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Well, nothing is perfect.  But the way the songs and lyrics fit the 3rd week’s message in our “Uncaged” series at SSCC this week was close to it.

I’d planned our closing song in cooperation with Jon Blankenship, who would be preaching this week … but had no idea that the rest of his sermon would literally be full of the actual lyrics and expressions in all of our songs.

I love it when it when that happens!

Overall, it was a more “contemporary” Sunday than normal, with bigger, edgier, louder music.  I expected that I may get a little more pushback than I did, but only one complaint thus far, and it was from a visitor who said they don’t want anything except traditional music.

Walk In:
My Savior Lives

Opening Song:
I Am Free

Worship Set:
Your Name
You Save (original)

Closer:
Christ Is Risen

It was awesome seeing a number of people confessing Jesus as their Lord and Savior in both services!

Sharing this as part of the “Sunday Setlists” event held weekly at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Better late than never, right?

Here’s a recap of our Setlist from SSCC.  As always, I’m posting this as part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

View our Service in PlanningCenterOnline.

This was one of those Sundays when before you ever start, you realize that you’re probably trying to cram way too much into one service.  Sometimes it just happens that way.  We want to worship through music and song.  We want to be challenged and equipped through the preaching of the Word.  We want to have community and communicate things to our congregants.  We want to celebrate missions and pray for outgoing teams.

The tension comes when all of this needs to happen on one Sunday, for whatever reason.  We are held to a fairly tight schedule due to multiple services and the logistics of clearing a building and parking lot.

This Sunday was one of those Sundays.  We had a longer-than-normal sermon (which we already knew, and was great).  We had new members to introduce, several important announcements, and a missions team to send.  Plus, we’d planned an inspiring time of ministry for response after the sermon.

Well, our service DID go a bit long – but it was worth it.  At the end of the day, I’m sure we were the ones paying attention to the clock a lot more than those who came to worship.  It’s a tension that has to be managed, and I think we did a good job with it this week.

On to the music:

Walk In:  “Everlasting God” (a last minute change because the original song we’d chosen didn’t work out)
Opening Set:
“Alive Again” (Maher, one of our favorites)
“Song of Moses” (recently recorded on new Aaron Keyes album, LOVE this song)

Ministry time at end:
“Rescue” (Jared Anderson)
“Jesus Paid it All” (Northpoint)

Without going into a lot of detail about the sermon and how it impacted people, we were overwhelmed at the conclusion of the service with people coming forward for ministry and to “put their sin” in this cage we’d built.  It was incredibly inspiring and I felt like people were really getting free.  Praise God!

And that’s a wrap for this week!

Question:  how do you manage the tension of time management in your services?

This 4th of July holiday threw my blogging schedule off a bit.  Excuses, Excuses!

So I’d hoped to do a thorough recap on my use of the iPad2 in our worship service but for today, the setlist recap will have to suffice.  The blog on the iPad is going to be a lot more involved.

You can view a production sheet for our July 3rd service via PlanningCenter.

Sunday, July 3rd - St. Simons Community Church

Russ Hutto opened us with the debut of “Here for You” off the new Passion 2011 album.  It was a great song and one I look forward to integrating into our services.

From there, we went into “All my Fountains” (also from Passion 2011) with the arrangement I use for hammer dulcimer.  It’s a favorite of ours, and I love playing it.

After announcements, I acknowledged the significance of the upcoming July 4 holiday and we sang “God Bless America” as a prayer, asking God for his blessing on our country.  That flowed seamlessly into “I Stand Amazed” (How Marvelous) hymn, followed by “Mighty To Save” that was more in the Laura Story-type arrangement than the Hillsong one.

We had an intense sermon about being “caged” — I’d been waiting literally for 2 years to find the right service to do the song “Pieces” by the band, Red.  This was the service.  I spent the week scoring out cello and violin parts, sequencing, tracking, and we did this song for a very powerful time to close the service.

Tons of great feedback about this closer.  I will be posting the sequences and loops soon.

As always, this recap is part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com each week!

(Today’s post is part of the “Sunday Setlists” event sponsored by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.  Checkout worship service recaps from other worship leaders!)

Hey Gang!

I’m crafting this recap at an early 5:19 AM on Monday.  I had no intentions of being up at 4:00 AM but that’s how it happened today.

Yesterday was a great service at SSCC.  The flow of our service was a bit different than normal, as we didn’t have our corporate worship through singing and music until the end of the service.

It was the final week of our “The Man Series”.  This week’s sermon title was “When A Man Loves a Woman”.

What better song to kickoff the morning than Percy’s “When A Man Loves A Woman”!  Since this is a secular song I thought it would be wise to break the ice.  This was our “walk-in” song so I just greeted everyone, explained that we were on our last week, the title, and pitched the song.  It was fun watching people laugh and smile as they casually enjoyed this all-familiar tune.  After we finished the song in the 9:00 AM service people really clapped and showed how much they enjoyed it.

We had one of our supported missionaries to East Asia with us so the first part of our service was dedicated to him.  After a well-produced video he shared about their work.

Just as David was about to get started with the sermon we interrupted him with our final spoof of the Bud Lite commercials, “Real Men of Genius”.  This week was “Mr. Golf Tournament Quiet Sign Holder Upper”.  The real humor in it was having PGA Pro Jonathan Byrd walk out on stage holding a big “Quiet” sign, accompanied my Mark Love, brother (and former caddy) of PGA Pro, Davis Love III.

Our time of corporate singing came during holy communion at the conclusion of the service.  Our communion set included:

“Remembrance” (Matt Maher/Matt Redman)
“In Christ Alone”
“He Ransomed Me” (original song I wrote last month, featured here)

“The Man Series” was a hit in our church.  I’ll miss our cool man cave setup on the stage for sure, but maybe I’ll get our Yamaha grand piano back out there.  I miss playing her!

View a copy of our service details and flow @ PlanningCenterOnline.Com.

How did it go with your services this weekend?

Worship Recap from St. Simons Community Church
Sunday, June 19th 2011
Posted as part of the weekly “Sunday Setlists” event at TheWorshipCommunity.Com – see what other churches are doing!

Yesterday was one of those Sundays I’d characterize as a real “win” for our church in regards to our culture of leadership.  That’s because both myself, as the Worship Pastor, and my buddy and co-worker, Travis Paulding (our Full-Time Tech Director) observed while those on our teams led.

We had the privilege of hosting Aaron Keyes as a guest worship leader for a few songs yesterday.  He’s in town leading worship for a summer camp and has formed some great relationships with some folks in our church over the past years.  It was a perfect fit for him to return back to SSCC and bless us with his ministry.  Aaron and my friend Shannon Lewis are friends and I decided to let Shannon run with this one.

So, while I sat back and watched Shannon lead an incredible worship service,  co-leading with Aaron, I noticed Travis leaning back against the sound booth while his faithful volunteers made all the audio/video stuff happen.  At one point I leaned over to the volunteer running sound, Jerry, and said “man, that’s a great mix”.  I have a critical ear when it comes to mixing – and he did an incredible job.

Afterwards, my brother-in-law said to me, “I think that was the best sermon I’ve ever heard David preach”.   He was so inspired by the teaching on how a Real Man is a Life-Giver.

You can view a copy of our service flow. (thanks to PlanningCenterOnline)

Walk-In Song:  “Glory to God Forever” (Fee/Beeching)

At the top of the hour, we ran the “Dad Life” video for Father’s Day by Church on the Move.  It was hilarious! (see below)

Next, Shannon led “Our God”, followed by an introduction to Aaron Keyes.

Aaron led us with:
“Not Guilty Anymore” (my personal favorite”
“Song of Moses” (on brand new CD coming out tomorrow!)

After the sermon (you can watch it within 24 hours at sscclive.com), we closed with “Father Will You Come”.