Worship Confessional – Sunday, Sept 14, 2008

I’m hoping to get some photos posted this week but on Sunday we used our new stage for the first time. We are in the middle of a building expansion as well as a bunch of renovations in our auditorium (which is also our gym, making things interesting) – new PA, new projectors/screens, new stage, new soundbooth and storage rooms. Lots of new, lots of work!

The big change on our stage is that we’ve removed our elevated baptistry as well as torn out the existing stage, rebuilt the whole stage area with two retractable sections that pull out towards the middle of the room – before we had been using 4 very heavy “portable” 4′x8′x16″ stage boxes. I’ll have to get some pictures up to show you the changes but basically we’ve gained 30% more stage space as well as modernized the look of our auditorium with new paint and carpet. There are still some final touches to come but using the new stage was a bit of a milestone in this whole process.

Our set list from Sunday morning - 

God’s Distinct Society – Romans 12:3-8
You Are – Mark Roach – F
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown – Bb – with click from Duane Rogers
Mighty To Save – Hillsong United – A
Christ Arose – chorus only – A
Video – I Am Community
Message – Unity With Great Diversity
Communion
You Are My King – Stuart Townend – D
Solo – O Church Arise – Keith Getty & Stuart Townend – D
Next Steps
O Church Arise – congregation 

Okay – so if you’re thinking that the line-up looks pretty packed, you’re right! We ended right on our time limit and it felt like there was alot to pack in to the morning. I’ll just hilight a few things - 

1. Clicks – Carlos tweeted about Duane Rogers and his click tracks this week and they are amazing! I think I will be using a bunch of these and that started by using his ‘Everlasting God” track on Sunday. The vibe of the click is very different from other ones we’ve used and it worked perfectly. He’s added a nice touch by inserting audio cues on the metronome side to remind the band what’s coming next. Have a listen and you’ll understand what I mean.
2. Christ Arose – I was playing through the songs on Friday afternoon and got to the end of “Mighty To Save” and felt like that package really needed something to close it off. Playing off the theme of the MTS chorus we went straight into a very open, mid-tempo chorus of “Christ Arose” and it worked beautifully – first time through we had just piano and vocals and the whole band dropped in right at the end of the last line, leading us back to the “Up from the grave…” lyric. It was awesome – a great closing tag to a package of very solid songs.
3. Next Steps – This is a new thing for us and I need to blog about it some more. Basically we have introduced a “connection card” to our worship service that is serving three main purposes – giving our congregation a chance to communicate prayer requests to staff and elders, gathering contact info from first- and second-time guests, and also to encourage everyone in attendance on Sunday morning to be taking intentional next steps in their walk with Christ. We launched this last Sunday and after two Sundays we are seeing some good results.