You can read the prefessional here.
Our setlist -
Sunday, December 16, 2007 – “The Surprising Story Of Christmas”
Pre-Service Christmas Songs
The Son Of God Came Down – Doug Plank – D
with this video in the background
Come Now Is The Time – Brian Doerksen – D
This Is My Father’s World – Sheppard & Babcock – C
Community Stuff – Announcements, Offering, Congregational Prayer
Kids Christmas Songs
Joy To The World – Handel & Watts – C
Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee – Beethoven, Hughes & Van Dyke – G
Glory Of It All – David Crowder – A
Message – “The Surprising Humility Of Christmas”
How Great Is Our God w/ Good Christian Men, Rejoice – Tomlin & Neale – A
All in all it was a great morning. The snow did come – boy, did it come! – but not until after our 9:00 service had begun. I woke up at about 3:30 in the morning checked outside, no snow. Got up at 6:00, no snow. I figured we were in good shape and the storm had passed by to the south of us. But when it came, did it ever come! We got about 12 inches of snow on Sunday – made for some good family time in the backyard on Monday morning.
Alright. Confessional time. We had one of our musicians* lead worship and he did a good job, as usual. It’s been great to see how John has grown over the past couple of years of being involved in our worship ministry. He is getting more and more confident with the transitions and speaking parts between songs – really leading people in worship rather than just leading songs.
I feel like we’re in a really good spot with the music selection for our services. It’s a nice mix of old, familiar and new songs that are giving our people opportunity to worship. We need to branch out in to other artistic expressions of worship too but we’re headed in a good direction.
Well Marty was the only one who commented last week so maybe he’s the only one who will care about this but the tying together of the lyrics of “Good Christian Men Rejoice” and “How Great Is Our God” was AMAZING. Both services I had people come up to me and tell me that the combination of Earl’s message on God’s humility, the first verse of How Great and then the added lyrics had a significant impact on them. One guy was in tears just amazed that God Himself would come to earth as a baby to live a life of humility and sacrifice and then give Himself up to death – even death on a cross!
What a great, majestic, glorious, humble and tender God we serve.
This really is the most wonderful time of the year!
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*I call him a musician only because I don’t want to call him a “worship ministry volunteer” or a “team member” or “someone from our church.” He is a talented, servant-hearted, eager-to-learn friend a co-labourer for the sake of the gospel. To call our musicians simply volunteers is nowhere near sufficient.