Worship Confessional – August 15, 2010

The last four Sundays of our Romans series has been spent in Romans 8 and it’s not hard to figure out why. This chapter is jam-packed with incredible theology and is deserving of deep study.

Consider for a moment the implications of any of these snippets taken from Romans 8:

• there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
• if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness
• those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God
• the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children
• our present sufferings are not worth comparing wtih the glory that will be revealed in us
• hope that is seen is no hope at all
• we hope for what we do not yet have
• in all things God works for the good of those who love him
• if God is for us, who can be against us?
• it is God who justifies
• in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us
• …nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those are all taken from a single chapter of Scripture! How could we NOT give several weeks of emphasis to this passage??

Here’s what our service looked like on Sunday -

• Welcome/Announcements
• Q&A w/ Paul Sadler, our global ministry partner in Japan
• Call to Worship – 1 Chronicles 16
• Jesus, You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown, Don Williams – C
• Our God – Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jesse Reeves - A
• In Christ Alone – Keith Getty, Stuart Townend – E
• Message – Romans 8:31-39 “When You’re Under Attack”
• Our God – Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jesse Reeves – A
• Everlasting God – Brenton Brown, Ken Riley – A

A few hilights from this past Sunday -

1. It was great having Paul Sadler, his family and some Japanese students here with us this weekend. Paul & his family are ministering in Tsukuba City, Japan and are global ministry partners of our church. We love what they are doing in a place that is very resistant to the gospel. Having them here this weekend to encourage them and hear an update was great for our church family. Also great to have Paul preach on Sunday morning and share some thoughts from this incredible passage of Scripture.

2. I’d been holding on to “Our God” from the new Passion album for a while, knowing that it would fit perfectly with the service this Sunday. I was right – people were definitely familiar with the song and really sang out. To teach it, we started with the bridge – “If our God is for us, who could ever stop us / If our God is with us, what could stand against.” We repeated that line with a little space in between four times so that people were familiar with it. We then hit the intro, to the verse and chorus a couple of times and then back to the bridge. When you’re teaching a  new song, don’t feel you always have you teach the chorus first.
3. I began our songs by encouraging our church to think about what it means to ascribe glory to God. We see that phrase a few times in Scripture – “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name.” This ascribing is not about bragging, beating our chests, frothing at the mouth with how great our God is compared to all of those other gods out there but is instead about lifting God up, increasing His greatness, making Him known with the hope that one day the whole world would know of our God’s greatness, majesty, strength and power. I read several verses of 1 Chronicles 16 as a way of demonstrating what this ascribing looks like. The songs we sang, the prayers we prayed together were all examples of ascribing glory to God.

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You can read a bunch more posts like this over at TheWorshipCommunity.com

Worship Confessional – Sunday, June 13, 2010

We had a great morning at OBC (where I’m on staff as the worship director) this past Sunday. How can you go wrong with stories of how people’s lives have been changed by Christ, seeing them baptized, celebrating together in worship and then spending significant time in God’s word? I continue to be thankful for what God is doing in our midst when we gather – we are in this fresh, new, exciting season where people seem to be very willing to engage in worship and show their excitement and joy for the Lord while we are singing.

Here’s what our services looked like this week as part of our Romans series -

• Everlasting Light – Drew Brown, Bob Cottrill, Luke Holst & Keith Sparrow (as part of WorshipRises) – F
• Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher – F
• Welcome/Announcements
• Testimonies & Baptisms
• How Can I Keep From Singing – Chris Tomlin – G
• Glorious – Paul Baloche – C
• Everlasting Light – F
• Message – Romans 6:15-23
• There Is A Redeemer – Keith Green – E

I’ve got a second post coming today talking about “Everlasting Light” but the reason that it’s in our setlist twice is that the first time we did it pre-service just so people could hear the song as they were walking in.

A few things from this past Sunday -

1. Like I said before, hearing stories of how Jesus has changed the lives of kids, students and adults to the point where they are ready to go public with their faith never gets old. Being part of a church that values and celebrates baptisms is a real privilege and I am so thankful that God continues to be at work in the lives of individuals in our church. The big encouragement for me on Sunday was that each of the stories spoke of how other people in our church had been influential in the faith journeys of those being baptized – a good reminder that God is at work in the lives of individuals but also in the community life of our church. It’s important to be reminded of that.

2. The middle set of those three songs (How Can I Keep -> Glorious -> Everlasting Light) was very, very solid. We were helped out by using click tracks for the first two songs from PraiseCharts. If you aren’t using the resources that PraiseCharts is producing you should check them out. Great stuff! (I’m a little biased – we’ll have some news on that in the next couple of weeks.)
3. While there was great joy with the testimonies and celebrations there was also a bit of heaviness of Sunday for me, just because of a situation that is happening with someone who is part of our worship team. Our pastor, Earl Marshall, spoke to the severity of continually dreaming of what life might be like “on the other side of the fence” even when we know that making those decisions would only be coming from satisfying our desire for sin. He encouraged those in our church to confess to secret sin, to behavioural patterns inconsistent with live out the gospel.. but above all that he encouraged us to remain focused on Christ, to remember the gospel and to live lives out of the grace and mercy God has shown us in Christ.

All in all, we celebrated, we worshiped God, we opened His word, we gathered together to turn our eyes away from “the hills” in our lives and to focus instead on Christ (Ps 121). You can read more recaps like this over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, May 23, 2010

We are in a pretty sweet season at OBC and our Sunday mornings are hitting a really nice groove. We’re not satisfied, of course, with just letting things go well but it is definitely encouraging to have bands that sound good, tech people who know what they’re doing, and services that bring glory to God.

Here’s what we did on Sunday -

Romans 5:12-21- “Pandemic”
You Are – Mark Roach – F
Holy Is The Lord – Chris Tomin – G
Meet & Greet/Announcements
Congregational Prayer
Romans 5:12-21
What The Lord Has Done – Reuben Morgan – C
Psalm 51:1-3, 10-12, Psalm 32:1-2, 10-11
Worship Rises – Joshua Seller & Chris Vacher – A
Message – “Pandemic”
Jesus Paid It All – Kristian Stanfill* – Bb

Overall, we were trying to make a few things happen in this service: 

• Last weekend we ended with a real tone of celebration and in our call to worship I encouraged people to continue in that. You may not have heard “You Are” before but if your church likes to sing Tomlin or Matt Redman, you should definitely check out Mark Roach‘s music. 

   

   

• The passage from Romans that we were focusing on led us to spend some time in confession during our service. We had our pastor come and lead our congregation in prayer and then read the passage he was preaching from – we don’t always do this. We sang two songs between that spot and his message and as part of that section we read together from two confession psalms. I had people take a few moments and reflect on that last verse of Psalm 32 and meditate on the words – “Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!”

   

• The end of our service was just a great opportunity to respond to this truth from Romans 5 that our righteousness is from Christ alone, not from our own good works, our own keeping the law, not even from our faith in Christ – our righteousness is a “free gift” given by God for our good and His glory. “Jesus Paid It All” was a great song to close our service and people definitely made the connect from the truth of that passage to the truth of the words.

   

 

Great morning. You can read more Sunday recaps like this over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

*I realize that Kristian isn’t the writer of this song but it was his version that we played. Most people would be familiar with the original hymn and this version has an extra chorus added by Alex Nifong. You can find it on the “Everything Glorious” CD from Passion.

 

Worship Confessional – April 25, 2010

After Easter we launched a new 4-week series at OBC called “Kingdom Seeds” (we got the title from some great series art we found over at PowerpointSermons.com). We’ve been looking at different episodes from the book of Luke and how an encounter with Jesus leads people to radical generosity, in so many ways.

Here’s what our service looked like on Sunday -

Sunday, April 25, 2010 – “Kingdom Seeds”
Luke 20:1-4
Song of Hope – Robbie Seay Band – Bb
Jesus You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown – C
Responsive Reading – Colossians 1/Philippians 2
In Christ Alone – Keith Getty & Stuart Townend – D/E
Message – “Extravagant Generosity”
All Because of Jesus – Steve Fee – A

Three things from this past Sunday -

1. A great song is a great song is a great song. “All Because of Jesus” is a familiar song for our church and we normally use it as an opener or near the beginning of the service and do it pretty close to the original tempo, but not with big rockin’ electric guitar. We sometimes have one electric player but we still like bringing lots of  energy to our songs. After some wrestling with our setlist between practice on Thursday night and Sunday morning I landed on the idea of closing our service with that song but bringing the tempo and feel way down – one of our guys commented at run-through on Sunday morning that it felt more like a Fleetwood Mac song We took the tempo to about 108 (we didn’t use a metronome, I’m just checking a tempo online now and I think that’s close), added a shaker as the only percussion on the first verse and chorus and then brought the drums in with just hi hats and kick through the rest of the song. The bridge became the highest part of the arrangement and the whole song had a very different feel. Great songs can do that – they work with different feels, different tempos, different arrangements. Don’t be scared.

2. Worship leaders, get your people reading and singing scripture. This is important. You should be able to explain the theological stuff behind the songs you are singing but get your people reading scripture in your services. The idea of responsive readings might be strange for you or your congregation at first but don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be afraid of putting God’s word in the mouths of His people on Sunday morning. We do this fairly regularly at OBC and it’s great – it allows people to hear themselves speaking words of truth about Christ, it allows (some of) the congregation to move from an audience mindset to a participant mindset and it reinforces that the words we are singing have basis in scriptural truth. On Sunday we sang two songs about Jesus with a Jesus-focused responsive reading right in the middle – can you get much better than that? Having people sing about Jesus, read scripture about Jesus and then sing again about Jesus gave the whole section some added impact. Beautiful. (Added bonus - I needed a moment in between those two songs to switch my capo position. Tada!!)
3. I love my church. Seriously. God is doing some amazing things right now and I love being a part of it. That’s not something just about this Sunday, it’s most Sundays. God is so good to us.

 

You can find more posts like this over at TheWorshipCommunity.com.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, January 31, 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010 – “Good News for Bad News”
Romans 2
Call to Worship
Glory to God Forever – Steve Fee & Vicky Beeching – Bb
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown – Bb
Worship Rises – Chris Vacher, Joshua Seller & WorshipRises – A
Offering/Announcements/Meet & Greet
Congregational Prayer
Message – “False Sense of Security“
How Marvelous – Charles Gabriel – F
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) –  John Newton/Chris Tomlin – E

Three things about this past Sunday -

1. Last week I asked if you would pray for our church. If you did, keep praying – people are being confronted straight up with the truth of the gospel and we know that it is only the Spirit that changes hearts.

    

2. We had to be a little flexible in our response section this week. I originally had planned to do Amazing Grace first and then key change from E to F up to How Marvelous. Now, a half-step key change isn’t always the most elegant thing but we made it work. After hearing from Earl Marshall with some more info on how he was going to end his message we decided to flip the two response songs – so that meant a key change of one half-step DOWN.. yikes. But.. we made it work. We took time at practice to work through the chords of the key change and it came off beautifully.

   Because we were flexible in the layout of our service even up to Sunday morning, we were able to bring more focus to the service and really tie our response songs to the close of Earl’s message.

3. This week marked the beginning of Operation ClapClap and it was very successful. I will blog more this week about Operation ClapClap and what it is we’re trying to do – we’re having fun with this one!

I’m back on the Sunday Setlists train – have a look at what other worship leaders are doing at their churches.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, January 24, 2010

Sunday, January 24, 2009 – “Good News for Bad News”
Romans 1:21-32
Call to Worship
All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises – Paul Baloche – E
All Because Of Jesus – Steve Fee – A
This Is Our God – Chris Tomlin – E
Offering/Announcements/Meet & Greet
Glorious – Paul Baloche – C
Worship Rises – Chris Vacher, Joshua Seller & WorshipRises – A
Message – “My Moral Compass“
Worship Rises – reprise

Worship leaders, you will know what I mean when I say that Sunday was very heavy for me. If you are familiar with the words of Romans 1 and the words of these particular verses, you can bet that people were confronted in very direct ways with the truth of their own sin and their need of salvation through Christ.

I got home on Sunday and I was wiped – just very, very tired. I know that this is what happens to me when there is significant spiritual activity happening around men – unfortunately I didn’t recognize it in the moment on Sunday morning, it only became really evident to me in the afternoon because I was able to read the signs.

Pray for us. Pray for our church. Pray that God would move in mighty ways and that the hearts of people would be softened and opened to the gospel of Christ. There are people here who desperately need to come to know Christ. Pray for them.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, January 10, 2010

Well it’s been a real long time since I’ve done one but I’m back with a worship confessional. We started a new series after Christmas called “Good News for Bad News” – we are working our way through the first 3 chapters of the book of Romans. If you are familiar with these chapters, you will know why the title makes sense. Good news, indeed!

Here’s how our morning looked at Orangeville Baptist Church -

Sunday, January 10, 2009 – “Good News for Bad News”
Romans 1:8-20
Opener – Song of Hope – Robbie Seay Band
Announcements/Meet & Greet
How Can I Keep From Singing – Chris Tomlin – G -> A
Jesus Messiah – Chris Tomlin – A
Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher – F
Communion
Lead Me To The Cross – Hillsong United – E
This Is How We Know – Matt Redman – Bb
Message – “I Am Not Ashamed“
How Can I Keep From Singing – Chris Tomlin – G

Three things from this past Sunday -

1. It was a Chris Tomlin morning but I’m fine with that. Don’t freak out about playing several songs from the same artist – there’s only one person in your whole church will realize it and they won’t be bothered by it. Those songs work together well because they have the same writer – similar feel, similar lyrical direction, etc. Don’t do it every week but don’t be afraid of going with it if it makes sense.

2. We had some important info to communicate to our people. We didn’t want to break up the flow of the service from the songs to communion to the message. So we opened our service with an upbeat, high energy song (Song of Hope) and then did our announcements in two separate sections with our meet & greet right in between. That whole opening section took about 10 minutes but it was worth it – the things we needed to communicate to our church family deserved that time.
3. There were beautiful moments of worship during “Lead me to the Cross” at both our 9:00 and 11:00 services on Sunday. It’s hard to describe what those moments are like but you know that you’re in them when they happen. People focused on the cross, remembering the sacrifice of Christ and the new life that we have because of Him.

Hope you’re having a great week. Stay focused. Keep going!

 

Worship Confessional – Sunday, October 11, 2009

Great weekend at OBC. It was Thanksgiving up here in Canada (and, no, it’s not “Canadian Thanksgiving” for us – you folks down in the US just got the date wrong ) and we finished up our Elijah series. Here’s what our morning looked like -

Everyone Needs A Little – Kari Jobe – E
Welcome/Announcements
Because Of Your Love – Paul Baloche – F
Hosanna – Paul Baloche – G
Meet & Greet/Offering
Glory To God Forever – Steve Fee & Vicky Beeching – Bb
Communion
Once Again – Matt Redman – D
Message – How Big Is Our God? 2 Kings 2
Lord I Give You My Heart – G

Three things from Sunday’s service -

1. We had one of the most solid band lineups ever on Sunday. All of our musicians at OBC can play at a very good level but if you’re a worship leader you’ll know that there are certain combinations of talent, personality and instrumentation that just work really well together when you get them on stage. When I saw who was scheduled to play this week, I knew we would be having a special time together in rehearsal and on Sunday – and that’s exactly what happened. The musicians who play together here week after week are really talented and do a great job but so much more than that I appreciate their hearts and who they are as worshipers themselves.  Having band sound great is one thing but having a band of friends sound great is pretty much out of this world. I am so thankful that I get to play alongside the people who serve in our worship ministry.
2. Having said all that, the talent on stage Sunday was priceless. One of our guys can play pretty much any instrument you drop at his feet so I asked him to pull out his mandolin (yes, mandolin!) on Sunday for some of our songs. He played it on “Everyone Needs A Little” (if you haven’t heard this song, you must) and then brought it back for “Once Again”. For the rest of the morning he played electric. It added a really nice touch to the sound of the band and some good diversity to the songs when it was played.
3. As our pastor was beginning his message at our 11:00 service, he took a couple of quick moments to thank the worship team and to recognize the work and preparation that goes in to planning our services, rehearsing the songs, praying for the people who will be there, etc. He said that it’s not something we do often but it’s something we should do because the work that happens is appreciated. After each service every week I try (sometimes I forget or get sidetracked) to personally thank each person involved in our worship ministry – band, singers, techs – and to let them know that their work was appreciated. But.. I should also thank them publicly here and perhaps encourage you to thank worship ministry volunteers at your church, whether you’re the worship pastor, part of the worship team or just part of the congregation that gets the benefit of the work they do. So.. OBC worship  ministry folks, thank you! Thank you for your dedication to Christ and His church. Thank you for your dedication to this church and to her leadership. Thank you for your willingness to use your talents and abilities in a way that honours God and serves our congregation. Thank you for giving time away from family, hobbies, sleeping in, raking the lawn and a million other things so that you can be the first ones to arrive on Sunday and the last ones to leave. It is a real joy to serve alongside you as we continue to lead our church in worship. My prayer is that we’ll be faithful every step of the way, honouring God with everything we do and loving every minute of it!

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You can read more posts like this over at Fred’s blog.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, September 27, 2009

“How Big Is Our God” – 1 Kings 19
Call to Worship
Holy Is The Lord – G
Unchanging – G
In Christ Alone – D
Meet & Greet
Announcements
Offering
Yahweh – Hillsong – B
Message – “Big Enough To Restore”
Restore My Soul – Andi Rozier – E

This was the third week of our series looking at the life of Elijah and how God’s big-ness is displayed over and over again in his life. After looking at the “showdown at high noon” last week, we see an Elijah who is afraid, depressed, angry and totally without hope. How quickly Elijah goes from the mountaintop (literally!) experience of seeing God do the incredible to the desert (literally!) experience of questioning God’s call on his life.

Three things from this past Sunday -

1. Our pastor, Earl Marshall, talked last week about worship and how our worship & our expressiveness is not done to call down the presence of God in to our midst but, instead, is done as a result of the fact that God has come down to be in our midst. Our singing, raising hands, bowing down, etc is not done so that God will come and be among His people but, rather, in response to God having come to be among His people. That is a massive distinction! The prophets of Baal from 1 Kings 18 were dancing, shouting, slashing themselves so that their god would be among them. The church expresses itself in worship in response to God already being in our midst.
   We moved that idea along from last week by beginning this week’s service by singing two songs that talk about raising our hands, bowing down, expressing ourselves in worship because of who God is and what He’s done. I opened our service by reminding people of what we are doing and why we are doing it when we gather – that even our gathering is a response to the new life we have been given through Christ.
2. We taught “Yahweh” – not sure if the song was too high or too hard or too something else but it didn’t seem like people engaged. We’ll give it another shot. There are a couple other songs on the new Hillsong CD that I’d consider teaching our church. We’ll see.
3. “Restore My Soul” is a great song by Andi Rozier. The verse melody is known from “When I Survey” and, I think, other Irish folk songs. The lyrics of both verses and the chorus fit the theme and direction of our morning perfectly – that when God is doing the work of restoration in our lives, we must be directed back to the cross for true comfort and to be reminded that the great call on our life continues despite our distraction.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, September 20, 2009

Last Sunday we began a new series at OBC that is taking us through the life of Elijah. We’re asking the question “How big is our God?” and looking at the life of Elijah to see how God’s big-ness is displayed in different ways. I’ll do another post on this but one of the beautiful things about this series is that LifeChurch has already done an Elijah series and offers all of their graphics, videos and logos for free through their Open site. Ridiculously helpful! This is the second time we’ve used LC graphics and I’m so thankful that God has allowed them to release resources like that.

On Sunday we looked at what is probably the most well-known episode from Elijah’s life – the “high noon” showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel from 1 Kings 18 & 19. Our pastor, Earl Marshall, did a great job of setting the scene for this confrontation and explaining that this is really biblical theatre at its finest. There is the immediate of what is going on – Elijah versus the 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah – as well as the showdown between Yahweh and Baal. Behind these two layers there is also the third level of confrontation where the prophetic “word of the Lord” confronts each one of us as we read the story, hear the words of Elijah and see the display of God’s power.

Here’s what our service looked like -

“How big is our God?” – Sunday, September 20, 2009
1 Kings 18 & 19
God of Wonders – G
Psalm 96 – Responsive Reading
Holy, Holy, Holy – C -> D
Hosanna (United) – E
Communion
Wonderful Cross – D
Offering – E
Message – ‘Big enough to worship?’
You Are God Alone

Three things to hilight from this service -

1. I was off stage this week. I try to do that every 6-8 weeks and turn over rehearsal and leading to other very competent people who serve in our worship ministry. Lots of reasons for doing this but here’s a real easy one – if the only time I was off stage were the weeks that I was on vacation, I’d spend too much vacation time worrying about whether or not Sunday morning went okay. By doing this several times a year I’m able to do consistent development with our leaders, musicians and AV teams. And – believe it or not! – everything went just fine (actually, better than fine) on Sunday without me being on stage leading our people.
2. We did an extended opening on Sunday. Moving right from ‘God of Wonders’ in to the Psalm 96 responsive reading (both of those elements had really nice energy and created some good momentum at the beginning of the service) I came up on stage and spoke very briefly about what it means that God is holy. We sing or say that word and have an understanding of the other-ness or uniqueness of God and how He is set apart but it sometimes can be a word that is too ‘big’ for us to really grasp. I encouraged our congregation to remember that in every attribute, every characteristic, God is holy, set apart, like no other. The love of God is unlike any other love – His love is holy. The grace of God is unlike any other grace – His grace is holy. Mercy, faithfulness, justice, on and on and on – in each of those, God is holy. Going from that into ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ moved things along nicely and helped establish our theme for the morning.
3. We had a great morning even if the services were a little “full” as things tend to be in September in church world. Not sure what we can do to ease the overflow of startup information during the first few weeks of the fall but I’d be interested in hearing how people balance the desire to have information communicated with the reality that we only have 80 or 85 minutes of gathering time when we meet. We are very focused in the kinds of things we hilight from the platform but there’s just lots of things that fall in to that category – mission-critical, church-wide, strategic, etc etc. All good things, just too many of them brought to peoples’ attention all at once.

So while I enjoyed being off stage for the singing part of our service, I’m looking forward to being back on this week and leading our church on Sunday morning. Lots more recaps and confessionals like this over at Fred McKinnon’s site. Check them out.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, September 6, 2009

Worship Confessional – Sept 6, 2009 from Chris Vacher on Vimeo.

“You Are” by Mark Roach is on iTunes here or you can check out more of Mark’s website at www.markroach.com

iPhone App For Worship Leaders

A friend of mine is designing the first iPhone/iPod app specifically targeted to worship leaders and is looking for some input from you. Check out the survey and let him know what would be helpful –

Can you help us launch the first iPhone app geared towards worship leaders?

We are just about to go into some expensive design and development,
and we need some insight from our worship leader friends. (forward
this to those you may know lead worship and have an iPhone/iPod

Could you complete a quick survey for us-it shows a stripped down
version of our upcoming iPhone app, and we need your feedback/ideas.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=VoF0LXQT0mP_2bHdWNDXXUng_3d_3d

You can sign up to receive updates at www.songsuggest.net

Worship Confessional – Sunday, August 9, 2009

We began a new series today at OBC where we’ll be spending the new five weeks walking through the book of Psalms – getting a new perspective on what’s written, how it’s written and how we should read the book. The series is affectionately being called our Psummer Psalms Pseries around the office

Here’s our service outline this morning -

Intro Quotes
Sing – Josh Wilson – A
w/ Psalm readings
Forever – Chris Tomlin – G
Hosanna – Paul Baloche – G
Great Is Thy Faithfulness – C -> D
Message/Communion
Jesus You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown – C

We tried something a little different this morning and did a bit of a presentation-type call to worship at the beginning of the service. Right when we hit 10:00, the band began to play “Sing” while the quotes from the post below played through on the screens. When the quotes finished up, we did two verses and choruses of the song before two people came up on stage to read verses from the Psalms which talked about the people of God singing praise to Him.

Shout with joy to God, all the earth!
Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious!

Psalm 66:1-2

 

Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!

So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you.

All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you,

They sing praise to your name.”

Psalm 66:3-4

 

Sing to the Lord, you saints of his; praise his holy name.

For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime;

Weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning

Psalm 30:4-5

 

Sing praises to God, sing praises;

Sing praises to our King, sing praises.

For God is the King of all the earth

Sing to him a psalm of praise.

Psalm 47:6-7

 

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord

Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving

Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise

For the Lord is a great God

And a great King above all gods

Psalm 95:1-4

 

After those verses were read, we did another chorus of “Sing” before asking people to stand and going right into the other songs of the opening set. Again, this was something a little different from what we normally do – there were things in the flow that didn’t go perfect but overall it worked pretty well and was a good opener for our service and our series.

Some other thoughts from this morning –

• Today was the closest we’ve come to losing power on a Sunday morning. A huge thunderstorm rolled through at about 10:30 this morning – lots of thunder, lightning and dark skies outside. Power flickered off and on a few times but the new surge protection gear we installed during last year’s expansion/renovation did the trick this morning! We did lose power on our projectors at one point but they reset themselves and came back online pretty quick.
• Our numbers on Sunday morning have been up significantly last year. I don’t normally make a big deal about numbers on the blog just because they would be HUGE for some churches but they’d also be TINY for some churches. But.. year over year, we are seeing about 40% more people in our building on Sunday morning compared to 2008. We think there’s three reasons for that – it’s just a different crowd of new people who have been coming this year, the weather has had a BIG impact on people not taking holidays and, of course, the economy.
• We did something kind of fun (well, fun for me!) with “Jesus You Are Worthy” – this song is really familiar for our congregation and normally we do it as a medium-tempo song pretty close to how Brenton does it on his CD. During rehearsal we had the idea to bring the tempo waaaayyyy down – about 54 bpm! We really built the bridge – did it once instrumentally out of the second chorus and then three more times with the vocals. By the last time the band was really driving it – pretty different for a song like this but because we were using the song as part of communion it worked really well.
• One other thing we’re doing in this series is we’ve set up easels on the main floor of our building and each week we’re giving people an opportunity to respond to the message by writing words or phrases that express a Psalm-like heart response. At the end of the series we’ll gather these boards and display them on our stage as a community-written Psalm.
• If you were tracking along with Willow Creek Leadership Summit stuff, you might have seen Josh Wilson’s name pop up. I’m so glad to see him getting the exposure that he is – I was introduced to him in February at re:create, heard his song “Sing” a few weeks ago and knew that we would use it for this series. I’ll do a separate post on Josh and his music this week.

Check out more Sunday recaps and confessionals over at Fred’s blog.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, August 2, 2009

This morning at OBC was one of those ones that just makes the thankful that I get to be a part of this. Seriously – great morning with a great bunch of people, both the people service on stage as well as the people who came to be a part of our service.

The first weekend in August is a long weekend in Canada – we have no real reason to celebrate a holiday, so we’ve just called this one a Civic Holiday. That’s pretty awesome in my books! Normally long weekends show a bit of a dip in attendance but our auditorium was JAMMED and the vibe in the room was great. Our pastor, Earl Marshall (blog|twitter) finished our series called “Jesus Neighbourhood” and reminded people that our focus is “repent, believe, follow” and that when this message of Jesus is presented to others there will be some who just don’t get it. But in light of knowing that some will not respond, the call on OUR lives is to continue to “repent, believe, follow” – to persevere in the calling God has given us. Great morning and a great wrap-up to the series.

Here’s what it looked like for us -

Glory In The Highest – Chris Tomlin – A
This Is How We Know – Matt Redman – Bb
Your Name – Paul Baloche – Bb
Announcements/Q&A
Message
I Exalt Thee – E
Be The Centre – Michael Frye – E

Some thoughts from this morning:

• 8:30 call time (which we have during the summer) is way easier than 7:30 call time (which we have the rest of the year). Going back to two services will not be nice for my Saturday night sleep schedule!
• There was incredible energy in the room this morning – it really felt like a community event happening inside our building.
• I’m not sure I remember seeing so many unfamiliar faces – the woman who collects our Connection Cards had quite a pile of them so we’ll see if they were just in town visiting or if they’re people who are exploring OBC.
• When I was in university I attended a great church which was very encouraging to me personally and in my faith journey. The pastor of that church was visiting with us this morning – that was a real privilege. Great to see him & his wife.
• If you raised an eyebrow at “I Exalt Thee” and thought it was an odd song to pull out, you’ll be seeing it show up at more and more churches soon. The folks at Jesus Culture did an updated version of the song on their last record and it’s inspired lots of people to bring it out. Worked really well for us this morning.

All in all, great morning. I love my church and that I get to be a part of the leadership here. So fortunate and know that God is alive and working among us, around us and through us.

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Check out more Sunday morning recaps here.

Worship Confessional – Sunday, July 26, 2009

Alright – Fred’s throwing a big birthday party so I thought I’d join in!

This past Sunday at OBC we were talking about the cost of following Jesus – the ‘not-so-fine print’ that He tells us about. We walked through Luke 9 and read the story of the three guys who each have different reasons for not following Jesus in that moment. At the end of the message we were reminded that following Jesus and calling others to follow Him could look like this -

• Proximity – not just living close to people but being close relationally with them as well
• Presence – being the hands & feet of Jesus in our neighbourhoods
• Proclamation – deeds lived out for the sake of the Kingdom and not just as random acts of kindness

We closed our service by asking people to reflect on those three – Proximity, Presence, Proclamation – and to allow God to speak to them. Perhaps there is one of those concepts that they really felt God was calling them to explore and to expand in their lives this week. Closing the service that way was a little bit of an audible since the message went long and we weren’t able to do our expected response songs. Not the end of the world – just different than what we were expecting.

We opened our service with a solid set of 3 songs -

• Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher – F
• Everlasting God – Brenton Brown – Bb
• This Is How We Know – Matt Redman – Bb

The first two songs are real winners for our congregation – they love to sing them and join in right away. We did something a little different with “Everlasting God” and opened with the pre-chorus (“Our God, You reign forever..”) four times. We started that section with the band and vocals nice and full and as we went through that pre-chorus four times we brought the band back to a really simple, straight, four-on-the-floor feel and brought the vocals right out front. It was a nice little moment – one of those things that takes the band some work to accomplish and probably nobody in the congregation noticed But that’s okay – it helped with the flow of the songs and getting people engaged in what was happening.

“This Is How We Know” is a new Matt Redman track – it’s available on iTunes so check it out. We played the song last Sunday during communion and this week had the congregation sing with us. They got the chorus no problem and we’ll do it again next week to give them a chance to get real familiar with it.

So that was our morning – pretty straightforward, nothing too complicated. Great to be together with our church family, hear from God’s word, lift Him up in worship – love it.

We’ve got one more week of this series left and then we begin a five-week series through the book of Psalms. Really looking forward to that and talking about coming up with some opportunities for people to respond that will help make the messages and the words of that book really stick. Stay tuned!

How I’m Feeling

What do all of these things have in common?

• fever, which is usually high, but unlike seasonal flu, is sometimes absent
• cough
• runny nose or stuffy nose
• sore throat
• body aches
• headache
• chills
• fatigue or tiredness, which can be extreme
• diarrhea and vomiting, sometimes, but more commonly seen than with seasonal flu

They’re all symptoms of swine flu AND several of them have been ravaging my body for the past few days. I’m definitely on the mend (and no oinking yet!) so I don’t think there’s much cause for concern but it certainly made things interesting this past weekend.

On Saturday morning I got up, felt fine, headed over to the church for breakfast with a bunch of guys and then spent some time with my family at a kids festival in town. By 1:00 we were home and I was totally knocked out by this flu – chills, fever, headache, coughing. I ended up on the couch, not moving until 10:00 or so that night – knowing that I was going to be leading two services the next morning at OBC and feeling pretty confident that I’d be okay to do that.

I drank lots of orange juice and water before going to bed and another full litre of juice the next morning before heading to the church. I can honestly say that I have never led worship feeling the way I did – my head was spinning, a couple of times I had to just step back to catch my breath. During the 9:00 service I sat beside my wife during the message and spent most of it doubled over just trying to get comfortable enough to go back up and lead the closing songs.

In the midst of my great weakness, though, God was definitely honoured. I spoke with lots of people who couldn’t tell that I was sick and told me how moving the service was and how much they enjoyed it.

We are continuing in the series called “Grow UP!” where we’re spending nine weeks on a chunk of verses in 2 Peter which talk about spiritual growth. Earl led us through an exploration of perseverance and godliness and it was clear there were some “aha!” moments for people in the crowd. I think that this series will come out as being one of the most helpful for our people over the last couple of years – lots of good stuff and great content for people to grab on to.

Here’s what our service looked like -

Welcome/Announcements
Call to Worship
Sing to the King – Billy Foote – E (9:00) // You Are – Mark Roach – E (11:00)
Let Everything That Has Breath – Matt Redman – E
Meet & Greet/Offering
Your Love Never Fails – Chris Quilala – G
Responsive Reading – Psalm 118
Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus – Hymn – G
Message – Perseverance & Godliness
You Never Let Go – Matt & Beth Redman – Bb
Lord Reign In Me – Brenton Brown – C

A couple things to hilight -

• We switched our opener after the 9:00 service. I thought that “Sing to the King” would give us a good Jesus-focused opening right at the beginning but it didn’t – pulled it out and added “You Are” for 11:00. Much better.
• “Your Love Never Fails” is a new song from Jesus Culture – we’ll give it another couple tries with the congregation before deciding if it’s a keeper or not. Not sure yet.
• That song plus the reading focused on the enduring love of God leading in to “Tis So Sweet” was a really nice section in both services. At 9:00 there was one guy who sounded like he’d been waiting his whole life to sing that hymn and as soon as we started the first line he just let it belt out – awesome!

Great weekend – despite my sickness. Couple more weeks of this series and then two weeks of holidays for me – looking forward to all of it!

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You can find more posts like this at my friend Fred’s blog here.

Sunday Quick Hits

I haven’t been giving much time to doing full worship confessionals over the last little while and I’m not about to break that streak tonight. So hear are my Sunday quick hits from today -

• Sunday is pretty much the only day that I don’t curse the alarm going off a 6:00 AM – I get jazzed about helping to make Sunday morning happen
• We are continuing our “Grow UP!” series – if you thought it wasn’t possible to pull nine week of gooood content out of nine verses in 2 Peter, Earl Marshall has proven you wrong
• We called a MAJOR audible between our 9:00 & 11:00 services and completely changed the order of service – I mean completely changed
• The biggest reason for that was we had people sitting & listening for too long at our 9:00 service – keeping people engaged, active and compelled is key on Sunday morning
• I wish someone would help visiting missionaries understand what congregations want to hear from them
• I think we need to be clearer with people who are giving ministry updates on what will fire up our people
• We baptized a high school girl today – beautiful example of INVEST and INVITE being lived out in relationship, now seeing this girl IGNITE and IMPACT – it is a beautiful thing
• INVEST, INVITE, IGNITE, IMPACT – our 4 I’s of ministry strategy helping us to achieve our vision to Transform Our Region, Transform our world because of our mission to glorify God by making disciples who love God completely and others sacrificially
• We only did two songs in our 11:00 service and – guess what! – it was still engaging, authentic worship
• Don’t believe the lie that you need 6 songs and 25 minutes in a worship package to get people to a place of worship – use every moment of your worship set properly
• I had this mental conversation during one of the verses in our 11:00 service – “Oh. You’re here today? Well, that’s interesting. And you came with her? Wow. Very cool. God, You know what’s going on – make it happen.”
• Songs we did this morning – Unchanging by Chris Tomlin, Here I Am To Worship by Tim Hughes, It Is Well (9:00 only) and then just a verse/chorus meditation of May The Words by Tim Hughes

Worship Confessional – Sunday, May 10, 2009

It’s been a while since I’ve posted with a recap of Sunday morning but I’ll try and do some catch up. Today was the second week of a 9-week series we’re doing called “Grow UP!” The content of this series is from 2 Peter 1:3-11. Yes, 9 weeks focused on a 9 verse chunk of scripture. And these are 9 verses full of some GOOD stuff.

Here’s our outline -

Because of Your Love – Paul Baloche – G
Great Things – Matt Maher – G
Sing to the King – Billy Foote – E
Mother’s Day focus
Announcements/Offering
Child Dedications
Communion
My Hope Is Jesus – Hillsong (CD with video)
Jesus You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown – C
Message – 2 Peter 1:5
Prayer

Some of my thoughts after today’s services -

• People came ready to sing today and the combo of that with some good leadership from Rebecca helped things get real focused, real quick! The two opening songs work really well together (same key, similar progressions) and had some good energy to get things going. “Sing to the King” is a new one for us and people picked it up quickly.
• Earl took some time to honour moms today and did it with sincerity and meaning. Our service was NOT all about moms (it was much more about Jesus and the work of the Spirit in our lives!) but we did take some time to show moms our appreciation.
• Lots of visitors for child dedications this morning. We are a church with lots of young families and lots of babies (we had 25 babies born in a church of 500 a couple of years ago!) and dedicating kids is a significant thing for us. We are still working out exactly the best way to do this in a way that is significant and memorable – I’d love to hear how other churches are doing child dedications.
• Today was the third Sunday in a row that I wasn’t leading. It’s the longest I’ve gone in my time at OBC without leading and I didn’t like it. The scheduling just worked out this way but I don’t want to do that again. Going four weeks between being the voice of our worship ministry isn’t ideal.
• Orangeville is not a university town so when our talented, musical high school students graduate we lose them (and other churches GAIN them!) for 8 months or longer, depending on whether or not they actually come home to mom and dad for the summer. I connected with a bunch of our university students who are back home and excited about playing this summer. That pumps me up!
• We closed our service by asking people to prioritize spiritual disciplines in their lives so that they are training (not trying) towards spiritual growth. We gave opportunity for people to stay and pray after the service if they wanted and several did – it was amazing to see people that we as leaders have been praying for over the last several months or years taking some time to talk to God about their own spiritual growth. I think today was a landmark day for some people at OBC.
• This series is right up Earl’s alley – it’s a great meshing together of some of the things that have been happening in his own life over the past couple of years and he’s got the opportunity to be sharing some of that right alongside with what scripture has to say about spiritual growth.

Check our more posts like this at Sunday Setlists

Good Friday – Community Service

One of the real unique things we do at OBC is work together with a bunch of churches in our region to host a community Good Friday service. This has been happening in Orangeville for a number of years and I’ve loved being involved since I came here in 2005. The focus of the service has always been the crucifixion and death of Jesus – very much the beginning of a weekend which ends with real celebration on Sunday!

This year, for the first time, we decided to do two identical services. Our building has always been packed when we did one and we’ve talked about possibly making this service multi-site in the future. By taking the first step of offering this service more than once then we could begin to create some diversity in how or when the service is offered. It was definitely the right call! Both services were very full (we only offered childcare at the first service) and our total numbers were up about 30% from last year. It will be interesting to talk through why that was – did churches promote more because we made more space available? did people invite more because they knew there would be room? Interesting questions.

For the service itself, I began working on the content right after Christmas. I came up with the idea of using the stations of the cross as a template for the service design and eventually landed on a concept where we would tell the story of Good Friday in five segments or movements: condemnation, procession, crucifixion, death, burial. We used scripture, readings, songs, videos and visuals to help tell the story. We did record both services (the band was tight!!) and I’ll try and get some audio online later this week.

One of the visuals that we used to help tell the story was a set of five candles on a table right at the front of our stage. These fives candles were lit at the beginning of the service and as we progressed through the five moments – condemnation, procession, crucifixion, death, burial – each candle was extinguished. Here’s a quick video showing what the table looked like – the five candles are talking about are the big ones which are unlit in the video:

A table of candles. at 5 different points during good Friday’s service a candle will be snuffed.

We began the service with a call to worship, explaining the morning and our pastor, Earl Marshall, read from John 1 and then lit the centre candle. From there the service progressed through each of the movements. Here’s the rundown:

Call to Worship – John 1
Lighting of centre candle
Condemnation
Reading – Matthew 27:15-26, Luke 23:18-25, Mark 15:16-20
Responsive Prayer
Silent Prayers of Confession
First candle extinguished
Procession
Reading – Luke 23:26-31
“This Is The Day” – presentation song cued to “Passion of the Christ” video
“Mighty is the Power of the Cross” – Chris Tomlin
Second candle extinguished
Crucifixion
Verses on screen – Matthew 27:33-39, Mark 15:24, Luke 23:33, John 19:17-18
Reading from St. Matthew’s Passion

Commend your ways and whatever grieves your heart
to the most faithful care of him who directs the heavens;
he to clouds, air, and wind assigns paths, ways, and course,
will also find ways where your feet can go.

Third candle extinguished
Video – Psalm 22 with St. Matthew’s Passion underscore
“I Stand Amazed (How Marvelous)” – the Passion version
Death & Burial
Reading – Mark 15:33-39
Fourth candle extinguished
“You Gave Your Life Away” – Paul Baloche
“Jesus Messiah” – Chris Tomlin
Communion
“This is the Gift of God” – Carl Cartee
“The Wonder of the Cross” – Vicky Beeching
Fifth (centre) candle extinguished

 

Alright.. If you’re thinking that the outline looks complicated, you’re right. There were LOTS of moving pieces – four scripture readers from different churches, eight communion servers from different churches, lots of video and light cues and some elements that really needed to happen in the right sequence to have impact. It came off BEAUTIFULLY – this is probably the most complex service I’ve put together at OBC but the response was incredible.

I had run through the service on my own about 6 or 8 times during the week to prepare myself – videos, readings, songs, everything – but then still on Friday morning participating with everyone as we listened, watched and sang together the emotion of the day got to more more than a few times. I had lots of comments from people on not only the content but how everything flowed from the beginning of the service right to the end. This service was very produced but was executed so well by the people involved that it came off very naturally. I was really proud of everyone involved and at the end of the day we had accomplished what we had set out to do – to tell the story of the darkest day, the story of Christ’s condemnation, procession, crucifixion, death and burial. It is a day that I will not soon forget.

Worship Confessional – February 15, 2008

This is week number six of our series on marriage called “Marriage Matters” and after five weeks focused on God’s design for marriage and the roles of husbands and wives in marriage we decided to take a bit of a turn and focus on celebrating singleness today. That may seem odd for a marriage series but we know that 1/3 of the people here on Sunday morning are either single and not yet married or single again after divorce or being widowed. Learning how to live in a way that honours God while being single is just as vital as it is while being married.

Like every week in this series we have done a personal Q&A during the series – other weeks it’s been couples who have been married a looooong time (as in 50+ years!!) but this week we did a Q&A time with a great woman from our church who was widowed 12 years ago after being married for 41 years. She has experienced singleness before marriage, over four decades of marriage and now an extended time of singleness again. Her life is a great testimony that marriage is not the be all and end all of our relational lives.

For our time of worship, we didn’t really do anything thematic but just spend some time focusing on giving God worship for who He is and what He’s done – as well as celebrating the really unique fact that corporate worship has to happen in community. We are not in our own little worlds doing our worship time – for the church to worship best in every way, it must happen in community.

Here’s what our morning looked like -

Call to Worship

O Lord, open our lips
and our mouth will proclaim your praise.
O God, come quickly to save us.
O Lord, come quickly to help us.
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever. Amen.

Doxology – Traditional – G
Forever – Chris Tomlin – G
Responsive Reading

The Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us rejoice and shout for joy,
giving God the glory.

Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever. Amen.

Salvation Belongs To Our God – Adrian Howard & Pat Turner – A
Adoramus Te

We adore Thee, O Christ, And we bless Thee,
Who by the holy cross have redeemed the world,
Who have suffered for us! Lord, have mercy upon us!

Lead Me To The Cross – Hillsong United – E
Message – “Celebrating Singleness”
Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher – G

So nothing way out of whack – I know not everyone is used to doing responsive readings but they are a regular part of what we do here. Starting of our service with a reading was a good way for me to remind people that this is a communal event – it’s not a performance from the stage, it’s not your own personal worship time with God – we are here together! Leading from that to the Doxology and Forever set up the service really nicely.

I’ll talk about the Adoramus Te for a bit because it’s probably the thing that is the most unique for people who are reading. It is a poem or song of worship that is typically read or sung during a stations of the cross celebration on Good Friday.

Here are the words in Latin -

Adoramus Te, Christe, et benedicimus Tibi,
Quia per sanctam crucem Tuam redemisti mundum,
Domine, miserere nobis!

And in English -

We adore Thee, O Christ, And we bless Thee,
Who by the holy cross have redeemed the world,
Who have suffered for us! Lord, have mercy upon us!

Beautiful! I found a really nice recording of the Adoramus Te being sung by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge on iTunes. The link is here if you’d like to listen. We put the English words up on the screen, played the song and asked people to focus on the words as they listened – praying and thanking God that He has redeemed the world through the cross. Very cool moment!

There you go. Make sure you hit Fred’s site and check out all the other stories of what’s been happening at churches all over the place today.

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