Worship Confessional – April 13, 2008

We had a great morning at OBC yesterday which kicked off a whole day of great stuff. This was the third week of our identity series and we were focusing this Sunday on the idea of invest – what it means to have growing relationships with those who aren’t yet followers of Christ with the dream that we’d be able to share our story and God’s story. One of the things Earl talked about in his message was the idea that we are compelled to love others because of God’s great love for us. That sparked my brain and we built our whole worship package at the front end around the theme of God’s love.

Call To Worship
True Love – Phil Wickham – A
w/ video & click
Your Love Oh Lord – Third Day – E
The Love Of God – MercyMe-ish – D
Responsive Reading
Your Name – Paul Baloche – A
Communion
How Deep The Father’s Love For Us – Stuart Townend – D -> E
Amazing Love – Graham Kendrick – E
Q&A – invest
Message

The flow of the morning was perfect. The video that we used for “True Love” was beautiful and I thought it set a really nice tone to the service. We began our morning by just gathering peoples’ thoughts and giving them a few seconds of silence to prepare themselves. We had ushers keep the doors closed and then opened them when we began the first song.

After “True Love” we asked people to stand, let them know that we’d be focusing on God’s love for us through worship and word and we launched right in to it. “Your Love Oh Lord” is a standard favourite for our church – we did it with a bit of a different feel this week, though. Instead of playing in open E I played it in D capo 2 and was able to do more stuff with transition chords – G/B, Em7, etc (capo’d) – that gave a different flavour to the song. When we hit the second chorus we had the band drop out and I just dig some chugga-chugga stuff on guitar. Guitar players know what “chugga-chugga” means so they get it! :) It was a nice little musical contrast and gave the song some space – sometimes songs that only have verse/chorus sections need a little something extra to keep them interesting.

From there we went right in to an arrangement of “The Love Of God” – I said MercyMe-ish because it was close to that but not identical. The two songs flowed pretty well together (even with the E to D key change) and the lyrics contain some beautiful images of the fullness of God’s love for us.

Out of that song we did a responsive reading which was a bunch of verses all mashed together – John 3:16-17, Romans 5:6-9, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 – and all focused on God’s love and the motivation we have to love others. I know that sounds overly simplistic but the verses together worked really well and led nicely to “Your Name” which closed that set.

In our opening set we used a click for “True Love” to keep us on time with the video – click at 98 bpm – and for “Your Name” we used the click and loop that I got from PraiseCharts.com.

Right out of “Your Name” we took communion together – again focused on the idea that Christ’s death is the ultimate example of sacrifical love. During communion we did “How Deep The Father’s Love For Us” and then closed the first half of the service with “Amazing Love”.

Coming out of the worship we did our community stuff – announcements, offering – and then some Q&A with someone from our church who is deeply committed to investing in relationships. That set up Earl’s message on the importance of having growing relationships with those who aren’t yet followers of Christ.

From top to bottom this was probably one of the most thematically-unified services we have done in my time here. We aren’t normally able to do a 35 minute block of worship like we did on Sunday but it really seemed to click this week. I mean really clicked! At our second service, especially, there was a real sense that God was in our midst, His spirit was among us and the people were genuinely responding in worship. Coming out of communion we had people seated for “Amazing Love” and when we hit the first chorus I saw the first person stand and knew it wouldn’t be long before more people would follow – sure enough as the song progressed there were people all over the room who were now standing, arms raised, singing their hearts out to God.

I turned around to the band at one point and said “Guys, we’re just going to ride this for a while!” and we extended the song longer than we did at our first service. It was an incredible moment of worship and one that I’ll keep with me for a long time.

So that was our morning. I’m going to do a series of posts to talk about some other things we did during the day yesterday that were real hilights for me