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Last Tuesday we had a bad windstorm here, and we lost a huge branch from one of the trees in our front yard. The tree fell first on our roof, then bounced off and landed on our car.  Needless to say, when my wife called me at work and said a tree fell on our car, I raced home, only to find this huge chunk of the biggest tree in our yard had broken off and was covering our Envoy. At first glance, I was sure the roof would have been crushed, windows broken or worse.

Our neighbor Terry came out, and said that he was in his shower, and he heard a huge sound, so he thought he would come out to see what it was. Tina and the kids were inside when it happened, and they said it sounded horrible when it fell. They could hear something hit the roof first, then slide off.

After calling the insurance company, and figuring out what we should do, Terry offered to help us get rid of the tree. He owns a chainsaw, so we started cutting it up and dragging the pieces into our front yard.  As we carefully uncovered the car, we were amazed to see no damage to the structure of the car, and only minor scratches on the sides and back.  There was one little ding on the side, but nothing horrible. We have a $100 deductible with our insurance, so everything else should be covered.

After looking at the pictures and video, we realized how close it came to doing so much more damage. It could have been so much worse! So, we’re just praising God that He spared us from anyone getting hurt, or doing so much more damage to our car.

Here’s a video and some pics from the event.

This morning’s worship services at Bethel went very well! This was the first Sunday after our series on our new “Connect-Grow-Serve-Go Discipleship Process”, and Pastor Jamie did a great job on a message about living a life of purity and holiness. His point was that if we’re living lives that are not pleasing to God, this whole process we just learned about will be useless. We’ve had some marriages at Bethel recently that have been falling apart, and I think our church needed to hear this message right now. I was back from a week of vacation, so I felt refreshed and excited about the morning!

We started each of our services in a unique (for us), but powerful way! We used a countdown, and then as soon as we reached zero, I used the “Obstacles” video from Shift Worship. This was such a powerful video about what possible obstacles there might be in  your life that need to be addressed before worship – unforgiveness, anger, unconfessed sin. With music by Page CXVI, this was a perfect way to start a service. Immediately following the video, I had Zack play guitar quietly, and asked people to spend a couple minutes in prayer and reflection, based on the questions in the video. We transitioned right from Zack’s guitar playing into our first song.  It was something different, fresh, and it seemed like people really responded well to it.

Contemporary Service

Stronger (Ben Fielding, Reuben Morgan)
– Following the Obstacles video, this song seemed very appropriate as we praised Him for being stronger than all those things that can get in the way of our worship – “You are stronger, sin is broken”!!

Only A God Like You (Tommy Walker)
– One of my favorites by Tommy, and one of church’s favorites as well (which is always nice…)

Wholly Yours (David Crowder)
– This isn’t a new song, but it was the first time we’ve used it.  I love the song, and with Pastor Jamie’s focus on holiness, I thought it was a good week to use it. We passed out the solos, and our group did it as a special. They all did a great job!

Remembrance (Communion Song) (Matt Maher and Matt Redman)
– This is one of my favorite new songs for communion. It has been recorded by both Matt Maher and Matt Redman on their recent albums.  We used the vocal harmonies from Matt Maher’s recording, but followed the music more closely to Matt Redman’s version. Great song!

Beautiful the Blood (Steve Fee and Louie Giglio)
– With a writing combination of Steve Fee and Louie Giglio, you know it has to be a great song, and it is! Another new song that we’ve started to use for communion, this one is well written, with each part – the verses, pre-chorus, chorus and tag all having great qualities!

Click here to watch our LiveStream video of this service.

Cafe Connection (Video Venue Service)

Our summer youth intern, Nathan, was the worship leader in this service today, and he chose the songs and led the service. It’s been great to have him around, both for the great job that he did with our youth, and for his wonderful musical skills he used while he was here! This was his last Sunday with us, though, as his time is up, and we recently just voted in a new youth pastor, who starts in a week!

Better Is One Day (Matt Redman)

Enough (Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio)

How Deep the Father’s Love For Us (Stuart Townend)
– This is one of my favorite songs to use for Communion, with the rich theology and beauty in the lyrics, combined with that moving melody. Great!

Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) (Chris Tomlin)

Traditional Service

Jesus, I Come
And, Can It Be
Whiter Than Snow
Lead Me to Calvary
Glory To His Name

My Sunday recap will be a bit shorter this week, because I’ve actually been on vacation this past week in Minnesota! It was a great week spent with family and friends.  I had three great teams leading the services this week at church, and they all did a great job! This Sunday was also exciting because we had a candidate for a new youth pastor, along with our Burger Bash after church. This was the last Sunday in our series on our new Discipleship Process – Connect, Grow, Serve, Go. The Go theme today focused on living a lifestyle of evangelism. I missed all of those activities, but I was able to watch the Livestream from this morning, and saw that our teams did great!

We also used another video testimony from one of our members, Bruce, this morning about how God has called him to Go into the world. He has an amazing story, and is so comfortable sharing Christ with others. What a great example!!

Contemporary Worship Team

Marv led the team this morning, and the whole team did great. Watch the livestream video of this service. Here are the songs we used:

My Savior Lives (Jon Egan and Glenn Packiam)

Glory To God Forever (Steve Fee and Vicky Beeching)

How Great Is Our God (Chris Tomlin)

God of Justice (Tim Hughes)

Shine (Matt Redman)

Cafe Connection Cafe Service

Adam led the team this morning in our video cafe service this morning. We were short a percussion player today, so we had a pretty small  team. Here are the songs they used:

Glory to God Forever (Steve Fee and Vicky Beeching)

God of Wonders (Marc Byrd and Steve Hindalong)

Your Love, Oh Lord (Mac Powell)

God You Reign (Lincoln Brewster)

Traditional Worship Service

Rick led the team today for our Traditional Service. Besides leading the hymns, he also sang a great song as a solo about how we may be the only Jesus that people ever see.  Watch the Livestream video of this service. Here are the hymns:

Praise To the Lord the Almighty
All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name
Love Lifted Me
So Send I You
Send the Light

This post is part of the Sunday Setlist blog share at The Worship Community. Thanks for reading. How did your service go?

It’s been a very nice week so far at Grandma and Grandpa’s house here in Minnesota. Grandma and Grandpa are actually my parents, Olive and Elaine Westman, but with the kids now, we’re always going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  It’s been very relaxing, with very little going on.  We arrived Tuesday night, and had some sloppy joes with the family. My sisters, Barb and Sharon were here, along with my sister-in-law Donna and the girls, Tori, Julia and Caitlin, and Sharon’s husband Roberto.  Emily had been spending a few weeks here, so it was nice to see her again! Emily and Jillian, Sharon’s daughter, Jillian and Emily had prepared a special birthday song and dance for Olivia, so we were treated to our first performance of the week.

Wednesday and Thursday were both very relaxing days, with nothing much going on. Grandma made us a delicious breakfast both mornings, and then we just spent the day relaxing at the house, playing games, Wii, reading, and taking it easy. It really has felt like a true vacation.

Friday we went over to Jeanette’s house and spent the day with Jessica, Mike and Josie; Sarah Rose and Rebecca; and Jeanette. It was bitter-sweet since it was the first gathering on Tina’s side of the family without Jerome. His presence was missed greatly!  We had a fun time playing ladderball and other outdoor games.  We had a great lunch, and then steaks and burgers on the grill for dinner.

Today is Saturday, and it’s a special day since it’s Olivia’s 7th Birthday! She spent the night at Jillian’s house, so I haven’t even seen her yet! But, we’re celebrating Grandpa’s 87th birthday, and Olivia’s 7th birthday later this afternoon.  Tina is making some nice signs to hang up for her birthday.

My Dad actually just finished writing a book about his life called “From Arrowheads to Golf Balls”. For years now, we’ve always asked him to write his stories down that he would share with us.  Well, he finally did, and it’s been so neat to read about his childhood and our ancestry. He tells about how my great-great-grandparents (on both sides) came over from Sweden and settled here in this area. It’s been amazing to read about our family heritage, and even back then the dependence on God, and the faith of our fore-fathers. So cool!

We head home tomorrow late morning. It’s been a great week! It’s always frustrating when resources are tight on vacation, but God always provides what we need. I know He’ll provide a way for us to get the gas we need to get home tomorrow, for food along the way, and to make it to Wednesday.

We had a wonderful day today at Bethel! We are going through a sermon series on our new Discipleship Process – “Connect, Grow, Serve, Go”.  Serve was up today, and like last week, we had a shorter (45 minutes, or so we planned) service, followed by our Ministry Fair. At the Fair, each ministry of the church had a table with information about the ministry, and chance to sign-up for more information or to serve.   It was great! We had many new people sign up to serve in a ministry, and tons of people walk through and take a look.

But, with only a 45 minute service, the music elements were very short! Especially when we added in an element at the last minute that took about 5 minutes, and things ran long. I had planned 4 songs in the service, and only ended up doing 2 1/2 in one, and 2 in the other.  But, we’re used to being flexible, and the team did a great job rolling with the changes.

We also had a really neat testimony via video from Tamera, a woman in our church who shared how God has called her to serve in the church

Cafe Connection Video Cafe Service

This was an incredibly special service because today, Zack was the worship leader! Zack is a soon-to-be-senior in high school. It’s been so neat to see him grow and mature both musically and spiritually over the last few years. He’s led a few songs in the last few weeks, but today was the first day that he chose the songs, planned the transitions, planned out the song arrangements, led the rehearsal and this morning led the congregation in worship. He did a great job!!

Songs (we had to skip the last one because of time):
Because of Your Love (Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown)
Indescribable (Laura Story)
Mighty To Save (Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan)

Contemporary Service

I was excited to introduce a new song this morning, “Forever Reign”, off the new Hillsong CD. One of our members has been called into the ministry and is leaving to pastor a church, so we had commissioning service this morning. It was one of those happy-sad situations. Happy that God has called them and provided a place for them to serve, but sad to see them go. Again, I had 4 songs planned, but things didn’t go exactly as planned today. Click here to watch a video of this service.

Songs:
Love the Lord (Lincoln Brewster)
– No electric on this one today, but Zack did a great job filling in on acoustic for the solo part.

Our God (Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin)
– We started this song a bit differently today. As we were finishing up “Love the Lord”,  I just continued in G, and went right into the Bridge of “Our God”, building that up a few times, then going into the song.

Forever Reign (Jason Ingram, Reuben Morgan)
– Love this song! I’ve been humming it ever since our rehearsal on Thursday! We’ve rehearsed a few times in the Worship Choir rehearsal, so it was nice to see some people out in the congregation actually worshipping along with us as we introduced the song today. I’m sure this is one that we’ll do a lot!

What Can I Do (Paul Baloche,  Graham Kendrick)
– This was planned for our closing song, but we never got around to doing it, since we went way over time in the first part of our service, and we were supposed to end early for people to go down to the Ministry Fair.

Traditional Service

Since I was involved with the Cafe service this morning on keys, I wasn’t in this service today, but Rob led the service this morning. Thanks, Rob! Click here to watch the video of this service.

Songs:
We Come, O Christ, To You
Praise Him, Praise Him
The Longer I Serve Him
Make Me A Blessing

Thanks for reading. This is my contribution to the Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at The Worship Community.

GROW! That was the word for today.  We’re going through a sermon series on our new Discipleship Process: Connect – Grow – Serve – Go.  As part of the focus on Grow today, we had a Growth Group Fair this morning at the end of each service to launch our new Growth Groups.  We cut our typical 60 minute service 15 minutes short today, and used that time plus the time in-between each service to have our Growth Group Fair. Each of our Growth Groups had a booth, and the leaders of each group were there to help people sign-up for our fall groups.

So, because of the shorter service, we only had 3 songs in each service, which seemed very strange! But, it was a great morning, and we had many people sign-up to be in one of our Growth Groups, many for the first time.  I focused in worship this morning on how God changes us as we become more like Him.

Here’s a video we showed just before the Fair from one of our members, and her experience with Growth Groups.

Contemporary Service

“Now That You’re Near” (Marty Sampson)
– This one’s a few years old, but I loved the energetic opening for our service!

“My Savior, My God” (Aaron Shust)
– One of my favorites! Great lyrical depth on the verses, then a response from the heart on the chorus!

“I Will Never Be (the Same Again) – (Geoff Bullock)
– Another older song, but I just love the lyrics; what a great challenge to press on toward becoming like Him, and not turn back.

Cafe Service

“Today Is the Day” (Lincoln Brewster)

“Jesus Messiah” (Chris Tomlin)

“Your Name” (Paul Baloche)

Traditional Service

“For the Beauty of the Earth”
“I Would Be Like Jesus”
“I Am Thine, O Lord”

To read what other worship leaders did this morning, check out The Worship Community for today’s post.

We had a wonderful morning of worship here at Bethel today! I led worship in the Cafe Service, which is always a nice treat! Another highlight was when Zack, one of our younger worship leaders, led a couple of songs on his own, which was the first time for him. He did a great job! We also had the worship choir join us today! We are just starting to go through a series on our new Discipleship Process that we’ve been working on for a few years! It feels very good to actually put this into motion. Today we focused on how we can “Connect” with God through worship and connect with others.

Part of the message included a video testimony from Brenda, one of the singers on our worship team, about how she can connect with God through worship. Watch her video below – she did a great job!

Here’s the setlists for our four services. We have a Cafe Connection service, which is a casual contemporary service with a live worship team, and the message live via video; a Traditional service; and then two Contemporary Services.

Cafe Connection

“For All You’ve Done” (Reuben Morgan)

“Enough” (Chris Tomlin and Louie Giglio)
“Sweetly Broken” (Jeremy Riddle)
– Zack Burtness, one of our newest worship leaders, chose and led these songs this morning. It was his first time choosing, arranging, planning transitions and leading the songs in our service. He did a great job! Way to go, Zack!

“Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing)” (Brenton Brown)

Here’s the Planning Center details for this service.

Contemporary Services

“Say So” (Israel Houghton and Michael Gungor)
– We followed Michael Gungor’s version of this song this morning off the “For You I Live” album by Resurrection Life Church.  Great CD!!

“You, You Are God” (Walker Beach)
– This is  one of our congregation’s favorite songs! They sing out on this one each time we do it. It’s a great song to open a service, and just a great song!

“God You Reign” (Lincoln Brewster and Mia Fieldes)

“Jesus Messiah” (Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Jesse Reeves, Daniel Carson)

“You Never Let Go” (Matt Redman and Beth Redman)
– Always a great way to end our service! “Oh no, You never let go!”

Here’s the Planning Center details for this service.  You can also watch this service.

Traditional Service

“Immortal, Invisible”
“O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing”
“O To Be Like Thee”
“I Want To Be Like Jesus”
“O How I Love Jesus”
“Glory To His Name”

Since I was leading in the Cafe this morning, Randy led in the Traditional Service this morning. He did a great job leading the team. Thanks, Randy!

Here’s the Planning Center details for this service. You can also watch this service.

This recap has been part of the Sunday Setlists blog carnival at The Worship Community. Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your comments.

What a week! We were at the National Worship Leader Conference all this past week in Kansas City, and what a great week it was! You can read my recap and some thoughts from my experience here.  But, we got back Saturday night, so I was able to be at church this past Sunday, even though I didn’t have any official duties.

Once again, thanks to Adam for leading the team in the Cafe, and Rob in the Traditional.  This week we had our interim Youth Pastor, Nathan Nymeyer, lead the team in the Contemporary services. It was his first time leading that service here, and he did a great job!!

Contemporary Services
Let the Praises Ring (Lincoln Brewster)

Sing to the King (Billy Foote) – We met Billy and his wife Cindy this week at the NWLC. They actually stayed in the same hotel as us, so we met them over breakfast.

From the Inside Out (Joel Houston)

You Alone Can Rescue (Matt Redman) – It was neat to hear Matt’s story for this song at the conference!

Cafe Connection
Everyday (Joel  Houston)
Holy Is the Lord (Chris Tomlin)
I Give You My Heart (Reuben Morgan)
You Alone (David Crowder Band)

Traditional Service
Come, Christians Join to Sing
Love, Divine, All Loves Excelling
My Savior’s  Love
The Love of God
All That Thrills My Soul

This post is part of the Sunday Setlist page on The Worship Community.

I wasn’t at church on July 18, because I was leading a team of 10 others from our church down to the National Worship Leader Conference in Kansas City that morning. I know I’m very late in the game for getting our setlist in for this week, but better late than never, I guess!

Contemporary Service
Beautiful One (Tim Hughes) – A classic! Great song!

All the Earth Will Sing Your Praises (Paul Baloche) –

Glory To God Forever (Vicky Beeching and Steve Fee) – We did the Steve Fee version, just more of an acoustic feel without the electric guitar.

Mighty To Save (Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan)

Cafe Connection
Awesome Is the Lord Most High (Chris Tomlin)

Shine (Matt Redman)

Consuming Fire (Tim Hughes)

God of This City (Bluetree)

Traditional Service
We Are Called To Be God’s People
How Firm A Foundation
Trust and Obey
The Longer I Serve Him
Leaning On the Everlasting Arms

It’s great to be able to leave, and know that everything is in good hands. Thanks, Rick, for stepping in to lead all three services this morning! And thanks Adam for your leadership in the Cafe!!

This post is part of the Sunday Setlist website on The Worship Community.