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Oh, what a beautiful day … what a beautiful way .. that HE HAS SAVED ME!

No, we didn’t sing that song today, but my 3rd Easter Sunday as the Worship Pastor at St. Simons Community Church was a great day.  We had packed crowds with overflow in both services and Pastor David Yarborough presented the Gospel in a powerful way.  I know many lives were given to Jesus Christ today.

One of the problems I face is having TOO MANY wonderful musicians and singers.  As a result, it’s impossible to get everyone on the stage for Easter Sunday.  Nevertheless, we had an awesome team with some of our faithful volunteers and had a glorious time in worship.

We opened with a song that’s become a bit of a “tradition” for us … with “Shackles”.  This is such a groovy tune led by Kim Dixon and Todd Hendrix.  It was incredible having Josh Nunn with us on sax this year and Russ Hutto even pulled out his trumpet as we did a long interlude of band jam while people were waiting on the services to begin.

At the top of the hour we had an exciting 60-second countdown video which stirred us in anticipation of the celebration that was happening.

This led directly into “Glory to God Forever”, one of my favorite songs of the last year.

After some brief announcements we had an incredible interview/testimony with PGA Golfer Zach Johnson who won the Masters a few years ago … on Easter Sunday, actually!  Zach lives on St. Simons and attends our church and he had an incredible of story of how he’s given his life to Christ.

To kickoff the 2nd set of worship, Russ Hutto played a regal version of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” on trumpet.  After he played through the song one time, the vocals and piano joined in with Verse 1.  Verses 2 and 3 added full band with a “fanfare” to kickoff a big, broad Verse 4.  I asked Russ to play the big “pipe organ” sound on the keys as we went into the final verse, and frankly .. I LOVED IT!

“Mighty to Save” was a must-have for Easter Sunday.  This has become an anthem in our church and the people really sing it out with everything they have.

The next moment was carefully rehearsed and came out beautifully.  We had a video that perfectly setup the sermon and the background music was Tomlin’s “I Will Rise”.  Travis (our Tech Director) stripped the background music and narration away and one of our faithful volunteers created a new voiceover.  With the help of the full Ableton Live tracks from InteractiveWorshipLive.Com we accompanied the video with “I Will Rise” and came in after the 2nd Verse … so this inspiring video and narration played throughout the 1st Verse, Chorus, and 2nd Verse, and faded into lyrics as we picked it up.  It was wonderful.

Our closing songs were full of live:
“In Christ Alone” (Townend/Ketty) – one of my favorites!
“Christ is Risen” (Matt Maher)

Wow, what an incredible day.  Of course, “Shackles” as a walk-out/encore was a given, and we enjoyed seeing lots of people stay in the room to dance, praise, and enjoy the fun and music.

This worship recap is a part of the “Sunday Setlists” blog event happening at TheWorshipCommunity.Com each week!  Check it out and see what others are doing in their worship services!

Happy Easter!