Had a great day at Providence Worshiping Arts Center in Jesup, GA. Was joined by my beautiful wife, Lydia and my brother-in-law, Ben Bowen on guitar and his son Lex on shaker and toy guitar.
1) Beautiful One. D
2) Better Is One Day. D
3) We Are Hungry. G
4) You Are My King. D
5) I Exalt Thee. (chorus) D
Today was a Passion throwback day!
Yesterday was a great day at New LIfe in Richmond Hill, GA. Always enjoy worshiping with those fine folks and my friend Ryan Ogden.
My wife Lydia accompanied me and led out on a few of the songs:
1) Beautiful One (Hughes): Key C. An oldie, but an good upbeat opener.
2) Our God (Tomlin): Key G. Went over well last week, so I decided to repeat it this week.
3) Better Is One Day (Redman): Key D. Lydia led out on this one. It seems that this was pretty much a Passion week!
4) We Fall Down (Tomlin): Key C. Lydia led out on this one as well.
5) Holy, Holy, Holy (Heber): Key C. The old hymn.
Was a great day. I came back up at the end of the service to play a little response music and was piddling around on the How He Loves tune because that “thought” worked well with the message. The pastor turned around and asked me to sing so I did. I belted into the He Loves Us tag/chorus part and then after a few rounds of that, the pastor asked me to sing the verse…which I was totally unprepared to do! Anyways, Lydia, ever the constant helper, mouthed the upcoming words to me from the front row…up until the second half of the verse…where it gets a bit wordy. You guessed it! I crashed and burned.
Why? I’m not one of those who has included that song in my regular rotation so I’m not super familiar with the verse words. Add to that the fact that I have a hard time memorizing even my own songs and you’ve got a recipe for lyrical disaster! Thankfully, the lyrics were projected on a screen (I couldn’t see) so the congregation at least had the words in front of them.
All in all a great day!
Share your Sunday recap at Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community!
Hey all. Had an inspiring week at Re:Create11!
Excited to be leading worship at New Life Church in Richmond Hill, GA this weekend. My lovely wife, Lydia, will be joining me on vocals.
1) My Savior Lives (Egan/Packiam): Key of A. Still one of my favorite songs to open a set with. Works great with a full band or just an acoustic guitar.
2) Our God (Tomlin/Redman/Myrin/Reeves): Key of A. Just added this one into my rotation of regulars a few months back. Led worship at a VERY traditional Methodist pastors gathering back in late 2010 and one of the pastors asked me if I knew it. Sadly, I had not heard of it. But, I went and listened to it and added it instantly to my repertoire! When I rock it with a full band, I like it to actually have a lot more oomph than the Tomlin recorded version.
3) Overcome (Egan): Key of A. One of my favorite songs of all to lead in any setting.
4) How Great is Our God (Tomlin/Reeves/Cash): Key of A. Getting to be an oldie, but still definitely a good one!
5) How Great Thou Art (Hine): Key of A. Will segue immediately into the chorus of this one from How Great Is Our God, similar to the tomlin arrangement.
I’ll be capo 2 the entire set (playing in the key of G) so everything will come out in the key of A. I might move over to the piano for the last How Great medley. We’ll see! Looking forward to a great morning!
The last two weeks I had the privilege of co-leading with Mandy Thompson at The Chapel in Brunswick, GA. It was neat getting to know the leadership team and to get a sneak peek at their planning/prayer process for each week.
Played keys. Borrowed a keyboard and a stand. I was just joking with Mandy earlier about how I have no equipment to be so involved with music. Funny how that works. For the last 15 years, I’ve been on staff at churches that provided equipment. Now that I’m “freelance” I don’t have any. Haha! I do have an upright piano at the house, but could you imagine me lugging that thing around!! Haha!
This week’s setlist looked like:
1) All We Need (Hall): Key D. Mandy led this one. It was the opener.
2) Our God (Tomin): Key G. I have to take everything Tomlin records DOWN a few steps to sing it comfortably. This is a great song! Love it! We built the bridge up to anthemic levels and then had one of the leadership team come up and pray and then read the verses from Romans about if God is For us…while vamping the bridge chords under neath. Right as she finished the scripture reading we built back into the bridge…”And if our God is for us…” BAM! Good stuff!
Then we medleyed right into…
3) O Praise Him (Crowder): Key G. We did this one last week as well and it’s a GREAT singable song. I’ve never been a huge Crowder fan, but this song works well in a group setting because of the simple choruses.
4) Here I Am To Worship (Hughes): Key E. Mandy led this one and I just filled in some tenor on the choruses. I love this song. Any shape, form or fashion!
5) Come Ye Sinners (Jami Smith arr.): Key D. Mandy led these last two communion songs, while I backed her up in the choruses.
6) Let The Redeemed (Actually not sure who this one was by!): Key D.
1) My Savior Lives (New Life Worship): Key B. Walk-in song. This is a high energy upbeat song that I tend to default to when I need something to kick things off. Since it’s a “walk-in” song not many people are “connected” to what’s going on, but as the song builds people start clicking in! Good stuff.
2) Better Is One Day (Redman): Key D. We did this one a little uptempo. Kind of a pulsing, driving rock feel. I’ve always loved this song so I enjoy when I get to lead it. The ladies led out on this one (which was why it was in the key of D!).
3) Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone): Key D. One of our guys led out on this one. Always goes over well.
4) Here I Am To Worship (Hughes): Key D. I typically play this in E, but just flowed right into it from the previous song so I stayed in D. I guess we could have modulated, but didn’t really need to.
5) You Said (Hillsong/Rita Springer Arr.): Key E. Heather B. Led out on this one and did a great job with some bgvs by Todd H. Great job on this one to end the service.
One of the fun things to work through this week was different arrangements. We had established arrangements vs. my newer arrangements. I’m a newer WL at SSCC and I try to stay within the boudaries of established arrangements so as not to explode the heads of our musicians, BUT I do like to challenge them and to freshen some of the arrangements up as well. Especially, if it’s a song that hasn’t been done in a while. Here I Am To Worship and Better is One Day fit that category. And the musicians enjoyed the re-freshed versions! Not that I did anything crazy with the arrangements, but it’s fun sometimes to add a little flavor in!
My beautiful wife, Lydia, sang with us this morning. It was her first time on stage in the adult service. She did awesome!
Thanks to Fred McKinnon for giving me the opportunity to lead this week while he was away at Forge Con.
Join us at the Worship Community and share YOUR Sunday Setlist.
