this band is still worth your time and isn't going away any time soon.  A shoe-in for number 5.

Standout Track - "I'm Through With The Past (But The Past Isn't Through With Me)"

4. The Swell Season - Strict Joy

I confess, I initially missed out on the Once boat (don't worry, I'm all caught up now!)  A couple of months ago, a came across this video on Youtube and I knew that this was a record I had to have.  In fact, I'm listening to it today as I put the finishing touches on this list.  This is acoustic music at it's finest, and the dynamic vocal duo of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova is just unstoppable.  Start to finish, this is one of the best records I've heard in a long time.  If you don't have it yet, watch the video I linked to above.  I'm guessing it won't take you long after that.  In at number 4.

Standout Track - "In These Arms"

3. Christopher Williams - Something As Simple

This is the guy you've never heard of.  I might not have, either if I hadn't gone to see Jars of Clay in college.  Christopher opened that night, and I was immediately blown away by his live presence.  No major label deals, no big backing band (although he's toured with everybody in the Christian music world), and no false pretenses... just a guy with a guitar, good stories, and great songs.  I've picked up most of his studio records over the last couple of years, and don't get me wrong, they're good, but the live show is where it's at.  Therefore, it's not surprising that this new live record is phenomenal.  This record really lets Christopher's personality shine through, not only through the songs (he even includes a false start), but also through his trademark storytelling.  Trust me, you need this one.  Better yet, check him our live when he's in your area.  We were lucky enough to host him at CenterPoint earlier this year, and I'll be seeing him again tomorrow night.  It's worth your time.  Solid at number 3.

Standout Track - "Your Love"

2. Fiction Family - Fiction Family

What happens when you combine the musical talents of Jon Foreman (who's phenomenal EPs topped this list last year) and Sean Watkins (guitarist for Nickel Creek, one of my favorite bands of all time)?  Fiction Family, and as you might have guessed, I think it's pretty good.  Each artist brings a distinct songwriting style to the table, and it's pretty easy to tell who wrote what without even checking the liner notes, but each complements the other, and their instrumental and vocal talents compliment each other very well.  Throw in a couple of covers for good measure, and the result is solid pop-rock acoustic music.  Check it out and you'll see what I mean.  Number 2!

Standout Track - "Mostly Prove Me Wrong"

1. Derek Webb - Stockholm Syndrome

What can I say... 2009 belongs to Derek Webb.  Derek has been a black sheep of sorts in the Christian music world for a long time.  He's not afraid to tackle almost any issue, and he does it with the music and words he feels are appropriate, regardless of others' opinions on the matter.  He's dealt with his share of (in my opinion, unwarranted) controversy over the years, and this album was no exception.  In May, Derek sent out a pair of cryptic emails stating that his record label had refused to release the album in it's present state due to what they deemed to be objectionable content, and that he was going to need to take his website down for a while as a result.  What followed was a two month long scavenger hunt across the internet (not the mention the country!) to assemble the track in question.  Additional tracks were released through riddle-me-this websites as well... I don't know how much of it genuinely came out of the conflict with the label, but it definitely built hype for the record either way.  When the album finally released (in both "clean" and "explicit" versions) in September, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.  It's a record unlike any I've ever heard.  Derek (and producer Josh Moore) have created something unique unto itself... something that walks the line between acoustic, electronic, and industrial in style and delves into the most difficult topics of our day boldly and unashamedly.  It's probably not for everybody, but it really resonates with me.  Beyond being an important record for the artist and the genre, it's one of the best albums I've ever heard.  Number 1 without a doubt!

Standout Track - "The Spirit Vs. The Kick Drum"

So here we are... another year of great music from great artists.  As always, I want your thoughts... would any of these have made your list?  Do you hate these albums?  What should be here that isn't?  Let me know and here's to more great music in 2010!