This was a wonderful weekend! I was able to participate from the congregation while our Husband & wife team led worship. It was great. They do a great job. It was also great to be able to hear what’s going on out in the congregation and to be able to assess some things from a different vantage point.

Here was their set:

• All Creatures of Our God and King
• Mother’s Day Video
• Shout of the King
• Shout to the King
• Speak to me
  Message
• Everlasting God.

They did a great job, transitions were good and use of scripture was great. For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over on The Worship Community.

This weekend was missions weekend for us. It was a great celebration of what our church is doing around the world in the area of missions. It was a great chance for our body to see how we are a part of a bigger picture than what we see on a weekly basis.

Here was our Set:

• Yours (Steven Curtis Chapman)
• Let All the World Sing Praises (Word Music)
• Video of one of our students who is now a missionary in India
• Great in all the Earth (Hohnholtz)
• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Comissioning prayer for student going on a summer mission trip
• Sermon from one of our over seas missionaries home for a bit
• You Said

Our choir sang with us for the first two songs. We had a pretty small choir this time, only about 10 total, Luckily I didn’t need to direct, so I could hop in the choir and sing tenor. Since choir is still a new thing for us, I’m still working on training our choir to think of choir as a year round commitment and not as a seasonal group. I know this is backwards from what most of you are doing, from what I can gather, most churches only have a seasonal choir, if they have a choir at all. I know there are still churches out there that are doing choir and doing it well, but as a trend, choirs are trending down.

This year has been good for our choir, in terms of starting to build a core group of committed people, people who are willing to make a sacrifice for a bigger picture than they can see right now.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at The Worship Community.

This was a fun weekend. As you might remember, this group is a group I’m working with to try and break out of our shells a little bit, and to get a little more creative with our playing. I want to get one of our groups to start playing music that comes out of us instead of only playing music that we hear on the recording. So, that’s what we started doing a couple of months ago, and this weekend was a good move in that direction.

That’s not to say that everything we did was original, some of it was right off a recording. That’s also not to say that there’s anything wrong with doing it like the original artist did it. All I am saying is that as musicians and artists, we need to work harder at times to come up with our own music and not only rely on what others have already done.

Here was our Set:

• Rest in Your Peace (My song – our arr.)
• You are Good (Houghton – Brewster Arr.)
• Announcements
• Just to Be With You (Baloche)
• Breathe (Our Arr.)
• Sermon
• He Reigns (kind of the Newsboys arr.)

It was great to get to work on some stuff in a way unlike we normally do, to just play and give people a chance to work out their own part and come up with something of their own. I think the musicians in our churches around the world hold great potential in terms of creating new music that the church can be proud of.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at the The Worship Community.

I was back in the saddle again. I took almost two weeks off after Easter, and this weekend was my first day back. I know it’s not like I was gone forever, but it was long enough to feel like I was gone.

So, it was good to be back. It was me with some of the youth guys this weekend, and it was great. Since I was gone, I picked some of the songs the guys played this last week for youth group, which helped us be a little better prepared since we didn’t have practice this week.

Here was our set:

• Awesome is the Lord
• I Will boast
• Welcome
• The Stand
• Jesus Paid it All
• Center
• Sermon
• Here Am I

For more weekend Reviews and Sunday Setlists, check out The Worship Community.

For a direct link to the planning center outline, click here: http://www.planningcenteronline.com/plans/1264650/public

• Have three candles lit at the foot of the cross before people come in.
• God of Wonders
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading
  Vs. 1-2

  Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown
  when Thou camest to earth for me;
  But in Bethlehem’s home was there found no room
  For Thy holy nativity.

  Heaven’s arches rang when the angels sang,
  proclaiming They royal degree;
  But of lowly birth didst Thou come to earth,
  and in great humility

• Candle Instruction #1: John 1:1-5
  As a biological family, or spiritual family, go pick an unlit candle from one of the tables or from the foot of the Cross, bring it forward and light it from the candle at the foot of the cross. Then Take it back to where you found it.

  1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

  3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

• Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
• Joy to the World
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading: John 1:10-14
  Vs. 3
  The foxes found rest, and the birds their nest
  In the shade of the forest tree;
  But Thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God,
  In the deserts of Galilee.

  10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

  14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

• Spirit of the Sovereign Lord (Andy Park)
• Prayer for the people we’re inviting to Easter
• All Who Are Thirsty (Kutless arr.)
• Prayer for the Easter Services
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading
  Vs. 4
  Thou camest, O Lord, with the living word
  That should set Thy people free;
  But with mocking scorn and with crown of thorn
  They bore Thee to Calvary.
• The Wonderful Cross
• The Nails in your hands with “I could sing of your love forever)
• Communion Explanation & Candle Instruction #2: Mark 15:33-39
  In the same group as from before, go & take communion together. After you have taken communion, have one member of your group blow out the candle that you lit earlier tonight. When you blow out the candle, remember that Christ died on the Cross for you. Jesus Christ Our Savior, gave his life for you. When we break bread together we do so to remember His life – broken for us. When we drink from the cup – we remember his blood, poured out for us and the new covenant he made with us.

  33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

  35When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”

  36One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

  37With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

  38The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

• (Worship leader, in silence blows out one of the candles at the foot of the cross.
• Pardoning blood
• Candle Instruction #3
  Once again in the same groups, go get the candle you blew out after communion. Bring it forward, and light it from the candle at the foot of the cross. Then, take your candle and put it in the one of the windows here in the sanctuary.
• Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne Reading: Matthew 5:14-16
  Read Verse 5 then sing song
  When the heavens shall ring and the angels sing
  At thy coming to victory
  Let Thy voice call me home, saying “Yet there is room-
  There is room at my side for thee.”

  14″You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

• Sing “Thou didst Leave Thy Throne.

Easter weekend, what a great weekend! We had a tremendous celebration at our church. Everything was working, everyone was firing on all cylinders and the whole thing came off great.

You can view the set on Planning Center if you’d like: http://www.planningcenteronline.com/plans/1077934/public

Here was our Set:

• Empty Tomb Video (Worship House Media)
• Christ the Lord is Risen Today (Choir)
• All Because of Jesus (Fee)
• Christ is Risen (Riddle)
• Responsive Reading
• Prayer
• Sermon pt.1 – The Grand Opening
• All Things New (Steven Curtis Chapman)
• Sermon pt. 2 – The Wrong Doors
• Prayer 2
• Fellowship
• Sermon pt. 3 – Open Arms
• Sunday’s coming video
• Sermon pt. 4 – An Open Tomb
• Beautiful the Blood (Fee)
• Sermon pt. 5 – Open the Door
• Calling out to You (My song)

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists on the Worship Community.

This week I was flying solo. I rolled out the piano, got it tuned and it was just me, a few old hymns and the congregation. People seem to like it when I do that. I would have thought it would be just the opposite, but that’s just not the case. People like it when it’s simple. I took the opportunity to do some hymns that we don’t get to do very often – which was fun do.

Here was my set:

• Hosanna (Paul Baloche – but I rearranged it to be a little more interesting as a solo piano song)
• Glory to His Name (That’s right folks, that old one. I did it fairly slow because I’m sure a lot of our people didn’t know it because we never sing it, but then on the last chorus, I bumped it up and did it oompa loompa style – others call it double time)
• My Savior’s Love (How Marvelous)
• Announcements
• Nothing But the Blood (ushers passed out communion during this song)
• Communion talk
• There is a Redeemer (Melody Green)
• Sermon
• Rest in your Peace (my song)

For communion, I tied in the triumphal entry with what was happening during the rest of this week for Jesus. Here’s what I did:

All who are in a trusting relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ are invited to take communion with us today.

Jesus had just told a parable…

²⁸After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. ²⁹As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, ³⁰“Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ”

³²Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. ³³As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

³⁴They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

³⁵They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. ³⁶As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

³⁷When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
³⁸“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

³⁹Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

⁴⁰“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

⁴¹As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it ⁴²and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.

Before we take communion, let’s pause for a moment and pray for those we will be inviting next week. Those whom Jesus has wept over. Those for whom Jesus longs to be the giver of peace, and those whose eyes are hidden from the real answer they seek.

As Jesus entered the city, the people threw theirs cloaks on the road for the young colt to walk on. And as Jesus was riding this colt which no one else had ever ridden, the same people shouted out “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in Heaven and glory in the Highest!”

But, it wouldn’t be long before some of those same people who had thrown their cloaks on the ground we be shouting at Jesus. Not words of praise, but words of condemnation. They were willing to lay down their cloaks for him, but at some point over the next few days, the cost of following Jesus became to great. And they shouted at him.

Just as Jesus knew which colt he would ride on, and just as he knew the people who would be shouting his praises – he knew the people who would be shouting condemnation. And He knew that though this story began at the Mt. of Olives the next time he would return there he would be betrayed. And He knew the story would finish at Golgotha, a Hill where he would give his life as the ransom for our souls.

Just as the hundreds who praised him would later betray him, one of his own would betray him as well. And on that night, before he would return to that Mt., Jesus took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

Father, as we think about the joyful celebration that surround your son’s entrance so many years ago, and as we think about those who were there – so quick to lay down their cloaks for you – we think about the way you entered into our lives. We think about the way your Son laid down His life for us, to pay sins ransom. And for that we say Thank you. Thank you for being our redeemer. Thank You Father, for sending us your son.

For more weekend Reviews – check out Sunday Setlists over on “The Worship Community.“

What a great weekend! The only huge responsibility I had this weekend was directing the choir. For the rest of the service, I got to just play the keys and nothing else. It was a ton of fun for me. I don’t get to do that all that often, so when I do, I just love it. I must admit, I go a little crazy, I break a few of the rules and play a little too much. I just can’t help myself.

Here was our set:

• Joyful, Joyful We adore Thee (Charlie Hall arr.)
• Welcome
• Mighty to Save
• Wonderful Maker
• Jeremiah Scripture
• The Potter’s Hand
• The Majesty & Glory of Your Name (Choir)
• Sermon
• All of my Days

I totally botched the into to Mighty to Save. It’s a guitar thing normally, but I was doing it & I totally destroyed it – not in a good way. Phil & Danielle did an amazing job leading (as they always do). And the choir did an awesome job. Choir is still a relatively new thing around here, so I’ve been teaching the choir some of the “classics” in terms of Church choir music. “The Majesty & Glory of Your Name” is definitely a classic. If you have a choir, and they haven’t done this song, you should dig through your library and pull it out for them to sing.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.

This weekend was the first weekend or preparing for Easter. We taught Jeremy Riddle’s song, “Christ is Risen” today. We also had a great weekend for music. I was able to step aside from most of the leading this weekend and mostly focus on the band and playing. It was actually quite enjoyable!

Here was our set this weekend:

• Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin -did it in the original key, had an alto sing melody on the chorus and I sang melody on the verses.)
• Let the Praises Ring
• Hosanna
• Welcome
• Cannons
• Christ is Risen
• Sermon
• Here I am to Worship
• May the World See Your Light In Me (Brian Cheney)

Brian was a roommate of mine in college, and he also played in a group with Kevin for a while. We did this song in choir back in the day, and it just happen to fit perfectly with the sermon this weekend, so we did it.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists on The Worship Community.

This weekend we had the privilege of having some of the youth band play with us. It was really cool on a couple of levels. First, it’s always cool to to have the youth playing with us so the congregation could experience and get to know what the youth do on a weekly basis. It was also cool because our Youth Worship Intern was playing with us. Kyle played with me at my last church, and it was cool to get to lead worship with him again.

Here was our Set:

• O Praise Him
• Famous One
• Prayer
• From the Inside Out
• Sermon Intro
• All Who Are Thirsty
• Nothing But the Blood (Redman)
• Sermon
• Once Again

For more weekend Reviews, Check out Sunday Setlists over at The Worship Community.

Great weekend! Just loved it! So did our congregation! We had the choir join us this week for a couple of worship tunes and then the choir sang “Total Praise.” It’s an oldie, but not to our church. Since we’ve never had a choir around here, there are a lot of “classics” that our church has never heard, and that’s one of them.

We also had a smaller band this week, on purpose. It’s a group I’m working on taking in a different direction than our other groups. I’m wanting it to be a piano driven group with a jazz &/or Gospel feel to it. It’s a new venture for us, but I’m excited about it. If you have any experience with this and you would like to offer me some pointers, that would be awesome, I could use the help!

Here was our Set:

• I am Free
• Give My Praise (Mine)
• Welcome
• Your Name
• Revelation Song
• Total Praise
• Sermon
• Lord, Reign in Me.

It was great to have the choir join us, the band was fun. Just an overall great weekend! For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists on The Worship Community.

Since we’ve been “blowin’ and goin’” for about 6 weeks or longer now, with a full, rockin’ praise band each week, and since it was valetines day, I thought it would be good to change things up and just have a simple weekend. It was just myself on keys, and Trevor singing vocals. We split the singing duties 50/50, which ended up being cool and adding a little spice to the weekend.

Since it was pretty simple, I picked some songs that I thought would work well on just keys. That included a few hymns, it actually ended up being liked by a lot of people & it’s nice to score points with people who like Hymns. (I happen to be one of those people).

Here was our set:

• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC arr.)
• Blessed Assurance (My Arr.)
• My Savior My God (My Arr.)
• Amazing Grace (My chains are gone) – added a cello patch from the motif xs8 in on just the bass notes, cut it of on the C below middle C.
• Communion
• Love like Rain (Daniel Doss) – Kept the same cello patch for the bass & added in the “almighty” string patch in the upper register. With the piano, it made a really nice, full sound.
• Sermon
• I’ll go where you want me to God (My arr.)

For communion, we brought out some of the art work that some of the artists in our church have painted over the year to give people something visual to meditate. We also used photos from our photographic team as the backgrounds for the lyrics this weekend. It ended up being a cool, artsy kind of a weekend.

That’s about it, not a bunch more to talk about. For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists on the Worship Community.

This was another great weekend. We had all our top notch players on, everything went well. The biggest issue we had this weekend was in our transitions. We didn’t have any song to song transitions. They were all start & stop. Which I guess is fine, and one of the things you have to give up when all your songs are started by guitar. At least, when we’re only doing what is on the recording.

Here was our Set:

• Let God Arise
• Because of Your Love
• Song of Hope
• Reading – Psalm 103
• Let the Praises Ring
• Everlasting God
• Sermon
• Wherever He Leads I’ll go (Old hymn, my music) – You can listen to a recording in the player to the right.

To see what other worship pastors and churches did, check out Sunday setlists on The Worship Community.

5th weekends are awesome! Well for the way we do things anyway. We have four teams to rotate one weekend per month for most months of the year. However, now and then a month will roll around with 5 weekends in it. On those weekends I put together teams of people who don’t normally get to play together, and who are also all our best musicians.

Because of this we get to do a little bit tougher music & we get to polish it a little more. This weekend was no exception. Last night had a few rough spots, which can be largely attributed to my having to cancel our midweek rehearsal, but this morning was great!

Here was our set:

• Sing, Sing, Sing. (Tomlin)
• Welcome
• Happy Day (Fee Arr.)
• Let the Praises Ring (Brewster)
• Scripture
• One God (Jeremy Ross)
• From the Inside Out
• Message
• The Church’s One Foundation

“Sing, sing, sing” is the first song from Tomlin’s new album that we’ve done at our church. People liked it. For me, it’s okay, it sounds like all his other stuff, but people like it. This was also the first time we did “Let the Praises Ring” and I think in general people liked that one too. The best response was on “Happy Day” & “From the Inside Out”. “Happy Day” because people knew that one pretty well and “From the inside Out” because people really connect with that one.

All that good stuff said, we did have our fair share of troubles yesterday. One of the biggest troubles we had is with our bass player following along. He’s more of a technical player than a feel player if you know what I mean. He’s got good feel, but he definitely lands on the technical side of things. When using a chord chart he seems to have problems with repeats and what not. Aside from writing out music for him, I’m not sure how to help him out more. He works the music up on his own, probably more than most of the others on the team, except our guitarist, but for some reason, little changes seem to throw him for a loop.

Any of you have ideas on things I could do to help?

For more Weekend Reviews, Check out Sunday Setlists @ The Worship Community.

This was another good weekend. We had our piano driven group on this weekend, and it’s always fun to switch from doing all the usual suspects to doing songs that lend themselves to piano in some way.

So, we did some Tommy Walker songs which are great for piano, we did a song I wrote and since I’m a piano guy, it’s a piano song. We did a couple of other songs that are normal contemporary songs too.

Here was our set:

• Never Gonna Stop (Walker)
• No Greater Love (Walker)
• Scripture
• I am Crowned (Lindner)
• How Deep the Father’s Love for us.
• Message
• Amazing Love (I’ll never be the same – Hohnholtz)
• Awesome is the Lord (Tomlin)

We used a click on three of the songs this weekend. The click beat us on Saturday evening, but we played with it well this morning. We even got the transition from “Never Gonna Stop” which we were doing at 92 bpm into “No Greater Love” which we did at 107 bpm.

Do you know any good piano driven worship bands or songs? Indie groups would be great too. As much as I love the Tommy Walker stuff, I’d much rather be moving our piano sounding group more in the direction of a “Keane,” “The Fray” or “Coldplay” kind of a sound.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists over at “The Worship Community.”

On another note, Kevin (the other guy behind Worship Ministry Catalyst) would appreciate your prayers this week as his wife is scheduled to deliver their baby on Monday or Tuesday.

This was a great weekend, with one exception, we were doing a lot of electric guitar driven songs, with two electric guitar plays and we had a sound guy who doesn’t like electric guitar. That makes for a really weird mix, and I heard a fair amount of feedback about that after the services. I tried to fix it between services, but I still got the same feedback after the second service. We also had a couple of musicians who were really disappointed, understandably so, because they spent a lot of time getting ready and then weren’t heard. I’d be discouraged too.

However, what they two guys were doing sounded really good in my monitors, so aside from that one thing, it was a great weekend.

Here was our set:

• Call to Worship: Read William Temple’s Definition of Worship. “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose–all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”
• How Can I Keep From Singing?
• Glorious (Baloche CD arr.)
• Beautiful One (By the Tree arr.)
• Just to be with You (Baloche CD arr.)
• Holy is the Lord.
• Sermon
• Tell the World (Hillsong)

Aside from our sound issues, it was a great weekend. What was your weekend like? Check out what other worship leaders did this weekend over on The Worship Community.

This weekend was kind of the weekend where we start settling back down into a routine that will carry us for the rest of the spring into the summer. Phil & Danielle – on of our volunteer couples who used to lead worship at another church – led this weekend. Which means I got to play keys this week only and nothing else. It’s always fun when I get to focus on playing an instrument and not having to think about everything.

Here was our set:

• Love the Lord (Brewster)
• You are Holy (Prince of Peace)
• Scripture Reading (Eph. 2:11-22)
• Here Am I (Mike Honholtz)
• Still (Hillsongs)
• Sermon
• Rest In Your Peace (Mine)

It was fun to do a couple of these songs from a few years ago. Isn’t it amazing how quickly songs seem old now? It used to be that songs would last for decades, now they last a year. The really good ones still last.

For more weekend Reviews – Check out Sunday Setlists over on The Worship Community.

What a great way to start the new year. At least I think so! Our band did awesome this weekend, especially this morning. We had our A game on this weekend. And considering we didn’t have practice because of Holiday vacations, it was fantastic.

We focused our worship time around what might be my goal for our congregation this year, to take advantage of every opportunity we are given to worship. That we will rejoice daily in our savior, that we will boast in him, that we wouldn’t be lazy or selfish

I had the privilege of doing communion this morning, which I’ve only done one other time since I’ve been here. I botched it up last night, but I think I did a much better job this morning. I talked about Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, and contrasted that with the cup of the new covenant between Jesus our Groom and the church His bride.

Here was our set:

• Today is the Day
• I Will Boast
• Cannons (Phil Wickham)
• Communion
• Pardoning Blood (Mine)
• Sermon
• I am In You (Mine)

This last song is one that I wrote a few years ago for a sermon our pastor did at our last church from the book of Colossians. It turned out to be a perfect fit for this sermon in the book of Ephesians. This is the first time in my life I’ve done more than one of my own songs in a worship service. Felt kind of weird, almost like I was trying to get attention. It just worked out that the two songs we did worked really well. Oh well.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists over at Fred’s Place.

I feel like it’s been years since I last did a weekend review. Ah the joys of the Christmas season.

This weekend is one of the first times I feel like we didn’t drop the ball the weekend after Christmas. It seems like every year after Christmas and Easter, we’re always scrambling to get a band together and to get the music worked out, etc., but I didn’t feel like that was the case this year. We had a full band, with not missing components, we had solid vocals and we were able to get the arrangements worked out. Last night had a few wrinkles, but today was pretty good.

Here was our set:

• Angels from the realms of Glory (SCC Arr.)
• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (SCC Arr.)
• Prayer for our worship in the new year
• Light of the World (Nockels)
• Glory In The Highest (Tomlin)
• Sermon on Contentment
• Living for Jesus (Hymn with new music)

Our transitions weren’t exactly smooth, though they were better for this morning’s service. Other than that, things went pretty well. For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists @ Fred’s Place.

Ahh, the weekend after Thanksgiving. When people are out of town and the people who are there still have a Thanksgiving – too much turkey – hangover.

This weekend, our pastor was talking about the Holy Spirit, which is something we almost never talk about. And since we never talk about it, we also haven’t really introduced any songs in the past that are related to the Holy Spirit. So, unfortunately for some of the members of our band, we did 3 hymns that all talk about the spirit somewhere in the song.

Here was our Set:

• Hallelujah (Your love is amazing)
• A Mighty Fortress (My Arr.)
• Glorious (Baloche)
• Welcome
• Eph. 1:11-14
• Be Thou My Vision (My Arr. – with a bridge I wrote – Recording in the side bar to the right.)
• Hungry
• Sermon
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC arr.)

We’re still in our BE series, but we kind of finished up a mini-series within the series on the trinity, so I thought it would be fitting to close the service by singing about the entire trinity, for which Holy, Holy, Holy was the perfict fit.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Set-lists @ Fred’s place.

What a weekend! It was great! I know that not everyone involved felt like they were “up to snuff” for the weekend, but it was a great weekend – the people of God worshiped! Sure there were things we could have done better, things that could have gone better, things that could have been tighter, notes that could have been “righter,” but when it comes down to it, the bottom line is that people worship and that they did my friends, that they did.

One of the challenges of having a Saturday evening service and a Sunday morning service, is that there is always the possibility that something will happen to someone between Saturday night & Sunday morning – like getting sick. That’s what happened this weekend, our drummer called on Sunday morning to let me know he wouldn’t be able to make it because he was sick. Fortunately, our children’s director plays drums excellently, and he was able to step in. So, we ended up being covered.

We did Paul Baloche’s new song “Glorious” today. We didn’t use a loop (Someday, I would like to), but I was able to set up a patch on my Yamaha Motif XS8 to sound pretty much like a lot of the stuff they were doing on the recording. It’s a “glorious” song, If you haven’t added it to your repertoire yet, I’d highly recommend you do.

Here was our Set:

• All Because of Jesus (Fee)
• Ephesians 1:7-8
• I Am Free
• Glorious
• Mighty to Save
• Revelation Song
• Sermon
• Your Grace is enough.

I love a lot of these songs: All Because of Jesus, Glorious & Revelation song are among my favorites right now. Our female vocalists were sick this weekend, and were unable to find anyone to fill in for them, so I had to try & do the echo’s on “I am free” by myself. It was interesting, different.

For more weekend reviews/worship confessionals/Sunday Setlists – check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Church on Sunday was pretty cool.  I put together a Veteran’s Day celebration at the beginning of the service and it was a hit!  I tried to get the Junior ROTC from our local high school to come and do an Honor Guard to present the colors, but it didn’t work out.  Maybe next year.  But I did get all our Veteran’s to come in their uniform and one of our currently serving members gave a brief message on freedom.  At the end, all the Veteran’s came on stage and we prayed for them.  It was pretty powerful!

The rest of the service was good; but that image of over 40 Veterans standing on stage is still so clear.  We had a smaller band this Sunday, which worked out really well because we’ve been having some monitor issues.  I was happy with how things turned out and got some good feedback after church:

• Prelude: National Anthem (no Honor Guard; hopefully next year)
• Brief message on Freedom (Chris McDaniel)
• Welcome Time
• Mission Focus: Angel Tree Ministry
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• He Reigns (Newsboys)
• Lord Most High (Can’t remember who wrote this)
• All Creatures of Our God and King(David Crowder arrangement)
• Always (United)
• God of Wonders (Marc Byrd / Third Day)
• Message: How Did it All Begin? – Genesis 1-2 (Pastor Mike)
• Postlude: God of Wonders

To see what other Worship Teams are doing on Sunday, check out Fred McKinnon’s site.

This was a great weekend! I didn’t do a review last weekend, but should have. We did a worship night, and it was great! We did a lot of music and people really worshiped. I’m really looking forward to the next one we do and the times of worship we will have. This weekend, we used the same band from that night and we did songs that we did at the worship night, so we had already worked on them quite a bit by the time we got to this weekend. Wouldn’t it be great if we could prepare that much for every weekend. I’m working on coming up with a way to do that, I’ll let you know about that in the future.

Here was our set for the weekend:

• You are Holy (Prince of Peace)
• Song of Hope (Heaven come down)
• Run for the hungry presentation
• Cannons (Phil Wickham)
• Beautiful the Blood (Fee)
• Sermon (New series “BE”)
• I am crowned – (Mine – you can actually listen to a recording in the music player just to the right of this post)

It was great to do some of these songs with this band. Our lead guitarist for this weekend really worked the stuff up, had great tone and just nailed everything. Everyone in the group, really nailed everything this weekend!

It was a great weekend! Not a lot to critique. Of course there is stuff, we weren’t cd quality or anything, but it was a great weekend! For more reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place!

I also wanted to let you know that Kevin & I have been doing a series of Podcasts on Paul Baloche’s book “God Songs.” If you have interest in writing songs for worship, check it out! We’d love to have some of you on the podcast via interview and to talk about some of the chapters. Just get in touch with us. You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Hi everyone!  It’s been a few weeks since I last posted a blog on our weekend service.  I’ve been in the process of selling our house and moving to a new house right by the church.  I’m happy to report that as of last night, we are officially in the house and unpacked and it’s starting to feel like a home now.  Praise the Lord!

This Sunday, we had one of our missionaries preach.  It wasn’t exactly a “Mission Week” like David had last Sunday, but it was cool and different having this missionary to India preaching on suffering. It gave everyone in the church a really different perspective; plus everyone was listening really well because George was kind of hard to understand

Here’s what our service looked like:

• Scripture Reading: Psalm 89:5-8 / Psalm 47:10-11
• Awesome is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin)
• Scripture Reading:  Romans 8:17-18 / Romans 5:2-5
• Still(Reuben Morgan / Hillsong)
• Good to Me (Old Calvary Chapel Song… can’t remember who wrote it; Craig something)
• Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redman)
• Prayer for Offering
• It is Well  (Special arrangement for lead and tenor vocals; very cool!)
• Message: “An Eternal Perspective on Suffering” (George Varghese; missionary in India)
• Closing Thoughts / Transition into Business Meeting

We had a bit of a struggle transitioning into our Business Meeting.  We were trying to create a very smooth flow, but it didn’t work out so well.  There was some miscommunication, and a bunch of people ended up leaving and causing some distractions.  It’s hard to go from a worship service and then to talk business stuff.  If anyone has any good ideas, let me know!

To check out other weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnon’s site!

This weekend was missions weekend for us. Some of you know exactly what that means. There may be others of you who have a more positive view of missions services at your church, but my experience thus far in ministry has not been extraordinarily positive. The speakers usually tend to speak longer than they are given, some much longer.  A lot of times, their speaking skills lag behind those who communicate regularly and the point of their messages is usually an update on what they’re doing in their ministry and nothing that really empowers the people to act.

That said, this weekend was quite a bit better than usual, at least in terms of the event itself. I really think our missions committee did a good job of putting on an event that drew people into the ministries we support as a church. As far as the communication from the stage goes, well, it still fit into my expectations. But, our people did stay and do quite a bit of sharing with the ministries who were represented, which was exactly the goal.

All that said, our worship team wasn’t quite up to snuff this weekend. We had our staff retreat this last week, which left me no time to confirm musicians and plan for this weekend until it was too late to do much about. Those musicians who did participate, did their best. But, we just didn’t have the time or the personnel to do something of excellence.

Here’s what we did this week:

• All the Earth will Sing Your Praises
• Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble
• Missionary talk #1
• Great in all the Earth
• You Said
• Missionary Talk #2
• Hear Our Praises

Since I’ve only been here for a couple of years, I wasn’t sure about some of theses songs and if they had been done in the past here. I was pleased to hear from a couple of people that they had, so at least they weren’t brand new to everyone.

Our band was piano, bass & drums, and we had two altos on the team. When you look at it that way, it kind of feels like a team of whomever was willing to play – played. It was a challenge to pull some of the songs off like all the earth will sing your praises and did you feel. Well, actually all of them had their challenges without full instrumentation.

However, I feel like God used us to lead our congregation in worship, which is obviously the most important thing.

That was our weekend around here, you should also head over to Fred’s Place and check out what other’s did this weekend.

Hi everyone!  My life has been a little crazy and stressful the last few weeks; our family is moving to a house right by the church.  We’re super excited, but it’s a lot of work packing up a house.  You wouldn’t believe the things I found… I kept asking myself, “Why do we have this?” or “Do we really need xyz?”

But in the midst of all this busyness, God has been doing some neat things in my life.  The last several weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about our worship service a little differently.  I’ve been challenged to really examine everything we do in our service and see if it’s all pointing to God.  Even transitions can play a huge part in the worship experience.  As a result, I feel like the last couple weeks have been very focused on the Lord and having a unified message.  It’s been cool!

Here is what we did on Sunday:

• Opening Scripture Reading: Philippians 2 & John 3:16
• Hosanna (Paul Baloche)
• Here I Am to Worship  (Tim Hughes)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names (my friend wrote a new chorus to this classic song)
• Once Again (Matt Redman)
• King of Kings (Clay Heacocks; this is a great anthemic song from back in my days with Calvary Chapel Fellowships)
• Mission Focus: Missionaries Dwight and Becky Johnson
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Jesus, What a Beautiful Name (Old Hillsong from 1996 I think)
• Message: “Descending Into Glory” – Luke 2 (Pastor Mike)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names  (reprise)

To check out what other worship leaders are doing, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.

This was a great weekend, however if you had asked me at 5:45 yesterday evening how last night’s service was going to go, I would have told you…”This could be bad.” For some reason our practice was just really rough, and we had a hard time getting through several of the songs. But then, when we did the service last night, almost all the songs went pretty well. And this morning, all the songs went really well. Who knows, sometimes we work hard at something and it goes bad, other times we think we’re going to fail and God steps in and fixes it all.

Here was our Set:

• Meet Us Here (Mike Honholtz)
• The Stand
• Communion Prep talk
• Beautiful the Blood
• Take the elements
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC Arr.)
• Revelation Song (Riddle)

For some reason, I just wasn’t real enamored with “The stand” this week. That could be because we didn’t have an electric to really help drive the song, but whatever it was, it just didn’t seem to be flowing and growing.

I did absolutely love doing Beautiful the Blood and Revelation Song. Those are definitely two of my favorites right now. We had to cancel our mid-week practice this week, because no one coule be there, but we really needed it. Someone needs to come up with an online way to rehearse people, where people can go to reheasal when they have time to, and not at the one time when we have practice scheduled. Does anyone have a good way of getting all the arrangment notes onto a chart or do you make up inidividual charts for each part. The charts I make up are pretty clear and they work fine when we have rehearsal, but when we don’t have enough time for rehearsal, I’d like to have a chart that people could rely on.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s place.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done one of these. Partially because I haven’t been leading. In fact, this weekend I played the drums. It’s been a while since I’ve done that, but it was fun, and an experience I think I’ll try to repeat. It gives me a great perspective on the band and how rehearsal is going, it changes my point of view enough that I can really observe how well a lot of things are going in a way that I can’t normally do. Plus, it fills in one of the needs we have, which is for drummers.

Last weekend we had an outside band in, “The Neverclaim.” You’ve probably heard me talkd about them before, and this week we had a husband & wife team leading. They are going to be leading worship for a couple of women’s conferences for the next couple of weekends, so they did some of the music they’ll be doing for those conferences this weekend.

Here was our set:

• I’m Singing (Kari Jobe)
• Joyful, Joyful (Passion arr.)
• Announcement
• You are Good (Houghton – Brewster arr.)
• All Who Are Thirsty
• You are Good (Kari Jobe)
• Surreneder
• Sermon
• Tell the World (Hillsong United)

To be honest, I was definitely the weak link this weekend. I was leaning on the band leader and vocal leader to keep time instead of them being able to lean on me. Next time I play drums, I’ll definitely be using a metronome to help me keep time so they can rest a little more in the groove. I also had forgotten how hard it is to remember where you are in a song when you’re playing drums, and if you don’t have the order of the song written down, it can be really easy to get lost. There’s nothing that you’re playing that helps lead you into the next section, your totally dependent on your memory and the worship leader. So, this is good reason to have good cues as a worship leader. You want your drummers to feel like they know where they’re going and when they’re supposed to go there.

The version of Tell the world that we (actually they) did at the close of the service was really cool. It was acoustic and had a very cool, acoustic/coffee shop  feel to it.

The two Kari Jobe songs are off of her new album. I’d recommend you check them out. They’re simple and easy to use for your congregational worship times. I don’t know of many of you have used his resources, but she’s also one of the vocalists on Paul Boloche’s Vocal workshop DVD in his Lead Worship Series.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Hi everyone!  This week we did kind of a “throw-back” service and busted out a few of the Oldie Goldies from the archives.  It was fun; and our people love doing older songs.  I think if it was their way, they would stay in the late 80′s and early 90′s forever!

Luckily, I’m a firm believer that cultures change, music changes, and even the way we worship can change.  Have you ever wondered why Jesus never taught his disciples how to worship?  He taught them how to pray in Luke 11 (Lord’s Prayer), but there’s never any teachings about how to worship.  I think it’s because Jesus understood that things change.  As long as the message doesn’t change it’s okay if things are done in a new or different way.

Speaking of new: I’ve been doing a lot of new songs lately.  On a whim, I decided to try out “Revelation Song” as a special during the offering to see if I could get a read or vibe on if the song would work.  Man, oh man!  While the offering plate was going around, people were standing and worshipping and totally engaging in that song.  If you haven’t heard it yet, get on YouTube or buy it on iTunes: POWERFUL song!

Here’s what our Sunday service looked like:

• He Is Exalted (Twila Paris)
• Lord I Lift Your Name on High (Rick Founds)
• Baptisms
• Nothing But the Blood(hymn with a cool groove from a band I used to play with: forgivenmuch)
• You Alone(David Crowder)
• You Are My All in All (Dennis Jernigan)
• Mission Focus: MOPS and Club 66
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Revelation Song(Jamie Riddle; Kari Jobe arrangement from New Life Church)
• Message: “Take This Bible and Love it” – 2 Timothy 3
• You Are My All in All (reprise: just the chorus)

To check out what other worship leader’s are doing from around the country, go over to Fred McKinnon’s blog; you might just get some cool ideas!

Hi everyone!  It was a good Sunday, but also stressful.  We had some sound issues as I’ve been training a new guy on the board.  Things weren’t going well or sounding well in practice and I was trying to run back there and help him on the board.  We ended up running super late in practice; which is a bad thing since I am teaching a Sunday School class.

On the plus side: the service ended up going well.  It wasn’t perfect and we still had some sound problems; but those are the times when you just need to not worry about it and say “we’ve done all we can”.  People were blessed and God was glorified.  Here’s what our service looked like:

• Congregational Response: “Who is God?”
• Friend of God (Israel Houghton; PC&D cover)
• O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing(my arrangement based on David Crowder)
• In Christ Alone (Stuart Townsend)
• Holy God(Brian Doerksen – This is the new song I taught last week and people are LOVING it!  I can’t say enough about this song; great tune!)
• Holy is the Lord (Chris Tomlin – another favorite at our church)
• Welcome / Prayer Night info
• Mission Focus: Varghese in India… announce short-term trip to India
• Body Life / Offering
• Thy Word (instrumental version of the song with just me on piano)
• Message: “Can I Trust the Bible?” – 2 Peter 1
• Holy God – reprise of song

That’s it for me!  To see what other people are doing check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great week!

This weekend was a great weekend! We were “back” in the sense that we had a full band which we hadn’t had in quite a while, and I have to say, it was quite nice! Over the summer we’ve had a lot of people gone, so it was nice to be back in full swing.

We also did things a little differently this week. Instead of just going through our normal routine, I added some readings from a couple of books to get us started and to add a little illustrative and educational component to the worship portion of the service. So, I read a little from “The Worshipping Artist” by Rory Noland & a little from “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis which Noland quotes in his book.

Here is what we did:

• Read from “The Heart of the Artist”
• Center
• Your Grace Is Enough
• I Am Free
• Read from “Mere Christianity”
• From the Inside Out
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone).
• Sermon
• I Am Crowned

It’s interesting because I had been thinking and working on a song that dealt with our topic for this weekend for a while now. Pastor Bob was talking about the basic idea of not being able to do anything to earn God’s Favor. The song I wrote started from Psalm 8 and developed into this song about how we need to live like we’re already crowned children of the king. People seemed to really enjoy the song, it worked really well to tie the sermon into a song.

We started a new series this weekend called “Breaking Free.” We’re using a graphic for our series that’s based off of a graphic we found over on creativemyk.com.  If you haven’t checked them out and you need graphic content, you should go there, it’s a great resource.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday setlists over at Fred’s Place.

Church went well on Sunday.  We did a little less music than normal because it was a very full service.  And I taught a new song to our church that they just LOVED!  It’s written by Brian Doerksen, titled: “Holy God”.  Wow!  What an amazing song!  It’s super easy, very simple and very singable.  But it’s so powerful; the words have awakened my heart in a very real way.  Our church was standing on their feet by the second chorus; arms raised… it was very moving.

Check out this youtube link of Brian performing the song live with just his guitar.  Or if you want to hear the album version of the song; you can listen to this video.  It’s such a great song, but not many people know about it.  Spread the word: this song is an anointed worship song!

Here’s what we did on Sunday:

• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin – Great opening song!)
• Unchanging (Chris Tomlin – Good followup song; they have the same first lines!)
• Holy God (Brian Doerksen – Man… I can’t say enough about this song!)
• Holy, Holy, Holy (Hymn – we came right out of the new song into this hymn; awesome!)
• Welcome / Greeting
• Mission Focus: Testimony from short-term team to Australia
• Presentation of Sunday School award
• Commission new Sunday School leaders
• Prayer for offering
• Sweetly Broken (Jeremy Riddle – We did this as a special song; great text!)
• Message: “It’s Who You Know” – Daniel 3
• Closing Song: Holy God Reprise

To check out what other worship leaders are doing, please visit Fred McKinnon’s blog

This weekend was youth weekend for us, so we added some youth to the team for the weekend. I wanted to make sure that they would have a successful weekend leading our congregation, so I tried to pick songs that I thought they would be very familiar with. From all the feedback I’ve received from a lot of members of our congregation and others, they did a great job. The instrumentalists that played did a great job, and the vocalists that sang did a good job as well.

Here was our set:

• Come, Now is the time to Worship
• Welcome
• Worker Appreciation
• God of Wonders
• Better is One Day
• We Fall Down
• Message
• Surrender

This was the first time I’ve worked with the youth for a youth weekend at our church (even though I’ve been here for almost two years now) and it was great. One thing that was nice was that they listened to every thing I said and all the recommendations I made to them. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t always happen with the adults that I work with. And to think that teens get a bad rap for not listening, I think they did a great job.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s.

Happy Labor Day week to everyone!  Like many of you, I had Monday off for Labor Day… so now I’m trying to catch up on all the work I missed on Monday!  Sunday feels like so long ago, but it was really only a couple of days.

This past Sunday was communion; and we had a guest speaker; and I introduced a new congregational song… it was a busy morning!  Our practice ran late; partly because we weren’t able to practice on Thursday.  Only one person was able to make it Thursday, so we tried to meet really early on Sunday… and we still ran late.  But I think the extra practice paid off because we nailed the new Paul Baloche tune.

This is a song that I learned at the worship conference I went to a few weeks ago.  The song hasn’t even been recorded yet, but the song impacted me so much at the conference that I just had to bring it to my church.  So I taught it to my team and we taught it to the church.  I think it’s going to take a few weeks for them to get comfortable with it, but I know this song has big potential.  Be watching for it early next year; I really think when it hits the radio that it’s going to be the next “Open the Eyes of my Heart” song.  Yeah… it’s that good!

Here’s what our Sunday looked like:

• Sing Your Praise (original song written by me)
• All Hail the Power (cool arrangement of the hymn I came up with)
• Lord Most High (older Vineyard song; I’m not sure who wrote it)
• Communion (with songs between the elements)
• Mystery (just the chorus of this wonderfully simple Charlie Hall tune.  We did it on Easter and it’s stuck with our people for some reason)
• Glorious(this is that new Paul Baloche tune I was mentioning.  Man I love this song!  Once it comes out, you’ll understand what I’m talking about )
• I’ll Fly Away (Jars of Clay arrangement; but a little faster)
• Sunday School launch
• Body Life / Prayer for offering
• Video Slideshow- I put together some scenery and nature pictures of my recent vacation to Hawaii and while the slideshow was going I played “This is My Father’s World”… it was cool!
• Message: “The Pursuit of Happiness” – Ecclesiastes 1 & 2 (Steve Tompert)
• Closing prayer and challenge

To see what other Worship Leaders did during the week, head over to Fred McKinnon’s blog and join in on the conversation.  Have a great week!

Hi everyone!  I was on vacation last week (in beautiful Hawaii), so this is my first week back into the blog world.  I must say that coming home to the North West after being in Hawaii for a week is a bit of a challenge.  I suppose anytime you come back to reality it’s kind of hard.

This Sunday I had an older gentleman in our church lead worship.  I’ve been working on training a lot of younger worship leaders, but this guy actually used to be a worship leader about 20 years ago.  It was kind of fun seeing him in action and seeing his style; which is much different from mine!  But that’s a good thing: anytime we can bring variety and keep things different in our worship service, it gives our people something to look forward to and be excited about.

So Warren led worship by incorporating numerous songs and scriptures into the theme of “greatness”.  Basically, he started by asking the question: “What is so great about God?”  And then took various elements of God such as Him being our “great King”, or His “great Name”, or the “great power” of God, etc.  It was different, but kind of cool.

Warren ended up combining 13 songs and 15 different scripture passages throughout his worship set, so it’s a little hard to put down every song he did, but the service kind of looked like this:

• Welcome / Introduce Warren
• Worship Set on “Great” (included songs like “How Great is our God”, “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, “Immortal Invisible”, “There’s Just Something About That Name”, and many others!)
• Sunday School Implementation
• Mission Focus: The Haven’s (Missionaries to Reed College)
• Body Life / Offering
• Special Music: Sweet Hour of Prayer
• Message, “Enjoying Marital Intimacy”
• Closing Song: How Great Thou Art

It was nice to see a different style of worship leadership; and many of our older people appreciated the variance in music.  Not everyone is going to like the music 100% of the time, but I think we should always strive to make 100% of our people like the music at least some of the time.  That’s what ministering to the body of Christ is all about.

To check out other setlists throughout the country, hop on over to Fred McKinnon’s worship blog and see what other people are playing at their churches.

Early on last week I had a choice, I could spend the week trying to fill up the band, or do something different. Considering the amount of time I’ve spent over the course of this summer simply trying to have a band on any given weekend, I decided to do something different. So, I cleared the stage, moved the piano to Center stage & set up one additional mic. It was just myself and one of our female vocalists for the weekend.

It was fantastic. We had a great time leading and the congregation really seemed to enjoy participating. This gave me the opportunity to do some of the songs we don’t normally get to do and it gave the congregation the opportunity to enjoy a simpler worship time before their personal schedules got really crazy. It was really cool.

Here was our Set:

• Rest In Your Peace (mine)
• Welcome
• Come Thou Fount
• Great & Marvelous (Love this tommy walker song)
• Speak to Me (Also, another great Tommy Walker song)
• Draw Me Nearer (Diane Sheets Arr.)
• Sermon
• All of my Days

Our vocalist really knocked great and marvelous out of the park this weekend. It was just a great time to simplify things and really get to enjoy the time of worship!

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

This weekend was my first weekend back after vacation, it was kind of like going back to school. I wasn’t gone for long, but it was still a little weird coming back. Maybe you’ve experienced that same feeling?

This was a great weekend. Our focus was on communion and enjoying our salvation. So, we did a short sermon and spent a little more time on communion as well as split the service up in a different way. The service was quite a bit shorter than normal, which might be considered a summer treat!

We also got to play one of my new songs at the end of the service as a special. It’s a song called “Rivers of Love.” I’ll put a recording up on our social network (worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com) soon.

Here was our service:

• Welcome
• Because of Your Love
• Alive Forever, Amen!
• Happy Day
• Sermonette
• Love Like Rain
• Jesus Paid It All
• Communion
• Rivers of Love

On Saturday night, we had a little problem with Jesus Paid It All, I started it a little too fast, which threw her off throughout the song. We fixed that for Sunday morning, so that was much better. We didn’t quite get enough work on Rivers of Love to be able to play it like I wanted it, but considering we only rehearsed for a short time before the service on Saturday, it worked out pretty well.

How did your services go? To hear from other worship leaders, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

The first part of the week, I attended a worship conference in Hillsboro, Oregon.  It was the Integrity Conference (“Deeper”) with Paul Baloche, Brian Doerkson, Kathryn Scott, etc… and it was AMAZING!  By the end of the conference I felt so excited for ministry; I was genuinely pumped for Sunday and wanted to share with my whole church all the things I learned.

So on Sunday, I did that: I opened up the service by simply sharing all the things that inspired and convicted me.  One of the biggest things was the idea of our church being a community and a family.  So, we spent nearly 20 minutes having “Family time”.  I’ve never tried anything like it before, but it went over surprisingly well!  I litterally had people get to know the person next to them and then I took the microphone around the church and had people share what God was doing in their lives.  It was great to see the response!

It was certainly a little risky, and I was a little nervous; but most of the feedback I got was positive so I think we’ll try it again sometime.  Here’s what our whole service looked like:

• “Family Time”
• Come, Now is the Time to Worship(Brian Doerkson)
• Here I Am To Worship (Tim Hughes)
• We Fall Down (Chris Tomlin)
• Testimonies from the Clark County Fair
• Glorious(this is a new song that Paul Baloche taught us at the conference.  It hasn’t been recorded yet so you can’t find it anywhere… but I really think this song has the potential to be the next “Open the Eyes of my Heart”!  After hearing it several times at the conference, I was able to pick up enough of it to bring back to church on Sunday… talk about cutting edge!)
• Message: “Loving a Fool” Part Two (Jim Draper)
• Closing video: “Cats in the Cradle” (this was in connection with Jim’s message on parenting)

There you have it!  For more weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great week!

After a two week break, I’m back on the blog.  Oddly enough, I wasn’t on vacation or even gone these last two weeks… I just have been so busy that every time I think about blogging there’s about 15 other things that I need to be finishing right then.  Part of my busyness has come from this big outreach event that I’m coordinating.  We have a booth at the local fair for the express purpose of evangelism; I’m the one who is in charge of the scheduling.  I’ll tell you what: scheduling 88 shifts is not easy when you’re trying to work with busy people’s schedules!

But I got everything scheduled and now I can focus on what I really love: worship music!  This Sunday was incredible.  I really felt like God was using me and speaking through me.  The last several weeks I’ve tried to not let my emotions control how I perceive worship, and this week I really sensed that God was working.   At the end, we all kind of broke into this spontaneous chorus of “How Great Thou Art”; it was really neat!

Of course, the practice wasn’t that great.  We went super late and I was getting pretty stressed out.  I like to be done by 8:30 and we went all the way up until 9:00; any later and we wouldn’t have time for prayer.  I made a commitment long ago that I wouldn’t sacrifice prayer time for practice time.  I know some people disagree with that philosophy; but my take is that at a certain point you just need to give it to God.  So we did and I think God really moved this Sunday.

So, here was our service:

• Meet With Me(Ten Shekel Shirt)
• Thy Mercy (Caedmon’s Call)
• Mission Focus: Supported Missionaries in Italy
• Special Prayer Focus: Outreach at Clark County Fair
• Jesus Paid it All (arr. of hymn off the Passion album, “Everything Glorious”)
• Draw Me Close (Kelly Carpenter)
• Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redman)
• Shout to the Lord (Darlene Zschech… classic!)
• How Great Thou Art (this was a spontaneous song and our whole church rose up as we lifted our voices… it was a sweet moment)
• Message: Loving a Fool; a message on parenting (Jim Draper)
• Draw Me Close Reprise

To check out what other people are doing, go over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.  God bless!

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done a review. Sorry about that. Life has been a little crazy and quite honestly I’m a little burned out right now, so those would be the two major culprits for why.

This weekend, we didn’t have a drummer. Every week seems to be a struggle to find a drummer, and I probably could have found one for this week, but as I started thinking about it, I realized I might be shooting myself in the foot by always finding someone. If there happens to be a drummer in our church who just hasn’t stepped forward, and they always see that there’s a drummer playing, they may think that they’re not needed. So, going a week or two here and there without a drummer might actually prove to be a more effective recruiting tool. Who knows, I guess I’ll find out.

I also decided to try something different this week. Instead of just doing a couple of songs, giving announcements and doing a couple more songs, I decided to start off with the welcome, and then just plow right through 6 songs. We never do six songs, I’m pretty sure the most we’ve ever done since I’ve been here is 5, so this was a first for us. But, I’ve been thinking and evaluating our worship services over the past few weeks, and one of the things I think I’ve figured out is that one of the reasons people don’t enter in to worship is because we’re not giving them the opportunity. We’re starting & stopping and we never give them enough time to put the week behind them and get into worship. So, that’s what we did and It worked quite well.

Here was our set:

• The Heart of Worship
• Here I Am To Worship
• A Greater Song
• How Can I Keep From Singing
• Hosanna
• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Message
• Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

For more Weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Service on Sunday went really well.  I had one of our guitarist lead the entire service: he picked the music, put the order together, ran practice… the whole thing!  He did a great job too; it was very encouraging for me to just be on the piano as Dan led.  This is something we’ve been working towards as a Worship Ministry and it is awesome to now have 5 people on my team who have led an entire service.

Here is what Dan did on Sunday:

• Lord Reign in Me
• Take My Heart (Holiness) (Scott Underwood)
• Baptisms
• Forever (Chris Tomlin)
• You Are My All in All(Classic Dennis Jernigan)
• There is None Like You
• Mission Focus: Commission Michelle for Australia
• Body Life
• Special Song: Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful (Keith Green)
• Message: Forgiveness is a Choice
• Forever (Nails in Your Hands)

We did a beautiful acoustic version of Forever (Nails in Your Hands) at the end as we had a responsive time of forgiveness and looking at the cross.  It was pretty powerful and I was happy with how it all went down.  Check out what other Worship Leaders are doing over at Fred McKinnon’s place.  Have a great week!

Hi everyone!  Hope you all had a great Sunday.  Ours seemed strangely empty; as if half the church decided to go on vacation this week.  Did anyone else have this happen to them on Sunday?  I don’t remember last year being so vacant, but for some reason a lot of people were gone this week.

That didn’t stop us from having some great music.  It actually was one of the better sets we’ve done (musically).  Practice went okay; I was a little nervous about some of the transitions and hits/stops we were doing.  The first two songs went pretty smooth, but then around the fourth song things really started grooving.  We were in the pocket and it felt great.

I’m still struggling with that concept of not letting my emotions be an indicator of how good or bad the service was.  David and I even recorded a podcast episode about that.  It’s hard when you “feel” like things were flat… or when you “feel” like things rocked.  There certainly needs to be emotion–after all: what we do is a very emotional thing.  So, I’m still wrestling through how to be a good Worship Leader that has passion and emotion but isn’t dictated by it.  It’s a struggle worth fighting for!

Here’s what we did on Sunday:

• Your Grace is Enough (Tomlin)
• My Redeemer Lives (Reuben Morgan: Hillsong)
• Open the Eyes of my Heart(Paul Baloche)
• Forever (A song a friend of mine wrote: John Ross)
• Mighty to Save(Another Hillsong: Reuben Morgan and Ben Fielding I think)
• The Stand (United: Joel Houston or Marty Sampson… one of those guys)
• Mission Focus: Commission Dwight Johnson for long-term ministry in Taiwan
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• VBS Presentation
• Message: “Facing Our Problems Together” (Book of Philemon)
• The Stand (this was a responsive song I played by myself while people came forward to the alter for prayer; it was great!)

To check out what other Worship Leaders are doing, go to Fred McKinnen’s website.  God bless!

It was Fourth of July this weekend and I had a lot of people gone on my worship team.  In the past, I’ve ended up doing just a “piano service”; but this year I had enough people to do a small band.  So there was four of us on Sunday and it was a lean, mean crew.

It’s kind of cool having a smaller band because everyone gets a little more exposure and the sound is a lot tighter.  Of course, you also have the potential to highlight any mistakes you make; but I’m proud of my crew on Sunday.  I think we did well!  Here’s what our service looked like:

• Patriotic Medley (This was a smattering of songs like “God Bless America”, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, etc.  Our church has a lot of veterans and many people who “bleed red, white, and blue”, so these kinds of patriotic things are always very special for our church).
• Your Love Oh Lord (Third Day)
• Come Thou Fount (Standard hymn arrangement; with a few modified chords)
• You are my King (Amazing Love) (Billy Foote)
• Sanctuary/I Exalt Thee Medley (Classic songs; can’t remember who wrote them)
• There is Power in the Blood (We did a bluegrass/southern gospel version of this song; it was fun!)
• Mission Focus: Testimony from the Czech Republic
• Prayer for Offering
• Message: “How to Have a Good Fight”
• Sanctuary Reprise

We did a lot of “older songs” on Sunday… but you know what: it was awesome!  I think a lot of times I shy away from doing songs that were written 10+ years ago.  And while a lot of songs have a “shelf life” and you need to just let some of them die at pasture, there are other songs that have a lot of meaning despite their age.  I’m trying to do better about not looking at the year the song was written, but looking at the message in the song.

Well… that’s it for me! Check out what other people are doing over at Fred McKinnon’s site.  God bless!

I don’t know about you, but this was a weird week. We canceled our Saturday evening service because it was the fourth of July (for anyone not from America, that’s an important day for us, and if you’re from Great Britain – well – sorry). So we only had one Service on Sunday morning, which means the band only had Sunday morning to get ready and one service to get it all right. Normally, we have rehearsal on Saturday afternoon (when everyone’s awake) and service on Saturday evening, sound check and run-through Sunday morning and Sunday morning Service.

Having to have rehearsal on Sunday morning was a little challenging for some of our members. Granted, that’s what most of you do, but our people aren’t used to that. At my last church we met at 7:15 every Sunday morning, here we never meet that early.

So, considering we only had Sunday morning rehearsal and one service, it all went pretty well. We weren’t perfect and I made plenty of mistakes, but the sum of the whole was pretty good.

Here was our Set:

• Beautiful One
• I am Free
• Welcome
• Amazing Grace (My Chains)
• Pardoning Blood (A new song I wrote)
• Sermon
• You are my King

I’ll get a recording of the song I wrote up on our player for you to listen to, you should go check out some of the other songs that are on there. (At the writing of this post, it’s just to the right —> )

For more weekend Reviews Check out Sunday Setlists over at Fred’s Place. You can also check out Kevin’s post.

Happy Summer Day to everyone!  The sun is out, and it’s a beautiful day in Vancouver, Washington.  Yesterday was a good day for our Worship Service at Laurelwood, but I’ll admit that it felt a little off.  I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced this, but the practice was great and things were just clicking and feeling good.  But then when the actual service rolled around, it felt… a little off.  Kind of flat.  I don’t know how to explain it.

I have to remind myself that our worship of Jesus is not contingent on feelings, but it’s hard when you’re not getting that “feeling”.  Do you know what I mean?  Don’t get me wrong: the service was good and people were connecting with God… it just didn’t feel as “powerful” as it did during practice.  I know that probably sounds terribly unspiritual; but that’s how I felt about it.

So here’s what we did:

• Your Grace is Enough(Matt Maher; Chris Tomlin cover)
• Testimony from Junior High Camp
• Missionaries in town (David and Catherin Love)
• Be Thou My Vision (my arr.)
• All Creatures of our God and King (David Crowder arr.)
• Holy is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
• Holy is the Lord(Vineyard; Jeff Searles I think)
• Message: “Dealing with Anger” (Guest speaker: Jim Draper)
• Closing: Holy is the Lord Reprise

We had a layperson in our church give the message on Sunday; he’s spoken a couple times and also teaches a Sunday School class.  He does a great job and is a great teacher… I always like it when Jim shares from God’s word.  To find out what others are doing on Sunday mornings, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog.  God bless!

Do you ever have one of those feelings? You know, when you haven’t heard from your drummer all week, and an hour and a half before the rehearsal is supposed to start, you give them a call to confirm, and they’re out on the lake? Yeah….so…..

We had two different drummers, one for Saturday evening and one for Sunday morning. They both did great, especially considering the extremely little time they had to rehearse.

We had a full band this week, we had two acoustics. I’ll be splitting these guys up though. I had paired a new guy with one of our more seasoned-chord-fiends for a while to get his feet wet, but this weekend he reached the place where he was comptent on his own and the challenge of working a band with two acoustics outweighed the risks of putting him on his own. So, next time around, he’ll be on his own.

I have to confess, I haven’t been preparing as much for worship as I should have been. This week I did though, and it did pay off. Especially for my vocals. I still had my share of pitchy parts, but the whole was better than previous weeks. I just realized this week why my voice is so much weaker now than it was. Aside from all the sinus & Allergy problems I’ve been having, I’m not singing nearly as much. I used to have both choir and worship band rehearsal once a week, now I’m just down to worship rehearsal, so I’m not working my voice as much as I should. So, this week, I’ve been singing with a lot of Steven Curtis Chapman & doing vocal workouts as well, they’re both really paying off.

Here was our Set:

• Today is the Day
• All We Need
• Missions Prayer
• All who are thirsty
• Rescue
• Sermon
• Breathe.

The sermon is part of our series on the Lord’s prayer. This week was about God providing our daily bread, being our source of life. We really focused on the “You are my Daily Bread.” portion of breathe and it really seemed to connect with people. Great weekend.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

So, things went pretty smooth on Sunday… much better than a couple weeks ago!  If you remember, two weeks prior, we went super long and we ended our service almost 30 minutes late.  I’ve been determined to help keep things on track the last couple weeks, so this Sunday we did a few less songs than normal (no special music) and I made sure to not make any comments that would just take up time.

On the positive, we ended right on time and everything flowed very smoothly.  But in a way, I kind of feel like I cheated.  I don’t know how to explain it.  Maybe part of it is because we did less songs, so I don’t really feel like I had to put as much into the service.  Maybe another part of it is because I had one of the gals on the worship team leading 3 of the 5 songs.  I’m not sure what it is… but I just don’t feel like I had as much invested this Sunday.  Anyone else ever feel that way?

But like I said, we ended on time which was a huge plus.  Here’s what our service looked like:

• Days of Elijah (Robin Mark)
• Welcome
• Mission Focus: Summer Workers for VBS
• Prayer for Offering
• Beautiful One (Tim Hughes)
• Forever (Nails in Your Hands) (Richard Cimino I think… it’s an old Calvary Chapel tune I used to sing in Junior High )
• Before the Throne of God Above (Great modern day hymn; not sure off the top of my head who wrote it.  It’s very similar to “In Christ Alone”)
• Majesty (Delirious… one of my favorite worship songs.  Our church loves this tune, and we really rocked it out on Sunday!)
• Testimony on Communication
• Message on Communication: Proverbs 18:19-22
• Father’s Day Presentation

Considering that there was a lot of things going on (Testimony, Father’s Day presentation), I was very happy to end on time… now I just have to balance how to feel invested in all aspects of the worship service.  For more weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnen’s Blog.

Do you ever find it hard to focus on 8 things at once? I sure do. How do we do it? Seriously! How can you focus on your vocals, your pitch, your keyboard parts, the other vocalists, the acoustic, the electric, the bass and the drums…all at the same time. I’ve got to be honest with you, it’s been a challenge.

So, it was Father’s day, and we didn’t really do anything special for it. We showed a video and handed out a book to dads, but other than that, we didn’t really pay much attention to it.

Here was our set:

• Never Gonna Stop
• Video
• Father’s Day Prayer
• A Mighty Fortress (My Arr.)
• Your Grace is Enough
• Surrender
• Sermon
• The Stand

We finally did the stand this weekend. I know a ton of you out there have done it a lot, but it was new for us, and it seems like people like it.

We had some tempo problems this week, lots of rushing. We also had some tuning problems, both with the instruments and vocals, it probably wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t perfect (not that it will ever be). I just hate it when we have good musicians in the congregation and the music isn’t as good as it could be. I know we’re not doing the music for them, but…..

We were trying to do a transition between “Your Grace is Enough” and “surrender” with just a one beat head nod from me, and it just wasn’t working. I was trying to depict the tempo with the head nod (much like I do when I’m conducting, only that’s with my hands), and it just wasn’t happening. I think we might be able to get better at it, but not this week.

That’s what we did, for more check out Sunday Set lists over at Fred’s Place.

I’m continuing on with the work of raising up other leaders on my worship team.  I wasn’t off stage and in the congregation like David was this week, but I did have a chance to work with one of our guitarist as he led some of the music.  It’s been great seeing other people step up… but there’s still a lot of work to do!

I echo David’s comments that it’s totally worth it to move in that direction.  It certainly takes a lot more work, but I’m excited to see people in our church really taking ownership of the worship ministry and getting excited about songs and creating themes, etc.

So here is what we did on Sunday:

• Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin)
• You’re Worthy of My Praise (David Ruis; classic song!)
• Welcome / Greeting
• Mission Focus: Graduating Students
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• I Need Thee Every Hour (Hymn with very cool mellow guitar finger-picking)
• You Alone (the song that made David Crowder famous!)
• You Are My All in All (Another classic that our people love)
• Agnus Dei (powerful chorus; very majestic)
• Message: “How Come We Can’t Get Along?” – Genesis 3
• There is a Redeemer (Keith Green; just guitar… very cool)

We had a lot of slower, older songs that really featured the guitar and our vocalist.  It worked out really good because as Dan was leading he had some power vocals supporting him.  I got a lot of great feedback; especially from some older people who really appreciated the guitar.  I’ve been trying to do less piano… maybe I won’t even play next week

To check out what other Worship Leaders are doing on Sunday, go on over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great week!

I wasn’t on the band at all this weekend. One of our volunteers (who used to lead worship at a church and has extensive music experience as well as his wife) led worship and it was great. He was face with a few challenges, a drummer who hadn’t played in 4 months, a drummer/electric guitarist who played bass and an electric player who played for the first time, and he did a great job.

It’s such a blessing to be able to have a solid team to step up on the stage and give me a weekend to experience worship from a different perspective. It’s also great to know that there’s a solid person there if I have to be gone for whatever reason.

Here was our (their) set:

• Because of Your Love
• Youth Presentation
• Famous One
• You Never Let Go
• Enough
• Sermon
• All of my days

It was a great weekend, it gave me a chance to see some of the things that are going on in the sanctuary, and to know some of the issues that we need to conquer. I’d really recommend this if you haven’t done it, even if you don’t have the resources to do it right now, start working towards it, it will pay off.

For more weekend review, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Hi everyone!  Church on Sunday was… well… it was long!  At Laurelwood we have a 75 minute service and I’m usually pretty good about planning and coordinating so we stay within 75 minutes.  But this Sunday, everything went long!

I take a lot of the blame because I think I was being somewhat naive about how much stuff I could pack into 75 minutes.  We did some scripture readings, a special song, communion, Summer Ministry highlight, a new song… and Pastor Mike began his new sermon series and was giving an overview of the entire series.

So, the whole service ended up being almost an hour and 45 minutes… that’s right: we went almost 30 minutes late.  That’s the kind of stuff that drives me crazy!  Melanie (my wife) had to remind me like 20 times to stop looking at my watch, but it was hard not to!  I was stressed and frustrated about the whole thing.

But on the positive side; it was actually a really great service!  And we’re lucky that we only have the one service so it didn’t interfere with other start times or anything.  People actually stayed engaged the whole time and most people I talked with didn’t even notice we were so late.  So, I feel okay about it, but I still am a little frustrated and want to make sure this week that I don’t plan too much!

• Opening Scripture: Romans 5:15-17
• Your Grace is Enough (Matt Maher, covered by Chris Tomlin… this was a new one for us but a lot of people knew it already)
• Enough (Chris Tomlin)
• Draw Me Close (Kelly Carpenter)
• Communion (with songs in-between elements)
• Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)
• Scripture: Romans 5:7-11
• Mystery (Charlie Hall)
• Your Grace is Enough (we did the whole song again because it was new and also appropriate at the end of communion)
• Caring Board Update
• Summer Ministry Focus
• Offering
• There is a Fountain (very cool arrangement of hymn)
• Message: “You Were Created for Relationship” – Genesis 1 & 2

So, as you can see it was a lot to try and fit in 75 minutes.  There were some things I could have cut, but like I said: it was good service that flowed well.  In fact, one of the gals on my worship team told me this might have been her favorite service to date from start to finish.  So I have really mixed emotions about the whole thing.  I want to stay on time and on track, but I want to be open and allow for God to do big things.  What do you do?

To check out what other people are doing, go on over to Fred’s blog and join in on the conversation.  Have a great week!

This was one of those weekends. You know the really good ones? We just had all of our ducks in a row, we had our A game on and it was good. Our Senior pastor, who’s a musician, actually thought it was a CD when he was hearing us from his office.

So, this weekend we had all of our 1st stringers on the docket and it makes all the difference in the world. I could trust the drummer and rest in his groove, I could work around the electric guitarist, figure out my stuff and know that it wouldn’t change in the middle of the worship service. Our Acoustic player was rock solid, holding the rhythm extremely well, and doing some other really nice and tasteful stuff, and our bass player was solid, picking up the groove with the drummer really well. We had to vocalists who led, so I could just focus on keys. It was great.

We had a few glitches at the Saturday evening service, but we got them all ironed out before our Sunday morning service. For instance, the opening prayer happened before the first song instead of after it, which made the start of the song that was supposed to be after a prayer, but was after a song pretty rough. That kind of threw the band for a loop.

Here was our set:

• Salvation is here
• Opening Prayer
• Let God Arise
• Endlessly
• Communion
• Nothing but the blood
• Sermon
• How can I keep from singing?

I may throw some recordings up here for you to listen to. It may not be as good as your group, but we felt pretty successful this weekend. I have to confess, I stacked the deck this weekend. I did everything I could to make sure that we had all of our A players playing together this weekend. I had several motivations, but it really paid off. I think it was good for our musicians (on stand and off) to hear a really good sound coming from a group of people we all know, not a group that we bring in from the outside. If you’ve never stacked the deck on a weekend, I’d highly recommend it. It pays off immediately and long-term.

For more weekend reviews, check out “Sunday Set Lists” over at Fred’s Place.

Ah, having a four piece band is both a great thing and a dangerous thing. It’s a great thing because it gives all the musicians plenty of room to be creative and musical. It’s dangerous because all of your errors are very exposed and if a part isn’t there, it’s more obvious.

That’s what this weekend was for me. We had a pretty solid group of musicians, who were able to hold their now, yet we were having other issues – like timing and rushing, etc. All in all, it was (…insert long writing pause for memorial day festivities…) still good, just frustrating to have issues like timing.

Here was our set:

• Alive Forever, Amen
• Read Isa 6:1-4
• Holy, Holy, Holy
• Prayer of focus
• How Great is our God
• Glory in the highest
• Fellowship
• Sermon (On Heaven)
• I Can Only Imagine
• Revelation Song

As far as the music connecting with people, that seemed to be really great. We’ve never done I can only imagine at our church, but people knew it pretty well. And ending on Revelation song after our Pastor shared a lot from the book of Revelation was also great.

One more week focusing on heaven and the after-life, then we’re back to normal. There aren’t all that many songs about heaven that we currently sing. Makes it a challenge.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned in my blog last week, I’ve been doing a lot of work to raise up other Worship Leaders in our church.� This Sunday, I had a guy on our team do a “Phase-3″ worship service (where he plans, prepares, and executes the entire service).� It was really cool!

One of the benefits of having others lead worship is that it keeps things fresh and exciting. Ryan has a different musical taste and style then me, so the songs he selected are not ones I would normally do on a Sunday… but they totally worked! That’s the beauty of worshipping in community together and having others who can compliment you. So even though I wouldn’t do these songs normally, when Ryan led them he did it with conviction and passion and it really worked out well.

Here’s what the morning looked like:

• Forever With You (Decyfer Down… cool Christian alt-rock band that sounds a lot like the early days of Creed.� We did this song as a Prelude with full band and vocals… it was a great way to set the tone of the morning.� Check out this song by clicking the link)
• Welcome / Memorial Day Prayer
• Mission Focus: Commission Colin Fenn (young high schooler who is going to Africa during the summer)
• Body Life / Offering Prayer
• You Never Let Go(David Crowder; we played images of flags and Arlington Cemetery during the song… VERY powerful!)
• Offering(Paul Baloche)
• Message: “How to Let God Know You’re Grateful” – Hebrews 13
• Rest (Skillet)
• Show Me Your Glory (Third Day)
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) (Chris Tomlin)
• Offering (Reprise with full band this time)

You can see we did a lot of “commercial” type songs; but it was really cool. And people responded surprisingly well. I had my reserves about the music, but I was super excited how it all went down. You can check out what other people did on Sunday by going to Fred McKinnon’sblog. Btw, Fred was recently featured on the CCLI video section.� Good job Fred!

This week I had another team member leading most of the music.  I’ve mentioned before how I’m trying to strategically get others leading and involved in worship leadership; but things are really starting to take off now.  My ultimate goal is to only be leading the entire service once a month (or maybe twice).  I’ve really been impressed by the need to empower others in leadership and this has been a very big step… it’s a lot of work though!

So, on Sunday I had a young gal who helps out in youth group leading in a “Phase 2″ setting.  I have three phases of worship leadership that I empower people with.  The first is where I pick the songs and just have the other person leading on the chorus of a couple songs.  The second phase is where I pick the songs, but I have the other person leading almost all the songs; including any “wrap-arounds” (welcome, call, challenge, etc.).  The final phase is where I have the other person pick out the music and lead the whole thing from start to finish.  Next Sunday I’m having one of my leaders to a “Phase 3″ worship service… I’ll let you know how it goes!

In the meantime, here is what we did on Sunday:

• Meet With Me(Ten Shekel Shirt… anyone remember them?)
• Your Love is Amazing (Hallelujah)(I think Brian Doerkson or Scott Underwood; it was originally recorded on the sequel to the Vineyard “Hungry” album titled, “Surrender”)
• Open the Eyes of My Heart(Classic Paul Baloche)
• Jesus, Name Above All Names(old Maranatha tune with a new chorus that my friend, Brian Cheney wrote)
• It is You (Newsboys)
• Mission Focus: Brian and Melanie Stark in Australlia
• Body Life / Offering
• Special: Turn Your Eyes (we did this as a special song because I borrowed a very cool arrangement that isn’t “normal”… from my good friend, Scott Olsen http://www.myspace.com/scottolsenband)
• Message: “Who is This King of Glory” – Hebrews 12
• Who is This King of Glory (Third Day)

You can check out more Sunday setlists at Fred’s blog.  See you next week!

This weekend was another challenging weekend. I am fighting another sinus infection and head/chest cold, and we didn’t have an electric guitarist for this weekend either. I know I’ve ranted and raved about this before, but it can be really frustrating that all the music being done in churches today, and all the music that’s coming out of Nashville is electric guitar driven. It can make it a real challenge to pull off a lot of the newer songs that are out there if you don’t have someone who can do that.

That brings up a question: How do you get new talent into you church? If you’re hurting for Electric guitarists, for instance, how do you get new electric players to come to your church, or to join you? I know it’s an age-old question, one that many of us and many of our predecessors have been asking. If you have any advice for me, I’d love to hear it.

I had a set chosen that was going to require some electric guitar, and wouldn’t really be possible without it, so I had to change a couple of songs that we were going to do and replace them with a song or two that I could carry on the piano.

Here was the set we ended up doing:

• Happy Day (Fee)
• Welcome
• Today is the Day (Brewster)
• Beautiful the Blood
• Amazing Love (That rescued Me) (Mike Honholtz)
• Message
• The Love of God (MercyMe Arr.)

For the most part, we pulled the songs off quite well without an electric, there were times when we despereately need the electric or something to add some of the power that the song was lacking. We didn’t have that much to build to on some of the more powerful parts of songs like Beautiful the Blood and Today is the Day.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

I hope everyone had an EXCELLENT Mother’s Day!  When I think about all my wife does for our family–while working a part time job–I wonder why we only give Mother’s one day.  If you are a Mother; hat’s off to you… thank you for all you do!  Even when I think about my own mother and the sacrifices she made for me (taking me to piano lessons; driving me to youth group every Wednesday night so I could lead the worship band; taking me to church early Sunday morning so I could play in “Big Church”, etc.), I realize how much I didn’t appreciate her.  Thank you Moms for all you do!!

Our service on Sunday had a “Mother’s Day” focus.  We’ve been going through the book of Hebrews, and this week we were in chapter 11 (The Hall of Faith).  Pastor Mike made some great connections about faith and Sarah bearing Isaac.  So, our worship set had a lot songs about faith and walking a life of worship in faith.

There were a few glitches along the way… the biggest thing is that two of our stage lights burned out during the service (what are the chances of two going out!)  The whole stage right was so dark; it was annoying.  Then there was some mix-up with the Mother’s Day presents we were giving to all the ladies.  Things kind of fell apart at the end; which was kind of frustrating because we planned so much for this morning.  But I’ve learned those things happen and sometimes you just shake it off and start over again on Monday.

Here’s how our Sunday looked:

• Awesome is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
• Famous One (Tomlin)
• My Faith Has Found a Resting Place (Great old hymn)
• Come Ye Sinners(another hymn with great text; we did it like the Robbie Seay Band cover)
• Enough (Tomlin again?!)
• Mission Focus: Gideon’s International
• Baby Dedication (on Mother’s Day… it rocked!)
• Hebrews 11 Montage (this was awesome; I spent a lot of work on this putting together different pictures that represent the various people in Hebrews 11; we then had some voice overs reading through the scripture… it was super cool!)
• Message: Living the Adventure of a Lifetime (Hebrews 11:7-40)
• Mother’s Day Presentation and presents

The music was good and went smoothly, it was more of just the technical stuff throughout the service and some details that fell apart.  In all, I think the Mothers appreciated the service and God was glorified.  To see what other worship leaders did on Mother’s Day, go on over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.

Happy Mother’s Day! I don’t know about you, but I’m thankful for my wife and the great mother she is and I’m thankful for my mom too. We showed a video from Worship House Media today, that I’d be willing to be a bunch of you showed too, it’s called “Why She Deserves a Day.”(You can view it at the bottom of this post.) It was great, it was humorous and made a great point. If you’re wandering why moms deserve a day, I’d recommend you go check it out.

The rest of the weekend wasn’t about Mothers, we’re starting a new series this weekend on the After life. We’re using the series graphics that Lifechurch.tv put out for a series they did called “So you’re dead, now what?” They’re a great, high quality graphic and it makes your job a lot easier if you have anything to do with the series or series graphics, I’d strongly recommend you check them out.

This weekend had its bumps. Our drummer didn’t show, and we were doing some new songs, well not really new, but they were new to our group. It’s hard to find very many songs about heaven and the afterlife that are contemporary, so if you know any, please let me know!

Here was our set:

• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Great in all the Earth (Mike Honholtz)
• “Why She Deserves a Day” video (View it below.)
• Prayer for mothers
• Did you feel the Mountains Tremble?
• We Will Dance
• Sermon
• Take my life (Hymn – Tomlin Arr. – didn’t work cut it for Sunday)
• Here am I (Mike Honholtz)

Again, if you have any songs that are great contemporary songs about Heaven or the afterlife, I’d appreciate your help. (Stryper’s “To Hell With the Devil” doesn’t count.)

For more Reviews check out Sunday setlists at Fred’s Place.

Hello out there.  This Sunday was great… and I wasn’t even there! :)  I joined about 25 men in our church for a Men’s Retreat during the weekend.  We left Friday afternoon and got back Sunday evening; we had an awesome time as men seeking God and drawing closer together.

Meanwhile, back at Laurelwood things went smoothly and without any glitches.  I have spent over a year now intentionally training and raising up other worship leaders within our church body.  There are now 5 people on my worship team who have led a service and 3 of those 5 could do an entire service without me there.  It is so exciting to see people stepping up and to empower them and free them into ministry.  It takes a lot more work to raise up other people (simply because I’m a control freak and it’s “easier for me to do it myself”)… but the rewards are so awesome and we’re starting to see the fruits of it at Laurelwood.

So, Angie Parr planned the service, led and executed the whole thing; and everyone I talked to said she did an awesome job!  Also, we had a lay leader in our church preach because Pastor Mike was at the Men’s Retreat too.  And we had another lay person lead communion… how cool to see the Body of Christ stepping up and working together.  It’s so awesome to see that Sunday church can happen when the Church gets involved.  Praise God!

Here’s what Angie did on Sunday:

• Call to Worship
• Beautiful One (Tim Hughes)
• Indescribable (Laura Story, but done like the Tomlin cover)
• Communion (with songs sung while the servers pass out the elements)
• Once Again (Matt Redman)
• The Wonderful Cross (Tomlin arr. of hymn)
• Bless That Wonderful Name (Old Gospel Spiritual I used to sing growing up in a Foursquare Church… I have no idea who wrote it; I can’t even find it on CCLI)
• Mission Focus: Testimony of “Serve Day”
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Always (United; great song that not enough people know about.  We started doing this song at Youth Group and it has really crossed over well for our people on Sunday.  Click the link to hear it on youtube)
• Message: “Peace in the Valley” – Psalm 23 (Steve Tompert)
• Always (ended with the whole song; kind of a reprise)

For more Weekend Reviews, you can check out Fred McKinnon’s blog

This weekend was my first attempt at going in a piano driven direction with a band. We still have a full band, rhythm electric, acoustic, bass & drums, and I played piano and keys. Instead of just trying to get by with what we had, I decided to put together a band where we could drive the band with acoustic instead of being stuck in the electric contemporary rut.

Here was our set:

• Rest In Your Peace (An original of mine)
• Center (Charlie Hall)
• Prayer
• Hungry
• Communion
• Jesus Paid it All
• Sermon
• Breathe

Rest in your peace (since I wrote it) is naturally a piano drive song, on Center I started with synth, the acoustic came in and carries the verses, then I really drove the chorus, play 5ths in an eighth note pattern. Hungry is also another naturally piano driven song, and the hook on Jesus Paid it all is a really easy hook to pull off on Piano.

I think it’s actually a really good style to work harder on for this group. I also think it’s good to set a style that you want the band to fit into. I can’t imagine that all the people in our congregation like the same style of music, and that they want to listen to it all the time, so why should we try to have the same style every weekend?

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Oh man… it has been a rough couple of weeks.  I was miserable and sick almost all of last week (which is why my Weekend Review post was noticeable absent last Sunday).  Today has been the first day that I’ve had the time to sit down and write this out… I’ve been so busy catching up with everything from last week.

Have you ever had that happen?  Where you are frantically trying to get caught up, but in the process other things fall behind?  I hate that.  I hate not being organized and in control; it drives me crazy!  So last week was a great reminder that I’m not always going to be in control AND IT’S OKAY!

I can barely remember what I did two Sundays ago; it was a miracle that I made it through the morning.  Luckily, I had one of my guitarists do most of the leading and singing.  It was her first time stepping up like this and she did great.  And next week I’ll be gone at a Men’s Retreat and am having my number two do the whole service.  Her and I have been planning this service for a while now and I’m excited to hear how it goes.

In the meantime, here’s what we did on Sunday:

• He is Exalted (classic Twila Paris)
• You’re Worthy of My Praise (David Ruis)
• Lord Most High (Can’t remember who wrote it; it’s an older Vineyard tune in 6/8; our people LOVE this song!)
• God of Wonders (another classic)
• Majesty (Done just like the Passion cover off the CD, “How Great is Our God”)
• Mission Focus: Bob DeViney testimony (a guy from our church has been serving in Baja Mexico for 3 months!)
• Pastoral Prayer / Offering
• Instrumental w/Scripture (Mark 11:22-26)
• Message: “Ya Gotta Have Faith” (Hebrews 11:1-6)
• I Exalt Thee(oldie goldie)

We did a lot of classic songs this week; some of them were older… some of them were REALLY older!  In all, it was a great week and I sure felt a whole lot better health wise then the week before.  If you want to see what other worship leaders are doing with music, go over to Fred McKinnon’s blog and check out more Sunday Setlists.  God bless!

Kevin

Can you say flem? This weekend’s review is shaping up to be something like a treatise on what not to do to your voice when your sick. #1 – Don’t sing – (whoops)…. #2 – Don’t Drink coffee – (Oh Well)….#3 – Don’t strain your voice, don’t cough too hard, don’t clear your throat – Oh well, it’s over now.

It was a hard weekend for that reason as well as simply trying to get the band together. Luckily, our Senior Pastor hasn’t been preaching these last couple of weeks because we’re doing the “Life, Money, Hope.” series from Lifechurch.tv and Dave Ramsey. (By the way, if you haven’t heard about it, or checked it out, you should definitely check it out – go to www.lifechurch.tv and search for Life, Money, Hope.)

I was also able to get an Electric guitarist from Kevin’s Church, which was also great. Our drummer was sick as well, so it could have been a really rough weekend, but it turned out pretty good. In light of my vocal problems and the other possibilities for disaster, it could have been a nightmare, but it went quite well.

Here was our Set:

• I Will Boast
• Welcome
• Jesus Lead On
• All We Need (Charlie Hall)
• Give it all Away
• Message
• Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)

The closing song fit perfectly. In the Message Dave talks about the bondage of Debt and actually uses chains as an illustration, so to close with “My chains are gone, I’ve been set Free.” was perfect.

All things considered, it was a pretty good weekend. I hope to not have a weekend like this again, but even if we do, I know we can get through it.

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

So, I was trying to avoid this, but I fear that it has happened anyway. You know what I’m talking about. You plan for months and then totally rock on Easter, then the weekend after  Easter  it all flops. Maybe it doesn’t flop, but  it’s not even on the same playing field as the weekend before.

Well anyway, it wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m sure, it just makes me wish that every weekend could be as well thought out, planned out, prepared for and rehearsed as Easter weekend. Maybe it can.

We’re really hurting for electric guitarists right now, so I tried someone on electric this week who has never played electric and he didn’t do too bad. He’s got one of the best set of ears of all the musicians I work with, so he can hear all the little intricacies of the electric part, so I think he’s really going to be great. For his first time, he did pretty well.

Here was our set:

• Let God Arise
• O Praise Him
• Welcome & Announcements
• A Greater Song
• Holy, Holy, Holy (SCC Arr.)
• Message set up
• Life, Money, Hope. Video
• I will offer up My Life.

For more weekend reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Whew!  A lot of work went into making this morning happen… and it was such a success!  I am so happy with how everything turned out.  Like many of you, I spent hours in practices and working indivdually with musicians; not to mention all the prep work and putting together teams of sound people and lighting/video stuff.  A LOT of work!  But it totally paid off in the end.

I’ve been at Laurelwood for about three years now, and I honestly feel like this was the best service we’ve ever had.  In addition to having a TON of people on Sunday (we had 450; whereas we usually average 325), the music was amazing.  I had so many people comment on the music; even older people who normally don’t like louder contemporary stuff were saying how much they enjoyed the service.  That made me feel great!

Now my only problem is I’m exhausted!!  I feel like I need to have an amazing service next Sunday, but I don’t know how to pull that off!  It got me thinking about all the time and work that goes into putting together an Easter or Christmas program.  What if we put that kind of work into making every service amazing and excellent?  Then I realized that I probably would never see my family and be exhausted all the time; so I quickly dismissed that notion

Okay, here’s what we did with our Easter service:

• All Because of Jesus (Steve Fee: straight off the his CD “We Shine”)
• My Redeemer Lives (love the classic Hillsong!)
• Christ The Lord is Risen (great Easter hymn)
• Christ Arose (another great Easter hymn with a cool arrangement I worked out)
• In Christ Alone (Getty/Townsend; we had a great sax solo during the turns; beautiful!)
• Body Life / Prayer for offering
• Still Amazed (special song during offering that a friend of mine wrote)
• Easter Message: “God’s Promises for You” – Hebrews 10
• I Will Rise (Beautiful new Chris Tomlin tune off of “Hello Love”; did it just like the recording complete with violin… except I had an alto sing it since it’s so high!)
• Mystery (Cool Charlie Hall tune we did last week; very cool build on the bridge)
• Mighty to Save (I think every church in the world did this song on Easter!)
• Shout Unto God (we did this as a “new ending” for Mighty to Save.  It’s done by Hillsong United and it’s really powerful.  I don’t know if people were expecting an ending like that, but I think it worked)

In addition to doing some great new music that really rocked, we had a lot of instrumentation.  Normally we do a pretty basic band with piano, bass, drums, and either electric or acoustic guitar.  But on Sunday we had all that plus auxilary percusion, violin, saxaphone, trumpet, and some great singers on alto and tenor.  It sounded REALLY good.  I was very happy with how it all turned out

I hope your Easter was equally wonderful.  To check out what other churches did with their Easter service, go on over to Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Have a great “week after Easter”!

As I’m sitting here waiting for our Easter dinner (Sorry if you’re kosher, but Mmmm Ham!), I thought I’d stop and do a quick review of the weekend. In Short, it Was AWESOME!!!  I’m sure (I hope) you felt the same way about your weekend, and since it was Easter I hope that’s the case.

We had it all going this weekend, and we got er done. Full worship band, choir, videos, lights, continuity from beginning to end, it was great. It’s got me thinking about things we can do year round that will help us come closer to achieving this caliber of service more often.

Here was what we did:

• “Worthy to be Praised” – soulful choir number by Bryon J. Smith
• Mighty to Save
• Alive, Forever. Amen!”
• “Our Hope” video from worshiphousemedia.com
• Bob’s story of hope (Our Senior pastor’s testimony)
• God of Wonders
• Welcome
• Town Hall for Hope (Promo video we used to promo the “Life, Money, Hope.” Series we’re starting next week.)
• Dismiss kids & Fellowship
• Sermon Part 2
• Video on Sin (About a Police officer in our church)
• Resuce
• All Because of Jesus
• Sermon Part Three
• Video about the same police officer and his wife adopting their son.
• Sermon part four
• Prayer
• Video about woman in our church who discovered our church was a safe place to ask questions
• “Starting Over” Robbie Seay Band.

If I had it to do over, I’d probably cut “Mighty to save” and find another upbeat, resurrection song to put in its place. “Alive Forever Amen” worked great, but “Mighty to save” seemed like kind of a downer after our opener. We did a good transition though, on the final beat of “Mighty to Save” we started the guitar intro of “Alive Forever Amen” and it worked really well.

We also did pretty much the same kind of a transition between “Rescue” and “All Because of Jesus.” I ended the song on keys and started “All Because Of Jesus” with a “loopy” patch on the Motif XS8. So, I faded out of the synth patch from “Rescue” after I started “All Because of Jesus.”

We did a cool Arr. of “God of Wonders” that the band Kevin was in – forgivenmuch – did. It’s a pretty cool, and yet simple arr. of the song, I’ll check into putting it up on here.

“Starting Over” went really well too, but doing it at the end of the service was a challenge because our vocalists voice had gotten cold, and the song requires a fair amount of vocal stamina.

For more reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Hello out there!  Palm Sunday at Laurelwood was AWESOME!  We didn’t have a cool worship band like David, but we did get A LOT of excitement about Easter.  You ever have one of those Sundays where it’s just fun and exciting and there’s joy in the air?  That’s how church was on Sunday!

Truthfully, a lot of it may have had to do with the weather.  It’s been rainy and cloudy for many weeks and this Sunday was absolutely beautiful!  There’s something about the sun that makes everyone a little happier than normal.  But whatever the case, our Sunday service was just great.  We did some excellent songs and really focused on the idea of “Jesus coming to town”.  The best part of all is that we took communion this Sunday with the idea that “the story doesn’t end here”.  That’s when everyone started getting excited about Easter.

So, here’s what our morning looked like.  All our music centered around Christ being our King and Hosanna; the one who saves.  It really worked well and people responded very positively:

• Prelude / Scripture Reading: Mark 11 (Triumphal Entry)
• Here is Our King(David Crowder)
• Hosanna(Paul Baloche)
• Mighty to Save (Hillsong)
• Communion (with songs in-between the bread and juice)
• Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)
• Grace Greater Than Our Sins (Hymn)
• Mission Report from Youth (our Youth Group went to New Orleans during Spring Break to help with continued recovery from Hurricane Katrina)
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Mystery (Very cool, new Charlie Hall song that we are doing for Easter.  If you haven’t heard it, check it out on iTunes or somewhere)
• Message: “Christ’s Immanent Return”: John 12 & Matthew 24
• Mystery (Reprise)

To check out what songs other Worship Leaders are doing on Sundays, you can visit Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Hope everyone has a great Easter week.  He is Risen!

This weekend we had a guest band leading worship for us. The Neverclaim is a band whose electric guitarist goes to our church, so they’re still somewhat connected here. It was great for a bunch of different reasons.

1.) It gave me a chance to work side by side with one of our sound techs on getting the sound that I’m looking for, so he got to experience first-hand and side by side what I’m looking for.

2.) It gave me a chance to go around and listen to and look at all the gear in use to make sure it’s working correctly. (Which I found out that our fill speakers don’t seem to be working quite right – something I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t have the chance to listen.)

3.) We got to expose the congregation to really good worship. Since they’re a band that does a lot of gigs, they have a few worship songs that they do and do them really well. They all know what their role is in the band and they stick to it and do it really well.

4.) We got to expose our musicians to a really good group that they can gain inspiration from. It’s important to give our musicians tangible inspiration that will drive them to work harder at perfecting their craft.

5.) It gave me a chance to learn a few things from their worship leader as well as to see what does and doesn’t work with our congregation. As I would expect, their vocal leader in the group has a very vibrant stage personality. I got to see how our congregation responded to his leading.

6.) It gave me the time I would have been preparing for this weekend to put into preparing for Easter.

Here was their Set:

• A Place to Start (Band Original)
• Your Grace is Enough
• Everlasting God
• Your Love Oh Lord
• Wash over Me (Band Original)
• Sermon
• Song of Hope (Robbie Seay Band)

They used a lot of loops in their music, and I got to talk to the guy who does them a lot about the process he goes through in creating the loops. It has been great to get to know a little more about the process, as it is something I’ve been interested in doing for a while.

For more weekend reviews check out Sunday Setlists on Fred’s Site.

This past Sunday was Spring Break for Vancouver, WA so A LOT of people were gone; especially people on my Worship Team.  And we had two short-term mission teams gone on assignment: one was the annual youth mission trip to Louisiana to help with rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina (there is still a lot of devastation); the other mission trip was to the Czech Republic to help one of our supported missionaries put together a gospel youth rally.

Between the two mission trips, 40 of our church members were gone on the mission field and most of my worship team was part of that crew.  So, I decided to just do a “Piano only” service.  It turned out to be pretty cool… and it’s actually a lot less stressful for me because I just have to worry about me   But it was really nice to just have a very simple, mellow service.  We did a number of hymns and I know a lot of the older people liked it.

• Be Thou My Vision (Standard hymn)
• Come Thou Fount (Standard hymn)
• From the Inside Out(United/Hillsong; great song that is getting pretty popular)
• Forever (this is a song that a friend of mine wrote; great tune)
• Shout to the Lord (done as a medley with Forever)
• Mission Focus / Prayer for Offering
• Scripture Reading: Hebrews 9:11-15 (with piano underscore: “Nothing But the Blood”)
• Message: “God’s Stimulus Package for You”: Hebrews 7&8
• Come Thou Fount (responsive song where people could come up to the alter and/or pray with an Elder / Pastor)

Even though the service was kind of mellow, it turned out really cool and it was very appropriate.  People responded to the responsive time at the end and I think God was doing His thing; people were taking care of business in their hearts and God gets all the glory!

For other Sunday Setlists, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog

Let me start by saying thanks to those of you who have been praying for my wife & I after the loss of our baby last week. It’s been so much more difficult than I could have ever imagined, but we’re starting to do a little better.

This weekend was my “keys” band weekend. I had another guy play the piano (he’s 15 and has perfect pitch – a great asset!) while I played keys. It actually kind of worked. We might have sounded a little 80′sish, but I think it was okay. We did Steve Fee’s “All Because of Jesus” and Ryan Egan’s “I am Free” with synth patch that sounded kind of like a loop (we didn’t have an electric to do the U2 delay kind of stuff that both of those songs have, so I did it on the keyboard.)

So, I’m trying to develop different bands. I was working towards developing a bunch of bands that basically all played the same style. I was continually frustrated because I didn’t have all the people we needed for every position of each band. But now, instead of trying to come up with 4 lead electric players, I only need 1 or two, and we’ll do lead piano or lead synth the other weeks, and who knows what other styles I might try. Suggestions anyone?

Here was our Set:

• All Because of Jesus (Fee – kind of)
• I am Free (Desperation band arr. – kind of)
• Welcome
• ‘Tis so Sweet to trust in Jesus (My Arr.)
• John 3:16
• “Sick” video (From Worship House Media)
• 1 John 4:9
• I’ll go where you want me to Go (Hymn – My Arr.)
• Rescue
• Sermon
• Amazing Love (I’ll never be the same) Mike Honholtz.

I was going to change the closing song, but talked with a couple of people who said I shouldn’t. Our former worship pastor used to play keys with Mike Honholtz, and I get the impression that a lot of Mike’s songs have been beaten into the ground here. It’s a great song, though, you should check it out.

For more weekend Reviews, check out Sunday Setlists at Fred McKinnon.com.

Hi everyone!  First of all, please be praying for David and his family.  If you’ve read his Weekend Review, you’ll know they are going through some tough times right now.  Keep them in your prayers and make sure to drop David some love.

Our service on Sunday was a blast!  We had Doug Valenzuala, a missionary from Italy, preach on Sunday (our church has been supporting him since 1977!) and the guy is hilarious!  If you’re interested, you can listen to his message online at our church’s website.

So, having Doug was a lot of fun and the music just augmented to the service.  People were singing and there was a lot of joy in the air… it was really fun and refreshing.  And it was actually kind of nice to be leading as the last two Sundays I’ve had co-leaders doing all the music and leading.  Here’s what we did:

• Call to Worship / Prayer
• Hosanna(Paul Baloche; great song for Easter Season)
• Unchanging (Chris Tomlin)
• I Will Worship You (This is a song one of my co-leaders wrote… good Easter message)
• Mighty to Save (Hillsong; another Easter themed idea)
• The Stand (United/Hillsong… our church LOVES this song!)
• Welcome New Members (had our annual Business Meeting last week)
• Body Life / Prayer for Offering
• Great is The Lord sung as a special during Offering (on Saturday, we had a memorial service for a guy in our church who passed away; this was one of his favorite songs so it was very meaningful)
• Message: Doug Valenzuala on Acts 20:20-24
• Closing Prayer

For more Sunday Setlists, you can check out Fred McKinnon’s blogroll.

Musically this was a great weekend. The band was tight, the vocals were tight, and the flow was different and good.

Here was our set:

• Happy Day
• I Will Boast
• Easter Presentation
• Acts 4:1-22 reading
• God of Wonders
• Acts 4:23-31 Reading
• The Love of God (Mercy Me”ish” arr.)
• Sermon
• I’m forever grateful.

Personally, this has been a very hard weekend. My wife & I found out on Friday that we lost our baby. My wife was 14 weeks along. My wife has been having to go through things to help “deliver” the baby, so this weekend has been incredibly difficult.

For more weekend Reviews go check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Hi everyone!  I’ve been reading some of the discussion on church choirs (from David’s Weekend Review and comments).  I think it’s cool that churches are thinking about choirs and how to strategically use them.  I personally am not much of a “choir person”… we’re actually not even doing a choir this Easter (which is a first for our church).  How cool that God makes each church and each leader unique to bring flavor to the Body of Christ.  In other words, some churches (like David’s) are doing choir for the first time to do something different; and then other churches (like mine) aren’t doing choir for the first time as a way of doing things different.  LOL!  You got to appreciate the diversity of the local church.

FYI: David and I recorded a whole Podcast episode awhile back on church choirs.  Check it out and jump in on the conversation! http://www.worshipministrycatalyst.com/?p=224

Our Sunday Service was again led this week by one of our co-leaders: Rachel.  I tasked her with finding some creative ways of doing the service, and she stepped up to the challenge!  I have been encouraged by the response and feedback I’m getting from the congregation: people seem to enjoy seeing others lead even if it means the music is different or not as polished.  This has been a great strategic decision to help with our mission statement of empowering other leaders in our church.

So, here’s what the service looked like:

• Welcome / Call to Worship (Rachel)
• Promises (a great Jared Anderson song that not enough people know)
• Veggie Tale Video Clip (from the story of Abraham and Sara dealing with God’s promise)
• Above All(classic Lenny LaBlanc)
• Rescue (another Jared Anderson song; this one is more familiar as it was covered and made famous by New Song)
• I Surrender All (hymn with a cool guitar groove that Rachel worked out)
• Testimony time (One of our youth went to India for a month)
• Offering song: Amazing Grace (This was cool: Rachel sang with her sister, her mom, and her grandmother: 3 generations were on stage doing this quartet arrangement of Amazing Grace… it was powerful!)
• Message on God’s Promises: Hebrews 6
• Closing / Transition into Annual Business Meeting

Check out more Sunday Setlists at Fred McKinnon’s site

This weekend we had the worship choir singing with us, so we had a pretty laid back band. I kind of rushed the choir into singing this weekend, because I wanted to do some promo to round up some people for our Easter Choir. They did a great job.

We had some technical issues, we couldn’t get the choir up loud enough as they were right in front of the drum cage. Even though the drums are fully enclosed, we finally got them up in this mix during our service this morning by adding another mic.

It was probably a frustrating week for the band, as they were primarily a “pit band” who accompanied the choir, but they did a great job and hope they enjoyed their time.

I love choir! Choir is still pretty new to us. I guess they used to have one here way back in the day, but they haven’t had one at all for the last 7 or 8 years except for the occasional song for Easter or Christmas. I’m really excited about the possibilities that having a choir will bring us.

Here was our set:

• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Your Grace is Enough
• Welcome
• Choir Promo Video
• Easter Choir Announcement
• Majestic (Brewster)
• How Can I keep from Singing
• Sermon
• Be the Centre

For more weekend review, checkout Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Hi everyone!  I’m writing to you all from my hotel room in Bend, OR (which is about 4 hours South East of Vancouver, WA).  I’m at a conference all week for the NorthWest Conservative Baptist (which is the association my church is a part of) and it’s been great so far!  I’m looking forward to a week of hearing from Dr. Gerry Bresheres on the New Testament model of the local church… it’s going to be awesome!

Speaking of awesome, our service on Sunday was pretty awesome.  I had one of my co-leaders (Ryan) do the entire service from start to finish.  He picked the music, arranged the service order and actually led/executed.  It went really well; Ryan even introduced a song that he wrote, which was very meaningful for our church.  Here’s what it looked like:

• Instrumental Prelude: There is No One Like You (David Crowder)
• Welcome / Body Life
• Mission Update / Prayer for offering
• Psalm 25 (read during the offering with keyboard in the background)
• Message on Hebrews 5
• I Will Worship You (New song that Ryan wrote)
• Kindness (classic Chris Tomlin song)
• Take my Life (aka “Holiness”, written by Scott Underwood; made famous off the SonicFlood album)
• Unchanging (another Chris Tomlin song… GREAT song!)
• Let my Words be Few (Matt Redman song… another GREAT tune that our church loves!)

Next week I’m having another co-leader do the entire service from start to finish (including picking the music, etc.)  It’s been fun having other people use their creative talents in the service and I think we’re starting to see some of this idea of communal worship.

For other Sunday Setlists, check out Fred McKinnon’s blog

For some reason this weekend was really stressful, at least through rehearsals. I can’t put my finger on it, but especially at our Saturday afternoon rehearsal, we were working diligently and just didn’t seem to have nearly enough time. Maybe it’s because we had a larger group than normal with several different newer folks, so my attention was split.

However, once we got into the service, things seems to run pretty smooth. Not perfect, better than I had anticipated with as unpolished as we seemed to have left things in rehearsal.

We had our midweek rehearsal with almost all of the band there, we were just missing one acoustic player. We were only able to work up a few of the songs, and I was hoping that would be enough to give us a good jumpstart for the weekend.

We also had a worship concert on Friday night, which the stage was completely struck for, so there were a bunch of little things that hadn’t been put back correctly that had to be dealt with right before rehearsal.

All that so say, we weren’t feeling at our best in the service last night, in spite of that it all seemed to work pretty well. For the most part the band was able to get through the music without any major hiccups and nothing that was majorly distracting (except for when I started “I’d rather have Jesus” in 4/4 instead of 6/8.)

Here was our set:

• Hosanna (Baloche)
• Call to Worship Prayer
• All We Need (Hall)
• All Who Are Thirsty (Brown – Kutless Arr.)
• Sermon
• Sweetly Broken
• Communion
• I’d Rather Have Jesus.

Here was the band:

• Acoustic 1 – Steve
• Acoustic 2 – Tim
• Drums – Casey
• Bass – Alan
• Electric 1 – Phil
• Electric 2 – Steve
• Piano – Me
• Soprano – Lisa
• Alto – Tracie
• Lyric Presentation – Nathan
• Lyric Presentation Shadow – Jeff
• Sound – Todd
• Sound Shadow – Phil

For more weekend Reviews Go Check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

Hi everyone! We had a very full service on Sunday, and it kind of turned into a headache as I was coordinating with different people during the week and trying to keep everyone on track and on time for Sunday. Part of the service involved communion (which we take on the first Sunday of every month); and communion Sunday always seem to end up running late.

Either way, it was a good service with some new music that I wrote. If you want to listen to one of the new songs, click on the link listed below (keep in mind these are just board feeds that don’t sound that great… you can’t even hear the drums! And what’s worship without drums?! The congregation seemed to really responded well to the new one I wrote.

Here’s what we did:

• Opening testimony and video (a family in our church has a 7-year old son with cancer; we’ve been praying for them and I thought it would be cool to start the service with an update and video on his progress)
• Great is the Lord (old Steve McEwan song)
• Jesus Messiah (new Chris Tomlin song)
• Communion (between songs)
• You are my King (Amazing Love)
• Grace Flows Down (off the Passion “One Day Live” album)
• Sing Your Praise (song I wrote several months ago that we’ve been singing)
• Mission Focus / Offering
• Your Word is Alive (new song I wrote)
• Message on Hebrews 4:12-16

For more Sunday Setlists, you can visit Fred McKinnon’s site

I keep meaning to do a new graphic for weekend reviews and I just keep forgetting. I’ll try to get you a new one this week so you don’t have to look at the same one all the time.

This weekend has been a great weekend. Aside from not having our drummer at rehearsal on Wed. we were really well prepared for the weekend. We had our band practice on Wed. evening for all the band (minus the drummer), we had a vocals rehearsal on Saturday at 3:00 and full rehearsal at 4:00 (pm not am). There were still some skiffs along the way, but all in all, I feel like we were far better prepared to lead this weekends than I feel we are on most.

We did Lincoln’s new song “Today is the Day” which fit really well with our sermon last weekend. I planned on doing it last weekend, but when we didn’t have electric and I wasn’t sure about drums I cut it and opted for songs we already knew. However doing the song this week gave me an interesting tie back to last week. I was able to tell people to think back to last week as what pastor Bob talked about in terms of Sloth and diligence.

Here was our set:

• Today is the Day (Lincoln Brewster)
• Because of your Love (Paul Baloche)
• No Greater Love (Tommy Walker)
• Prayer to be diligent in our worship
• Beautiful the Blood (Fee)
• Your Name (Paul Baloche)
• Sermon
• Surrender (James Marc – Lincoln Brewster Arr.)

I’m really diggin’ Tommy Walker right now. It’s got a fresh feel for us, gives us a style that’s a lot different from most contemporary, our people seem to be liking it too.

For more weekend Reviews, go check out Sunday Setlists at Fred’s Place.

I’m just not sure. (I thought about just writing that with no explanation, but figured it would probably be frustrating to you.) I’m not sure where to start or even all of what happened.

We had a drummer who didn’t show up, so I had to ask someone to come who only got to sit through about 40 minutes of rehearsal. He did a tremendous job, but we ended up wasting quite a bit of time waiting for the other drummer, we tried to rehearse without him, but having a lot of new musicians on the team this weekend made that a challenge.

We’re doing a series right now called Elevate – it’s on the 7 deadly sins. This week was on sloth. We’ve built a staircase to use as a prop, and each week we’re adding a step with what the counterpart is to the sin. The opposite for sloth that our Senior pastor landed on was Diligence. My lack of diligence forgot to print the sign up for the step until right before the service, and instead of using diligence as the opposite, I used next week’s opposite – love. I fixed it for this morning.

Here was our set:

• Every Day (Brewster arr.)
• Never Gonna Stop (Walker)
• Welcome
• Praise Adonai (Paul Baloche)
• Here Am I (Mike Honholtz)
• Sermon
• Grace Greater than our Sin (Hymn)

We didn’t do the closing song on Saturday night due to a family emergency. We would appreciate your prayers. My wife is pregnant with our third child, and we had to rush her to the emergency room in the middle of the service last night because of some complications with the pregnancy. I don’t want to get into the details here, but my wife is fine and the baby was moving in the ultrasound, so everything seemed to be okay. We’re just praying that is stays that way. Thanks for your prayers!

For more weekend Reviews, go check out Fred’s Sunday Setlists.

Hi everyone!  Well… I didn’t have the “Valentine’s Day Problems” that David had since we just have a Sunday service.  But, I did have some other challenges to face as we had one of the laypeople in our church (Steve) preaching this Sunday.  Additionally, I had one of my co-leaders leading most of the songs and she led most of the practice.

I was a little nervous going into this Sunday because I knew it would look, feel, and sound different than most other Sundays… but it went really well!  I was super impressed with the message and also with the way Rachel led the practice and the songs.  I’ve been trying to be more intentional about having others lead.  It’s one of those deals where I don’t want to be a control freak; it’s so much more meaningful when others have buy-in and actually are leading.  That’s one of my big goals for 2009: to do less and have others do more!

So, here’s what we did on Sunday:  Steve was preaching on 1 Corinthians 15, which is all about heaven, and the rapture… so we set the stage right at the beginning of the service explaining how all the songs have to do with heaven and the scripture passage; making the whole service very thematic.

• I’ll Fly Away (old hymn with a cool “Jars of Clay” arrangement)
• Soon and Very Soon (old Andre’ Crouch song… similar arrangement as “I’ll Fly Away”)
• Marvelous Light (Charlie Hall)
• I Can Only Imagine (Mercy Me/Bart Millard)
• Forever (Calvary Chapel tune… “The nails in Your hands / The nail in Your feet…”)
• Better is One Day (Matt Redman; arrangement straight off the “One Day Live” album)
• Commissioned Mission Teams
• Special Song: “I Surrender All” (sung in Spanish like on the new Michael W. Smith album)
• Message on 1 Corinthians 15:50-58
• Amazing Grace (just piano and vocals)

It was a good service; and it was really good having other people take such an active role in the music and the message.  For more weekend reviews, check out Fred McKinnon’s  website

This is one of those times that Having a Saturday night service really impacted us. Generally speaking it seems to be a pretty convenient time for a large group of our body and the people who serve on a weekend, but when that service falls on Valentine’s Day, it makes things a little bit more challenging.

Knowing it would be difficult, I had our secretary start calling two weeks ago to try to find out who would be available. The only problem is that we did hear from some of them until a few days before the weekend, which didn’t leave any time to find replacements on a weekend like this one.

That said, I decided to back the band all the way down to just piano and two vocals. So instead of looking like we weren’t able to get the band together for this weekend, it would look like we had intentionally decided to go with just a piano and two vocals for the weekend.

The amazing thing is that it worked. When we were talking about it last night after the service, one of our pastors said that he had thought it was on purpose. Until he talked to another pastor who knew that it wasn’t, he thought we had planned it that way.

Going with just the piano, allowed us to go a little old school, which we don’t get to do very often, but really worked well thematically with the sermon.

Here was our set:

• Amazing Love (Mike Honholtz)
• Scripture: Romans 12:9-16
• Good To Me (Craig Musseau)
• Welcome
• Bible Sharing
• You are so Good to Me (Third Day”ish”)
• Scripture: 1 Thes. 5:16-18
• Wherever He Leads (Hymn I wrote new music too.)
• You are my King (moved this here for Sunday morning)
• Sermon
• I’m Forever Grateful. (Mark Altrogge)

Our senior pastor joined us on acoustic for Sunday morning, all we needed was an upright bass and fiddle and we could have had a pretty cool folk group up there. Maybe next time!

Check out more Reviews and set lists over at Fred’s Place.

Hey everyone!  Well… here it is: my very first Weekend Review.  Actually, this is my very first blog.  I’m really not much of a blogger or a writer.  I have no problem getting on the air and recording a podcast with David, but this whole blogging thing is new to me and outside my box!  But I’m going to give this a try!

Pastor Mike has been going through the book of Hebrews on the sermon series: “Knowing the God Who Knows You”.  Last Sunday was all about Christ’s humility leading to His exalation (Hebrews 2:5-18).  So I really wanted to do some songs that would focus on that beautiful idea of Christ humbling Himself; an image of humility and grace leading to a place of praise.  As such, we started things off pretty mellow, but then worked our way to a place of total praise!

• Scripture reading from the Worship Team Vocalists (Philippians 2:5-11)
• Here I Am To Worship
• Here is Our King (this is where things started picking up!)
• Forever (Tomlin)
• Jesus Messiah (also Tomlin)
• Holy is the Lord (another Tomlin?!?)
• King of Kings (a Clay Heacock song I learned at a Calvary Chapel conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
• Offering
• Mission Focus
• Message
• I Dare You to Move (Switchfoot… and it rocked!)

I kind of took a gamble on that closing Switchfoot song, but Pastor Mike really wanted it and it tied in perfectly with Mike’s closing challenge, so we did it and rocked it pretty good (especially for not having an electric guitar this week!)

For more Weekend Review’s, check out Fred’s Place. Thanks for listening!

This has been another great weekend.  It’s my “shadow” weekend. Ideally, I’d like to get to the point where this is happening every weekend, but for now, we’re doing it once a month. We had a new acoustic guitarist & a new electric guitarist as well as a new Lyrics person. I would recommend doing this if you don’t. We still have total control over the sound as we can pull the apprentices out of the mix if we need to, it is a really encouraging experience for the apprentices and it’s very exciting for the team and (at least in my case) for the church to see new people up on stage getting plugged into the Worship Arts Ministry.

In the past I’ve been too afraid of compromising our sound to have new people up there without having worked with them a lot beforehand (which we still do) because I was afraid that it would really jeopardize people’s worship experience. I was wrong. People seem to really enjoy it.

Here was our set:

• Let God Arise (Tomlin)
• Everlasting God (Brown)
• Welcome
• Communion
• Sermon
• How Great is our God w/ the Chorus of How Great Thou Art (Tomlin & Hine)
• Hosanna

Our pastor finished his sermon talking about worship so we did a little bit longer of a set at the end of the service this week. It seemed to work well. We were running late, so I was worried that people would be feeling like they wanted to get out of there, but that didn’t seem to be the case for the majority anyway.

That’s what we did, check out what some others did over at Fred’s Place.

All the stars aligned and worship was awesome. So, I don’t actually believe in the stars aligning or whatever, but in a sense they did. We did almost everything this week that prepared us as wholly as we could for the worship this weekend.

I don’t know about you, but for me, it seems like I feel quite regularly (as a worship leader) there is always more I could have done to help us get ready. And it usually shows in some way on the weekend. You know…could have gotten the band the charts earlier, could have worked more on one part during rehearsal, could have communicated better, etc. It wasn’t a perfect week, there were a couple of loose ends that had to be tied up on the weekend….our bass player couldn’t make to the midweek rehearsal, we didn’t have childcare for our Sat. rehearsal, I could have reminded the band what they needed to work on between our rehearsal and the service. But those things aside, we were really prepared for our role to lead worship this weekend. And it showed.

We got a lot of compliments like “Great worship” “There were times that it was hard to sing (in a good way)” & even one who said “That was the best worship we’ve ever had.”

In spite of all we did, the best thing that we did and the best thing that happened was that all of us on the team were being submissive and allowing God is speak to us and through us. In the end that’s what made it so great – our willingness to be led by the Spirit and lead the congregation that way.

Here was our set:

• All the Earth will Sing your Praises (Baloche – Travis Cotrell arr.)
• Lord I lift your name on High (Lincoln Brewster Arr.)
• Welcome & prayer
• Great & Marvelous (Tommy Walker)
• Scripture Reading (Rev. 4)
• Revelation Song (Jennie Lee Riddle)
• Sermon
• I surrender all (on Sat.) Grace Greater than our Sin (on Sun.)

Great and Marvelous.

This was a new song for us. It was challenging to our band (and me), and it was stylistically quite different from what we normally do here on the weekend – which is exactly why I chose it.

Revelation Song.

If this song isn’t in your rotation it needs to be. It’s one of the best, power-worship songs to come out in a long time (in my opinion).

Lessons Learned this week: When I do my part to prepare it frees the worship leaders up to be able to lead and be led in worship.

For more weekend Reviews go check some out at Fred’s Place.

It’s been awhile. The last time I did this was Dec 13 & 14, over a month. I took a break from blogging and what not during the busy time of getting ready for Christmas and then on vacation, so now I’m finally getting back into the swing of things.

This weekend we had one of our volunteer worship leaders lead and she did a great job. I’m happy to have her leading and starting to do it more often. I’m really looking forward to the way she will develop in the future. She has a ton of potential.

Here was our set:

• Mighty to Save
• Unchanging
• Prayer for Missions
• Beautiful the Blood (Fee)
• Enough
• Message
• Rescue

I’m really digging Beautiful the blood. I really like a lot of the stuff that Steve has on that Album and plan on implementing a lot of it over the next couple of months.

I was off keys and on Acoustic this weekend, we had Ian on keys, James on Electric, Nik on Bass & Russ on Drums. Erin was the lead vocal & Jeanette sang alto. With me on acoustic, and a couple of other really new people on the team this weekend there was quite a bit of potential for things to go badly, but they actually went really well. We struggled with tempo on the Pre of “Beautiful the Blood” and the outro where we were all really hitting every beat and driving it really hard.

I’m not sure yet if I like playing acoustic, to be honest. It’s fun, however I don’t feel like I’m adding anything. And I don’t mean this in a poor me kind of a way. What I mean is that as the worship leader or band leader, I feel like I need to be strong on the instrument I’m using to lead and not be a hindrance. I’m also a “maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses” kind of a guy, so I’d rather keep working at becoming a really good piano guy than work really hard to become a decent acoustic guy. It also kind of feels like peer pressure from the contemporary Christian music world. Everyone else is doing it, ergo so should I.

Anyway, enough about me (I’m out of coffee anyway). Go checkout what some other worship leaders did this weekend.

This weekend was kind of like the weekend a lot of football teams have. You know the one I’m talking about, it was the one you look over because you’re more concerned about the big game next week.

Here was our set:

• Better is One Day (Kutless Arr.)
• O come, O come emmanuel (My Arr.)
• Welcome/Christmas weekend announcement
• It came Upon a midnight Clear (SCC Arr.)
• Glory in the Highest (Tomlin)
• O Holy Night – Special
• Sermon
• O come all ye faithful (Igniter video)
• O come all ye faithful – sung

Saturday night we had a lot of problems. Most of them were technical. We fixed them for Sunday (With a new sound guy) and everything went much better. We also changed a couple of flow things that really improved what happened this morning.

It’s finally here. Christmas is coming. This is the last week to get ready – go do it!!!

Click here for more Reviews

This weekend we did a couple of new songs. I seem to keep doing that. I know there are rules and what not, but when songs fit so perfectly, it’s really hard for me to resist the urge to do the song, so we do them.

We were small again this weekend. We had one vocalist cancel at the last minute due to illness and our bass player didn’t show up, so we had to find a replacement in rehearsal. So, we had drums, bass, acoustic, keys, & 2 vocals.

We were doing songs that really needed electric, but we just didn’t have one for the weekend. We’re gearing up for our big Christmas weekend, so I’m trying to be careful about burning out our musicians prior to all the extra rehearsals we will be having for that weekend. So, I felt it would be honoring to them to not ask them to do this weekend on top of their existing commitment for Christmas.

That makes things a little difficult however. I’ve had to settle for coming up with arrangements that can be driven by the keys in someway. It doesn’t always sound as good as it would if we had an electric there, but I think it’s good enough to be able to do the songs.

Here was our set:

• Because of Your Love (Baloche)
• Holy, Holy, Holy (Hymn – Steven Curtis Chapman’s Arr. from WOW Hymns) – We didn’t do this one exactly like the recording, I changed a couple of things to make a little more like a worship song (Like doing the chorus again at the end and changed the intro and a couple of turnarounds, etc.)
• Welcome
• Here I Am To Worship (V1, C, V2, C, C)
• Revelation Song (Jennie Lee Riddle)
• Here I Am To Worship (B, B, B, C, C,)
• Sermon
• Rejoice (Tomlin)

Revelation song was hard to do without adequate instrumentation. I felt like I was trying to cover to much ground on the keyboard to keep the song as high powered as it should be. I think it still came off okay, I’m just used to hearing the recording, so I’m always comparing what I’m doing with what I’m hearing.

I think it was a good idea to sandwich Revelation Song with Here I am to Worship, the transition going into Revelation song worked good. And the transition coming out of it worked fine too, it just felt like too much of Fortissimo. Revelation song ended at fortissimo, then we backed off for the first two times of the bridge of Here I Am to Worship, then built on the third one and key changed into the chorus. People really sang out when we go to the chorus, it just felt like we were trying to sustain the fortissimo for too long.

We were having monitor problems too. We use Aviom IEM’s and I just couldn’t get the drums up in my mix, no matter how much I turned down everything else. I know Aviom will compress stuff to protect hearing, but if you have any help about what might be going on, I’d sure appreciate it!

For more weekend Reviews Click Here!!!

This weekend came out of nowhere! Having the Thanksgiving Eve service on Wednesday night really took a chunk out of my prep time for the weekend. And then having thanksgiving there in between both services didn’t help either. Nevertheless, we got through the weekend. It wasn’t too bad either.

I knew we wouldn’t have an electric so I picked songs that could be easily carried by the acoustic or keys, and that seemed to work pretty well.

This was the last sermon in our Series on the miracles of Jesus. It was a good closer. Pastor Bob talked about how Jesus uses storms in our lives to teach us lessons and ultimately to replace the debilitating fear that they bring with an amazing faith. You can listen to the sermon here.

Since he was talking about storms we went with the theme of Storms and peace, finding our strength in the rock. It was a great set. Even though we didn’t quite have the power I was hoping for on Still (it would have been nice to have an electric, maybe even another synth) it worked out pretty good. It was also new to our congregation, so I’ll be interested to hear the feedback from it.

Here was our set:

• Rest in Your Peace (Lindner Original – I hope to get a recording of this song up pretty soon.)
• Jesus Lead on (Forgiven Much Arr. – a now defunct band, but a pretty cool arr. of the song.)
• Sermon Intro Video
• The Solid Rock (Hymn – Passion/Charlie Hall Arr.) I really like this arr. of this old song. It takes a little getting used to for people who know and love the old version, but It gets the powerful message of the song into a contemporary setting very well.
• Still (Hillsongs) Just a powerful song.
• Sermon
• The Voice of Truth (Casting Crowns) I did this by myself at the keys, it would have been nice to have the band on this one, but it’s kind of difficult when your drummer is the children’s director and he has to be with the kids at the end of the service.

Now, the big push starts. Christmas is coming. 20 days and 5 hours until our big Christmas weekend service.

For more weekend reviews click here!

Tonight was our annual “Thanksgiving Eve” service. I think it’s a Baptist thing. I’m sure that other churches from other denominations do a thanksgiving eve service, but I had never been a part of one until I worked at a Baptist church.

Anyway, it was a good service. We had a pretty normal turnout and it was a nice relaxed time of worship and giving thanks together.

Because of the relaxed atmosphere, I felt a little more freedom to “go with the flow” than I normally do. I took a little more vocal liberty in my leading, as well as talked a little more than I usually do during the songs.

I accidentally skipped over the responsive reading, but it was no big deal to add it in later. Our special services are the ones where we make sure to work in all the staff that we don’t always use on the weekends, so I wanted to make sure we did the reading so we didn’t miss the opportunity to include one of our staff.

We used several videos, Thankful from Muddy River Media, and Start Small & Thanks Giving from Worship House Media. We used Thankful, to open the service, Thanks Giving to set up the prayer for our “Run for the Hungry” and Start Small we used to give people time to get up and go get and take communion from tables throughout the sanctuary.

Here was our order:

• Thankful
• Pastoral Opening scripture & prayer
• You’re Worthy of my Praise
• How Can I Keep From Singing?
• Thanks Giving
• Prayer for the Run
• Amazing Love (Mike Honholtz)
• You Are My King
• Thanksgiving Prayer
• Devotional
• Communion
• Start Small
• The Wonderful Cross
• Responsive Reading
• Open Sharing
• Leave sharing thanks with one another.

It was a pretty full service, but it only took us about an hour and ten minutes so it went pretty quick. All in all, it was a pretty good service.

This weekend was the first weekend I haven’t been on stage (except for the weekend after my son was born) in this first year that I’ve been here. And it was pretty nice. I was able to hear what the sound system sounded like for the first time with a full band, it sounds pretty good. I was able to give a little instruction to one of our soundmen in terms of some of my preferences when it comes to mixing. I was able to hear the congregation. I was able to talk to some of the other pastors and hear their feedback on what the band sounded like. It was all very nice.

One of our electric guitarists is in a band, so his band played this weekend. They were received well by the congregation and have a very polished sound. My only criticism would be that the songs were too high. They have a great lead singer (who sounds a lot like Steve Perry), so I think they tend to do songs in keys that he can sing and sound really good in. The only problem was that they were too high a lot of our congregation. Aside from that, it was great.

I think it was really rewarding for our electric guitarist as well. Not only did he enjoy himself and have a great time, he got to be infront of the congregation in a different way. A way that gives him a little more “clout” in terms of his ability and knowledge as an electric guitarist.

It was great to have the weekend off. It gave me a chance to evaluate my worship leading style, see a different style that people respond to and gave me some areas I can improve in. The break’s over though, right back into it this week with a thanksgiving eve service and our regular weekend services, and Christmas is right around the corner. It was nice to have a chance to step back for a weekend before the craziness really moves in on me in full force.

For more weekend reviews, click here.

Okay, so my fingers hurt! Just on my left hand. I played guitar this week, and I’m out of shape. I’m a keyboard player, so I don’t play guitar that much. I did it this weekend to give someone else a chance to play keys. It was good, it’s painful, but good.

We had 4 new people on the team this weekend. I know that’s not something that is recommended, but we did it anyway. We had a few veterans on the team that could help hold us together, but it was a challenge. We had two of our female vocalists lead the entire set this weekend, and they did a pretty good job. I knew I would be too distracted playing the guitar to be able to lead effectively, so they had no choice! But they seemed to enjoy their role.

Our set was:

• Hosanna (Baloche)
• Unchanging (Tomlin)
• Welcome & Announcements
• Everlasting God (Brown)
• God of Wonders
• Sermon Intro Video
• Be Thou My Vision

After talking with several people after each service, it seems that there wasn’t a big discrepancy between our sound this weekend and other weekends. It probably wasn’t exactly up to snuff with our “A” team, but I think it was pretty good.

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This was one of those weekends where I left the service wondering what went right. Of course it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, but it sure felt like it. It seemed like we just couldn’t get on the same page. It wasn’t that we were fighting each other in tempo or stylistically or anything like that. There was just something that wasn’t right.

On “Give it all Away” our acoustic player just couldn’t seem to keep up with the tempo of the song, especially during the introduction. Which is a problem considering the song is supposed to be acoustic driven. So we had to change the introduction up, but we still weren’t together during the intro after we had changed it.

I made several other mistakes. We didn’t have a midweek rehearsal because of some work related issues for people. In hindsight, I realize I should have had rehearsal even if it was just me and one other person.

Oh well, can’t win em all right? I talked with some people after the service and they didn’t notice the problems like I did. So, hopefully the problems we had weren’t too noticeable to most. The biggest thing for me is to not be a distraction. I don’t want to be the reason someone doesn’t connect with God.

Here was our set:

• Meet Us Here – Mike Honholtz
• Welcome
• Sermon Intro Video
• Give it All away – Aaron Schust
• Run for the Hungry Presentation
• Hungry – Kathrynn Scott
• Glory in the Highest – Chris Tomlin
• Message
• Enough- Chris Tomlin

I’m trying to remember the last weekend we didn’t do a Chris Tomlin Song.

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This was a fantastic weekend. It was the first weekend where we had a volunteer worship leader and a volunteer band leader working together with almost no help from me. And it went very well! First of all, the worship leader has a tremendous voice that works way better with a lot of the songs we do than mine does. He also has a huge heart for worship, which shows in his stage presence and facial expressions. Our band leader is a great guitarist and has a great desire for everything we do musically to be of great quality. Together, I think they’ll be a great team.

Here was our set:

• Prelude – Bridge of Salvation is Here
• Call to Worship
• Salvation is Here (Hillsong United)
• I Will Boast (Paul Baloche)
• Sermon Intro Video
• Welcome
• King (tree63)
• You Alone (our Arr.)
• Message
• How Marvelous (Passion Arr. – led by our Senior Pastor)

It was great to have our Senior Pastor close again. It’s great to have a senior pastor with musical ability and has a desire to use it with worship even though he’s too busy to really do that. I’m sure a lot of worship pastors wouldn’t like to have their Senior Pastor playing with them, but I do.

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This weekend was surprisingly easy. There were a couple of things that made it so. The first was that we were only doing 3 songs, so we only had to work them up in the same amount of time that we have to work out four songs on most weekends, so that was good. I also picked some songs that I thought would be easy to pull off considering the instrumentation we had. So, that helped also.

It was also the start of our new series, miracles. We’re trying a new thing for us, we’re doing a sermon intro video that’s 2 minutes long that we’re playing in the front end of the service. We hope this will help people connect to the Big idea of the sermon during the worship time, which will hopefully make the worship seem a little more purposeful (As opposed to expecting people to remember during the sermon the songs we sang and then make the connection).

I was listening to the recordings of the music, and it was actually pretty decent. It’s nice to know that what I’m hearing in my ears is coming out good on the other end. I don’t know for sure what it sounds like out in the congregation. I’ve been here for almost a year, and I still haven’t been able to get out into the congregation during worship on a weekend to be able to hear what the live sound is like. I’m hoping to be able to do that soon.

Here’s what we did:

• Beautiful One
• Welcome
• Sermon Intro Video
• Forever
• Communion
• All Who Are Thirsty
• Sermon
• Blessed Be Your Name

Blessed be your name was the perfect closer for us this weekend. The message was on Jesus turning the water into wine, and the Big idea was “Sometimes the right time for the best wine is one cup at a time.” The idea that God’s provides for our needs, sometimes in abundance and sometimes one cup at a time.

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This weekend we had one of our newer drummers playing with us. This was his third time playing with us over all. He’s really working hard at what he’s doing and I can tell that he’s really driven to do the very best he can. I find that I have to evaluate the weekend in a different light when we have someone like him on the team. He’s got a great heart and a great attitude, and feels really privileged to have the opportunity to play, however, he’s not quite at the same level as our other drummers. Granted, he’s probably better than the drummers a lot of worship leaders play with, but is still growing and learning a lot. Of course, I asked my wife what she thought about the music and she didn’t perceive any real difference.

For me the wins were that he had obviously worked up the music before hand, he was excited to be there, and he took direction really well. Areas for improvement would be in terms of remembering some of the adjustments we made on what he was playing in the rehearsal. He took the direction really well, but then seemed to forget what it was we had said we were going to change. I chalk that up the hugeness of having to learn the songs and being nervous about messing up. So, getting him to write it down or something. The third would be tempo. In weeks past, when he’s played, he’s done a tremendous job at keeping the tempo steady. It wasn’t quite as good this week. So, that will definitely be an area for improvement.

The rest of the band was smaller this week too, Bass, Acoustic & Keys. It was fairly dialed down by comparison to previous weekends. Largely because I was trying to pick songs that would be carried well with the instrumentation we had.

We did:

• Awesome is the Lord (Tomlin)
• How Can I Keep From Singing (Tomlin)
• Welcome
• Baptisms
• Beautiful Savior (Hughes)
• Give It All Away (Schust)
• Sermon
• Surrender (Brewster)

Our transitions were good, and the flow of the entire service was actually really good. Part of the issue I’m feeling with last night is probably my own problem. I know there are other musicians out in the audience who are listening with a critical ear, so I’m sure they’re hearing all the issues I’m feeling. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. And I know that’s not what my focus should be, but it is at times. Part of it is, I don’t want to be a distraction to people, and I don’t want there to be anything about the music that takes people out of the mind of worship, and I fear some of these things might whether they’re aware of exactly what they are or not.

Regardless it was a good weekend. Room for improvement, but it was good. I know God is at work in all of our lives and as long as we’re pursuing him in our worship endeavors he will guide us and help us prepare and grow in the ways we need to to be able to help his people worship.

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I missed last weekend due to a staff retreat, and to be honest I’d much rather review it than this most recent weekend. Last weekend was the final weekend in our Church 1.0 series. It was a great weekend, from beginning to end. To start it off, we had the fullest band I’ve had since I’ve been working here. We had a six piece band – which for some may not seem huge, but for us it was. On top of that, we had several in the band who are committed to doing excellent music. They had gotten together without me during the week to work on the songs so they’d be ready for the weekend. That’s a worship leaders dream!

I also had one of our up and coming worship leaders lead the majority of the songs that weekend. He did a phenomenal job. He did great vocally, and really started to come out of his shell in terms of being a worship leader. He was engaging the congregation instead of just singing in their general direction. It was great.

Here was our set:

• I Will Boast (Paul Baloche)
• I Am Free (New Life Church – Global Worship Now)
• Welcome/2 services announcement
• My Savior My God (Aaron Schust)
• Here Am I (Mike Honholtz Band)
• Message
• Wherever He Leads (Hymn with my Music)
• My Faith Has Found a Resting Place

We had a great response. As you can see in our graphic below, stained glass was a big part of our visual theme for this series. So, our creative team came up with the idea to have people sign a piece of stained glass to represent their commitment to our body. (Actually the idea was to have them etch their name into a piece of glass but we figured that wouldn’t be very feasible for a couple of hundred people to do in one service. So we went with plexiglass.) We used the old window frames we had at the church from helping remodel one of our members houses. We put the glass in and used fake leading from a craft store to make the lines. Then we had people sign a section of the window, and as they are filling in, we’re having someone come in and paint in the sections that have someone’s name in it. It’s really cool to look at. I’ll have to put a picture up here.

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This week was much different. Our Senior Pastor is on vacation, and we are having missions weekend. The musical portion of the service was pretty good. I’m actually really pleased with it. We didn’t have as full of a band as we did last week, but it’s been really great. We have a husband and wife who are on the team this week who have a tremendous background in music as well as an tremendous heart for worship. They’re dynamic. However, there was a huge disconnect between our time of worship and the rest of the service. Without getting super critical, let’s just say it this is one weekend I hope we didn’t have any visitors.

Here was our set:

• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises (Travis Cotrell)
• Lord I Lift Your Name on High (Lincoln Brewster)
• Welcome
• Shout To The North (passion)
• God of Wonders (Passion)
• Message
• You Said (Hillsong)

Like I said, it could have been better, in terms of the entire service. However, I feel like our worship team had another stellar Sunday, and that we’re continuing to build momentum. I guess I just have to not worry about things that I don’t have any control over. It hasn’t worked yet, but I can try.

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We had another great weekend this week. This was communion weekend, so that was fun to work in as well. One creative element we did this week was a reading that I found over on nailscars.com. It was called “Will you Serve me in Love?” It worked perfect for what we were talking about this weekend which was showing God’s love. That along with communion made for a pretty full worship set, but we were still done in less than half an hour which is our allotted time – so that’s good. Our senior pastor played acoustic with us on the first two songs as well, and it sounds like he’s wanting to play on a more regular basis. I think it’s great to have him up there, it gives the congregation a different perspective on him, and it gets to show him serving which is good too.

Here was our service:

• All who are Thirsty
• Mighty to Save
• Welcome/Communion set up
• Take the Bread
• Hungry
• Take the Cup
• Will you Serve me in Love
• Rescue
• Sermon
• You Rescued Me

It’s a fuller service than we normally have but it was good. The transition between the first two songs was a little rough, something we’ll work on for next time. However, a transition that went really well was the one between will you serve me in love and Rescue. It was almost like it was scripted out. All in all it was a great weekend.

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This was a great weekend! We had a full band of some of our most skilled musicians in the band this weekend, and it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes. I understand that a big part of my job is training up new musicians, but working with trained musicians is a completely different experience. We had our usual practice on Sat. Afternoon that was an hour and a half long. Usually, we’re fighting to just get through each song once, helping everyone get their parts down. This weekend, we started on time – which was a amazing in and of itself – we working through the songs quickly, did transitions, then played the whole set 4 times. It was amazing, and it really paid off. There were almost no mistakes in the service.

Here was our set:

• Let God Arise
• Because of your love
• Welcome/Ann.
• You Never Let Go
• Groups Video
• Fellowship
• Sermon
• I Surrender All

I did the closing song by myself as usual, and did verse 1 and 2 together, chorus, then 3 and 4 together. It kind of helped it not feel like such a traditional song, without pepping it up.

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Not quite the best of both worlds. It was a great weekend. We had a full band, which is fantastic. We also had a group of people who really wanted to do the music correctly which is also great. However, since we haven’t started up our midweek rehearsals yet, all of our rehearsal time was eaten up on working the songs and not the transitions, so there were a couple of spots that were rough in the service. Aside from that, however, it was a great weekend.

The songs worked really well with the theme. Center by Charlie Hall worked really well lyrically, but for some reason it seems to lack the luster I’m hoping for with it. I’m going to have to do some more evaluation as to why that might be. 

We started a new series this weekend, so that was exciting too. It’s called church 1.0. We’re talking about the basic essentials of being a church. It’s based Acts 2. 

Here was our set list:

• In the Secret
• Everyday
• Series Intro by Senior Pastor
• Center
• Everlasting God
• Sermon
• Announcements & Closing Prayer
• Breathe

The announcements have actually been working at the end of the service. We’ve done that before, and it’s felt really unnatural, but the last two weekends they have worked well there. 

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