Tag: music & art

I have been absent for a while now, but felt it would be good to get back in the flow of the Sunday Setlists hosted at fredmckinnon.com.  I hope this post finds you (and those you are walking with on this journey of faith) well.  It might just be me (being sappy), but I have felt the need this week to say “thank you” and “I appreciate/love you” to many of my friends this week.  This is how it started…

Last Friday we found out the sad news that our sound man and long-time friend John Emerson had passed away after his bout with a failing liver.  I’m quite positive his Sunday Setlist recap would be more than we could even comprehend.  Knowing that I was joining in with heaven’s worship was a comforting thought for me today, but still we will dearly miss him.

After sitting back, and looking at John’s life, I realized how much he did just by being consistent week in and week out.  This in turn led me to think of the rest of my family, friends, & worship team – to see how incredibly faithful they are to the little details that make up this wonderful thing called life.  I know I forget to be thankful for these “little things” (that are truly the most important of things).  So, in honor of my friend’s life – would you take a moment, during this week, to thank those around you for being there, for being faithful, and for doing the little things?

To all of you who are reading this  – thank you –  for your friendship, your service, and your faithfulness to doing what God has set before you.  What you are doing is important and it truly makes a difference in the lives of those around you.

Below is a recap of our Sunday sets.  You can preview the versions of the songs we did by clicking on the song titles:

am
1.  (Eb/F)   Forever
2.  (F)         No Sweeter Name
3.  (F)         Jesus, Name Above All Names w/Here In Your Presence
—
4.  (C)         It Is Well
5.  (C)         Great Is Thy Faithfulness



pm
1.  (Ab)       Filled With Your Glory
2.  (Ab)       We Cry Out
3.  (Ab)       Son Of God
—
4.  (D)        Lord I Seek You
5.  (D)        Cry In My Heart

After a beautiful “pink and melon” outdoor wedding yesterday, most of our team (including my fairskinned self) came in today pink-and-melon-sunburned. Everyone was a bit sore, but practice was amazing. Because of the planning and serving that went in to this weekend, we came in without a planned setlist today. For our team, not having a setlist is a very rare thing. So we sat down as a team and quickly put together what you see below.

The morning went smoothly from practice until we lead it live in the service. Our various worship leaders and young worship band did an awesome job of working together and quickly learning the songs – so good job team! Also, our soundman, John, gave us a clean, strong mix this morning and the congregation was all in from the start. It was a great morning at HACC and you can preview the versions of the songs we did by clicking on the song titles.

1. (A) Everlasting God
2. (A) Everyone (Praises)
3. (A) Great Is Thy Faithfulness
—
4. (B) Jesus Paid It All
5. (B) Overcome

Hope your week was great and thanks for stopping by to peruse, say hi, or ask a question. Today’s setlist was brought to you by the letters A, B, the number 5, and Fred McKinnon’s Sunday Setlist fun.

Sorry for missing last week, but we are back and had an excellent service today.  The church jumped right in at the top and had a lot of energy which made for a great morning.  We revamped Open The Eyes Of My Heart and changed a few chords to give it a little more “spice” and had very positive responses to it.   (sidenote: this song would go perfectly with Friend Of God (which we did not do) because it has a similar chord structure).  For our setlist today, Open The Eyes moved seamlessly into Forever.  Also, if you would like to hear a fresh, new version of this song – click here – to open up a link to the creativity that is Russ Hutto.

I ended up leading only 1 song today, which was a lot of fun for me because I was able to help train & backup our newer worship leaders.  Today they – Shabaka & Mark – did an excellent job and the response from the church showed me that they are beginning to trust them. ** I will be posting more about this later in the week, so check back to hear about our new training methods and how they are working.**

The rest of the set was equally great, and you can see the rest of it below.   Thanks for stopping by and be sure to click on the song titles to listen on iTunes.

1.  (E) Open The Eyes Of My Heart
2.  (F) Forever
3.  (F) Grace Like Rain

-announcements-

4.  (C) Great Is Thy Faithfulness
5.  (D) Here I Am To Worship

As always, this is a part of the Sunday Setlist craze that is sweeping the nation!

Welcome to another weekly installment of Sunday setlists as part Fred McKinnon’s blog party. We had a great morning today with another one of our bands in training. The morning was very powerful even though I made a last minute switch and threw in the old song “He Touched Me” by Bill Gaither. I have been singing that song for a few days now and felt it would be a good fit for this week’s morning list and the response was overwhelming.

Our best transition of the morning was from “Glory” to “Need You Here”.  Here’s what we did – since “Glory” ends on the 4 chord in E (an A)  we all stayed on that chord for a few seconds.  Then, while holding a pad sound on the keys, I faded in a rhodes sound underneath and as it was established, the band all kicked into “Need You Here” which just happens to be in A.  Just this simple hold and sound change caused a very easy key change for us.  Plus, we did not distract our congregation with an abrupt change, but a seemless transition helped this moment to not drop.

This morning we only had 2 lead singers, plus myself and band, which made for nice tight harmonies.  Kendra, one of the best part singers I know, lead “Glory” and “He Touched Me”; while Farah Abu Saada, our wonderful soprano this morning, (sidebar:  she is also the sister of Ben (from Overland Park, KS)) did an incredible job on “Need You Here”.  Overall, the congregation’s response was very strong to the entire set.  Below is our setlist and you can click the titles for links to iTunes.

Thanks for swinging by my blog – feel free to leave a comment, ask a question, or just peruse for general merriment.

1. Meet With You (A) by Lamont Hiebert
2. Glory (E) by Reuben Morgan/Hillsong United
3. Need You Here (A) by Reuben Morgan/Hillsong United
4. Your Name (Bb) by Paul Baloche & Glenn Packiam
5. He Touched Me (Bb) by William J. Gaither

(last week I promised to post a song written in our house, but have not done it yet.  Be looking for the chart and mp3 to “Consume Me” this week, as we attempt again to get it up.  thanks, dj)

Welcome to another installment of sunday setlists.  As always, this is a part of the worldwide interweb fun from over at Fred McKinnon’s site.

We had a good morning worship service at HACC and our congregation was very responsive. Today saw dead batteries everywhere, tempo fun, and a new song written in-house.  Just before going on stage, one of worship leaders’ batteries died (this is a plague upon us lately – possibly due to rechargeables) in his guitar.  We all quickly re-battery’ed up and were ready to start this set:

1. God of Wonders (A/B) – good song, we played it a little slow, but the thought behind it was to help our people jump in comfortably and warm-up.  Recently, we have been noticing that there are some mornings where we RUN past our congregation at the beginning of service.  So, we are trying not to leave anyone behind by entering around a 3 (on a 1 to 10 scale) before we rev the music up to 5 or more.  🙂

2. Everyday (B) – our obligatory Hillsong song – ha!  Actually, we have not done this song in a long, long time.  As such, it was well received and this helped us get moving closer to that 5.  Also, major props to our young drummer – James.  He found the perfect tempo on this song (which seemed to allude us all during practice) and just played it perfectly.

3. Knowing You (C) – an oldie, but a goodie.  Not much more to say on this other than it was a nice worship moment in the set.

4. Consume Me (E) – this was the new song we taught/sang this morning.  It was written by one of our newer worship leaders, Jordan.  It is encouraging to see our team begin to write and sing from the life they are walking with God.  Check back later in the week for the chart and mp3 of this song.

5. Bless The Lord (E) – We went straight out of the chorus of Jordan’s song into this older chorus –

“Bless the Lord, oh my soul

and all that is within me

Bless His holy name”

Then, near the end of singing this song, we key changed up to F, and everyone just seemed to go right UP (no, not that “UP” – but the same basic concept) with the intensity of the song.  It was a strong moment and felt as though our earlier “warm-up” helped bring along a large portion of our local house.  In my opinion, I think we ended up around a 7 on our little intensity scale (see song #1’s description for the explanation).

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment, or question, or just say hi.  And if you need more pretty things to look at online, then head over to Fred’s blog to see what other worship leaders and their teams are doing.  Have a wonderful Sunday and rest of the week!

Sunday Setlist – 04.05.09

Well, as you can see – I am working on getting this blog up and fully-functioning, but I thought I would at least post a Sunday setlist.  We had a good palm Sunday morning at Heartland Academy Community Church.  Initially it seemed that people were a little scarce this morning, but then I remembered that a large group from our congregation is on a missions trip to Egypt.

So here’s the rundown today –

1. evermore  (g) – One of our other worship leaders that we are training led this Hillsong semi-oldie.  It is a great tune to play.  I love the half-time bridge on this song because you can really build it for a nice worship moment, or use it to contrast the uptempo chorus.  People really jumped into this song and it worked well as it lead into…

2. surrender (g) – I remember when the Surrender cd first came out  with classic worship songs like You Are My King, All Who Are Thirsty, Hallelujah Your Love Makes Me Sing.  We did this a little more upbeat than normal, but it worked well and we used it as a medley with our 3rd song.

3. i surrender all (c) – This was lead by Kathie, one of our altos and she did a great job leading this.  Our church really enjoys hymns, and this one was no exception.  Rich in theology and a good conclusion to our set before we stopped and did announcements.

4. he is exalted (g) – Ridden with mental mistakes by me, this still managed to be a great moment for us.  We normally do this song a little like Shane & Shane; however, we did not schedule an acoustic guitar player (mistake #1) and we did not have another guy to sing the cool harmonies this song provides (mistake #2).  Regardless of my lack of foresight, the congregation knew this song well and was able to get past my cutting to just voices (mistake #3) and it feeling like all hope for rhythm was lost.  Again, this just helped solidify for me, that worship is not so much about my mistakes and shortcomings as it is about His greatness.  I was glad for being able to make a joyful NOISE.  🙂

5. jesus, lover of my soul  (g) – we finished the set with this song and then spontaneously cut over to the chorus of I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever. It took a few moments to build, but we ended up having a great time of worship with this song.

On a little different note, every Sunday morning, we are attempting to train our younger, less experienced musicians.  Our goal is to help them gain confidence and experience.  This morning was no exception, and I was very impressed with their ability to keep up, even with the multiple mistakes (by me, not them) and song changes.  This morning was a very good sign that we are growing and getting better in our skills and our ability to lead worship with our various instruments.  Good work team!

Thanks for checking out our set.  Feel free to to leave a comment, ask a question, or just peruse this almost-put-together website.  And,  be sure to swing by Fred’s blog to see what other teams & churches were singing this weekend.