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Worship Text-fessional – September 9, 2007

September 11, 2007 in textfessional,worship with 3 Comments

Sunday, September 2, 2007 – “After God’s Own Heart”
2 Samuel 11-12
Your Grace Is Enough – E
Amazing Grace (My Chains) – E
Video – Report from Pakistan
Prayer
Announcements
All Creatures Of Our God & King – C
That’s Why We Praise Him – C
Message
Communion
Take My Life And Let It Be – D

This weekend was pretty intense. Once again, Earl delivered God’s word powerfully. We looked at the shift in David’s life from a man who mourned over the death of his enemies and who wanted no innocent blood on his end to one who sent others to battle at the time of year “when kings go to war.” Ouch! From the adultery committed with Bathsheba David then turns into a man who is no longer focused on the heart of God but on hiding the consequences of his sin. He does everything he can – tries to convince Uriah to sleep with his wife, gets Uriah drunk in the hopes that he’ll get a little randy and when none of that works he simply has Uriah killed.

David’s response to Uriah’s death is just mind-blowing -

“Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.” 2 Samuel 11:25

Like Earl said in his message, this is the part of the story where you just want to take your first and ram it down David’s throat!!

Anyways – worship confessional time. You can see from our outline we did a grace-focused section and a praise-focused section. When I’ve only got about 10 minutes for a block of worship (about 2 songs and some intro/leading talking) I will try to keep the songs very thematic. This worked very well and people responded well in worship.

You’ll see that we did a video report from Pakistan. I was able to do a phone call this week with a man from our church who is there with his family for two months serving in a medical clinic. I recorded the audio from our phone call, edited it and added some photos and we played it back for our congregation at both services. The wonders of technology!! :)

How did Sunday go for you?

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the iTunes iMix of the songs we did this Sunday – link

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

Worship Text-fessional – September 2, 2007

September 5, 2007 in textfessional,worship with 2 Comments

Sunday, September 2, 2007 – “After God’s Own Heart”
2 Samuel 6
Yesterday, Today & Forever – Vicky Beeching
Crown Him With Many Crowns – George Elvey & his friends
Announcements
Prayer
Be Unto Your Name – Gary Sadler & Lynn DeShazo
Indescribable – Laura Story
Message – “Mountain Climbers”
Audio –
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This Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
Here I Am To Worship – Tim Hughes

This series continues to kill me. Man, it seems like week after week Earl’s messages are hitting home in a significant way. After talking about David’s cave experience a couple of weeks ago it was time for the mountaintop this week. The focus was on worship and how there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. David did it right, Uzzah did it wrong.

One of the fun things we did this week was put together a little video (I’ll get it online once I figure out why YouTube links aren’t working??) contrasting two pretty different worship styles – sacred harp and Hillsong United. Earl asked the question, “which is better?” and his answer was basically “I don’t know but does it really matter?” Kind of nice to place that kind of framework around worship for a church like ours that is almost 150 years old!

So after a message like that the natural thing is to ask myself, “What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong?” Here are some quick answers:

Right

time, prayer, thought, reflection goes in to the overall design of our worship experiences

the Sunday morning “product” – music, video, interaction with congregation – is done very well. We have very talented people

there is a recognition among the congregation that our time together on Sunday morning is to hear from God’s word, express our praise and worship to Him and to interact on a personal level with our church family – it is a “connect” event on multiple levels

our worship on Sunday morning is authentic in two ways

it represents who we are generationally (young and old on stage) and artistically (fits the current musical style of our culture)

it recognizes that the “artist’s heart” of worship leaders is not always shared by the congregation so not all worshippers will respond to choruses repeated several times, long interludes during songs, opportunities to “raise your voice to God”, etc etc

Wrong

we need to give ourselves more lead-time in our service planning process – I am currently developing a system where we will be working 4-5 weeks in advance

this was previously mentioned but I’d love to see us develop a better overall vision of leading worship rather than just leading songs

we need to get better at diversifying the components of our worship service – allow for different forms of prayer, place greater emphasis on the public reading of scripture, give space for our congregation to share life stories, etc etc

we all need to come to Sunday morning with the 100% conviction and expectation that we are coming to meet with the living God – that changes everything!!

Well, that turned out to be a little longer than I expected. Sorry Rich – although I’m sure you haven’t even made it this far. Buuuuut.. If you have – what are you doing right??

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

Worship Text-fessional – August 26, 2007

August 27, 2007 in textfessional,worship with 8 Comments

I’m going to be away for the next couple of days with our ministry staff so I’m taking some time on what is normally my day off to recap our Sunday morning. This weekend was a little different in that I had no official role to play in our service. My family was involved in a wedding on Saturday so we left all of the worship leading up to volunteers. I’ll give a recap of the service and then some thoughts from my perspective as a participant in the worship rather than as a leader.

Sunday, August 26, 2007 – “After God’s Own Heart”
1 Samuel 24-26
All The Earth – Paul Baloche
Your Love Is Amazing – Brenton Brown & Brian Doerksen
How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
How Great Thou Art – Stuart Hine
Announcements & Prayer
Shout To The Lord – Darlene Zschech
Psalm 46 Responsive Reading
Blessed Be Your Name – Matt & Beth Redman
Message
I Give You My Heart – Reuben Morgan

Good service, over all. I am still loving this series because the content is so deep and there are several layers of meaning to everything that is happening. This week we looked at the two opportunities that David had to kill Saul and his change in attitude from ch. 24 to ch. 26. Right in between is the story of Nabal (the fool) and his wife, Abigail. David learns something in that moment which causes a drastic change in his heart and re-commits him to the belief that God and no other (not David, not his men, not Saul’s men) will make him king.

As I’ve said before, I’ve got three other really solid worship leaders on my team as well as a host of other great musicians. I had no concerns at all with leaving the rehearsing and the actual service up to them - they are fantastic! It was a nice change for me to be able to sit in the congregation and not have to worry about transitions, timing, flow, etc. I could just worship!

Here are some quick thoughts -

Really “musical” does not always equal really “worshipful”. Here’s what I mean: I caught myself a couple times during some of the songs wishing that there had been an extra bar, an extra phrase, an extra instrumental section in places to give me time to reflect on what I had just sung. While it wouldn’t have been the best musical decision it would have allowed some more time for worship.

When we lead worship, we have to lead worship. We are more than songleaders. Songs are our tools -they are not the goal. I am reading a book right now that talks about the church turning songs into mediators – making our worship times the transcendant moments when we draw near to God. Of course, this is heresy – it is only because of CHRIST and his blood shed on the cross that we can – with confidence!! – come near to the throne of God to bow before Him and proclaim His goodness. We simply use songs as a way to encourage people to express their praise and their worship – the songs are not the vehicle which take us to the throne room.

It’s way too easy to make it about me when I’m leading. I often want to do the songs that the band can play best, that I’m most confident with, that are built on my theological understanding of who God is. This isn’t an easy thing to admit but sometimes the most effective tools to lead people in worship during a particular service will look very different from the effective tools to lead me in worship.

Thoughts? Comments? Reactions?

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

Worship Text-fessional – Sunday, August 19, 2007

August 24, 2007 in textfessional,worship with 1 Comment

Alright – I’m on a roll! Two posts in a row!

This week we had one of our bass players, John, lead the service. This is the second time he’s led our Sunday morning and the first time was awesome too!

Sunday, August 19, 2007 – “After God’s Own Heart”
You Shine – Brian Doerksen
Lord Reign In Me – Brenton Brown
Announcements, etc
Go! Students
Better Is One Day – Matt Redman
Your Love Oh Lord – Third Day
Message
Psalm 13 – Brian Doerksen

So this week was interesting. We went through our regular planning process, met as a pastor team to work out all the details and then Saturday morning (which is when we do our full rehearsals) my senior pastor came to me with the idea of totally changing how we were going to do the response section of the service. Instead of doing a medley of “How Great Is Our God” and “How Great Thou Art” (which we’re actually doing to do this week) he had the idea of using a song that would be new to our congregation but would really communicate the core of his message – even when we’re living life in the cave, we need to trust in God’s unfailing love.

There’s a song on Brian Doerksen’s “Live In Europe” CD based on Psalm 13 and we really thought it would work great. BUT there was only about 30 minutes for me to learn the song, teach it to the band and then figure out how we were going to present it. What we decided to do was to have me come at the end of the message, play the verse a couple of times as Earl led people through the text of the Psalm. As he prayed to close that section, the whole band came up, we did the verse again leading to the chorus – big contrast in feel, lyrics, everything – and had the congregation join us.

It was pretty powerful – several people came up to me right after the service and commented on the impact of that moment.

So – lessons? Although we try to be very pro-active in our planning and we spend lots of time thinking, praying, planning and re-thinking our song selection, service flow, placement of worship elements, etc etc sometimes there is just a great idea that comes to us last-minute and we have to run with it. I’m glad we did.

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

Worship text-fessional – Sunday, August 12, 2007

August 24, 2007 in textfessional,worship with Comments Off

Sorry for the delay – trying to enjoy the last couple of weeks before summer (it’s already turned cool-ish up here!) and the blog received much love this week just not on the posting side.

So here we go -

Sunday, August 12, 2007 – “After God’s Own Heart”
Hosanna – Paul Baloche
Jesus, You Are Worthy – Brenton Brown
My Jesus I Love Thee – William Featherston
Announcements, etc
Communion
Jesus, Lamb of God – Dennis Jernigan
You Are – Mark Roach
Video – “Presence”
Centre – Charlie Hall, Matt Redman
Message
Centre – again

I’m loving this series. The message focused on two things – living a life after God’s own heart plays out when we believe in who God is and trust in His presence. I was going to actually link to the recording of the message from this week because it was so good but we had major meltdown in our CD recorder and lost everything. Boo.

One really nice thing we did to set the stage for the message was use a video called “Presence” (Highway Video should really change their site to allow direct linking to videos – go there and search for it. It’s based on Ps. 139:7) and we played “Centre” as the video was going. That’s not a song that we’ve done with our congregation before so we did something like a verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge thing with the band and that got the congregation to sing the chorus with us at the end.

After the message we came back and did “Centre” again BUT took the key from D to E, had everyone stand (they were sitting the first time) and did the whole song with the congregation. Very nice.

It wasn’t intentional but our song selection this week was VERY Jesus-focused. Yes, I know – we’re always supposed to be focused on Jesus. But just look at the songs. I didn’t go into my service planning mode with the idea that all of our songs would be directly about Christ but it worked out that way and I loved it. I was able to lead people through the themes built in the songs and the fact that they were all speaking directly about Christ was awesome.

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

Worship Text-fessional – Sunday, August 5, 2007

August 10, 2007 in textfessional,worship with 5 Comments

My blog-friend Victor tipped me off to a new way of describing my recap posts. Lots of people are doing worship confessionals and I felt kind of lame calling mine the same thing because they’re all high tech and fancy with their videos but I feel hip and satisfied by calling these posts worship text-fessionals, so that’s what they’re going to be.

On Sunday we started a new series looking at the life of David in 1 & 2 Samuel that we’re calling “After God’s Own Heart.” The basic premise is to take 5 snapshots of David’s life and look at the constant contrast in those stories between who David was and who the other characters are. We started this week by telling the story of Saul.

Sunday, August 5, 2007 – “After God’s Own Heart”
1 Samuel ch. 8-15
Beautiful One – Tim Hughes
Because Of Your Love – Paul Baloche
Announcements/Offering/Prayer
Doxology (Praise God From Whom…) – Traditional
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown
In Christ Alone – Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Message
Step By Step – Rich Mullins

Our congregation is loving “Everlasting God” right now – they sing it loud, they really get in to the lyrics and the words seem to really express a place that our congregation is at right now. It’s also a song where our band can crank it up a little bit so they enjoy that. I had our piano player do more of the lead on the verses and pre-chorus and I just filled in little rhythmic things on my guitar – made for a nice arrangement and a good contrast for when we went full out on the chorus.

“Because Of Your Love” is a song that we’ve been doing for a while here and for the first time we dropped the key from G to F. I’ve been finding that the chorus (which hangs on a high D in the melody line) has been a bit high and I was wondering if it was holding the congregation back. So we dropped down a key to stay in that golden “C to shining C” range for our people and it really seemed to help.

I’m excited about the rest of this series and digging in to the life of David some more. One of the things we’ll be doing with the worship side of our services is pulling from the Psalms which parallel different parts of the David story. Right now I’m working on a song taken from Psalm 51 that we’ll be using in a couple weeks and we’ve got a few other ideas we’re throwing around.

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

Sunday, July 29 Recap

August 1, 2007 in textfessional,worship with 1 Comment

Sunday was good. We’ve finished our “Like This” series in 1 Thessalonians and we’ll be starting our new series looking at the life of David this coming week. On Sunday we had a guest come and preach. Darryl Dash is the senior pastor at Richview Baptist Church in Toronto and is a good friend of ours. He came and preached a message on “Restoring Worship” from Ezra 3.

The service planning process was a little different – mostly over email and with less interaction between me and the speaker, obviously. Normally over the course of planning a service I will meet with our pastor several times to make sure that we’re on the same page for Sunday morning. I’m planning on doing a post soon about our service planning process and will be looking for some feedback from other people who have insight in that area.

Anyways, here’s what we put together.

Sunday, July 29, 2007 – “Restoring Worship”
Ezra 3:1-11
Ancient of Days – Gary Sadler & Jamie Harvill
Forever – Chris Tomlin

What the Lord Has Done – Reuben Morgan
Be Thou My Vision – Dennis & Nan Allen
Heart of Worship – Matt Redman

Message

Give Us Clean Hands – Charlie Hall

“Heart of Worship” isn’t a song that we’d typically do on a Sunday morning (in fact I don’t think we’ve done it in the almost-two years that I’ve been here) but it made alot of sense as the first bookend, if you will, to the message. Our worship leader set the song up really nicely to encourage people to think about the song as we were preparing for the message – just the idea that worship is more than singing and we may occasionally need to rethink how and why we are worshipping.

“Give Us Clean Hands” was a really nice closer to the service and provided another good bookend to Darryl’s message.

At the end of our service we did a little Q&A and prayed for a team of 4 students and 2 adults who are leaving today (their plane takes off in about 2 1/2 hours) for Japan where they will be partnering with some missionaries we support over there. It’s been neat to have missionaries either visiting or being sent from our church interviewed durng our service the past four Sundays – a missionary we support in Rome, one in Central America, a family from our church going to Pakistan and now this team going to Japan.

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

Sunday, July 22 Recap

July 25, 2007 in textfessional,worship with Comments Off

Well last week was amazing. We ran our Krazee Arts Camp for the first time ever and from all reports it was a HUGE success. Lots of photos on my blog.

Hilights from last week -
>Having a peacock in the building
>Telling kids every day that God created them, God loves them, God wants a relationship with them
>Hearing them sing LOUD at the Variety Show on Friday night
>Working with amazing volunteers to pull off an incredible week

Our service on Sunday morning was another good one. We closed our “Like This” series by taking two of Paul’s “final instruction” verses and building a section of teaching around each verse. It went something like this -

Sunday, July 22, 2007 – “Like This”
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
Let Everything That Has Breath – Matt Redman
Open The Eyes – Paul Baloche

Teaching – v.23 – “A Prayer”
Communion
The Wonderful Cross – Trad., Tomlin & Reeves
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Trad., Tomlin & Giglio

Teaching – v.24 – “A Promise”
Faithful One – Brian Doerksen
Never Let Go – Matt & Beth Redman

Two really neat things from this service -
I felt like for the first time “Let Everything” really worked in a service here. Right tempo, right groove, right placement. It just worked.
The other really great thing was “Never Let Go”. This song rocks. I said to my team this week that the song feels like an epilogue to “Blessed Be Your Name”. Same authors, same theme, same conviction, same range separation from verse to chorus. Anyways – the congregation ate it up. It is definitely going in our regular rotation and we’ll for sure pull it out during our next series on David.

Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next

Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.

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Chris Vacher Married to Sonya, dad to Avery, Emmy, Isabelle and Anderson. Director of Worship at Orangeville Baptist Church near Toronto. Founder of WorshipRises and doing my best to follow Jesus in the midst of it all.

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Worship Text-fessional – September 9, 2007

Worship Text-fessional – September 2, 2007

Worship Text-fessional – August 26, 2007

Worship Text-fessional – Sunday, August 19, 2007

Worship text-fessional – Sunday, August 12, 2007

Worship Text-fessional – Sunday, August 5, 2007

Sunday, July 29 Recap

Sunday, July 22 Recap

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