RussHutto.com

Walk-in:
Ripped a riff from Audio Adrenaline’s “I’m Not The King” and added a simple James Bond-esque counter melody on top of it. Then at key points threw in a Mission Impossible inspired rhythmic breakdown. Fun stuff.

1) One Way (Hillsong):
Key A. Funny story. My wife comments after service, “I love that new ‘That Thing You Do’ feel you guys did One Way with today.” I was like, “Thanks, babe,  but we’ve been doing it like that for almost a year…” She was like, “Oh….” Hahaha!

So, we do kind of mashup the That Thing You Do vibe with an almost western/surf feel. Works out pretty good on this tune. A great song to use some whammy bar or tremolo effects on your electric guitars.

2) O Taste & See (Johnson):
Key G. We haven’t done this one in a while, but I love it. It’s such a simple and repetitive song, but so rich! Cortni rocked it! She’s one of my go to female vocal leaders! One thing new that we kinf of improved (rehearsal) into on accident was a half-time feel towards the end. Instead of just repeating the chorus verbatim musically, we go to a drums and vocals break (chorus) with a break down kind of half-time feel. Worked well, and broke up the potential monotony of this great tune.

3) I Know Who I Am (Houghton/Tomlin):
Key A. For some reason my mind keeps thinking this song is in D every time we play it. Especially if I’m on keys, which makes for some interesting chords! I did play guitar this week, but rehearsed on keys. Weird, I know, but I forgot my guitar at home and all I had was keys for rehearsal. I should be fired.

This is a great song that goes over so well. One of our female vocal leaders, Ros, tears it up. I sing the bridge. The energy of this song is so great for group worship.

Speaking of rehearsal:
The last few weeks I’ve been utilizing a split rehearsal format. Vocals come in at 6:30 and rehears with me (on keys or acoustic) for 45 minutes. The Band comes in and has 15 minutes to set up and then we rock full team rehearsal for an hour.

Pros:

• The vocals have never been tighter. Even though they rehearse parts during the week, it’s great to be able to come in and tighten those up.
• Before a lot of times when I’d need to rehearse with the vocals the band would get to chatting or even start noodling on their respective instruments. I don’t mind that so much as far as volume, but they’d lose focus a bit. It’s always a good thing when we can just plow through our rehearsal times and not have anyone lose focus.
• I also get to spend a little bit more time interacting with the vocals in a little more intimate setting. Not that we didn’t interact before, but I’ve always found the smaller the group, the better the interaction.

Cons:

• The entire rehearsal is about 15 minutes longer give or take.

As you can see the Pros have far outweighed the cons with this.

Today’s Sunday Setlist is part of many others shared by worshipers and worship leaders from all over the world at Fred McKinnon.com

I know many worship leaders are familiar with the 7 Hebrew shades of the word “praise” – a few years back (ok a good many years back), Carman had a song about them. A bit cheesy, but a good source of basic info for these 7 shades of praise.

“Hallelujah”

One of the most common to us in church is the halal. Not because we really know what it means, but because we use it almost every Sunday in our church services.

You might be more familiar with the commonly used churchy phrase “Hallelujah.”

Hallelujah is basically a mashup of 2 words: Halal and Jah.

Jah means (the Lord).

Halal means to be clamorously foolish, it means to boast loudly, to laud, to celebrate, to shine.

In english we translate it as to praise. Man how much we miss by simply using that bland descriptor. Hallelujah does mean “praise the Lord” but somehow it’s lost it’s rich and expressive meaning and become more of a cliche that we toss around like a nerf football at a picnic.

In today’s current culture, probably the best visual picture of the halal is this guy:

We get pretty foolish at our sports events. Now before you all throw the reverence book at me, I’m not suggesting that we show up to lead worship or to a prayer meeting dressed like this, especially the ladies, but I am suggesting that it’s the “spirit” of what makes a “fan” (short for fanatic) that is something to take a look at.

They are wholly devoted to their team. They will go into the team’s “presence” any time they can to have an “encounter” with the team. They will deck themselves out in apparel that SHOUTS dedication to the team. They will shout, clap, cheer, laugh, cry, boast, and go through just about every range of emotional expression as a result of what their team does.

“Halal”

David knew what the halal was.

This is the Halal. Hallelujah doesn’t simply mean “praise the Lord.”

Hallelujah screams out total devotion. It reflects a commitment, a dedication, a devotion.

Hallelujah means “a clamorously foolish, boastful, celebratory, shining, outward display of praise to and for the Lord.”

Something to think about: Halal is clearly an outward PHYSICAL expression of praise and worship to God. But I wonder sometimes if my very LIFE is also a halal to God. Is my heart wholly devoted? Is my life a shining boast of God’s work in, around, and through my life? Do others SEE my life outside of my “singing halals” as a laud or celebration of who God is?

Do you halal much?

That’s almost a $400 registration paid for in full!

The National Worship Leader Conference is teaming up with The Worship Community to give away this VERY VALUABLE opportunity!

National Worship Leader Conference
July 20-23, 2009
Leawood, Kansas

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1. Worship Music Academy (Musicademy.com):
A great resource site that offers free videos and paid dvds to teach musicians to play using worship songs. If you’re just getting into your instrument and want a great resource this is a great place to dive in! I had a chance (briefly) to chat with Andy Chamberlain at the National Worship Leader Conference in July 08. Not only is he a great teacher (I took one of his guitar workshops), he’s also genuinely nice. We chatted for about an hour in the “green room” at the conference.

@mariemusicademy

2. CCLITV (cclitv.com)
With their OpenMic, Instruct, and FirstTake sections, CCLITV is a great resource to find new music for worship and to hear a little of the inside scoop on how songs were written and the inspiration behind them. I think my favorite feature is the OpenMic section, where CCLITV features songs directly from churches. My good friend, Fred McKinnon, has a song featured there.

@cclitv

3. Highest Praise (highestpraise.com)
This site is run by my good friend, Fred McKinnon, and is a great resource for new songs, free giveaways, and a great worship oriented podcast.

@fmckinnon

4. Worship The Rock (worshiptherock.com)
A great resource with forums, photos, groups, blogs, and more. One of my good blog friends, David Goodwin, helps run this site.

@worshiptherock

5. Our Creative Community (ourcreativecommunity.wordpress.com)
A creative accountability group blog that is geared towards songwriters, photographers, artists, writers, health/fitness, and just about any area that touches “creativity” that you can think about. I help run this site along with Mandy Thompson and Tammy Hodge. If you’re a worship songwriter, this is a great group to get involved with. We share our success and our struggles in our commitments to write. Personally, I’ve committed to writing 50 songs this year, and it’s been a great encouragement to have a place to share that experience with others (even when I don’t succeed in any given week). People are sharing there successes and struggles with committing to write a certain number of songs per week/month; taking more photos; memorizing more scripture, writing a certain number of chapters per week/month; exercising a certain number of hours per week; crafting more; etc. You get the picture. It’s a great resource for worship songwriters.

@ourcc

As always, be sure to check out The Worship Community, a great site with articles, forums, giveaways, and just generally a great place to connect with and share all things worship. I’m a regular contributor there.

As a worship leader it’s good to know WHO you’re creating worship spaces for. You have to view your “worship leading” as an act of worship through serving. You’re not up there to get famous or to worship mindlessly in front of a crowd. You are there to GIVE. Not to take, not to consume, but to give.

What Not To Do:

• Don’t do everything that’s popular on the radio. Just because a song is familiar doesn’t mean it will serve your congregation.
• Don’t do everything popular by Chris Tomlin or Israel Houghton or the newest, greatest, latest worship leader phenom. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to as well.
• Don’t pick your favorite songs, close your eyes, and enter into a time of deep, personal, and intimate worship leaving everyone else behind. Leading worship is about serving, helping others to worship, not consuming “worship” like it’s your own personal energy drink each week.
• Don’t do every arrangement of worship songs exactly like you’ve heard them on the recorded version. Mix it up. Re-mix it. Re-arrange it. Add your own spice to it.

What To Do:

• Do everything that’s popular on the radio. The fact that it’s on the radio mean that people resonate with it. Use that to your advantage. People are more likely to feel at ease if they have something in common with you. If you know a song and they know a song, how much more of a common denominator could you get!
• Do everything popular by Chris Tomlin or Israel Houghton or the newest, greatest, latest worship leader phenom. The fact that they are influential means a lot of people are utilizing their music. This is a good thing. In most situations, good songwriters rise to the top. Bad songwriters don’t. There’s a reason why some of these folks are the few you hear on the radio, they are good at what they do. Use their stuff.
• Pick your favorite songs, close your eyes, and enter into a time of deep, personal, and intimate worship leaving everyone else behind…at HOME. Do this in your own personal spiritual growth time. Enter your prayer closet secretly. Worship with total abandon. When you are “leading” worship make sure you are LEADING your family, not LEAVING them. Remember that our times of creating worship spaces on Sundays should be coming from an overflow of the times that we’ve spent plugged into the “flow” ALL WEEK. If the only time you get to “worship” deeply through music is on stage on Sundays then you’ve got your priorities mixed up. DO IT! Just make sure that you’re doing it right!
• Do arrangements of worship songs exactly like you’ve heard them on the recorded version. Yep. It’s okay to replicate an arrangement that you’ve heard on a cd. Why? Sometimes those arrangements are smoking hot and you’ve got to jump on them! More times than not, there’s no way I’d ever try an re-mix an Israel Houghton tune. Why? It’s already baked up with TLC and really doesn’t need to be revamped. Nothing wrong with re-arranging a song for your particular needs, but if it ain’t broke then realize it’s ok not to “fix” it.

Know Your Music Culture:

As worship leaders it’s your privilege to find and resonate with the “tune” of your congregations heart strings. Practically, this comes from asking people questions about the music they love. It comes from knowing the demographics of the people who worship with you. Look around. If there are is a significant number of skin colors that are different than yours, you should probably be doing all that you can to incorporate music that serves THEM!

If your place is only represented by one skin color than you might have to dig a little deeper. This is where asking questions comes into play. If you have a lot of younger people, you probably shouldn’t ONLY be doing traditional hymns or choruses. If you have a good bit of older people you probably shouldn’t only be rocking new millenium modern worship. Ask. Look.

Don’t Stereotype:

This is where the balance comes in. Just because someone of a different skin color worship with you doesn’t mean they automatically like a different “style” of music. My point isn’t in just blindly trying to play to skin color, but more so in trying to best SERVE your faith family by being AWARE of their music preferences and asking questions that serve your people. Don’t stereotype.

Feedback Is Key:

Also, it’s important to know that feedback AFTER you do a certain song is wanted as well. LISTEN to people when they say, “MAN! That song was awesome!” Or “That was pretty weird when you did What A Friend We Have in Jesus with the kazoo and bagpipes choir…it kind of messed it up.”

Pay attention to feedback. Don’t get offended by it.

Take Risks:

Not only is it important to be in tune with what people like, but you also need to be ready to take some risks and to nudge people in different directions. Experiment. Try new things. One Sunday we actually broke into a beat-box and rap bridge for Shackles (Mary Mary). It was fun for us. The congregation enjoyed it, and we also got a few negative comments back. Not enough to never do it again, but definitely gave us some feedback on who likes what!

Take risks, ask questions, and catalogue feedback.

For examples of how others are “knowing” their music cultures and the successes and struggles associated with that journey, head over to THE WORSHIP COMMUNITY forums. It’s a great place where worship leaders and worshipers from all around the world engage in discussion about any and every topic you can think about as it relates to worship.