Sweet.

That’s the one word I’d use to sum up our 9/11 services at SSCC yesterday.

We opened with the Latin-groove “Glorious” by Martha Munnizzi.  Always a tough one for the band and vocals to pull off (this song has the craziest key changes I’ve ever seen).

Kicking off the congregational singing was “Hosanna” (Baloche/Brown).  After this opening song we were seated and watched a 3:00 minute video reflecting on 9/11 ten years ago.  Afterwards, our pastor spoke briefly about what has changed in our lives since then, and how restless the world has become.  Reading the famous quote by St. Augustine “I am restless until I rest in You – we performed as a special, Audrey Assad’s “Restless“.

This flowed into congregational singing of “Come Thou Fount“.  Our closer was “Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone” as a gospel response song.

That’s a recap of the songs this week.  As always, I’m posting this as a part of the weekly “Sunday Setlists” event hosted over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Hey Gang,

For all of you worship leaders … when was the last time you got off the platform?  For all you church goers – when was the last time you saw your leader off-stage?

I’ve been off the platform for the past two Sundays at SSCC.

Two Sundays ago my wife and I took the weekend (sans kids, thanks to my mom!) and went away to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary together.  I tuned into our worship services via our SSCCLive.Com internet broadcast and enjoyed seeing my friend Russ Hutto lead the worship.  You could say I was truly “off” that Sunday, except for about 15 minutes of emailing and texting when our scheduled drummer for the youth service was a no-show.

Yesterday I was back at work, but off the stage.  My friend Shannon Lewis led worship for us. (read his recap of the service and the setlist on his blog) It’s so funny to hear how many people come up and say “you’re off today”?

I believe that as leaders, we have a responsibility to raise up and empower other leaders.  As we work to duplicate ourselves and multiply our efforts we have to step aside and let other leaders flourish.

This Sunday, Shannon’s leading in our main sanctuary gave me the ability to do several things:

1.  give him a chance to lead and bless our congregation with his gifts (we all lead differently, and the diversity is good)
2.  gave me a chance to mingle more with our people as they came in and connect with them relationally
3.  gave me a chance to worship in the congregation and get the much-needed perspective of what that’s like
4.  gave me the chance to observe the culture of worship in each of our venues (Tiny Town, Kid Jam Clubhouse, Youth Rooftop)

Being off the stage brings so much perspective.  From the congregation I can see how the audio mix is sounding (great job, Ben!), I can observe how people are engaging, how our lighting feels when it’s adjusted in the room, what other distractions may be occurring that we miss from the stage, etc.

Some of you are in a church where you have nobody else to lead worship.  It’s you, or it’s a CD.  I’d like to encourage you to really pray and ask God to bring in more leaders.  Ask the Holy Spirit to give you eyes to see who on your team may be that next leader.  Begin to mentor them.  Take the “you lead with me, I lead with you, you lead” approach.

My goal is to be completely off-platform 2-3 times per quarter.  I typically adhere to that unless I have a very specific reason for not doing it.

How about you?

(this recap is a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com each week)

Here’s a recap from St. Simons Community Church for this Sunday, August 7, 2011.  As always, this setlist recap is a part of the weekly “Sunday Setlists” event that happens over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Today I enjoyed welcoming our two newest additions to the praise team – Beth Cox (vocals) and her husband, Allan (trumpet).  It was awesome having them serving together.

Our walk-in was an older favorite, “Love the Lord“.  We did the bulk of our praise and worship right at the beginning of the service today as we had a packed Sunday with 50+ minutes of teaching/speaking time.

The opening set included Come Thou Fount, Jesus Saves, and I Exalt Thee.

One thing that was cool during “I Exalt Thee” was as our band backed off and just let the people sing out, we had our tech team actually RAISE the house lights up a bit – the idea was that our darker, more intimate setting was for personal worship, and as we began to change from “I Exalt Thee” to “we exalt Thee”, it became a corporate cry and I wanted our congregation to not only hear one another, but also SEE on another.

I honestly can say that in both services I could hear a noticeable difference as we did that.

Our closer was “I Will Never Be”, a beautiful old Hillsong ballad.  The teaching time went well past our cutoff, so we essentially sang this as people dismissed.

Tomorrow night (Monday) I’m headed down with my wife and our Tech Director (and his wife) to see Hillsong United in Jacksonville, FL.  Should be a cool time!

Hey Everybody,

Today was a sweet service at SSCC.  It was what we call a “stand-alone” Sunday, meaning the sermon was not part of an ongoing series.  Our Family Pastor, Mark Fritchman, spoke on parenting, and did a great job.  I’ve been doing a lot of new music and had lots of energy put into our previous Night of Worship.  Because of that, and the reality that our Tech Director was away (let’s try to keep rehearsal simple) and my wife was away (I’m Mr. Mom all weekend!), I opted for a Sunday where our songs were familiar to the congregation and the band.

Our walk-in song was “Praise the Name of Jesus” by Ken Mullis.  This is a super-fun song to play.  It’s a blues swing with great lyrics.  From our quick greeting we dove directly into “For All You’ve Done” by Hillsong, which is an ongoing favorite at our church for the past four years.

After announcements we did a 2-song set in G, starting with Don Poythress’ version of “The Doxology” followed by “Agnus Dei”.  I really enjoyed this segment and once again, we slowed things down a bit and just lingered at the end of Doxology for a time of reflection and prayer.

Our closing song was “Revelation Song”.  Honestly, I was feeling awkward about it – we usually try to pull our sermon and closing together and that wasn’t the case this week.  I wasn’t really interested in going to the handful of convicting-parent songs, so when he finished the sermon, the changing of gears to “ok, let’s sing one last song and worship” felt strange.

The strangeness faded after about 10 seconds.  The people began to sing and the room was filled with worship.  I’m reminded that we don’t have to meticulously plan every song and lyric to support the sermon.  Worship doesn’t have to be a response to a sermon – it’s just a response to God, period.

And that’s my recap for this Sunday, July 31.  As always, I’m posting this as a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com each week.  To view our planning document, visit PlanningCenterOnline.

Yesterday was perhaps one of the sweetest days of worship that I can recall at SSCC.  I think there are lots of reasons.  We’d just had a “Night of Worship” event the Friday night before.  We had more margin (see tomorrow’s post!) in our service plan, and the teaching focused on worship.

We opened slowly, with an older classic, “Open the Eyes of My Heart”.  I find it nice to open slowly sometimes.  Paul Baloche calls this an “on-ramp”.  It gives people a transition into worship and I could see people making that transition clearly.

To open up the top of the hour, we introduced a new, upbeat song called “We Are The Free” from Matt Redman’s newest album, “10,000 Reasons”.  I’d originally decided that although I love this song, it would never find a home in our typical sunday service.  I felt it was just too edgy and youth-driven.  It didn’t seem to fit our culture.  I had so many people from the band and congregation who’d already heard the song and really encouraged me to go for it.  To my surprise, the song was really well-received.

From that song we segued directly into super-familiar “Glory to God Forever”.

After a time of announcements, we introduced the brand new worship ballad from the Passion 2011 album, “Waiting Here For You”.  Heather, one of our team members, led this and did a beautiful job.

At the conclusion of this song, I felt a strong sense that we should just wait a moment and not rush into the sermon.  We lingered there, and before I knew it, we were praying and crying out to God.  The congregation was praying, people were praying for others who needed prayer … it was a beautiful thing that I’ll describe more fully in tomorrow’s blog post.

Our Discipleship Pastor did an incredible job teaching on worship, our response to God, and living the life of worship.

We concluded with a traditional version of “The Old Rugged Cross” with nothing but vocals and piano.  IT WAS GORGEOUS.  I loved hearing the people of God sing this classic hymn.  I also sang the deep bass line, which was stylistically different for us, but added to the traditional feel.  It was a special moment.

Transitioning out of the hymn we sang “The Song of Moses”, a newer song from some guys up in Atlanta.  It was massive and I can only say that I felt that our congregation literally walked together through this journey of worship.  It was one of my favorite Sundays!

As always, I’m sharing our worship service recap as a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event, hosted weekly at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

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”.

Happy Mother’s Day!  Here’s a quick recap of our worship music set from St. Simons Community Church.  It’s been a great Sunday with a great band.  If I had to think of a couple of words to describe this morning’s set, I’d say “simple” and “relaxed”.  We’re singing some older songs and using some lighter arrangements that work well for a smaller band.

Walk-In:
“Your Love is Amazing” (Hallelujah, Your Love Sets Me Free)
*based on the last Brian Doerksen recording, love this newer arrangement of a great song

“Everlasting God” (Brenton Brown)
*still one of my all-time favorites to lead corporately.  We’re singing back God’s Word with this tune.

Baby Dedication:
What a great day to honor Mothers in having Baby Dedications.  After dedicating the babies we have a time where various pastoral staff and Elders pray for the parents and kids – during this time, we typically do a softer arrangement of a song focused around consecration and dedication.  For this moment, we did the Passion version of “Take My Life”.

Special:
“Word of God Speak” (Mercy Me) – a light arrangement of this classic ballad to setup our sermon, called “Word of God Speak”.

Closer:
“I Will Never Be” (Hillsong)
*an older Hillsong ballad that’s been a classic in our church for years.  “Never be the same again” is a tagline used in our branding and church logos, and it’s a prayer of our church, that people will encounter God and “never be the same again”.

I’m sharing our setlist with other worshipers who participate in the “Sunday Setlists” event, hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.  Check it out!

This picture has to be one of my favorites taken at our church, St. Simons Community Church.  This is a shot of our Groups/Discipleship Pastor, Jon Blankenship, in the baptismal, about to celebrate baptisms.  What an incredible way to have Easter Sunday – with baptisms.  We had powerful baptisms in every service accompanied by incredible video testimonies.  Huge kudos to my friend, Chris Moncus, for the as-usual-awesome photography.

Our songs:
“Glorious” (Baloche/Brown)
“Alive Again” (Matt Maher)
“For All You’ve Done” (Hillsong)
“Christ the Lord is Risen Today” (Trad. Hymn featuring Russ Hutto on trumpet)
“Jesus Saves” (Travis Cottrell)
“Christ is Risen” (Matt Maher)

Both services were powerful, with strong worship, baptisms, testimonies, and the Spoken Word.  We saw responses for salvation in both services as well.

With the exception of the air conditioning dying in our 9:00 service (which was completely packed), it couldn’t have gone much better.

Interested in what other churches did?  Checkout “Sunday Setlists” over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

You know it’s a fun Sunday when you get to play the theme music from “Angry Birds”, right?  Read on!

This is a recap of our worship service at SSCC for Sunday, April 17, 2011.  I’m posting this recap as a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Yesterday we had our “Church in the Park” service in Neptune Park by the ocean on St. Simons Island, GA.  We could not have asked for a more beautiful day.  There is something incredible about worshiping outdoors with a backdrop of the ocean, sailboats, majestic live oaks, and easily somewhere between 1500-2000 people on blankets, in chairs, and even in trees!

Our Setlist:

1.  G-Blues (the band just played some jazz for about 5 minutes to get things started)
2.  “Our God”
3.  “Hosanna” (Baloche/Brown)
4.  “No Other Name” (Todd Fields)

Announcements/Welcome
It was during this time that we unveiled our new SSCC T-Shirts.  We had one of those huge balloon launchers and decided to launch some rolled up T-Shirts into the crowd as giveaways.  What better music to play than the “Angry Birds” theme music.  I switched to marimba on my Yamaha S80 and had the band vamp on Em.  It was hilarious and I was pleased that so many people instantly recognized the tune.

5.  “Alive Again” (Matt Maher)
6.  “Mighty To Save”
7.  “You Are Everything” (Matthew West – special)

Closer:
8.  “How Great is Our God”

We wanted to do songs that were easy to sing and very familiar.  We did have the lyrics printed in our single-sheet bulletin but hoped most people would connect to these tunes.  Our tech team did an awesome job working with Stage Front, the company from Savannah that was hired to provide our outdoor sound system.

The best part of “Church in the Park”?  All the picnic foods, ball-throwing, and fellowship afterwards!

I seem to have fallen off the band wagon (no pun intended) on faithfully posting our “Sunday Setlists” worship recaps here.  This is the first blog I’ve even posted in a couple of weeks.  All together now … “SLACKER”.   Thanks, I needed that.

So this past Sunday was a blast at SSCC.  I was able to teach the new Passion 2011 tune “All My Fountains” to our congregation and that’s exactly what we did … “teach” it.  I took about 4 minutes in the middle of the service to rehearse the melody, alto, and tenor parts with the congregation.  They owned it.  I was reminded how actually “teaching” a song … not just “performing it” could make a huge difference in corporate participation.

Russ Hutto joined me this week so he and his wife Lydia joined me in between services for a quick “worship confessional” video recap.  Here ya go – our worship recap, posted as a part of the weekly “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Hey Gang,

It’s been quite a while since I posted a recap of our worship services at SSCC.  Every week I get emails, phone calls, and messages about the songs so I thought it would be good to resume participation in posting the recaps again.

Recap for Sunday, March 6, 2011

I had a smaller vocal group this Sunday – myself, Russ Hutto, and Katie Fendig.  Katie naturally hears the tenor part so Russ and I found that we’d be singing some alto … or we’d just settle for 2-parts.  I must say in most cases, we settled for 2-parts and it wasn’t really settling – it was nice to just have that kind of harmony for a change.  I’m not a guy who always wants 3-parts anyway but it still took some getting used to.  Our band included myself on keys, Russ on acoustic, Derek on electric, Bucky on bass, and Mike on drums.

Walk-In Song:
Hosanna (Paul Baloche/Brenton Brown) – one of our church favorites

I transitioned directly into a quick welcome and a Scripture reading from Psalms to setup “Better is One Day”.  Russ led this with his own, rocked out arrangement and it was a blast.  We haven’t used that song in a long time and it was well-received.

After announcements we had a 2-song set that included:
“Rain Down” (David Crowder) which segued directly into “Our God” (Tomlin)

For our closer, we did the Hillsong “Hosanna”.

And that’s a wrap for us.  I’m posting this in participation with the bigger “Sunday Setlists” event posted each week at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

“it was the best worship time … EVER”

“the music this Sunday was better than I ever remember … BOTH times, I went in for both services”

“don’t remember last time it sounded and felt like that” …

Those are the comments I keep getting since yesterday morning’s time of worship at SSCC.   So what made this Sunday so special?  I’d say extra prayer and fasting.  Being intentional about the songs.  Creative story-telling.  A great band and clean mix.

We are in a series called “Lord, Teach Us To Pray” and this week was on “Hallowed be Thy Name”.  We wanted to have a special time in worship where we honored God’s Name.

Our “walk-in” song was Paul Baloche’s “Glorious”.  Love, Love, Love this song – we already had a full band this week but supplemented our sound with some additional tracks from InteractiveWorshipLive.Com.

We opened up the service with a greeting and got those ole’ announcements out of the way.  The Pastor cast some vision about how we’d like to take a journey through worship and “hallow” God’s Name.

I took the transition and acknowledged the reality that although we can “worship” in many ways, the primary expression of worship we have during our corporate gatherings on Sunday is through singing and music.  So I encouraged everyone, regardless of whether they had a natural “bend” towards singing and music, to participate.

Next, I moved into a transition for the hymn “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”.  There is a powerful story about a missionary who was surrounded by savage indians who played his violin and sang this song.  When he opened his eyes, the indians had put their swords away and took him into their tribe.  After sharing this story, one of our violinists played through the hymn slowly and gracefully.  We then joined her and sang two verses with gusto.

This transitioned directly into two big choruses that are congregational favorites:  “How Great is Our God” with a modulation into the Chorus of “Shout to the Lord”.  Old songs?  Yep.  Did our congregation care?  No – they loved being able to sing a familiar medley with passion.

In closing we introduced the Paul Baloche/Glenn Packiam song, “Your Name”.  I’ve loved this song for over a year and we finally got around to introducing it.  Many on our team experienced this last weekend at Seminars4Worship and we purchased the video elements to sync with the music and it was a powerful closer.

Many thanks to the band and tech volunteers who helped make this time of worship a special one.

Our band setup:
Drums
Bass
Acoustic Guitar
Electric Guitar
Violin (on the one song)
2 Keyboards (I mostly played piano, or didn’t play at all, Russ Hutto played aux keys, string pads, rhodes, etc)
4 vocals

So that’s my recap.  I’m posting this as a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com where you can see other church’s setlists and worship service recaps.

Happy Monday everyone!

Here’s a look at the worship recap from St. Simons Community Church for Sunday, November 7.  I was away with a portion of our team at the Seminars4Worship event in Augusta, GA so I didn’t lead.  We got back around 1:30 AM Sunday morning … so though we were at church, we were all pretty glad we weren’t up there leading!

One of our volunteers, Kim Dixon, led worship this weekend.  She always does an amazing job.  She is one of the most anointed, powerful leaders anywhere.  I’d have her leading a LOT more if her work schedule allowed for it.  She went with a smaller band this week since most of us were gone to Augusta and it sounded really clean.

Opening Song:  “Incorruptible”

Music:

“O Taste and See” (Brian/Jenn Johnson)
“Lord, Reign In Me” (Brenton Brown)
“I Stand Amazed” (How Marvelous/Hymn)

Closer:
“Father Will You Come” (Unhindered)

Great time of leading and ministry.  We try to post our setlist every week for the benefit of our church and to participate in the weekly “Sunday Setlists” sharing event at TheWorshipCommunity.Com where you can view other’s setlists and recaps!

Hey Everybody,

I’m joining up with other worship leaders from across the globe over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com to share a recap of our worship experience yesterday.

From a musical standpoint, we had a shorter set of songs than normal because we worshiped and praised God in a different way – through baptisms.  (again).

We opened with the older Delirious song, “Majesty”.  We’ve never done it here and one of our singers, Todd, has been asking to do it.  I’ve always loved that song and I’m not sure why we haven’t done it before – maybe because there are a kazillion different songs out there.  But I hope to do this again next week.

At the top of the hour we opened with “Alive Again”, as recorded by Matt Maher.  Awesome song.

After baptisms we sang “In Christ Alone” which is always a stirring song of praise and worship for our congregation here at SSCC.

We started a new sermon series called “Teach Us To Pray” so I thought a different way to end the service would be a simple, traditional version of “The Lord’s Prayer”.  I played it from the grand piano and Todd sang it beautifully.  It was a sweet moment that generated a lot of positive feedback from those in the congregation – especially those from more traditional backgrounds.  We didn’t spruce it up or try to make it contemporary at all – just the old classical version.  It was beautiful.

Looking forward to this series on Prayer!

The McGladrey Classic PGA event is happening right here on St. Simons Island and we expected to have a lighter-than-normal attendance this morning at SSCC.  Seems like our expectations were on as both our 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM services had a lot more empty seats that we’re accustomed to seeing.  Nevertheless, we had an awesome time worshiping.

We’re on Week 5 of our “FAQ” series and we had a panel of 3 people this morning who answered some of the questions that have been submitted over the past few weeks.  Our panel did an incredible job answering some tough questions.

As for the musical portion of our worship service we enjoyed a batch of songs that are familiar and faithful here at SSCC.  Due to this week’s praise team leading worship at another church this past Thursday we did not have an opportunity to actually rehearse.  We kept the same team and songs that we used on Thursday and pulled it off painlessly.

Opening Song:
“No Other Name” (Todd Fields/Northpoint Live version)

Praise and Worship Set:
“Everlasting God”
“Mighty to Save”
“Blessed Assurance”

I enjoyed taking a moment to setup “Blessed Assurance”.  I was inspired to sing this song again after being at the Forge Conference in Ocean Grove, NJ last weekend where the hymn was actually penned years ago.  I took a little extra time (several minutes) to setup this song and remind everyone that we all have a story.  The Samaritan women in John 4 went into her village saying “come and see this man who told me everything I ever did”.  She told her story and people believed.

After our sermon we closed with “With All I Am” (Hillsong), one of my favorite worship ballads of all time.

For fun, we did Needtobreathe’s “Washed by the Water” as an exit song.  It’s another favorite of ours.

This recap is posted as a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event sponsored by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.  Visit TWC and see other setlists and service recaps from other worship leaders!

Welcome to the weekly recap from my perspective as the Worship Pastor at St. Simons Community Church.  As always, I’m posting this recap along with other worship leaders as part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.  Check out other setlists and recaps from churches worldwide.

It was another powerful morning of worship, yet not without some technical difficulties.  For this service, we changed the flow of the service order so that all of our music was in the beginning of the service.  I had several comments about how nice it was to have a solid block of music, as opposed to breaking it up throughout the service.

Everything went well with the exception of some issues we had with our electric guitarist’s gear.  For some reason, it kept going in and out, in and out.  We’d have the levels set appropriately in the mix and then it would just drop out – sometimes, completely.  It frustrated everyone a bit and gave the sound guys a fit.  Some tweaking between services happened and I believe they resolved the issues.  It’s one of those things that works fine, then stops.  I suppose the key in these situations is trying to be patient and gracious.  Neither of those are great traits for me.  In cases like these, you can bet that your sound guys are equally frustrated.  Blaming them or constantly pointing out the issue probably doesn’t help.  In this case, our guys were gracious and professional and worked with the guitarist to get the issue resolved.  Still, in reflecting back on the morning, I didn’t feel that I was a strong enough leader in comforting the team that they were on top of it.

We kicked off a new series called “FAQ” which is based on apologetics.  The sermon wasn’t the type of message to invoke a ministry response so we opted to bring all the music to the first part of the service, and end with announcements.  The flow seemed to work perfectly for that morning.

The Music

Walk In:  “Praise the Name of Jesus”  by Ken Mullis
(this is a bluesy, “Alman Bros” type song that is complete BLAST to play.  A good friend of mine wrote this and I had the pleasure of producing the live recording of the song.  Below is a copy of the song (from the live recording with Ken Mullis, not from our service).  Feel free to grab this tune and try it out as a special or song of praise in your services.  We had harmonica and electric guitar featured on this … I just wanted to grab my wife and do some swing dancing in church!
Praise the Name of Jesus by highestpraise

More Music:

“Glory to God Forever” – Steve Fee
“You Have Made Me Glad”
“Revelation Song”
“Holy, Holy, Holy” (Hymn)

We closed out the service after the dismissal with “Praise the Name of Jesus” again … it’s fun to see so many people hang out and listen to the music.  It’s definitely meant to glorify God but we can’t help having fun playing it!

I’m not sure where to start.  The last few weeks at my home church have been … well, incredible.  We’ve made a conscious effort to slow it down, to hear God, and to allow God to do what He loves to do … change lives and minister to people.

It started 3 weeks ago when we prepared for a service where we’d offer people the opportunity to be baptized – right there, right then, no excuses.  We baptized 126 people.  It was amazing.

Then we shared testimonies and built faith.

Then we prayed for the sick and those in need of healing.

Yeah … at that “community church” – <begin sarcasm> you know the one where they don’t allow the Holy Spirit to show up.  </end-sarcasm>

I’m sensing a flow, an anointing, an expectation … that I haven’t sensed in a while.  I cannot explain it, other than to say .. I like it … a lot.

One of the big objectives that was given to me in taking this position over 3 years ago was to get more people involved in the music/worship ministry at SSCC.  I think that’s definitely happened as we’ve experienced tremendous growth.

Perhaps the biggest joy I have is in stepping back and allowing others to lead.  This Sunday was no exception when my friend Russ Hutto led his first full service at SSCC.  Russ has led a song here and there and has played in the band plenty of times.  I felt like the time was right and handed the keys to Russ and he did an amazing job.

Our songs:

“My Savior Lives”
“Beautiful One”
“Overcome”
“Holy and Anointed One”
“Doxology”
“Blessed Be Your Name”

After singing “Overcome” and moving into one of my favorites of all-time, “Holy and Anointed One”, it seemed that the Presence of God was so thick you could touch it.  Something about singing “we will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony” followed by singing the Name, “Jesus”.

Wow.

So, how was your worship services?

PS:  Oh yeah, almost forgot – I’m sharing this recap as a part of the weekly “Sunday Setlists” event hosted at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

OK, so first … what is this #sundaysetlists thing in my blog post title?

It’s called a “hash tag” … a way to tag or identify a blog or twitter post so that people can know it’s subject, keywords, or you can even search twitter based on them.

“Sunday Setlists” is an event that started right here on FredMcKinnon.Com, but has since transferred over to TheWorshipCommunity.Com – where people post a recap of their worship services each week.  Be sure and check out the other posts.

So, on to my recap of our worship service at SSCC for Sunday, August 15th.

Wow.  I can’t express how incredible it was.  We have never conducted a baptism during our worship services in the building … they have always been special gatherings, outside, at some place with a pool.  We had our first baptism service yesterday, which was a complete surprise to most of those who attend our church.  The bigger surprise; however, was that we were prepared to baptize anyone who wanted to be baptized … spontaneously.

We opened up with a couple of songs:

“I Have Found” (Kim Walker)
“Mighty to Save” (Hillsong)

Then, David (our pastor) taught on salvation and baptism.  It was a shorter, 25-minute sermon.  Then he basically challenged people to respond.  We were ready with the excuses.  We had stacks of brand new shorts and T-shirts of all sizes.  We had undergarments.  Personal Products.  Hair dryers.  Combs.  Photographers.  Videographers.  There was really no reason to NOT respond …

And respond they did.  Between the two services, countless people confessed Jesus Christ as their Lord, and +/- 126 people got baptized.

Young, old.
White, black.
American, Chinese.

I’m still blown away … we played instrumental music, sang a bit, worshiped the whole time, and simply let the music “ebb and flow” with the baptisms.  Makes for some tired feet … a good 1-1/2 hours into the service and still seeing people lined up all the way down the wall of the church, waiting for their turn to publicly demonstrate their faith in Christ.

And that’s a recap for our church.  How about yours?

Hey Everybody!

Yesterday (Sunday, August 8th) was my first time back on the stage, leading worship at SSCC, in a couple of weeks.  It was great to be back.  We started a new series called “Small Steps, Big Faith” and our service didn’t have a “sermon” … just a flow of worship, testimonies, and communion.  Well, we did “kind of” have an impromptu sermon during our 9:00 AM service when one of the pastors lost track of time in his 5-minute “setup” … which turned into 25 minutes!

Thankfully, a little “Campfire Meeting” backstage after that service helped us workout the timing kinks and we nailed the flow in the 11:00 AM service.

Walk In Song:
“Washed by the Water” (NeedtoBreathe)

“Glorious” (Paul Baloche)
“For All You’ve Done” (Hillsongs)
“Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone” (Hillsongs)

*Testimony:  I shared a faith-building testimony about prayer.
*Testimony:  One of our pastors, Steve, shared a faith-building story about how God called him into ministry.

“Great is Thy Faithfulness” (Traditional Hymn Version)
*The Lord’s Prayer (corporate prayer)

Communion:
“You Gave Your Life Away” (Baloche)
“Jesus Paid it All” (Northpoint Live Version)
“Christ is Risen” (Matt Maher)

From a technical standpoint, we used a cool backing lyrics video for “Christ is Risen”, which required us to play this song to a click.  The animated lyrics and backgrounds were powerful and added a nice visual dynamic to the worship experience on that song.

We wrapped up our Sunday with a big, family “Beach Night” on St. Simons Island – it was a great day celebrating with other Believers here in the area!

This recap is a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Wednesday Evening:  3 hours of rehearsal
Thursday Evening:  3 hours of rehearsal
Friday Evening:  1 hour of rehearsal, 2 hours of passionate worship for hundreds of people at “Night of Worship”, SSCC.

Sunday Morning?

Exhausted.  Hoarse.  But the benefit of using the same band and songs from “Night of Worship”?  A simple sound check and rehearsal.

So, off we went, into another gathering of God’s people in this place we call “St. Simons Community Church”.

Walk-in:  “You Save” (1st Service) and “Mighty to Save” (2nd service)
*this is the song that I co-wrote with Mandy Thomson.  Wow, I’m overwhelmed by the incredible response to this song.  It was kinda weird to do this as a “walk-in” song, so I made a decision to move it to “in” the service during the 2nd service.

Opener:  “Alive Again” (Matt Maher)
Worship:  “Blessed Be Your Name”, “Mighty To Save” (1st service), “You Save” (2nd service), and “How Deep the Father’s Love”.

Loved having Ms. Carol Parks play violin again.  Her intro to “How Deep the Father’s Love” was beautiful, and of course, ‘You Save” isn’t complete w/o the violin!

Closer:
Well, Pastor David pulled a fast one on us, and stopped about 75% into his sermon and called me up …. he felt like it was time to stop and worship.  So, we pulled an impromptu version of Kate Miner’s “Holy Spirit Come”, followed by “You Save” and “Open Up the Sky” by Jonathan Stockstill.

An incredible day of worship and ministry, capping off an incredible weekend!

Curious as to what other churches did?  Checkout the weekly “Sunday Setlists” event over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com!

We enjoyed a great time of worship at SSCC yesterday.  We were in Week 4 of our “Prevail” series on spiritual warfare.  Pastor David taught about the “breastplate of righteousness” and challenged us in some big ways.

As far as the musical aspect of our time of worship, here’s a snapshot of what we did:

Walk-in:

“When We All Get to Heaven” – a fun arrangement I made where we open it up in the old, traditional style, acapella.  Then, we rip into a funky version that is a blast to play, and after singing all 4 verses and the Chorus, we end the song with a campmeeting-style, double-time backbeat Chorus.  Always gets the people excited.

Opening Song:

“No Other Name” – Todd Fields/Northpoint Live arrangement.  This is always a great go-to song for a shorter, 3-minute opener that rightly brings attention to the Name of Jesus.

Middle Set:

After a short teaching (ie. 1 minute) on the word “hosanna” and what it means, we sang back-to-back “Hosanna” songs …

“Hosanna” (Paul Baloche/Brenton Brown)
“Hosanna” (Hillsong)

Then, the band left the stage and I moved to the grand piano where we did an intimate, reflective arrangement of “Sanctuary” (Lord Prepare Me) with piano, vocal, and acoustic guitar.

After the sermon we closed with the old Vineyard song, “Take My Life” (aka “Holiness”) by Scott Underwood.

Loved leading this week.  You can watch our services live or “on demand” at www.sscclive.com.

This recap is a part of the “Sunday Setlists” event hosted weekly by TheWorshipCommunity.Com.