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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!

Today is Sunday, June 13, 2010 – and this is our worship service recap from SSCC.  I’m posting this along with hundreds of other worship leaders in the “Sunday Setlists” event that happens every week over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

Today was a blast because I was able to debut the first song I’ve written in nearly 6 years.  It’s called “You Save” and it’s the fruit of my first songwriting collaboration with Mandy Thompson.  More on that in a second …

Our walk-in song this morning was “Marvelous Light” … Shannon Lewis has always “owned” that song and done an awesome job leading it.

Opening Set:
“Alive Again” (Matt Maher and Jason Ingram)
“You Save” (Fred McKinnon and Mandy Thompson)

After some announcements, missions video, sermon promo, and challenging word by Pastor David Yarborough, we celebrated Communion.  During communion we worshiped with:

“You Gave Your Life Away” (Paul Baloche and Kathryn Scott)
“Be Thou My Vision” (hymn)
“Revelation Song” (Jennie Lee Riddle)

One of the cool additions today was violin, courtesy of Ms. Carol Parks.  Below is a video of the new song, “You Save”.  Enjoy!

Verse 1:
Darkness, famine, trials, temptations,
Sorrows, anger, lies, frustrations,
Where, o where are You, God?
I feel a million miles away yet I know you are near
Are you listening?  Do you even hear?
Where, o where are You, God?

Chorus:
Where o where does my help come from?
I cry out into the night …

Verse 2:
Lusts of the flesh and the greed in my heart
Selfish desires to be set apart
Where, o where are You God?
Have my sins hidden me for all eternity?
Will you rescue?  Will you still help me?
Where, o where are You, God?

(Chorus 2x)

Bridge:
Your arm is not too short to save
Your reach goes deeper than the grave
When I’m crying to You
You save!  You save!
You save …. You save …

(repeat)

My help comes from the Lord above
Maker of heaven and of earth
You watch over me and run
to save!  To save!
To save …. To save …
You save …. You save ….

Hey Everybody!

Another great day of worship at SSCC yesterday.  One of the songs that Russ Hutto has been telling us about is “Say So” by Israel Houghton and Michael Gungor.  We introduced it as our walk-in yesterday … complete w/ the full Ableton Live tracks offered by Interactive Worship Live.  Since we already had drums, bass, acoustic, piano, and electric guitar, I muted those tracks in Ableton, but we still benefited from the loops, synths, the THREE extra electric guitar tracks and other fillers …

Earlier this week I “tweeted” about my frustrations in scheduling a worship setlist that didn’t “flow” as well as it should simply because we knew people would come to church late.  This was one of those weeks.  Because we needed to make some major announcements about our upcoming Easter services … specifically, the parking issues … we needed to make sure more people were “in the building”.  As a result, I put “Hosanna” (Paul Baloche/Brenton Brown) at the top of the hour to give an extra 5-minutes for people to come in … LATE.

I know we shouldn’t schedule to reward and enable late attendance, but in this case – all of those late-comers missing the announcement about parking for Easter would have been a bigger problem.

After announcements we entered the middle “set” … this is where I wish we could’ve had “Hosanna” for a 3-song flow.  Instead, we jumped right into “Revelation Song”.

After that, we were thrilled to have a blog/twitter friend, Gary Durbin, share one of his original songs.  Gary was in town for Spring Break and knowing he’s a great worship leader and songwriter from Melbourne, FL … I asked him to share a song.  He did better that that … he WROTE a song based on the sermon text I gave him only a few days ago.  And it was AMAZING!  Thanks, Gary!

We closed with “Take My Life” (the Tomlin/Passion version) as a song of dedication and consecration.

Overall it was a great Sunday, though the flow of worship seemed a bit disjointed because of the way I had to break things up.  Travis, our Tech Director, helped smooth things over with some great transitional elements via video.

I’m posting my worship recap as a part of the bigger “Sunday Setlists” event that happens over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com every single week.  Go check it out!

Today we’ve kicked off a new, 8-week series called “Deep Roots” at SSCC.  I’m excited to get into a deep teaching where we break down God’s Word, verse by verse.

Part of the creative discussions we’ve had is how we could incorporate some older creeds and songs.  Today we proclaimed “The Apostles Creed” together.  Now you may be in a church where this is done every Sunday but that’s not normal for us.  In my nearly 3-years of serving on staff as the Worship Pastor, we’ve never recited it.

Here’s how the flow of our worship service went today:

Walk In Song:
“Washed by the Water” (Needtobreathe)
Comments:  I’ve always loved this song and one of our guitarists/vocalists, David Dantzler, nails it.  It was our first time and people really got into it.

Opening Song:
“Glorious One” (Steve Fee)

After a short announcement video, I took about 4-5 minutes to discuss the history and heritage of the Apostles Creed.  I wanted to make this come alive so that it wasn’t some creed we said out loud that meant nothing.  I tried my best to put this creed into context.  It seemed like people were connecting with it and when we proclaimed it together, it was if I were saying it for the first time.

From there, I transitioned with the team directly into the traditional hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy” in the Key of C.
This made for a smooth transition from “old” to “new” with “Revelation Song” (Gateway Version) in C.
(yeah, I know, some of you saying “that’s not new!” … haha, indeed it’s a few years old now, but still a great song for our congregation!)

After Pastor David’s sermon, we closed by reinforcing what the Book of Colossians was stating … by singing “Center” (Charlie Hall), stating how Christ is the center of it all.

That’s a recap of our services.  I’m sharing this in cooperation with the “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival hosted over at TheWorshipCommunity.Com, where you can see our recap along with many others!  Go check’em out!