Hope your week is off to a great start. I’m a day behind and a minute late but wanted to get out this week’s worship recap. This past Sunday was a tremendous day at SSCC. In addition to our regular Sunday morning services we had one of our larger “Night of Worship” events which I’ll likely blog about separately.
I am posting this review as a part of our weekly “Sunday Setlists” event hosted by TheWorshipCommunity.Com. You can also watch archived video of our worship services at SSCCLive.Com.
The morning service contained many of the elements that would be used in the Night of Worship and as a result we had a diverse setlist. Our setlist was also a bit shorter than normal due to some other media elements we were using in the service.
We usually have what we call a “walk-in” song before the service that we play as people are coming in and finding their seats. Sometimes we display lyrics but more often we have an announcement loop playing on our screens. It’s not unusual for us to bring people in about half way during this song and ask them to join us. It’s also a great time to introduce new music.
This Sunday I introduced an older song that I did more than a decade ago. It’s called “I Believe” (A) by Don Potter from when he was with Morningstar Ministries in Charlotte, NC. It’s a bluesy shuffle type of song declaring what we believe. I’d say it’s like a modern day, paraphrased Apostle’s Creed. I added some motown-esque horn parts to it and people really enjoyed it. My friend and fellow worship leader, Russ Hutto, and Justin Henshaw played horns and it smoked!
At the top of the hour we played the upbeat, energetic song from Gateway, “The Lord Reigns” (C-D). This song is full of excitement and it’s one of the songs that I arrange the vocals differently (see earlier post on creative vocal arranging) so that the men were on the melody and the girls were on lower harmonies.
After some announcements and a rather long, albeit powerful video testimony, we did a special called “I Will Trust” (Am) by Molly Williams. This is also a song from Morningstar that you wouldn’t find in mainstream worship music but it’s one of my favorite songs now. We did a longer, jam version of this Sunday night during worship night but a shorter version Sunday morning.
To close our service I needed a ballad that was easy and familiar. We’d already invested around 10 hours of rehearsal that week for night of worship songs and just didn’t have time to have to rehearse another song for our Sunday morning closer so I opted to use “Here I Am To Worship” (D). We played this in (D) so that it could be led by one of our female vocalists.
The biggest surprise of the morning; however, was a special I’d planned with our creative team just prior to the sermon. I’m trying to keep my blog posts shorter so I’m going to save the surprise part for the next post tomorrow … so STAY TUNED!
That’s a wrap for this Sunday. How was your worship service? Can’t wait to hear.
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We opened with “New Doxology” as the call to worship. Then setlist was Hosanna Praise Is Rising in F, [Paul Baloche] Our God in F, then Hosanna [I See the King of Glory] in F. Having those songs in the same key enabled a nice transition from Our God to Hosanna. After doing the bridge of Our God, we repeated the chorus ad lib with mainly keys, and then lead into Hosanna with keys, building back up. Lead to some nice moments of praise.
For offering song, did Tommy Walker’s version of “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” which I’m introducing to congregation as new song.
This church/congregation is pretty traditional in format. With music, they’re OK to be more progressive – try to mix in hymns but with new choruses or new rhythmic feel.
Angela,
Is “”O God Our Help in Ages Past” a hymn? Not familiar w/ it (traditional, or contemporary version)