(Advertisement)

Sunday Setlist #19 - Worship Service Recaps

Posted on November 30th, 2008 in Church Life, Faith, Sunday Setlists, Worship Confessionals by Fred

The purpose of “Sunday Setlists” is to collaborate with other worshipers worldwide, and to share a recap of our worship experiences.  This blog is the hub, and in the links below you’ll find spokes … links to other blogs all over the world capturing the encounters they had in worship this week.

To participate:

1.  Blog about your worship service.  You don’t have to be the leader, pastor, or Worship Leader.  If you don’t have a blog, you can just share your experiences in the comments below.

2.  In your actual blog entry, mention the “Sunday Setlists” blog and link back to today’s post.  The link you should use is below.  An example?  In your blog, you could say something like “I’m posting my worship recap along with other worship leaders at “Sunday Setlists” over at FredMcKinnon.Com” - and link to:
http://www.fredmckinnon.com/myblog/2008/11/30/sunday-setlist-19/

3.  After sharing your recap (blog entry, worship confessional video, etc)., come back here and fill out the Mister Linky form below.  Note:  for “URL” - be sure to enter the actual URL address to your Sunday Setlist post, not your homepage.  Homepage links will be deleted.  If you aren’t sure what your URL is, go back to your blog, and click on the title of the blog entry, and then copy that URL from your address bar.

4.  Leave a comment below, and then surf over and visit some of the other setlists.

5.  SPREAD THE WORD - try to get others involved, twitter it, facebook it, myspace it, blog it, email it, etc.

Here’s our “Sunday Setlist” recap for St. Simons Community Church, Sunday Nov 30, 2008:
(when possible, song titles are linked to iTunes store)

Walk-In Song:
“O Taste and See” by Brian and Jenn Johnson
Comment:  this song has been off rotation for a while.  A number of people just didn’t really care for it - it was a bit too “sing songy” for them, and they didn’t feel like people connected with it.  I’ve really liked this song all along, and thought I’d bring it back during the Walk-In Time.  The band enjoys it, and we song several people singing along.

First Song:
“Holy Is The Lord” - Chris Tomlin
Comment:  an old familiar for us.  We had an early rehearsal last week because of the Thanksgiving Holiday, and I was intentional about choosing an easier lineup with familiar material - both for our rehearsal sake, and to have a good, solid Sunday of familiar music.

Second Song:
“Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone”
Comment:  I’d originally planned on doing the Hillsong version of this, which is big, fast, and comes with a full band arrangement.  I had a smaller band today (which always seems to blend nicely) so during rehearsal last week, I changed this up on the spot and opted for the soft, piano-driven version.  It was the right choice.

Interlude:
I continued playing the piano, and took about 3-4 minutes to share a scripture from Jeremiah about how we should trust in God, and not man.  I took some time to lead/pastor the people, encourage them, and verbalize the anxiety and tension that we all see in our economy, political transition, and our lives.  It was a comforting time, the Scripture re-affirmed our trust in God, and I used that to connect on a relational basis with our people, and transitioned directly into the next song.

Third Song:
“Blessed Be Your Name” (Matt/Beth Redman)
Comment:  came right ouf of the interlude above, and sang through the Chorus slowly, with only piano.  After singing through the Chorus twice, the drummer clicked it off, and the full band came in at the regular, upbeat tempo.

Sermon:
Final week 6 of 6 of our “Ignite” series, concluding the last of two weeks on Marriage.  Great job, David.

Closing Song:
“How He Loves Us” (Kim Walker version)
As I contemplated a closer this week, I met with the Pastor to find out just how his sermon would be closing.  When I heard that he was speaking on the 3 types of “love” I asked him if he might could work out the closing so that we acknowledged that even with the 3 types of “love” we are to give, we must accept God’s love for us.  He did this, and “How He Loves Us” was a perfect closer.

I thought it was a great Sunday, personally.  The guys in our Tech Dept. did a fantastic job, as always.

Your turn!

FreePlay Friday - Shopping and Holiday Island

Posted on November 28th, 2008 in Events, Free Play Fridays by Fred
FreePlay Friday Logo by Russ Hutto - www.russhutto.com

FreePlay Friday Logo by Russ Hutto - www.russhutto.com

Hey Everybody!!

Hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving.  I’d love to hear about it.

Today is “Black Friday”.  Joy got up and went to Wal-Mart in Brunswick, GA.  She got there around 6:00 AM, an hour after the doors opened.  It was a mad house.  She said the entire parking lot was overflowing out into the grassy areas.  When she got in, the lines at the cash registers were backed up all the way across the store, down the front aisle, past the pharmacy section.

They had some 7″ Portable DVD Players for $49, I think.  They were locked up in those glass cases, so you had to wait in line there, too … which stretched way across the area.

Joy didn’t buy anything … no way she was waiting that long. But she said it was WORTH IT, just to see the craziness.

How ’bout you?  I saw that Los was already done w/ all his shopping by early Friday AM, and saved more $ than he spent!

Also … for those who are somewhat local?

I’ll be doing a concert with a 5-piece band tomorrow night (Saturday Night) on Jekyll Island, kicking off their “Holiday Island - Lighting of the Christmas Tree” event.  We’ll do about 40 minutes of praise and worship music, followed by another 30-40 minutes of Christmas  carols.  The only thing topping that is Santa coming in to light that big ole’ tree, followed by what I think is one of the best FIREWORKS DISPLAYS all year.

Come throw some of the “snowballs” (but not at us on stage, right Shannon?) and join the party - 4:30 - until.

Share your “Black Friday” stories and Holiday Plans!

I’m Thankful For …

Posted on November 27th, 2008 in Events, Faith, Family by Fred

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

What are three things you’d like to give thanks about?  I’m thankful for:

1 - a Godly heritage - parents on both sides of my family (my parents and Joy’s parents) who love God, serve God, and brought us up in a home of love and Godly values.

2 - my wife and kids.  They are amazing, and I don’t deserve them!

3 - our church, and the privilege I have to serve at SSCC.

You are thankful for ….
(comment by clicking)

Scoring Soundtracks for Video

Posted on November 26th, 2008 in Church Life, Faith, Music, Technology, Worship Leadership by Fred

Hey Everybody -

One of my favorite things to do in music is creating original soundtracks to video clips.  In my role as the Worship Director here at SSCC I get lots of opportunities to do that.  Our Tech Dept is amazing, and huge kudos to Travis Paulding for leading it.

Though our videos are pretty short, it’s often necessary to score original music with them.  Sure, we can find “canned music” online, but it’s much more meaningful to me when I can feel the vibe of the video and relate it musically.

This past week was no different - only the “vibe” was amusing … my challenge was to create a spoof on the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” Apple commercials.  The music needed to be similar enough so that people could get the parody, yet different enough to prevent infringing on their copyrighted composition.  This video is being used to setup the sermon on the last two weeks of our “Ignite” series on Sex, Dating, and Marriage.  Special thanks to John and Missy Weaver for the acting!

You can read more of the technical details of how the video was shot on Travis’ blog, but for the music, here are all the recording/tech details for those who are interested.  But first, the video:


Ignite - Marriage Intro - Man vs. Woman from Travis Paulding on Vimeo.

1.  Travis edited the video and once the timing was established, I received a QuickTime Movie.  It was still raw, the green screen was in the video and hadn’t been keyed out, etc., but the timing was there, which was all I needed.

2.  I imported the video into ProTools, and created several new tracks:
a.  Midi Track for the Shaker
*I used the Stylus RMX plugin to get the Shaker sound.  It’s an awesome plugin by Spectrasonics and it allows me to copy/paste a MIDI segment that I can alter and arrange.  Most importantly, I can control it with tempo changes, since it’s really a simple MIDI file.

b.  Midi Track for the Marimba
*I used my Yamaha S80 for the Marimba sound.

c.  Midi Track for the Piano
*Again, I used my Yamaha S80 for the piano.

3.  After tracking everything, I used ProTools’ Tempo controls to insert a gradual ritardando (slow down, for you non-music folk) over the last couple of measures, to give it that same feel as the Apple commercials.

4.  I bounced a stereo .wav file, but after getting it back to Travis, the mix wasn’t nearly the same.  Although I have great studio reference monitors (Event 20/20 biamps), it simply sounded vastly different on Travis’ monitors.  The marimba was way back in the mix, and the shaker was way too hot.  So, I went back to ProTools and created 3 new AUDIO TRACKS.  I bussed the output of the existing AUX INPUTS from Stylus and the S80 to the inputs of the Audio Tracks, named those tracks with the respective instrument, and recorded them.  Now, I had individual .wav files in my Audio folder for each instrument.

5.  I brought the invidiual .wav files back to Travis who was able to mix them appropriately in Final Cut.

Voila - what do you think?

Sunday Setlists #18 - Worship Service Recaps

Posted on November 23rd, 2008 in Church Life, Sunday Setlists, Worship Confessionals by Fred

Hey Everybody - Welcome to the 18th consecutive week of “Sunday Setlists”.

First things first - some business.  You’d probably agree, the “Sunday Setlists” logo above is lame.  It’s one of those “create a logo from the text you type” freebie things online.  Some of you have design genuis.  So, just like I’m always looking for a new logo for “FreePlay Friday”, I’m looking for new “Sunday Setlists” logos.

Interested?  Design a “Sunday Setlists” logo, and I’ll use it, and give you credit and link back to your blog right here at the top of the post.  Sunday Setlists is the most visited entry here each week!

OK - on to the carnival:

1.  Blog about your worship service.  Don’t blog?  Just post a comment below and share your recaps.  We want to hear about your songs, sermon series, creative elements, etc.

2.  In your blog, you should link back to *THIS* post.  The purpose of that is to direct other people who view your Setlist back here for the carnival so they can see all the other links.  You should link to:
http://www.fredmckinnon.com/myblog/2008/11/23/sunday-setlists-18/

3.  Come back here and fill out the “Mister Linky” box below.  The URL that you enter should be the URL that is your Sunday Setlist post.  Don’t link to your blog’s homepage.  Homepage links are deleted.  Not sure of your URL?  Click on the TITLE of your new blog entry, and copy/paste that URL.

4.  Leave a comment about your participation below, and then SPREAD THE WORD.  Please use FaceBook, Twitter, and any other means of social networking to encourage others to participate.

*WE WANT TO GET MORE PEOPLE PARTICIPATING THAT AREN’T THE LEADERS - I’D LOVE TO SEE MORE RECAPS FROM PEOPLE WHO JUST ATTENDED, AND GET THEIR PERSPECTIVE FROM THE CONGREGATION*

Here we go:

Sunday Setlist for St. Simons Community Church, 11/23/08

Great day of worship today.  Our flow felt a big disjointed because of some extras we had.  As a result, we didn’t have a flow of more than 2 songs at any given moment.  This isn’t my preference but we had extra things to handle today.

Walk-In:  “Meet with Me”
This is an older song, but I just love it.  It’s so singable, so easy, and with some good arranging, it can sound really good.  I think our arrangement works really well - big intro, scaled back verse, big Chorus.  I use the B3 sound on the keys when leading this song.

Opening Song:
“Hosanna” (Paul Baloche) … once again, we used this click-track and loop

Welcome and Mission Time:
Quick welcome and announcements, and a 5-minute recap from a missionary who is serving in Asia.

Praise:
“Thank You, Lord” (Paul Baloche, Don Moen)
We introduced this country/ho-down type song last week as our “walk-in” … I was looking for something new and fresh to express our gratitude.  I think this is the first “Sunday-before-Thanksgiving” that I didn’t sing Henry Smith’s “Give Thanks” since I’ve been involved in leading worship.

Sermon:
As part of our 6-week series on Sex, Dating, and Marriage, David kicked off the 5th week with the first segment of “Marriage”.

We had a hilarious video that we produced … a spoof on the “I’m A Mac, I’m a PC” commercials.  We used “I’m a Man, I’m a Woman”.  I had fun composing the score for it … it’s hosted over on Travis’ site - so check it out in a new window when you’re done here.

Closing Music:
We bumped two worship songs together at the end because we wanted people to have a time to respond to last week’s Building Campaign time.  We’d passed out some commitment cards and wanted people to have the option to bring those forward as an act of worship, so they had some boxes setup on the altar, etc.  I am grateful for all the people who responded to God’s challenge in giving, and who brought up their cards.  I pray that they saw their “giving” as an act of worship as much as the song we were singing.

“Take My Life/Here Am I” (Tomlin/Passion)
“I Will Never Be The Same Again” (Hillsongs)
*had to cut the 2nd verse out, the sermon went long and we were already at :10 past, which is out goal to be done by.

Locals - if you were at SSCC, let us know how you felt about today’s worship experience.  Otherwise, everyone else join in!

Next Page »