We had a wonderful time of worship this morning at Bethel!  The worship choir joined the worship team this morning, which is always a treat! We went back to Genesis today for a message from Pastor  Tim about how the Lord  makes a difference in our lives, based on the life of Joseph.  This post is part of the Sunday Setlists blog over at The Worship Community.

We also started our 30 day trial with WorshipStream, a new site for hosting our live stream.   Since June, we’ve been streaming our services via the LiveStream website.  The free service has been fine, and the only complaint I have with is is the ads.  Some are very inappropriate, and they happen too often.  I noticed that WorshipStream was offering a free 30 day trial period to test out their service, so today was the first Sunday in that time. Since it’s a paid service, there are no ads.  Everything worked well, although there have been a few glitches in the setup process.

 

Contemporary Worship Service

“The Lord Reigns” (Klaus Kuehn)

“Only A God Like You” (Tommy Walker)

“Overcome” (Jon Egan)

“Happy Day” (Ben Cantelon and Tim Hughes)

We had the most number of people in our worship choir today so far, and you could really tell a difference! The worship team singers, band and tech crew did a great job, and it was a lot of fun this morning! “Overcome” has got to be one of my favorite worship anthems right now. The lyrics are so rich, and combined with the soaring music, it’s such a powerful worship song!  You can see the Planning Center details for this service.

 

Cafe Connection

“Awesome Is the Lord Most High” (Jon Abel, Chris Tomlin)

“Glorious One” (Steve Fee)

“God You Reign” (Lincoln Brewster)

“Happy Day” (Ben Cantelon and Tim Hughes)

I wasn’t involved with this service today, but I was able to listen to their rehearsal, and they really sounded great! We added Jake today to the band on acoustic bass, which really helped to fill out the sound! You can see the Planning Center details for this service.

 

Traditional Service

“Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”

“Praise To The Lord, The Almighty”

“At Calvary”

“He’s Everything To Me”

“Since Jesus Came Into My Heart”

You can see the Planning Center details for this service.

I just finished going through a tremendous Bible study on worship entitled “Pure Praise”, written by Dwayne Moore. I’ve heard so much about this book from so many people that I just had to read it for myself. I saw that there was a group of people at The Worship Community, a popular website for worship leaders, who were going to go through the study together online, and I thought that would be a great opportunity to do it, so I signed up and began going through this nine-week study back in November.

One of the main reasons I wanted to go through this study was to see if it would be a good resource to use with our team here at Bethel. I wanted to go through it first, myself, before I led our team through it. Now, after completing it, I know for sure this is something I would like to do with our team. In fact, as we learned on the last day of the study “we are now required to live out what we learned and to tell what we have experienced – through praise that is more pure and more powerful.”

I have come to appreciate Dwayne so much over the last year! I first met Dwayne at the All About Worship Retreat in Kansas City, where he was the main speaker, but I had heard of the impact of this study long before then.  Then, more recently, I registered for an online course taught by Dwayne. His Online Worship Leadership Training Course was such a great learning experience!! And now, having completed this Pure Praise study, I feel like I have grown so much from Dwayne’s teaching!

This 9 week study is written for worship teams to go through together, with special group discussion questions included at the end of each week’s lessons. There are five lessons each week, and each lesson included teaching on worship, a time for daily praise and surrender.  The central passage that this study draws from is found in 2 Chronicles 20, and I found it amazing how much detail Dwayne was able to draw from one passage! Of course, he uses texts from the whole of Scripture to support his teaching. It was amazing to dig deep into God’s Word and see all that He has to say to worship leaders in this area of worship.

This study is perfect for people of all stages in their role as a worship leader, whether it’s for a vocalist, band member, worship tech, the worship leader or pastor.  It starts with general teachings on praise, and then draws you up the mountain of learning to the peak, as you strive deeper and deeper in what it means to be a worshiper and worship leader.  I have been involved with worship ministry for over 18 years, and I learned so much in this study, it was incredible! God used this study to point some things out to me that I have read so many times, but have either overlooked, or looked at in a completely new way! I was challenged daily to surrender all to Him. The week on learning how to hear God’s voice was so powerful! I also really enjoyed the week about style, and the one about how we can have the greatest impact on the congregation through our worship.

Each week was worthwhile, and I’m so looking forward to figuring out how I’m going to take our team through this study. I know I need to!  Thanks, Dwayne, for such an amazing study!!

I’m a day behind in my weekly post, but we were gone all day after church yesterday with the installation service for a very dear friend of our family. He was installed as the senior pastor at a church, and my wife and I were privileged to be part of the service by singing a duet, and I was able to lead a congregational song at the end. We didn’t get home until late, and I was just too tired to put this together.

But, thinking back to yesterday, it was good to be back. I have not led for a couple of weeks, since we were gone at Christmas visiting family. John DeCleene was our guest speaker yesterday. He is a missionary to the Philippines, and it was so cool to hear his story about how God is using his Christian radio station there to reach so many teens! He showed a neat video, which you can watch by clicking here.  This post is part of the Sunday Setlists area of The Worship Community, where worship leaders share their setlists and worship experiences from the previous Sunday.

Contemporary Service

We had kind of a small team yesterday, but everything seemed to gel just fine.  We were missing our electric guitar player, Zack, so I had to do most of the solo parts on the keyboard. It was different, but what I had to do for years before we had a elec. guitar player.  So grateful for that!  We had Elias on the drums, Marv on guitar, Jake on the bass guitar (it was great to have him back with us, and it was neat to see how much he’s grown since last year!), myself on keys, along with Georgine, Barb and Michael on vocals.  The tech team (Bruce, Sue and Barry) did a great job as well!! You can watch the video of this service and also see the Planning Center details.

“Our God Saves” (Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown)

“For All You’ve Done” (Reuben Morgan)

“You Alone Can Rescue” (Matt Redman)

“God Of This City” (BlueTree)

“Shine” (Matt Redman)

Cafe Connection Service

It’s always fun to lead in this service, and even with a very small team this week, I thought it went well.  I was on the keys, and Brenda sang, along with Barry and Curt on the Tech team.

“For All You’ve Done” (Reuben Morgan)

“Only A God Like You” (Tommy Walker)

“You Alone Can Rescue” (Matt Redman)

“Shine” (Matt Redman)

Traditional Service

Since I was in the Cafe, Rick led this week, so a big thanks to him! Janet did an excellent job on the piano, and Pennie and Barb sounded great as they sang. Sue, Larry and Florian held down the tech booth! You can watch this service or see the Planning Center details.

“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
“Praise the Lord, Ye Heavens Adore Him”
“Glorious Is Thy Name”
“All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”
“I Love To Tell the Story”
“We’ve A Story To Tell to the Nations”

A new year, a new year of sharing worship recaps on The Worship Community’s Sunday Setlist. It was a great morning of worship at Bethel today. I was there, but since I was gone all week on vacation, I just got to sit back and watch the incredibly talented team of musicians and techs who were on today do their thing! It was great to be there, and just be led in worship, and get a unique perspective today. We had a special celebration theme today as we took a look back at “2010: The Year In Review”.

Contemporary Services

Marv led the team this week, and it was all guitars today! Usually I lead from the keyboard, and we have a second keyboard playing strings/pad. But, since I was gone, and the person who was supposed to be on keys was sick, there were no keyboards today.  But, as one of the guys said today “If the Beatles can do it, so can we!” I thought they sounded great! You can watch this service, and see the Planning Center details.

“Matchless” (Aaron Shust)

“How He Loves” (John Mark McMillan)

“Awesome Is The Lord Most High” (Chris Tomlin)

These next two songs we used during communion.

“Once Again” (Matt Redman)

“Lead Me To The Cross” (Brooke Fraser)

 

Cafe Connection Service

Zack led the team in the Cafe today, and he did a great job, as usual! Here’s the Planning Center details for this service.

“Your Grace is Enough” (Chris Tomlin)

“Because of Your Love” (Paul Baloche)

“Remembrance” (Matt Redman/Matt Maher) – A great song for communion!!

“Indescribable” (Laura Story)

 

Traditional Service

Randy led the team in this service, and they did a great job! You can watch this service and see the Planning Center details.

“Another Year Is Dawning”
“Blessed Assurance”
“To God Be The Glory”
“Lead Me To Calvary”
“Calvary Covers It All”

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,300 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 89 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 119 posts. There were 33 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 26mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was September 12th with 56 views. The most popular post that day was Sunday Recap – Bethel At The Rock.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were theworshipcommunity.com, facebook.com, networkedblogs.com, twubs.com, and twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for owl city, owl city in christ alone, owl city fireflies, in christ alone owl city, and how deep the father’s love for us owl city.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Sunday Recap – Bethel At The Rock September 2010
6 comments

“In Christ Alone” recorded by Owl City October 2010
3 comments

Sunday Recap – September 19, 2010 September 2010

Sunday Setlist – October 24, 2010 October 2010
6 comments

Worship Recap – October 3rd, 2010 October 2010

It’s been a whirlwind of a week with getting everything ready for services for two weeks, Christmas Eve services, travelling to Minnesota to be with family for Christmas and the festivities of Christmas week! But, I finally have a second to look back and recap our services from Christmas Eve and Sunday, December 26th. I hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating Christ’s birth with your church family and your own family and friends. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Christmas Eve Services

I always enjoy our Christmas Eve services, and this year seems to have gone exceptionally well.  We try to come up with some creative way to present the story each year, and this year we had four of our pastors each give  a little monologue dressed as a different character from the story: Joseph, a shepherd, a wiseman, and Simeon. They all did a great job bringing out the different parts of the story from some unique perspectives. We interspersed music between each story, and ended with our traditional candlelight singing of  “Silent Night”. We started the service with the popular “Social Network Christmas” video that’s been going around. It was one of the most unique and creative presentations of the story I’ve seen in a long time, and very relevant to those visiting. Thanks to everyone on the team who made this such a great service!!

Countdown Video (“What Child is This” by Centerline)

Opening Video (Social Network Christmas)

“Joy To The World (Unspeakable Joy)” (Chris Tomlin)
“Angels We Have Heard on High” (Chris Tomlin version)
– These two songs we used as opening songs of Christmas praise.

“Joseph’s Lullaby” (Brown Bannister and Bart Millard)
– This is an older Mercy Me song, but fit perfectly after Joseph’s monologue, as he sat by the manger holding his (real-life) newborn baby boy.

“Offering (Christmas Version)” (Paul Baloche)
– This is one of my favorite songs to do at Christmas, and we even added the sleigh bells this year, played by one of our middle schoolers.

“Adore Him” (Traditional and Don Poythress)
– Another contemporary arrangement that fit perfectly after our wise man gave his monologue. Beautiful song, especially when we added in the flute part on the solos.

“O Holy Night” (Chris Tomlin’s version)
– We used this song as the candles were being lit across the sanctuary. Chris’s new version seemed to work great as we built up to this big part of our service.

“Silent Night! Holy Night”
– Probably my favorite part of the service – candles lit across the room, and we sing “Silent Night” with no instruments, just the voices. Beautiful!

You can see the Planning Center details and watch this service on our Livestream.

 

Sunday, December 26th

Contemporary Services

I wan’t in church this Sunday, since I’m up here in Minnesota on vacation, so Adam led the team this week.  I was able to watch part of the service, though, on the Livestream, and from what I saw the team did a great job! Thanks to the band – Adam, Dennis, Elias, Zack, Adam and Janet; vocals – Brenda, Georgine and Eric; Tech – Sue, Bruce and Dave for doing such a great job!

“Hark The Herald Angels Sing” (Praise Carols)

“The First Noel” (Praise Carols)

“How Many Kings” (Jason Germain and Marc Martel)
– This is a great song by the group Downhere.  Adam and Zack did a great job on the duet, and the the band rocked – Janet on piano, Elias on drums, Dennis on bass, and Adam on keys.

“Joy To The World (Unspeakable Joy)” (Chris Tomlin)

You can see the Planning Center details for this service. We also used the same songs in our Cafe Connection service this week.

 

Traditional  Service

A big thanks to Janet for leading the team this week while I was gone. It was a small team, with just Janet and Cherry singing and Dee on the piano. But, from watching the Livestream, they sounded great!

“O Come All Ye Faithful”
“We Three Kings”
“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”
“While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks”
“O Little Town of Bethlehem”
“Good Christian Men, Rejoice”
“The Birthday of a King”
“Go Tell It On The Mountain”

You can see the Planning Center details and the Livestream for this service.

This post is part of the Sunday Setlists blog sharing at The Worship Community, where you can read other recaps from around the country.

 

We had a great morning of worship today at Bethel!  Pastor Tim continued his Christmas series on John 1:14, and it was good to back into our regular routine after a break last week for “Back To The Manger”, our kid’s Christmas musical.  We used a neat countdown video this morning, “Nativity Sketches Countdown” from ShiftWorship (one of the best places for media, in my opinion!)  This post is part of the Sunday Setlist blog carnival at The Worship Community, where you can read other recaps from around the world.

 

Contemporary Services

We had the worship choir sing today along with the worship team and band, and they did a great job! You can see the video of this service, along with the Planning Center details.

“O Come, All Ye Faithful” (Praise Carols)
– Bekah did a super job on the solo (even though she wasn’t feeling the greatest!). It was a nice way to start the service.

“Angels We Have Heard on High” (Chris Tomlin’s version)
– Like most of the songs from Chris Tomlin’s newest Christmas CD, this arrangement is very congregationally-friendly. No surprises, yet different enough to give it a contemporary sound.

“My Soul Magnifies the Lord” (Chris Tomlin and Daniel Carson)
– This is one of my favorites from Tomlin’s release. Not familiar to the congregation, so it was more of a special, but many were able to pick it up and join in.

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (Casting Crowns)
– Marv nailed the solo on this one! We used our worship choir as the choir on the “Peace on Earth” part to this one. Such a great song!

“Glory in the Highest” (Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Ed Cash, Jesse Reeves)
– Another one of Tomlin’s, but again, these songs are so singer-friendly that even though people weren’t that familiar with the song, people were singing out and worshiping so demonstratively on this song. We had many comments after the service that people were so touched by that song, some couldn’t stop crying. It was powerful!

 

Cafe Connection Service

Adam led the team in the Cafe service this morning, and picked out some great songs. You can see the Planning Center details from this service.

“O Come All Ye Faithful” (Third Day)

“Angels We Have Heard on High” (Chris Tomlin)

“Away In A Manger” (Casting Crowns)

“O Holy Night” (Mercy Me)

 

Traditional Service

We sang some great carols this morning, and Rick did a super job on special music, with “Joseph’s Song”, one of my favorites! You can see the video of this service and the Planning Center details.

“Angels From the Realms of Glory”
“Angels We Have Heard on High”
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing”
“The First Noel”
“What Child Is This”
“Joseph’s Song” (Michael Card) – special music
“Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne”

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all had a great morning of worship!

For the first time this morning, we performed our children’s Christmas musical on a Sunday morning, and not just on a Sunday night. So, my morning today was quite different than normal. We almost didn’t have church this morning!! Here in Wisconsin, we had a huge blizzard last night and today. It was a hard decision, given the forecast, but we decided to keep church on for today, and I’m glad we did!

We presented “Back To The Manger’, a kid’s Christmas musical by Christy Semsen (WORD Music). It’s a great musical about some kids who use a time machine to experience a Christmas Outreach that takes place across a variety of decades, and ultimately back to the manger.  The music from each decade was so fun, and the kids did such a good job! I was part of the leadership team, teaching the kids the music, while others taught the drama and choreography.

If you’d like to see our performance, you can watch the video of one of our services this morning.  A huge thanks to the tech team who made this possible, and the great job they did on the cameras!

This post is part of the “Sunday Setlists” at The Worship Community where you can read other  recaps of  Sunday services.    I hope your morning went well! Merry Christmas!

I thought I would have a little fun today, and change my Facebook Profile pic. I also wanted more people to find my blog, so…

Using a handy little tool where you can create your own QR Code, I thought I would just make  a barcode and save that as my profile pic.

When you scan the image with your phone, or barcode scanner it should bring you right here – to my blog!

Who knows how many people’s curiosity will lead them here, but we’ll see.  If it worked for you, why don’t you leave a comment! Most people will probably just think – huh?

Use this site to create your own QR Codes by entering a URL, text, phone number, or whatever…

OK – that was my computer nerd/geek moment for the day. Got it out of my system for a while.

Barry