Friday, September 11, 2009

Sunday Setlist 09-06-09

Each week I try to blog about our Sunday Service.
I include this post in the blog over at Fred McKinnon's site.
There you can see lots of worship leaders talk about their services.
I encourage you to check it out.

Here's what we did Sunday and some personal thoughts...
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The format below is exactly as the tech and musicians get it from me.
Choir Call To Worship: A Mighty Fortress (Octavo)
Choir will enter as Orchestra plays intro

Welcome / Announcements - Shawn

He Knows My Name (Ab/BH#44)
Omit repeat @m12, V1, C, V2, C, C, C, tag
On last chorus change lyrics from “He knows” to “You know”.

How Great Is Our God (Bb/BH#5)
As Written (We’ll teach Chorus2 to Congregation) V1, C, V2, C, C2 2x,C)
then no pause into next

How Great Thou Art (Bb/BH#6)
Chorus only, broad

Prayer / Fellowship

Everlasting God (Bb/BH#121)
As Written / V, Channel, C, V, Channel, C, Channel, C
In Christ Alone (D-Eb/BH#506)
All 4 verses w/ key change and tag

Offertory Prayer - Deacon

Special Music: Deb Ingram - Pianist
Message: Bro. Steve
Invitation: Wherever He Leads I’ll Go (F/BH#437)
Closing Chorus: Everlasting God (Bb/BH#121)
V, Channel, C
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I can't speak for everyone, but I had a very worshipful experience Sunday.
Some of the highlights...
1.) How Great Is our God - I finally taught the church the 2nd Chorus "Name Above All Names..." Hearing the ladies sing it while the guys sang the regular chorus really added to the song. Hearing the voices sing God's praises sounded so great I had us sing the chorus of How Great Thou Art a 2nd time acapella.
2.) Everlasting God - First time we've done this one at Westwood. Clearly it was new to most in the church, but by the end they were singing the chorus pretty strong. This is a simple to teach chorus that is very upbeat. I'm sure it will be done again soon. (I only wish the opening verse wasn't so low.)

Some of the "no-so-high"lights...
1.) We sang all the verses of In Christ Alone (My Hope Is Found). By the end, it felt like it was simply dragging on instead of building in worship. I'm going to attribute that to the fact that not as many folks knew it as I had assumed. I think when we do it in the future I might cut a verse and see if that changes anything.

2.) During the intro, I foolishly started talking "off the cuff" about God's love and how amazing it is especially considering the fact of how big He is and how small we are. I even mentioned a video I'd seen online last week comparing the size of Earth to other objects in space. Would have been nice to have shown the video instead of told them about it. That's what I get for working without notes. =)

How was your Sunday?

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Space, The Final Frontier

Tonight if you look up at just the right time, you might see something that will remind you how small we are and how big God is.
According to Nasa, the space shuttle and international space station should be visible passing overhead in the Birmingham area.
My wife, two sons, and I sat outside Tuesday night to watch it as well. Seeing those man made spacecrafts moving through the sky caused me to realize that I was looking at one of mankind's greatest achievements, but then looking at all the stars that filled the rest of the sky, my focus quickly shifted from what we've done to what our creator has done. As I watched, I couldn't help but think of the heavens that God has created, noticed all the stars, and imagined the galaxies that are beyond what I can see. The thought that I'm so small compared to all the wonderful things that God has created and yet he still chooses to love me, and sent His son to die for me, it's makes me want to worship Him. I know that Nasa didn't send those astronauts into space to lead me in worship, but Tuesday night, that's exactly what they did.

If you're in the Birmingham area, I encourage you to look in the Northwestern sky at 7:26. You might see a small shining dot moving from NorthWest to North, North-East. That will be the space shuttle. Then at 7:30, another small dot, following the exact same path. That's the international space station. They should each be visible for about 2 minutes.

You can find more info here... http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/

Thursday, September 3, 2009

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

I started writing this blog today planning to talk about how much I love this time of year. College football, cooler weather, everyone's back to school. It's probably my favorite time of the year...BUT...

Right before I started typing this blog I received an e-mail from Netflix. Even before opening the e-mail, I knew what it said. It was going to tell me what wonderful movies they are mailing my way today. Then I realized something. We've now reached the worse time of year for DVD watchers. This is the time of year when movies that we're in theaters in Jan- April are released on DVD. Yuk, everyone knows those movies stink. The big summer movies don't start getting released until closer to the holidays. So for the next couple months at least, my movie viewing is going to be limited to movies that I'm indifferent about watching, nothing I'm just dying to see.

You may be wondering why I'd watch a movie I really don't want to watch. It's not that I don't want to watch them, it's that I'm just not excited about them. Plus, I'm spending $18 of my hard earned dollars every month to enjoy 3 movies out at a time. So I try to make the most of my plan and watch 3 every week which would mean I'm paying only $1.38 per movie with no late fees.

So here are the blah movies for this week...

1.) Sunshine Cleaning (I'm expecting this one to be "independent film quirky".)
2.) Pink Panther 2 (I'm expecting this one to have at least 2 good laughs. That's about all Steve Martin's earned per movie in recent years)
3.) Tyler Perry's: Madea Goes to Jail. (Probably the one of these I want to see the most.)

And one more thing...
If you get a chance to see Julia Roberts new movie "Duplicity", don't.

I'm through being whiny now.