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Hey Everybody,

Welcome to the 35th consecutive week of “Sunday Setlists” – where we share our worship confessionals and worship service recaps.  The rules are pretty simple:

1:  blog about your worship service that you attended (or led) this week.  (it does not have to be on a Sunday)
2:  in your blog, mention that you are participating in Sunday Setlists, and link back to this entry on my blog:
http://www.fredmckinnon.com/myblog/2009/03/22/sunday-setlists-35/
3:  leave the URL link to YOUR Sunday Setlists post in the Mr. Linky below
4:  comment, and visit the other sites.  Share yours on twitter, using the #sundaysetlists hashtag

Sunday Setlists, March 22, 2009
St. Simons Community Church

Great today @SSCC – we are in Week 4 of our series on Job entitled “When It Hurts”.  Today’s message was about Job’s lament, and our need to be willing to lament and wrestle with God.  It was a powerful service.  For the second week in a row, the sermon was delivered by one of our members, Billy Barrow.  Pastor David Yarborough was taking a couple of Sundays off during this series.  He was there  – he slipped back into the Middle School service and from what I read on a “tweet” by @chrismoncus, he led some kids to the Lord back there this AM.  Woo Hoo!

I was joined in leadership today by the founding Worship Leader for SSCC, Mrs. Harriet Jones.  She played acoustic and sang – it’s always a privilege to share the platform with her.

Our walk-in song was “Your Grace is Enough” (G).  We did that last week, but the message in that song is strong for this series, and the guest speaker requested that we sing it again.

Our opening song at the top of the hour (9:00 and 11:00 services) was “Everlasting God” (A), one of our church favorites.

The second set of worship (after announcements) included:
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman) -(G)
You Are So Good To Me – (D)
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – (E)

I brought Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) down to the Key of E – much more comfortable for my lower range, and much more singable for the congregation.  I never liked the higher key because you drop DOWN to sing the Chorus, which makes no sense to me.  Doing the song in (E) allows you to “rise” into the Chorus, instead of “dropping down”.  As always, I like to challenge worship leaders to consider where the highs and lows of the melody are in a song and adjust to fit the “norm” for congregational singing.

After this segment we went straight into our testimony video.  This one is a little longer, but really hits home – as it’s from a dear friend of ours, Todd Hendrix.  Todd is a friend, a neighbor, and has sung on the worship team at SSCC forever.  Plus, he was one of my vocalists on the “Worship Under the Stars” CD/DVD, and was featured singing “You Raise Me Up” on that concert – still a very popular arrangement on iTunes.  Here’s the video:

At the closing of the sermon, Billy (the guest speaker, and brother-in-law of Todd, the guy in the video) read a stirring lament that he’d written to God about Todd.  It was powerful. Then he encouaged us to lament, to wrestle with God, and he opened up the altars.  As a special during this time of ministry, we performed the lament of Psalm 13, as recorded by Brian Doerksen on the “You Shine” album.  Take a listen below – it was strong.  Imagine, lights all the way down, and the altars filling up with people – many whom we could hear wailing, crying, lamenting, and wrestling with God.

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After this time of ministry, we transitioned into a slow Chorus of “Your Grace is Enough” as a reprise, closing out the service.

I think it was powerful, and had a blast leading this week. For any local SSCC folks, I’d love to get your take on how the service went today as well.

OK – It’s Your Turn – Fill out the Mister Linky below.  VERY IMPORTANT – be sure that when you enter your URL, it’s the FULL URL to your actual blog post – not your blog’s homepage.  Every week I probably delete more than 10-20 links for not following this simple rule.  It’s important because people don’t want to have to wade through your homepage to find this post – so if you aren’t sure how to do this, be sure that after you publish your blog post, click on the title of that entry, and copy that URL.  Thanks!