In a post a few weeks ago, I talked about being a part of what God is doing instead of trying to fit God into what we’re doing. This post falls in line with that, but it takes it to a deeper level and gets a little more specific. I thought it would be good to share some of the ways that our crew here in Eagle River have found work well in planning and preparing worship events and worship sets in general.

***disclaimer*** This is NOT a “5 surefire steps to a blah blah blah…” This isn’t meant to be a cookie-cutter strategy, these are just a few things that we have found work well for us.

Dump the baggage. We want to be in line with God’s plans for the event, and want to remove any distraction or aspect that could distract us from focusing in fully on Christ. So, before we even start brainstorming an order, flow, or other creative elements, pray. Set aside any junk or baggage, confess anything that needs confessing. Basically, get rid of any junk.

Ask and then listen. God knows best, I think we can all agree on that. In prayer, ask God what He wants to do, ask God what He wants us to know. And then, once you ask, listen to how God responds. It’s nice to have something to write with so you can jot down things as they come. It’s also nice to pray as a group, that way you can discern as a group what you feel God is saying to and showing you.

Take it from there. God is creative. We are made in His image. We are designed to be creative. So let’s take what we’ve gotten in prayer and start to build on that. Here is where a lot of songs, scriptures, flow, and an order of events usually come in.

Check back often. Go back often, in prayer, and ask God if you’re on the right track. If something feels off, ask what it is and then work to correct it and continue on.

We’ve found that in doing these things consistently makes things go a lot smoother overall. When we as a group seek God’s will and guidance and discern together where God is leading something, there is less room for egos, there are less disagreements, and there’s less tension between those involved in planning.

Again, this is not a step by step guide to great worship or event planning. It’s just a few things that we’ve found that work and I thought it might be helpful to others.

Make God the center of what you do, and no matter what, the end result will be good.

d

Here’s another Sunday Setlist post recapping this evening’s worship service. The hub for all of the Sunday Setlist posts can be found at FredMcKinnon.com. Now, let’s get to it.

Today, I played in big church instead of leading our youth groups because CHIC is going on right now and most of our senior highers are in Tennessee taking part in that. So I got to play guitar and sing in big church today, which I love doing. It’s nice being a part of the band when you’re not the leader and not the one in charge of everything. I love leading, but it’s also nice to follow the leadership of someone else once in a while.

The setlist for today looked like this:

O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing (traditional). This was the first time I had done this song the traditional way, (not Crowder’s version). Autumn and I traded off a little bit on this song with her leading verses one and three and I sang lead on verse two. I like being able to do this kind of stuff where two different people sing lead at different times during the song.

For Who You Are into Jesus Messiah. Like the last song, Autumn and I went back and forth leading it. I led the first time through it, Autumn led the second time through, and then I picked it up again at the bridge and went until the end. From there, we did a major tempo change and transition into the chorus of Jesus Messiah and did the second half of the song.

Yesterday Today and Forever. This is a Vicky Beeching that we do pretty regularly. It’s a very good up tempo song talking about God’s faithfulness and unchanging…ness. I enjoy playing this song, but I’d like to sit down and work out some more interesting guitar parts for it, because I feel like I play the same riff for 2/3 of the song.

Fairest Lord Jesus (traditional). This was right after the sermon and was a very quite, reflective song with just piano. Ricky sang harmony on it and it sounded great.

Exalted (Yahweh). This song is pretty new in our church and is off of Chris Tomlin’s Hello Love CD. This song was great as it perfectly fit with the sermon (talking about God’s name, Yahweh), and it felt like it really connected. There’s something really cool and powerful about singing “Yahweh, holy is your name.”

Blessed Be Your Name. The last song of the service, after the offering. I led this one and forgot one of the words, but it was okay. I think this song is known well enough that it doesn’t take too much leading. One really cool part was when we got to the bridge and David, our drummer did a syncopated, half-time feel beat that was really, really cool.

There you have it. The Sunday setlist for July 12, 2009.

It was a good Sunday, I was happy to be a part of the team leading the evening service in worship.

d

As the worship leader for the young people of our church, I get to plan out what music we do every week for the 20-30 minutes of worship time we do before the message for the week. I get to talk about God stuff and talk about our insufficiency and his grace that overcomes that. Sometimes though, I get in a rut of trying to do it all myself. I get in the mindset of, “How can God be a part what we’re doing Sunday night?”. The frame of mind I want to be in is to ask, “How can we be a part of what He is doing?”.

When I ask the first question, I rely on my own strength/creativity/wisdom/whatever, the point it that I rely on myself. When I ask the second question, it forces me to do two things. First, it forces me to slow down and take a deep breath. Second, to answer the question, the only one I can ask is God, because only He knows what is going to happen and how best to work with it. From talking with God and getting a sense of what He wants us to know and how to respond to that, it gives me a much better direction to go with in planning than if I try to come up with everything on my own.

I might be the only one who does this, but I don’t think I am. So let’s make a deal: instead of trying to get God to be a part of our services, let’s try to be a part of God’s service. After all, it’s His Church to begin with.

d

This is my first “Sunday Setlist” post. Sunday Setlist is where worship leaders all over the world post on their blogs the songs that they did for that Sunday at Church. The central hub and directory of all Sunday Setlist posts for a given Sunday can be found over at fredmckinnon.com. Now that the intro is done, let’s get to the set for Sunday July 5, 2009.

We only had three people playing today, me on guitar, Jonathan on bass, and Kristian on drums. Sometimes, I like it when there’s only three of us playing, things are simpler and we tend to get through material faster during our rehearsal. Don’t get me wrong, nothing beats having the full band together, it’s just nice to have a little change once in a while.

The first song we did was Marvelous Light by Charlie Hall. This song is relatively new to our church, it was first introduced at the Senior High retreat back in April, but since then, the song has gained a lot of momentum. It’s been really resonating with our entire church. With the youth groups in particular, I find myself caught in between doing it a lot because of how liked it is and trying not to overdue it to where it gets met with resistance, “Oh great, this song again?”.

The next song we did was Mighty to Save by Reuben Morgan. Mighty to Save is a great transition song to get from the upbeat to the slower songs. The thing that really worked well with this one tonight was the way we transitioned into it from Marvelous Light. We do both songs in the same key, A, and after the last chorus of Marvelous Light, we stayed on a D and carried that into the start of Mighty to Save so I could just start singing the first line. It had a really good flow to it.

Next was Only You by the David Crowder Band. This was the first time I had done this song. I’ve always liked listening to it, but it was a song that was on my heart today as I was singing most of the morning, so it got put in. I felt like this was a great, true worship song. It’s simple and it’s singable. It was almost like taking a deep breath and just being with God. It was nice.

The last song we did was one I wrote back in January called Come to Us. This song has a very Fire Fall Down feel to it. This song went well, we’ve only played it once at youth group before, and the guys did a great job with it. (Side note, it’s super affirming as a worship leader and songwriter when you hear people in the congregation singing a song you wrote and singing it loudly.)

There you have it. The setlist from tonight. It was a good night and God was glorified.

d

One thing that we, as leaders, cannot do enough of is assisting those in the next generation, (no, not that next generation,) to rise up. This applies to all areas of life as far as I know: in churches, worship teams, businesses, learning how to be real men or women… No matter where we are, or what we’re doing, chances are that you’re not going to be doing or leading the same people the same way for the rest of your life. Things are always changing. People come. People go. You might come and go. But as a leader, it’s always important to be intentional about building up those who are going to come after you.

This last year has been bodacious as far as the band I’ve been able to lead at our junior and senior high youth groups. I’ve been blessed with a team with amazing musical talent and a heart for what we get to do every week. The only problem with this is that two of them are seniors and are leaving in a couple months to go to college out of state. Now, we’re in the position of building and raising up the next students to plug into the band and be a part of it for the next year.

How do you do that?

I’m not 100% sure. I don’t think there’s a twelve-step program for doing that. But I think it all begins with being intentional about it and not waiting around hoping someone will come along and be a clone of who is in the place now. It’s about taking those who are next under your wing and teach them, show them, push them, to listen to them, and adjust to them.

We’ve started the process of raising up the next musicians for our youth band. We’ll probably make mistakes. Okay, we’ll definitely makes some mistakes. I know I’ve already made some. But, this is a process and a cause that we need to invest in.

What things have you done or have people done with you to help raise up the next generation?

d

He loves you. Never forget that.

d

It’s been almost a year since I started blogging again on one platform or another. A couple nights ago, I was looking through some of the old iWeb posts I have on my computer and found this amusing little post that I had forgotten about. This was after the third Heart of Worship toward the end of last summer. I was amused remembering what happened and then again by me trying to make it into a funny story.
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Here’s a hypothetical situation for you, the 6 people that read this, to chew on:

Say there’s a worship leader, we’ll call him Steve, and he’s the worship leader of the college age group at his church. And lets say that his group was putting on a worship event at their church in which anyone and everyone was welcome to attend. It was a big two hour event with prayer and tons of music.

During the planning of said event Dus… I mean, Steve had this hymn that he really liked, which is something because he isn’t really a “hymn guy”. Anyway he put down the hymn in the set order, we’ll just call the hymn “How Deep.” He also added the hymn because he knew that it was one of the band member’s favorite song. And knowing that, he offered to let the band member lead How Deep.

Now the week before the event How Deep was played at the evening service at Steve’s church. This was during a time of communion so Steve was having a heart-to-heart with God at the time of the song. And during the song he realized that it wasn’t the song he thought it was and that he had added the song to the set list thinking that it was a different one. We’ll call the hymn he meant to put in “Before the Throne”.

So during communion and in the mass panic in Steve’s mind as he realized that he just inserted the wrong song into the set, but didn’t want to change the order because it was pretty set, he had a little dialogue with God. This is a rough account of what went down.

Steve: Oh crap.

God: What’s up?

Steve: I added this song for the worship night thinking it was a different one!

God: Uh oh…

Steve: You’re telling me! Is there anyway you can still work your stuff and make everything turn out good?

God: I’ll see what I can do.

Steve: What does that mean?

God: …..

Steve: Hello?

God: ….

Steve: Hey, you still there?

God’s Voicemail: Hey it’s the Alpha and Omega. I’m busy at the moment but if you leave your name, location, and reason for calling I’ll be sure to get back to you soon.

Steve: That was weird.

Communion Server: Communion is over, Steve. Go sit down.

Okay, okay, so that might not have been exactly how it went down, but that’s the spark notes version of it. Long story short, the hymn that Steve accidently put in to the set actually turned out to be probably the best song of the night and it really drew people in. Steve was grateful for what God did, and immediately added the correct song, Before the Throne, to the list of songs for the next worship night.

Steve sure lucked out on that one,
Dustin

p.s. This was all hypothetical of course.

p.s.s. No seriously, it was all hypothetical.

p.s.s.s. Okay fine. I admit it, I’m Steve, and I put How Deep the Father’s Love For Us in the set list for Heart of Worship III thinking that it was actually Before the Throne of God Above. So what? Who hasn’t had an incident in which they put the wrong song in a worship set? It happens all the time I bet.
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yeah….

d

I’ve been noticing that, in a worship team setting, it’s really nice to have someone that for the time being I’m going to call a “secondary leader” on the team. And what this person does is gives the rest of the team cues and reminders during the course of a set that the worship leader can’t do because he or she is singing and looking forward (or has their eyes closed or whatever).

If someone is a little lost as to where the song is going, the secondary leader can look back, see that the team member is unsure and give them a cue by mouthing or saying something like, “repeat” or “chorus” or “bridge”. This person can also help smoothen the ending of a song, or if the song starts to speed up or slow down, by making it more apparent with a motion that he or she makes to let the rest of the team know what’s up.

From my experience, it works best if the person is toward the front of the stage and plays a guitar or some other instrument where they have a bit more freedom to move and turn and whatnot. It’s also easier for the person to make eye contact with the other band members from the front of the stage.

Worship leaders, if you’re like me, you never had to appoint someone to do this, they just stepped up to the plate and it just comes naturally. Although sometimes you may need to ask someone to be your second in command and assist with leading the band. Either way, be thankful for these people. They share some of the weight that being the leader of a band and worship team brings and they really help in making sure the band stays together during the course of a song.

Those of you reading who have been in this role in bands that I have led, thank you. You really do make life a lot easier by not just your musical contribution, but your contributions as a leader too.

d

I’ve had Chris Tomlin’s cd, Not to Us, for quite a few years now and I’ve noticed that it’s always one that I return to when I want to soak, relax, and just be with my Creator. I’ll put this on the iPod when I’m laying in bed, or on a plane, or any other place where I can just take a step back and put my focus back on Jesus.

I know I’m not the only one who does this, so what cd, (not band, not song, can’t be a mix cd or a playlist), do you put on the iPod to turn your eyes upon our Creator? Let’s see if we can get some responses from those who read this and maybe get a few good music suggestions going.

d

I’ve been trying this whole song writing thing for a few months now. I’ve come up with some good ideas, and a lot of bad ones. But overall, I really enjoy the process of writing music, especially working on a song with a partner and really combining what each person can bring to a new piece of music.

So far, most of the stuff I’ve written has the sound of a layer of Hillsong United, on top of that, we have a layer of Generation Unleashed, then covered in a decadent layer of Desperation Band. Put it in the oven for 4 hours at 350 degrees and when it comes out, top it off with a little bit of Tomlin and let cool overnight. And in the morning, there’s a beautiful creation of sugary deliciousness set to music. At least, that’s how I’d describe it. You might not go to those lengths to describe it.

I see a building passion in our church to go to a deeper, more intimate place during our corporate worship times. To encounter our saviour in a very real and powerful way as we love Him and let Him love on us. I believe that Heart of Worship events and songs written in our church are a part of pulling closer to God corporately and crying out with one voice.

I think this next year is going to be a very exciting one in Eagle River, Alaska.

Dustin