Tuesday, September 30, 2008

worship confessional (9.28.08)

so I made a strange decision last week, after years of pushing for more music up front at our services, always lobbying to maintain our typical 4-song set whenever possible... I decided that I'm going to try something over the next month or so. 3 songs. 3 songs in the 20 minutes or so that I'm allotted in each service. why? well, lately I've felt... I don't know... trapped. constricted. have I really been allowing the Spirit to move in our sets? we've become much more polished in the last several years--especially after moving into our first facility. sure, I've been accused thousands of times of rambling during worship... but it never fails. those are the days when someone comes up to me and thanks me--not for the great music, great words, great band, but for my heart. something that I said, read, suggested, questioned even.

anyway, this past weekend was the first of those 3 song sets, and I did my share of rambling again... spoke a bit about the Trinity. I have a brand new song called 'Holy Lord' (that I'm so amped for all of you to hear, by the way) that focuses on the entities of the Trinity for a verse each. the bridge is one of those one-line repeating worship bridges and the chorus just shouts of the holiness of God. my hope is that I allowed--both musically and with what I said--a moment to happen. a moment where the music would culminate in a change--even ever so slight--in someone's heart, mind, soul...

anyway, I'd love to hear about how you all intentionally leave space for the movement of the Spirit... how many songs up front, etc. songset follows:

Beautiful One - (Tim Hughes)
Indescribable - (Laura Story)
Holy Lord - (M. Roach)

feature tune - Better Is One Day (Matt Redman)

we ended the service (and our entire series on 'Inheritance' actually) by singing 'Better Is One Day' together... I broke out the ol' bible on the platform and just read portions of Psalms 84 and 27, just two of the passages represented in the lyric. we used a loop that I created in the vain of the original Passion version's loop, so that was fun... and we triggered it with Ableton Live and were able to loop the fallout section as our Pastor came up to do the blessing and return to the full loop seemlessly into the end. I love using technology in that transparent sort of way, although we fell just short of mastering it this weekend. it worked out, though.

until next week...


this post is also a part of sunday setlists

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I THINK THAT IF YOU WANT TO MOVE GOD PRESENCE YOU DONT HAVE TO CARE ABOUT HOW MANY SONGS... ITHINK YOU SHOULD SING ONLY ONE SONG ALL THE SERVICE, AND GOD WOULD BE THERE, BECAUSE AS YOU SAID IT ISN´T HE GOOD BAND OR MUSICIANS OR SONG, IT´S ONLY GOD... BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVE LEARN THE FIRST STEP OF ALL THAT IS THAT FIRST THE WHOLE BAND LIVE WHAT IS TO BE WORSHIP ON GOD PRESENCE, AND AFTER THAT YOU CAN HELP THE WHOLE CHURCH TOO, YOU KNOW WHY, BECUASE WE ARE GOD INSTRUMENTS TO TAKE THE CHURCH TO THE WORSHIP LEVEL! SO KEEP GOING I KNWO YOU ARE DOING AN AWESOME JOB... AND GOD IS GOING TO BE WITH YOU IN EVERYTHING!!!!
MUAK!

Kelley said...

Y'all should be chomping at the bit to hear Mark's new tune. FOR REAL. It's incredible.

Anonymous said...

It's rare for me to ever miss service on a weekend- but I did this week when I was shooting for WIBI. And you know my hubby HAD to text me to rub it in and tell me that HE got to hear your new song FIRST! I heard the whole setlist was great...along with the message. I'm missing my dose of MSC this week.

Jennifer said...

So I've been wanting to let you know all week how much I connected with the new tune. You did great! Couldn't help but smile on the Holy Spirit verse. Well done. Now I just need it recorded because I keep singing the same line...
And about the "rambling" - I happen to be disappointed if I don't get a little Mark sermonette each week. :0) Just the other day I had a bird in my garage. Yep. Thought of your story. Took a moment to see how I needed to apply that lesson. So, please, keep the ramble.
Oh, and videos? Any chance you know where they are?

Anonymous said...

BTW- I love your rambling, but I'm not gonna' lie...I miss that 4th song.