This post is part of Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.  Click here to check out more Easter Sunday sets!

CenterPoint Church 4/4/10

Walk-In
    -I'm Alive - Bb - Shane Barnard

Opening Set
    -Song Of Hope - A - Robbie Seay Band
    -Counting On God - B - Jared Anderson
    -My Savior, My God - D - Aaron Shust

Offering Song
    -Trading My Sorrows - A - Darrell Evans

Closing Song
    -Marvelous Light - A - Charlie Hall

Wow!  What an incredible Easter Sunday at CenterPoint!  I was up all night last night because I was so excited about today's service, and God really moved in a powerful way.  We stepped out in faith and had two services this morning, and both were very well attended.  On top of that, the band did a great job through both services.  I was a little concerned that we would lose some energy in the second service (because even though a lot of us have done two services in the past, we just aren't used to it in the context of CenterPoint), but everybody did a great job of pacing themselves and it worked out really well.

Musically, this was an excellent week.  We had a great band and a great set!  All three worship leaders were singing this morning, so we divided up the lead vocals, which was really cool.  One musical highlight this morning was the opener - Shane & Shane's "I'm Alive".  What an awesome tune!  I put together a basic loop for this one (which can also be downloaded for free on the "Media" page):

Dave's message this morning was called "No More Tears" and talked about the transformative power of the resurrection.  It was a very uplifting and powerful message and followed our Good Friday service (see below) very well.  We also had one person share their testimony in each service, both of which were very personal and honest.  Very cool.

It was a great service... I've been buzzing on the Spirit all day!

I wanted to quickly share our set list from Good Friday, as well:

CenterPoint Church 4/2/10

Opening Set
    -Blessed Be Your Name - A - Matt Redman
    -Center - E - Charlie Hall
    -Give Me Jesus - Bb - Jeremy Camp Arrangement

Communion Song
    -Carried To The Table - Bb - Leeland Mooring

Closing Set
    -Jesus Paid It All - Bb - Passion Arrangement
    -Nothing But The Blood - F - Traditional

I'll be brief with this one, but our Good Friday service ended up being very cool.  We had a lot of technical issues getting started, but the service itself was very powerful and Spirit led.  We were a little bit looser with our timing and flow than usual, but it felt appropriate for this particular service.  It was definitely moving and set up the rest of the weekend leading up to Easter in a big way (at least for me!)

Last year, CenterPoint published our own Holy Week devotional for our congregation.  A different person wrote each day, and it ended up being a really cool project, so we decided to do it again this year.  This year I was asked to write today's Good Friday devotion.  I thought I'd share with you all what I wrote.

"By this time it was noon, and darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock.  The light from the sun was gone.  And suddenly, the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn down the middle.  Then Jesus shouted, 'Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!'  And with those words he breathed his last.  When the Roman officer overseeing the execution saw what had happened, he worshiped God and said, 'Surely this man was innocent.'  And when the crowd that came to see the crucifixion saw what had happened, they went home in deep sorrow.  But Jesus' friend, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching."
                                                                                                                   -Luke 23:44-49 (NLT)

I would love to have been in the temple at that moment - the moment when God literally removed the barrier between Himself and His people.  The temple curtain separated those worshiping there from the "Holy of Holies", the place where the Jews believed God's earthly presence resided.  It was believed at the time of Jesus' death that anyone who saw beyond that curtain would die.  I can imagine the terror those in the temple must have felt when the curtain was torn before them.  I can also imagine the tears of joy that must have followed soon after, when they realized that they had essentially been brought into the presence of God without punishment.  The centurion and the others on the hill  could feel the change, too.  suddenly it was obvious that Jesus was not just any man.  They realized that something very important had just happened, and they immediately worshiped God.  I like to imagine that some of them received their salvation right there on that hill, just moments after Christ breathed his last breath, and to me that is the truly incredible part of Christ's death: from that moment on, anyone who had 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.  This event that took place thousands of years ago still has the power to change people today.  The curtain has been torn, the barriers have been removed, and we now have a "direct line" to God and to our salvation.  It can be easy to get caught up in the darkness of this story, and it's important to remember the magnitude of the sacrifice that was required and the sadness it represents, but it's also important to remember that this was the moment that everything changed.  This was the moment that God offered a new life to you, to me, and to each and every person on earth.

Have a blessed day, everyone.

So if you've hung out on this blog for very long, then you know that I'm all about in ear monitoring in worship (and just about every other type of gig!)  I think IEMs are many times better than traditional wedges for most situations for a lot of reasons, and in a small room as acoustically challenging as ours, they're pretty much as good as it gets.  After using generic fit buds for years, I finally bit the bullet in late 2008 and picked up a set of Alien Ears dual driver custom fit monitors.  You can check out my original post about them here.  The entire experience working with the company was a dream then, and I've been absolutely in love with my monitors since the first time I put them in.

Having said that, eventually even the best equipment wears out or malfunctions, and recently, I noticed two places where the cords had split, exposing the bare wire underneath:

Not good.  Needless to say, I've been back to my old Shure's since that happened.  Now don't get me wrong, the Shure's are great monitors, but they just don't have the sound quality and comfort level that the dual drivers and custom fit provide.
  In any case, I finally got around to emailing Alien Ears support this morning about the issue.  This is the cool part.  Within about 4 hours, I had a reply (from the general manager, no less!) with instructions to send them in and have the cords replaced.  On top of that, they had already pulled up all the information from my original order, even though I had forgotten to include any info other than my name in my email and I've had them for well over a year.  Awesome!

Basically, all that to say - if you're an IEM user and you're in the market for custom earpieces (or want to be, but don't think you can afford them), definitely check out Alien Ears.  You won't be disappointed!

This post is part of Sunday Set Lists at The Worship Community.  Click here for more set lists!

CenterPoint Church 3/28/10

Walk-In
    -Hosanna - E - Brook Fraser

Opening Set
    -Not To Us - A - Chris Tomlin
    -Reckless Love - A - Eric Frisch, Mark Homkes, Tina Baker
    -How Great Is Our God - A - Chris Tomlin

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

I never got a set list post up last week, but suffice it to say it was a rough week.  We had a lot of technical issues and it was just a frustrating morning.  That said, this week was MUCH smoother!  It was a pretty simple service, which helped, but the Spirit was definitely moving in worship this morning!

We had a smaller band this week - just drums, bass, keys and vocals.  Because of that, we had a pretty keyboard driven set... I thought the band still had a very full sound.  We used Hillsong United's "Hosanna" to open the service... that's such a great tune, and the team did a great job with it today!

Pastor Dave was out of town this weekend, so Jon taught in his absence.  He did a great job framing the Palm Sunday story in a modern light.  We also used a clip from the movie "Hancock" to set up the message, which worked well (once we found a clean clip!)

Overall, it was a great service to start Holy Week... looking forward to what we have coming up the rest of the week!

I'll have my Sunday Setlists post up later today, but right now I just want to share a quick thought that's been running through my mind since yesterday.

I'm not a very political person.  I've got my opinions, but as much as possible, I like to keep them to myself.  I'm fiercely moderate, and I'm sure that my more politically enthused readers would find plenty to disagree with me on, whether liberal or conservative.  For that reason, this blog VERY rarely gets into anything at all political, but today I'm going to break my rule.

I've been fascinated by this whole health care issue.  I've seen a lot of opinions expressed very strongly, and I've seen our leaders on both sides of the isle suffer vicious verbal attacks throughout the process.  Democrat or Republican, it really seems to have brought out the worst of who we are as a country... a level of politicism that would rather lash out at the "other side" over the tiniest detail rather than try to have a real discussion and solve some problems.  Here's the thought that's been on my mind lately:

Despite our best efforts, there is no single man or woman nor any group of any political or ideological persuasion that can bring the kind of peace and restoration that our nation is searching for.  There is only one who has ever been able to do that.  He is is the only one who can do it now, and He is the only one who ever will be able to!  Any and all of our human solutions are just temporary fixes awaiting Christ's return to restore His creation and His people.  Important to keep in mind when we put our trust in congressmen and presidents!

This post is part of Sunday Set Lists at The Worship Community.  Check out dozens of other churches' set lists here.

CenterPoint Church 3/14/10

Opening Set
    -Everlasting God - A - Brenton Brown (Lincoln Brewster version)
    -Reckless Love - A - Eric Frisch, Mark Homkes, Tina Baker
    -Here I Am To Worship - E - Tim Hughes

Closing Song
    -Oh The Glory Of It All - A - David Crowder

Wow!  We had a great worship service yesterday morning!  The message was awesome, the band was great... all around an excellent service.  This is going to be a quick one (headed into a CRAZY week around here!)

We went with a slightly stripped down band yesterday; just drums, bass, 1 guitar, vocals and click tracks.  Despite the thinner setup, I thought the songs sounded great.  Very full.  The click tracks help a lot with that!  We played "Reckless Love" again this week.  That's the new original that we taught last Sunday.  The congregation has really been getting into it, which I think is awesome!  I love that we have that kind of creativity on our team!

Dave's message this week was called "The Solution" and focused on the "missing character" from the Prodigal story; that is that in that time, the older brother would have had a responsibility to go out and bring his brother back, something that clearly didn't happen.  This series has definitely helped a lot of folks (including myself) take a tough look at our "older brother" tendencies, and this week's message made it clear that ultimately, Jesus is the only one who can fill the role.  It was a very powerful message.

Looking forward to wrapping up this series next Sunday and then heading into Holy Week!

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!

It's been a while since I've let my tech-geek side come out here on the old blog, so I figured it was about time I let him stretch his legs.  This past December I made the leap into smart phone territory.  I had been using Verizon's mobile web app extensively on my last two phones and was primarily looking for a richer internet experience.  My (not so) new (anymore) HTC Droid Eris has definitely provided me with that, and quite a bit more.  I've been very impressed with the way this phone has increased my productivity and efficiency when I'm not at my desk.  Being able to buzz through a bunch of emails during downtime at a symphony rehearsal has given me more time to do other things when I get home.  I'm all about it.

One of the reasons I decided to go with an Android phone instead of an iPhone or the like was because of the open source aspect.  I like most of what Google's been doing in the past few years, and there OS seemed like a natural fit for me.  It has been.   Another thing that has been awesome is the Android App Store.  Admittedly, the store is not as well stocked as Apple's, but there are still a lot of valuable and fun things to download, and most of them are free!  I know I have readers who are also on the Android bandwagon, so today I thought I'd throw up a quick rundown of my 5 favorite free apps.  Here we go!

(one quick disclaimer that these screen shots aren't mine... they were compiled from around the internet)

5. Advanced Task Killer Free

This is an indispensable tool.  Actually, if you're using Android, you probably don't need me to tell you about this one.  Everything you do on Android opens an app.  Almost none of those apps close when you leave the program, so your phone can get bogged down pretty quickly (sad news for speed and battery life).  This app lets you kill all that stuff running in the background.  Simple and necessary.

4. The Weather Channel

The Eris comes with a great little weather widget right on the home screen, but it links up to AccuWeather online for more info.  Nothing wrong with that, but I've always appreciated The Weather Channel... use it on TV, online, on my desktop, so why not on my phone?  TWC's android app is simple and straightforward and gives you the info that you need.

3. Ethereal Dialpad

This one goes in the "just plain fun" category.  A very simple little synthesizer.  Just select a scale and a "scene" of sorts and you're good to go.  Drag your finger across the screen to see and hear the synth come to life.  Great way to kill time, and the sounds it produces are very pleasing and relaxing.  Some of the visualizations are a little lame, but a couple of them are absolutely mesmerizing, plus it's free!

2. Lightning Bug

I just discovered this one a couple of days ago.  It's a surprisingly full-featured sleep machine and alarm clock that I've used every night since.  You select one of five scenes and then blend in different sounds (I've been using "Beach At Night" with rain, lightning, and waves crashing).  Set a sleep timer and it fades it's volume down at the end of the time period.  It also has an alarm clock that lets you access all the major features of the built in alarm, but much more intuitively.  I used to have an alarm clock that did this and have missed it recently.  Not anymore!

1. Bible

YouVersion.com is pretty much awesome.  Their online resources are top-notch, and the newest version of their Android app brings most of that functionality in.  Now you can log in with your account and follow all of the reading plans, versions, etc. that are available online.  The only thing still missing is an option to download Bibles for offline use (something that's been available on the iPhone app for some time now).  Any way you look at it, YouVersion is revolutionizing the way people read and study the Bible, and I'm glad they're sinking time into their Android development.  It pays off for people like me!

So there you have it!  A little bit of what's been taking up my time lately :-P  Nerdy tech post: complete.

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!