Hey, that rhymed!

This was the last song of Unite 2009, Marvelous Light by Charlie Hall. It was such a great night all around. Also, it was my birthday, so Jeff had everyone sing me happy birthday.

Marvelous Light, Unite 2009 from Dustin Petersen on Vimeo.

It was such a cool night to be a part of. I’ll talk more about it in the next day or so.

d

There was no youth group yesterday, so I committed to playing big church with Autumn. Kristian, the drummer I’ve been fortunate to have also filled in on drums. Our set this week looked like this:

Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee – Passion version
Hosanna – Brooke Ligertwood (Hillsong United)
Father Let Me Dedicate – Passion version
Take My Life – Traditional/Tomlin (Passion version)

This Sunday was quite different as there was a lot of talking about ministry opportunities throughout the church and ways to get involved. There were also videos and interviews of people that show how God can take simple ideas and turn them into reality. Next week, it’s back to youth group as we kick off the new school year with our “move up” Sunday.

It’ll be good.

d

part of Sunday Setlists at FredMcKinnon.com

Yesterday was a sad night. It was a good night, but it was also sad. It was the last youth group for our seniors who graduated this year, and thus it was the last time that the team that I’ve been blessed to lead for the last fourteen months got to play together as two of the team members graduated this year. For our setlist, we talked as a team about which songs over the past year have been our favorites to do and which ones felt like they had the most impact. We talked and decided that our set would be:

The Time Has Come – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)
Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
How Deep the Father’s Love For Us – Stuart Townend
From the Inside Out – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)

Yes, The Time Has Come is a pretty new song, but it’s one that we’ve really taken a liking to. It was also good to play it again this week as it got a little more ingrained in the memories of everyone. Like I’ve mentioned before, Marvelous Light has gained a lot of momentum in the months that it’s been a part of our list of songs. I still think that this song has the best pre chorus ever in saying, “Sin has lost its power. Death has lost its sting. From the gave You’ve risen victoriously.”

As a team, we’ve only done How Deep the Father’s Love for Us once, and that was when we led all three church services back in May. But it was a song that we liked, and it’s a great song to take a deep breath and just rest in the words of the song. We did it in a way that allowed a seamless transition into From the Inside Out, and Inside Out is a song that our team could play with our eyes closed and no preparation we’ve done it so many times. It’s definitely one of the top songs in our youth group and pretty much has been since introduced almost two years ago.

I’ve been amazingly blessed to lead this team and am very thankful for the time we’ve had to play and worship together. I pray that God will do big and mighty things in the lives of our seniors as they head off to college in the next few weeks.

The first youth group of the new school year is in two weeks and we’ll be in the process of raising up younger musicians to be a part of the team.

I’m excited to see what’s to come for this team.

d

I’m exhausted. Today was a serious “bring it” day at our youth group gatherings tonight. We had a very high tempo, high intensity set along with the same setup we had last week with two electric guitars instead of one electric and one acoustic. Our setlist tonight looked like this:

The Time Has Come – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)
All Day – Marty Sampson (Hillsong United)
Tell the World – Marty Sampson (Hillsong United)
(detecting a pattern here?)
Hosanna – Brooke Fraser (Hillsong United)

Like I said: high tempo, high intensity. This was the first time our band has done The Time Has Come at youth group, we practiced it a little bit last summer but we never played it during a set. This song was a song that was done at CHIC, so students knew it pretty well already, which is always nice when you have a new song and half of the people already know it. It was awesome, for our first real time playing it together, the team did a really good job with it.

Yes, we did All Day last week. But we did it again this week to get it lodged in the heads of everyone a little bit that way it’s familiar when we play it in the future. I love this song. It’s simple, it’s real easy to follow, it’s loud.

Tell the World was also a new song for us. We don’t normally do two new songs in one week, but with most people already knowing The Time Has Come, I think it was okay to introduce this one, too. Again, the team did a great job with this song.

I was super excited to do Hosanna, because Krista was going to lead it, and she did an absolutely awesome job with it! It’s awesome to have a female singer on the team, it opens up new songs and arrangements and I think it benefits everyone. The organ pad that Jordan played really added some great texture to this song as it carried it through the verses the way an acoustic guitar normally would. Also, Jonathan played a sick bass riff during the verse that was way cool.

There it is, a seemingly short Sunday Setlist compared to the marathon day that was last week. It was a great Sunday, and I’m very blessed to be able to do what I do here.

d

Another Sunday Setlist post recapping the worship set this Sunday at Church. The hub for all of things Sunday Setlist can be found over at FredMcKinnon.com.

Today was an epic and epically long Sunday for me. I played acoustic guitar and co-led the 5:00 service with Autumn and then led worship for both of our youth groups.

The 5:00 service was just me on guitar and Autumn on piano. It was really neat for me to play and lead a set with Autumn, just the two of us, because of how she’s really the one who has taught me just about everything about what it means and what it looks like to lead worship. Our set looked like this:

It Is You – Newsboys
Unchanging – Chris Tomlin
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown
//dismiss kids – greeting//
Desert Song – Brooke Fraser (Hillsong)
//sermon//
It Is Well – Traditional
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus – Traditional
//offering//
Oh You Bring – Matt Crocker (Hillsong United)
You Never Let Go – Matt Redman

We each led four songs, Autumn led three of the four before the sermon, and I led three of the four after the sermon. The time after the sermon was really, really powerful. It was this recognition that no matter what is going or has gone on in our lives, God is still God. It was a really cool moment and the presence of God was right there with us.

Oh You Bring was a new song for us. It was the first time for us playing it in a service and despite it only being the two of us, the arrangement and instrumentation we did on it made it work. All in all it was a great service, and it was really cool to do a simple arrangement, vocal and harmony rich set with the person who taught me basically everything I know.

After the service, however, the day was just getting started. There were still two sets to play for our junior and senior high youth groups. We did a different setup at youth group tonight. We switched to two electrics instead of one acoustic and one electric, we had a female singer on stage with us (who did a great job!), and then had our keys, bass, and drums. Our sets for youth group was as follows:

Dancing Generation – Matt Redman
All Day – Marty Sampson (Hillsong United)
Mighty to Save – Reuben Morgan and Ben Fielding (Hillsong)
Overcome – Jon Egan (Desperation Band)

Our team did a great job with these songs. Dancing Generation and All Day were fun and loud. Mighty to Save and Overcome were powerful and worshipful.

It was a great Sunday. However, it was a long, long day. Between practices, sound checks, and actual services, I was at the church from 1:30 to 9:00. I don’t regret any part of the day, but I can’t do this every Sunday.

But today was oh so totally worth it.

d

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