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We had an amazing worship celebration this morning! Besides singing some great songs, we ended our services today with a baptism service.  We had 13 people baptized this morning, which was the largest group we’ve had. One of those 13 was my daughter, Emily (9), and I got to baptize her! What a special blessing! I was so proud of her, and I actually held it together and held back the tears!  So, for me this morning, that was definitely the highlight!

But, for those of you reading this Sunday Setlist blog entry, I’ll try to focus on the rest of the service!

• Because Of Your Love (Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown)
• We opened up with this one, and it went great, but it wasn’t the typical way we’ve done it. Our electric guitar player, Zack, was on acoustic today, so our sax player was playing the lead parts today.  The solo part in the middle sounded just as sweet with the sax as it does with the electric, just a bit different.
• Glorious One (Steve Fee)
• Great song!
• Fairest (with Fairest Lord Jesus) (Glenn Packiam)
• This has been one of my favorite contemporary hymn arrangements that we’ve done. The verses are very familiar, so the congregation can sing them out, and the new chorus is great, and easy to learn!
• The Words I Would Say (Sidewalk Prophets)
• We had a group of 7 teenage girls do this song with piano as special music. It was so good to get more of the youth involved singing in our service, and they did a great job!!
• May the Words of My Mouth (Tim Hughes)
• This is an older song, but it really fit our theme today, and people knew it well, so they could sing it out!

Overall, the songs we did today were a bit older, but once in a while I like to do that, just so the people don’t have to worry about learning anything new and can just worship.  With the 13 baptisms at the end (including my daughters!), it was a wonderful morning!!

We had a great morning of worship today! We’re continuing our walk through Genesis, and today the message was on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Not a fun, light-hearted passage, but still a valuable reminder to not look back, but press toward Christ!

Our worship set included:
“Love the Lord” (Lincoln Brewster)
“Our God” (Chris Tomlin and others)
  – We introduced this song last week for the first time, and today it went even better! Great new song!
“From the Inside Out” (Joel Houston)

“A Mighty Fortress” (Nathan Nockels and Christy Nockels)
– I love this song! We introduced it today during our service. We did it more as a special during our offering. Our team did a great job!!

“You, You Are God’ (Walker Beach)
A great song – one that we normally use as an opener, but it also worked great today as our closing song! We were challenged to not look back (Lot’s wife) on our life before Christ, but to keep our eyes on Him. This song was a great challenge as we left to live for Him!!

You can see the full order of service at Planning Center.
You can read other setlists from around the country at Sunday Setlists

I’m actually in the process of reading through my Bible reading plan for today, and just had to comment on it.  I’m reading through the Bible this year by using the Chronological reading plan at YouVersion.  I’m really enjoying it. Right now, I’m reading through 1 Samuel, and the story of David fleeing from Saul.  So far, the Chronological version has pretty much taken us through the Bible in order, except that Job must be one of the oldest books written, because it was very close to the beginning of our year.

Anyway, the neat thing now is that right in the middle of 1 Samuel, as we hear about different stories in the life of David, we are then reading the Psalms in chronological order. This makes them come alive even more, because you can see the context in David’s life in which he wrote that particular Psalm. They take on a whole new meaning when read in that way.

One of our Psalms for today was Psalm 27. David wrote this Psalm while he was fleeing from Saul, running for his life. Here’s an excerpt, using my favorite version, the New Living Translation (NLT):

1 The Lord is my light and my salvation—
  so why should I be afraid?
The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger,
  so why should I tremble?2 When evil people come to devour me,
  when my enemies and foes attack me,
  they will stumble and fall.3 Though a mighty army surrounds me,
  my heart will not be afraid.
Even if I am attacked,
  I will remain confident.
4 The one thing I ask of the Lord —
  the thing I seek most—
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
  delighting in the Lord ‘s perfections
  and meditating in his Temple.5 For he will conceal me there when troubles come;
  he will hide me in his sanctuary.
  He will place me out of reach on a high rock.6 Then I will hold my head high
  above my enemies who surround me.
At his sanctuary I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy,
  singing and praising the Lord with music.


11 Teach me how to live, O Lord .
  Lead me along the right path,
  for my enemies are waiting for me.12 Do not let me fall into their hands.
  For they accuse me of things I’ve never done;
  with every breath they threaten me with violence.13 Yet I am confident I will see the Lord ‘s goodness
  while I am here in the land of the living.
14 Wait patiently for the Lord .
  Be brave and courageous.
  Yes, wait patiently for the Lord .

If you aren’t currently using any type of a reading plan, I’d really recommend trying this one out.  The website makes it very clear and easy to use.  I even have a reminder sent to me every day with a link to today’s reading.

The week after Easter, and it was another great morning of worship.  Our team did a super job! Here are the songs we did this morning:

“Today Is the Day” (Lincoln Brewster, Paul Baloche)

“Everlasting God” (Brenton Brown) – Lincoln Brewster version
“You Alone Can Rescue” (Matt Redman) – Passion:Awakenings version

“Our God” (Chris Tomlin and others)
– We introduced this new song from Passion:Awakenings this morning, and it went really well! I received several comments about the song after the service. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if it would work too well, but I think we’ll keep it in the loop.  From the band’s perspective, there’s some interesting  dynamics to develop in this song. Also, with all the repeating eighth notes, it’s very easy to rush this one! This is one song where I can see playing to a click track would be helpful.

“You Never Let Go” (Matt Redman)

You can see the full Planning Center plan here.

You can read other recaps from around the country at The Worship Community’s Sunday Setlist.

What a great morning of celebration at Bethel yesterday for Easter! We had three services, and close to 700 people! God was really moving yesterday, and people were especially excited and ready to worship and praise our risen Lord! The only downer for me was that I lost my voice Thursday just before our full night of rehearsals for the weekend services, so I had no singing voice at all for our Good Friday service or the services yesterday.  But, we have a great team, and several people stepped up and took the lead parts in many of the songs, and they did a great job! I had enough of a voice to get out the verbal transitions between songs, but then I just played the keys during the songs. So, it was quite different for me, but God really used that experience to remind me that He is in control, and He provides for our needs.

Good Friday Service
– Our theme this year was “The Sounds of the Cross”, so besides the music and communion, our other 3 pastors each did a 10 minute talk on the different sounds of the cross: the hammer and nails, the cries of the crowd, and the tearing of the veil. We ended each segment with the actual sound from the back of the room. It was very powerful. We also used a countdown video and another video called “The Veil” to setup the last talk.
– Our songs for this service:

• Here I Am To Worship (Hughes)
• This Is How We Know (Matt Redman)
• Remembrance (The Communion Song) (Matt Maher/Matt Redman)
• When I Survey (Kathryn Scott’s version from His Passion CD)
• You Gave Your Life Away (Paul Baloche – his new version from the Easter EP)
• Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)

Easter Morning
– We used an Easter Countdown video, and then an Easter Morning Intro video. We also used a video later in the service called “Alive”, which was very powerful. Our Children’s Pastor did a great job with a short 10 minute message with the kids.
– Our songs:

• My Savior Lives (Jon Egan and Glenn Packiam)
• Alive Forever Amen (Travis Cottrell)
• This was one of the highlights! We had our worship choir this morning as well, and together with the band they were rockin!!
• Stronger (Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan)
• Glorious (Paul Baloche)
• Happy Day (Tim Hughes)

I hope your Easter services were wonderful! He is risen!!

You can see other setlists by visiting The Worship Community’s Sunday Setlist

I’m not quite sure if this blog will stay, but I thought I would explore other options for a home for my blog. I have been using Blogspot, but I’ve seen other posts from WordPress that look really good. I’m exploring this out for a while, and we’ll see how it goes.

This morning, we had our special presentation of “Run to the Cross”, an Easter praise and worship musical written by Travis Cottrell. We have typically done our musical on Palm Sunday, versus Easter, so that on Easter we can present a service that allows our pastor to present a full message, and so that all the visitors who come can see what our services are normally like with the music and teams. With the musical taking the whole hour, our pastor delivered a short 5 minute talk during the musical. Even so, we still had so many visitors this morning, and it was so great to see friends, coworkers and neighbors of people in the choir there this morning. We actually had around 700 there this morning, when we typically have around 500-550.

The choir, praise team and soloists did a great job! It was a wonder way to kick off our Easter week services. The musical included several original songs, plus “Stronger” (Hillsong), and a couple other familiar songs.

You can see photos from our presentation here.

This post is part of Sunday Setlists blog at The Worship Community.

There’s been a question rumbling around in my mind the past few months, and it was brought to the front again last weekend when I attended the Pulse Arts/Worship Conference. It has to do with how many worship team vocalists to include on the team.

We typically have 3-4 worship team vocalists on stage, along with myself leading from the keyboard. We also have a couple singers, usually, in the band singing from guitars.  We also have a worship choir that sings once a month along with the band and WT singers.  The choir has between 20-30 people.

But, lately, as I’ve watched services online, and when I was at the Pulse conference, I’ve noticed that frequently there’s the worship leader plus one other female singer on harmony. That’s it.  I’m guessing this is done to give it a more contemporary sound? (And I thought what we were doing was contemporary, but I guess that was 10 years ago…) I really like the sound that’s created with the 2 singers. It does sound more like what you hear on the radio.

But, we have so many singers on our rotation, that people would not get as much opportunity to sing on the team.  Also, I’d miss the 3 pt. harmony that we’ve developed.

So, I would love to hear what you do at your churches in this area. What’s your reasoning behind it, and what do you think about the current trend to smaller teams?

Thanks!!

We had a lot going on in our services yesterday, so we didn’t have as much time for music as we normally do.  But, it was so neat to see the baby dedication and hear from one of our missionaries. 

So, for the songs, we did:

• “Rising” (Paul Baloche)
• “Majestic” (Lincoln Brewster)
• “God You Reign” (Lincoln Brewster)
• “Mighty To Save” (Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan)

You can see the whole service order at the Planning Center 
Read other recaps at The Worship Community

This morning’s worship service felt very familiar, and I mean that in a good way! The last couple of weeks I have been introducing some new songs, and although I love to do that, I felt this week I just needed to give the congregation a chance to sing out confidently and wholeheartedly! So, except for one newer song, all the rest were ones where people could just focus on praising and worshiping our God together!!

Songs

• Our God Saves (Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown)
• We kicked things off with this great call to worship. One of my favorites!
• God Is Great (Marty Sampson)
• We did Travis Cottrell’s version from his “Alive Forever” CD.
• Your Name (Paul Baloche and Glenn Packiam)
• One of my favorites by Paul! Our sax player was with us today, and I had him take the solo in the middle, which sounded great!!
• You Alone Can Rescue (Matt Redman)
• We introduced this song last week, and we did it again today.  I love this new song by Matt Redman. I was happy to also hear a new version of it on the new Passion CD – “Awakening”.  We followed more closely to Matt’s version, but I love the Passion one as well!
• Jesus Messiah (Chris Tomlin)
• We ended our service after the message with this favorite of our congregation.  I had Zack, our high school electric guitar player, take the solo on the first verse. He did a great job!!

  Read about other setlists from this week at the Sunday Setlists blog. See the full Planning Center order for this service.