Service Review - 2.13/14.10

Past week's set...

Let God Arise (G)
All Because of Jesus (A)

Intro new song - We Crown You (E)

Scripture (from Rev, led by Sara)

Revelation Song (E) - Sara led this and transitioned into "How Great Thou Art"
How Great Thou Art (E)

*Greeting/Announcements
*Parent Child Dedications (Sunday morning only)

Special: Choose (by christy knockles, led by Sara)
- With this song we were trying to tie in with the theme of Valentine's Day along with a lead in to the passage we were talking about in I Pt. 3 which talks about the relationship between husbands and wives.

This was a good Sunday for us. The participation of our church was strong and we worked really hard to get some of the songs we did into singable keys. Unfortunately, most recorded songs are too high for the average worshipper and we feel strongly about making the worship accessible for everyone. Obviously, some high keys allow people to sing an octave lower, but it is something we try to pay attention to.

It was good to have Sara Smith co-worship leading. It was good to have her playing guitar, reading scripture and leading our congregation in worship. My prayer is that through our example of sharing leadership in the service, God will be planting seeds in young people's hearts in our church to be worship leaders.

It was a good weekend for us. I am really excited about what God is doing.

On Weekend Service Building

Psalm 127
1 Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.

I find myself thinking about this verse many times over the course of a weekend service. The challenge with service programming is that it's easy to come up with a great service on paper the week prior, but the all-telling sign of whether or not the Lord built "the house" is when you get to the actual service. In reflecting on this verse, I am convicted more than ever about the importance of prayer and seeking the leadership of the Lord as our team puts together services each week.

I think one of the biggest ways God reminds me of this in the midst of technical difficulties. A couple weeks back, we arrived for our 30m run-through on Sunday morning, after the Saturday rehearsal and service, to find that all of our audio settings had been erased. With a digital board and lots of patching and presets, it got a little panicky from about 8:05-8:30. While these difficulties are never fun, our whole team was reminded that "unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain".

We are dependent on God at each step of the way and we need to acknowledge Him in all of them.

Video from CYA

Steve Smith and Kevin Fiske with some friends worked hard to put this together for our College/Young Adult worship venue. I am really excited about how they used this video to bridge the gap between the scholarly world and church world (which sadly can often be very disconnected). We are really looking forward to using this concept again. Nice work guys!

Exhile - 1 Peter from Harvest CYA on Vimeo.

New Song we're thinking about

Love this song. I think we will be incorporating this into our worship culture...

A Tasty, Hooky Toon

I like everything about this. Great song.

Worship in Review 1.16/17.10

It's been a crazy week past.  The devastation that happened in Haiti on Tuesday was something that just couldn't be ignored and as the worship leader for the weekend, I couldn't bring myself to start the worship set off with a couple upbeat rockers followed by a medium then a slow song.  It wasn't right and we decided to go to the drawing board officially on Thursday.  My thought in planning was to start out with a song that reflected the hope of the gospel, and move deeper from there.  I wanted remind people of the hope of the gospel not just for the victims in Haiti, but for the troubles of they face in their own lives.  Here is the set we came up with...

:Your Name (started with a quiet chorus and drew people to the "Strong and Might Tower")

:Mighty to Save (full version, nothing left out)

    Responsive reading from Ps. 18

:Oh You Bring (Hillsong - "Oh you bring hope to the hopeless...)

:Jesus Paid it All

We also took up an offering at the end of the service for the church in Haiti and showed this video right before we took up the offering.

To end the service, our head pastor, Ron Zappia, had people spend time in prayer.  We did a quiet close and it was amazing to see people huddled with family and friends long after the service had officially ended.

The offering goes to an initiative called churcheshelpingchurches.com.  Please take a minute to check out the site and give what you can.