Last week I wrote about how rough it was to get going, this week was much better!  We were all there on time and ready to get to work, with no chairs to set up, which was nice!  We are still on the hunt though for some extra volunteers, because, as they say “more hands makes less work”.  We’ve been asking the congregation for the past few weeks for some volunteers, but no one seems to want to be up that early!  Hopefully some will come soon.

Worship went great this week.  The team seemed to be spot on! Musically it was great, vocally I was hearing some amazing 4 part harmonies that I haven’t heard at our church before, so it was a joy to be a part of.  The only thing missing was the percussion, and we could feel it! Our percussionist was away this week, and boy did we miss him!  At this point, percussion is the only thing we don’t have a back up for, though we do have a couple of drummers in our church.

On a some what unimportant note, I played my new guitar (70′s reissue Highway One Strat) at church this past Sunday, and it was awesome! I gave her a pep talk the night before, and all went great!

The team this week was as follows:

Chris – Electric Guitar/Vox
Matt – Acoustic/Bkg Vox
Greg – Bass
Tammy – Bkg Vox
Joy – Bkg Vox
Cathy – Piano/Bkg Vox

Now onto the set list (with iTunes links)

Your Love is Amazing (G)
Open the Eyes of My Heart (D)
Lord I Give You My Heart (E)
Seek Ye First (C)
Come Thou Fount (D)
Be Thou My Vision (D)
The Heart of Worship (D)

The sermon this Sunday was on Matthew 7, “Do Not Judge” and the nature of the sermon felt heavy.  All week I was praying about whether or not I should tell the song story behind The Heart of Worship, and after hearing what Steve was talking about, I felt God telling me to share the story.  I also shared a lot about my own problems in worship and how God has matured me over the years, and then I called the congregation to a place of repentance for wanting the worship time to suit their needs.  I talked about how we get out of worship what we put into it, and that if we go into it with a heart of judgement, because we don’t like hymns, or modern music, then we won’t get anything out of it.  There were a lot of tears being shed by young and old, which affirmed for me that it was something that needed to be heard. God is Good!

As always you can see our PCO Plan Here

You can read other peoples Sunday Set Lists Here

I’m going to start off with a side note, it involves our congregation, but nothing to do with our music. This past Sunday morning the adults in our congregation had a major breakthru during Sunday School.  Our pastor started off his lesson talking about some of the silly things he had done in his past, and wrapped it up by apologizing to the congregation for something that happened the week before, where in not so many ways, he spoke badly of another church in our area.  The breakthru was that many people in our church speak badly about other churches, because we seem to think we are better than them.  Be it because we have an amazing teaching pastor, or awesome worship band, or the fact that every church in our community (about 25 churches) are dying, except for ours, which is growing in leaps in bounds.  The congregation realized that we shouldn’t be thinking ill of these churches, but rather we should be praying for them and helping when we can.  There were a lot of tears, and some very encouraging words spoken around the idea of repentance, and it not being to late.  It was something I’ve NEVER seen happen in our church in the past 5 years that I’ve been attending.

The day started off rough, but ended off great in my opinion.  The first rough part was when we arrived at the high school (we out grew our building last year, and now meet in a high school until we can raise the funds to build a new building) and none of the chairs were set up.  We pay the school a reasonable fee for the use of the gym (and a few other rooms) but a part of that fee goes to the custodians for setting up chairs and tables.. we’ve had a lot of really interesting struggles with the chairs not being set up right.. and this Sunday they weren’t set up at all.. they were out on the floor, and it looked as though someone got mad, because they were all scattered around.. this was later confirmed when the custodian on duty told me that there was a note from the Friday staff (the Friday guys set up our chairs) and he said the note seemed as though he was mad.

Once we got some people to set up the chairs, we got to work on the gear.  We got some new gear this week, which I was very excited about.  We got 2 new Yorkville 50KW wedge monitors (now we have 3) we got a new 16 channel snake, which was much needed with the growth in our worship team, and we got a Behringer HA4700 Headphone Amplifier, which we are using for the IEM system for our leaders.

Set up was rough.. it seemed as though no one really knew what was going on.. there was so much confusion and it took some time to bring everyone back on track and get the goal completed, but we did.. Then came time for sound checks.. we started with monitors, since we had 2 new ones, and a new IEM.. the IEM’s are running off of the EFX Send on our soundboard, since we only have 1 monitor feed.. and the wedges are running from the main monitor feed. The IEM set up was perfect.. those using them knew exactly what they wanted, and it took all of 5 minutes to set them up.  Then we came to the wedges.. they were a pain.. 1 piano player was saying it was plenty loud, and the other piano player was saying she couldn’t hear anything.. even though she was full tilt on the board, and everyone on stage was going deaf.. so I’m not sure what was going on there.. even at the end of the service she said she couldn’t hear very well.. but we were all being blown away by the volume…  bugs to get worked out I guess.. maybe we’ll set her up with headphones coming out of her wedge.. I don’t know but it was pretty frustrating to start off..

Anyway.. the set went great I felt.  Transitions went perfectly, and I only heard a few bad notes from the keys.. things that 95% of people wouldn’t hear anyway..

We had a slightly smaller team this week, because some of our team was away, or wanted to take the Sunday off. Musically we had…

Chris – Electric Guitar / Lead Vox
Matt – Bass / Bkg Vox
Angie – Lead Keys / Bkg Vox
Clint – Percussion
Joy – Bkg Keys
Tammy – Bkg Vox

Now onto the actual setlist (with iTunes links)

Nothing But the Blood (F)
By His Wounds (F)
Alas and Did My Savior Bleed (G)
I’m Forever Grateful (G)
The Power of Your Love (G)
My Faith Has Found a Resting Place (G)
Your Love is Amazing (G) This got pulled on account of time

As always, you can see our PCO plan here

Check out other Sunday Set Lists Here

Today marked the beginning of something new for our church when it comes to worship music.  Today was the first day of our “one BIG worship team”.. for the past 2 years, we’ve been working with 4 smaller worship teams, and to be honest, it just didn’t work well for us, because if I (as the more contemporary guy) introduced a new song the beginning of the month, the congregation wasn’t going to hear that song again for another month, because the other teams never took the new songs, they would just do older stuff.  So after a chat with our pastor about where the church is going, and a long chat with all the worship leaders, we decided to merge and make 1 versatile team.

The stage was full, but it wasn’t a biggie because we have a big stage at the high school where we meet for worship.  Musically we had..

Chris – Electric Guitar/ Vox
Matt – Acoustic/Vox
Greg – Bass
Clint – Percussion (no drum kit yet, but we’re working towards it)
Angie – Keys/Vox
Cathy – Keys
Joy – Vox
Tammy – Vox

I thought it was great.  I was nervous going into it, not knowing how the congregation would respond, or how the team would do together, but, the team worked great together, and I had a few people say to me after the service “I don’t know what it was, but compared to last week with a smaller worship team, this week the congregation was really singing”.. This is a problem we’ve had for a long time.. we weren’t really getting a large amount of participation from the congregation, we won’t say why we didn’t think they were singing, but lets just say that seeing the mix of people up on stage is what we believe has helped them to really sing along.

Now.. on to the actual set list.. (with iTunes links)

Great God of Wonders (D)
Great is the Lord (C)
Holy is the Lord (G)
Take My Life (G)
Holy, Holy, Holy (C)
Great Are You Lord (F)
As It Is In Heaven (G)

As always, you can see our PCO Plan Here

Check out other peoples #sundaysetlist by clicking here