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.