Hey, You! Get Into My Choir! (Sunday Setlist 02-02-14)

The stage at Northside Baptist Church's building (without the worshipers.) 

As I write this, it is Wednesday night and I'm still smiling thinking about this past Sunday.
You see, we did something a little different than the norm.

I forced some people to sing in the church choir Sunday morning.

Well, maybe not forced, but pressured them into it for sure.

I'd done this a few years ago at my former church and it went well, so I tried it again.

Wednesday night in choir rehearsal, I explained to the choir what we'd be doing.  I told them that, Sunday, everyone would just sit with their families, then during the fellowship portion of the service, they were to each bring someone into the choir loft with them. I knew this would cause people to laugh and cut up and have conversations like:

Congregant : "I'm not going up there!"
Choir member: "Why not? Do you not love Jesus?"

Once we were all in place, I'd take a few minutes to discuss worship and how important it is that we smile and worship with more than just our words...

If we are just singing the words on the screen, that's not worship. That's just singing.
Worship has to start with our heart,
that overflows into our thoughts,
then that overflows into our facial expressions and voices.

Sunday, when our impromptu choir began singing "Shout To The Lord" (a song I felt confident everyone would be familiar with), I was blown away by the volume and by the great sound the choir had. Many of our choir members chose people to bring up that had been in the choir before or who they knew could sing well.
It sounded great! I was blown away by both the beautiful harmonies and the expressions of worship in smiles, raised hands, etc. It was a day of worship I won't soon forget.

Big thanks to Tonya Rice for posting the video to facebook.

There were other great moments in the service too.
Here's a full list of what we did Sunday...
click the song title to go to lifeway and hear the exact version we did.
                                                                       

Sunday School Report/Announcements - John                                                                       

Sing To The King                                                           

Come Christians, Join to Sing     (An updated arrangement of a good old hymn)

Welcome / Prayer / Kids Message - David                                                       

Lord, Reign In Me                                                                                   

Choir Special - Shout To The Lord                                                                  

The Wonderful Cross                                                               

Offertory Prayer                                                                                                    

Offertory Interlude                                                                                               

Message - David

Invitation - Wherever He Leads I'll Go

Closing Prayer

Looking back on this, I see that I was very 1990's in my song choices.
But that's ok with me. I wanted to stick with songs most people would be familiar with.
It was a good day worshiping God with my church family.

How would you react if someone forced you onstage on Sunday morning?

This post is part of the blog carnival at TheWorshipCommunity.com. You can go here to see what other churches are doing in their services around the world.

lessons

Here's a few things I've learned this month.

1.) In my two day trip to Chicago I learned that every joke I've ever heard about cabdrivers is true.

2.) Everyone has an agenda. It may not be good or bad, just theirs.

3.) Lack of discipline in any area of your life effects every area.

4.) Gavin loves my impression of "The Swedish Chef"

5.) A new computer with a lot of memory and new gadgets is awesome, but connecting to the internet with dialup at only 32k still sucks. It took my computer 6 minutes last night to load my myspace page. ( I can't even attempt to look at people pages with music.)

6.) Ethan knows way more about Star Wars than any 3 1/2 year old should. Do you know what color Mace Windu's lightsaber is? He does.

7.) I'm in mourning due to the writers strike. I'm not a fan of much reality TV. Except for "Beauty & The Geek" the most hilarious show you're not watching.

8.)Black Friday shopping is for idiots. I was one of them this year. The only benefits were that I got almost all our shopping done in 3 hours & I stumbled upon a Wii. I was in the right place at the right time.

9.)Going to Chicago for a work trip, interesting and kind of fun. Having to share a hotel room with the boss due to a reservation mixup, uncomfortable and awwwwkward.

10.) I really HATE the Christmas song ... "The Holiday Season".

Reason, let's look at some lyrics...

"It's the holiday season
With the whoop-de-do and hickory dock
And don't forget to hang up your sock
'Cause just exactly at 12 o'clock
He'll be coming down the chimney
Coming down the chimney
Coming down the chimney, down!"

It will be stuck in your head all day now. You're Welcome!

(WHAT DOES " WHOOP-DE-DO AND HICKORY DOCK" HAVE TO DO WITH CHRISTMAS!! I THINK THEY JUST NEEDED SOMETHING TO RHYME WITH SOCK. THATS JUST LAZY SONGWRITING!!!)

God Bless us, Every One!

-Shawn

random thoughts

So, I've found myself with about 2 hours and nothing urgent that needs to be done. So...here are some random thoughts from the past few weeks.

1.) Kids say the darndest things - Last week I heard Ethan use the phrases "take a dump" and "what the heck?". Sadly, he said he heard the former from me and the latter from a cartoon. I guess I need to be more careful with what I say from now on. Little ears and always listening.

2.) Elton John still knows how to rock even at 60 years old. Great concert.

3.) Gavin crawled forward for the first time last night. He'd known how to go in reverse, but never could seem to find drive. Now, we've got to go back into child protection mode. It's amazing what little kids can find on the floor once their mobile.

4.) I'm losing interest in the show Smallville. I've loved it since I first got a bootleg copy of the pilot a month before it aired. But now I'm just ready for it to end. That makes me sad.

5.) I have no time to play my playstation. Sleep has taken a higher priority. That makes me kind of sad too.

6.) I need to take guitar lessons. I want to play, but need some guidance on where to begin and I need someone to help keep me accountable to practicing on a regular basis.

7.) I love Mrs. Stratton's Chicken salad. I rarely go into wal-mart without buying a package of it. I usually eat some of it as a meal with some club crackers. I think I just heard Joseph say to me "I can hear you getting fatter."

8.) I no longer find American Idol entertaining. Now that Sanjaya's off, who cares.

9.) I've heard that every marriage has a "spender" and a "saver". Do you know what you are when you have two spenders? Broke.

10.)Even as I sit here, I've realized there are other things I should be doing, but I'm choosing not to. Does that make me undisciplined? Probably.

Hello. I'm Johnny Cash

So, I've known for a long time that little kids like to lock into certain things and want to talk about them all the time. Do you know what I mean? Kids I've known have gotten into Star Wars, Power Rangers, Thomas the Tank Engine, Etc...

Well my child, the cool kid that he is, has gotten hooked on Johnny Cash. Yes, You read correctly. Ethan loves Johnny Cash.

It all started about 6 months ago when I was watching the movie "Walk The Line." Ethan walked through the room and happened to look over and see Johnny Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and the Tennessee Three playing "Ring of Fire". I think he liked watching him play the guitar so he asked me to play it again. After about the third time of him asking me to play that scene again, I just put it on loop. And he sat there are watched them play Ring of Fire for about 30 minutes straight. I didn't know I was creating a monster.

A week or so after that, I had forgotten about the "Ring of Fire" evening and Ethan asked me, while we were in the car, if he could listen to "Ring Of Fire". He actually knew the name of it. So of course I went out and bought a Johnny Cash's greatest hits CD. Since then Ethan has not only memorized every word to "Ring of Fire", he also loves the songs "Walk The Line", "Sunday Morning Coming Down", and even "I've been Everywhere".

We now own 3 different CD's and 3 DVD's. And Ethan knows the difference in each one. Every night before bed he tells me if he wants to watch the real Johnny Cash (a concert DVD) or the guy pretending to be Johnny Cash (The movie Walk The Line).

I began to think this past week that maybe I'd allowed the Johnny Cash fan-dom to get a little out of hand. We went to the beach this past week and on Friday night we went out to eat at Angelo's Steak House. There were 10 of us in our group, because Kristi's whole family had gone to the beach. At one point, there was a lull in the conversation. I guess we were too busy eating, and for some reason Ethan shouted .....

"MY NAME IS SUE. HOW DO YOU DO?!"

If you're familiar with Johnny Cash you probably know that the next line of that song is "NOW YOU'RE GONNA DIE!"

Luckily we were able to stop him before he shouted that out as well.

After we recovered from the laughter I decided that we might have to take a break from listening to Johnny Cash for a while. I'd hate for him to be in Sunday School and someone overhear him singing another Johnny Cash favorite line from "Folsom Prison Blues"........

"When I was just a baby, my Momma told me "Son, always be a good boy. Don't ever play with guns." But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die."