worship confessional from the road...

Just left Temecula, CA this a.m. after a great Sunday at Sunridge Community Church. The Worship Leader there, Rich Kirkpatrick (@rkweblog) and I met a few years ago at a conference in Nashville and have had many a compelling conversation about church, leading worship, pastors, philosophy, theology and so on. He's the real deal and he asked me to come out and lead at his church yesterday... so I did.

It's humbling to step into a church like his that plays 4 or 5 of my songs on a regular basis... very cool, though, too! I lead worship with a set of songs from Every Reason Why and they just figure I'm singing a bunch of songs from Rich's rotation! :) I just jumped in front of the band from there at Sunridge and acted like I was their Worship Leader for the day. Fun stuff. If you wanna see a bit of what I did out there, check out www.richkirkpatrick.com.

Later that night, I did kind of a storyteller's concert. Those have a tendency of being my favorite times of worship these days... I just grab a stool and tell stories about the songs I've written and we worship God together. It's a lot of fun, and it really gets to the heart of where the songs come from... discussion of Scriptures, stories and sometimes struggles that have elicited the lyrics I've penned.

Anyway, one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole day for me was backing up Rich, his daughter Emily and Nick (visiting from Texas) on electric guitar! Rich had hooked me up with basically the same rig Jason (Sunridge guitarist) had so we were rockin' twin gold tops and Suhr guitar rigs. I borrowed a pedal board and played lots of eighth notes :) It was a blast.

Tonight I'm at a small worship conference in Highland, CA before headed back to STL in the morning. Can't wait to be with these guys tonight, a handful of local worship leaders in SoCal... should be a great time.

Until next time...

worship confessional (2.01.09)

This weekend was the first in our new series 'Bringing Sexy Back' ... no, the band won't be playing the Justin Timberlake tune, but the intro does make a cameo right before the message :) Anyway, the series is about sexuality and this weekend our pastor delivered a great message to kick it off.

The front setlist was back to three songs this week... Here's the setlist:

As Long As I Have You - (M. Roach)
Joy - (John Ellis)
May the Words of My Mouth - (Tim Hughes, Rob Hill)

feature tune - Wrapped Up in You (M. Roach, Mike Weaver)

From the Inside Out - (Joel Houston)

It's been a little while since I've played electric in worship, and I opened with a tune on electric which was fun. We played a new song that I wrote a little while ago with Mike Weaver (from Big Daddy Weave) called "Wrapped up in You." It's based on my life scripture, which is Philippians 4:8, and it got pretty good feedback. It was the first time we even attempted it, so I'm sure it'll eventually evolve more in terms of arrangement and such. Anway, that's all I got for this week. I'm actually typing this confessional from my hotel at re:create in Nashville, TN, and I'm looking forward to my first weekend off since November this week. I'll try to blog a bit this week about the conference--it's always a great time... this is my 3rd year. Until I post again...


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worship confessional (1.18.09)

Ok, so services went great this weekend overall, but I did have my most embarrassing worship moment of 2009 (so far) ... I'm wondering has anyone else ever done this? We were singing Matt Redman's 'You Never Let Go' and you know how the bridge lyric is kinda borrowed from the second verse lyric? Well... I was singing the second verse--my mind was really resonating with the truth in the words, too--and I just totally abandoned the verse and ended up just singing the bridge, albeit an octave down. I looked up at the rear screen and realized it and I did two things: 1) I stopped singing. 2) I said into my mic, "let's sing that 2nd verse one more time... sorry about that." (at that point, I felt like I had to kinda apologize for basically ignoring the form of the song with my eyes closed) yeah... it was a bummer, but only at one service. :)

Setlist went like this:

Hosanna - Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown
Forever - Tomlin
You Never Let Go - Matt/Beth Redman
The Wonderful Cross - Tomlin & co.

feature tune - Gone by Switchfoot

Filled with Your Glory - Jon/Tim Neufeld

As you know if you've been reading my confessionals for the past month or more, we've been trying to really spend time making the transitions meaningful in our sets lately. This week's transitions were especially fun, one in particular. The set started in G with 'Hosanna,' and we pushed the tempo just a bit so we could just leave it there (122) into 'Forever.' We do the key change a la MWS at the end of 'Forever' so we landed in A on the final downbeat, which is where 'You Never Let Go' starts. When we ended 'You Never Let Go', we got rid of the click just for the final down chorus and then restarted on the final chord with the tempo for 'Wonderful Cross'... we slowly moved through the A, F#m, E progression of 'You Never Let Go' (2 measures per chord) and then when we struck the D, our bass guitar player immediately went into the melodic piece at the beginning of 'Wonderful Cross.' The other thing that was cool (at least I thought) is that I kept my capo on the second fret and played 'Wonderful Cross' with C voicings, using the C/G chord as the primary one chord. If you've never done that, you'll find that it produces an amazing undertone and actually sounds you're playing a note lower than your guitar can even play (without re-tuning of course)... anyway, try that sometime, it's kinda fun.

'Gone' was a blast... that's just a great song, and Ryan, the Associate Music Director, made tracks with a bunch of the loops, tams and digital artifacts in the song. That's always fun. Hey, I'd love feedback on some of your embarrassing worship moments if you have any like me :) Hope all of your weekends went well and God was glorified above all else.


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worship confessional (1.11.09)

2009. seriously.

anyway... I've been back into 4-song sets again recently, so that's what we did this weekend. The set felt great, but as it turned out I pro'ly should have done a 3-song set... we went über long (is that geeky to include the umlaut? hmmm.) at any rate... setlist looked like this:

Happy Day (Tim Hughes, Ben Cantelon)
From the Inside Out (Joel Houston)
You Are (M. Roach)
You Gave Your Life Away (Paul Baloche, Kathryn Scott)

feature tune - God and Money (Jill Phillips)

Here With You (M. Roach)

When we rehearsed the set on Tuesday, my first concern was the massive jump in tempo from 'Happy Day' to 'From the Inside Out'... you know I've been very cognizant about transitions lately. We do everything to a click and we were jumping from like 144 to 74 I think. At some point it occurred to me that 72 is exactly half of 144 and if we could get away with that for the second tune, we could actually do the transition in time... we'd just change from quarters to eighths on the metronome. That helped a ton and it ended up feeling great. We run tracks on 'You Are' primarily for the drum loop (which I would totally give to you worship leaders if you ever wanted it by the way... I've given it away to some of you already) so that transition is a little harder 'cause we were moving from Bb to G and I had to add the cut capo... drummer did a good job reading exactly when to trigger the loop on Sunday after we had a little bit of an awkward pause on Saturday. Not a huge deal, but if you know me you know I don't like to allow any obstacles into the worship set. Pauses aren't obstacles in worship... awkward pauses are :)

After 'You Are' we seemlessly went into 'You Gave...' and... I'm telling you... that's probably my vote for worship tune of the year. It's just so amazing in it's simplicity. I'd still love to pen a worship tune with Paul Baloche... who knows, maybe 2009 is the year for that... Our message was about debt and the lyric my sins are gone | my debt's been paid really resonated with me in worship, so I discussed that a bit before we sang the last chorus... it's funny, we so readily accept Christ's death and resurrection for the most overwhelming, uncontrollable debt imaginable--the debt of our own sin--but we're often so tentative about seeking freedom from other types of debt from the same divine source. I think that prepared some hearts in a different way for the message that Pastor Mike delivered--which was awesome.

We were all set to do a song by the single most influencial artist/songwriter in my life Glen Phillips... the song is called Don't Need Anything -- it's on an amazing record called 'Winter Pays for Summer'... anyway, we switched gears at the last minute, less than a day before the Saturday service run-through, and decided to go with 'God and Money' by Jill Phillips (not related to Glen, we just really wanted to do a song by a Phillips, I guess) and, of course, my wife tore it up. :)

Ended with my newest tune 'Here With You' which is the only song mentioned without an iTunes link, since the song is not available yet. Can't wait 'til it is... I'm excited to hear what you all think of that one.


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worship confessional (1.4.09)

well, after after a Christmas season littered with music and media galore, our first weekend of '09 started off with a fairly simple, straight-forward service. We kicked off a brand new message series about money, of all things. As odd as that seemed to myself, our Worship Design Team and much of the congregation I'm sure, I have to give plenty of kudos to our pastors who prayed diligently months ago about this and have felt called to launch the new year with this, the topic on just about every single person's mind in America. I can't begin to question such prayerfully executed planning.

By the way, feel free to vote in this week's webpoll, to the left there. It's a bit provocative and none of my business, I know... but it's anonymous :)

The series, brilliantly titled "The Other 90%" (I thought it was brilliant, anyway, and no, I didn't come up with it :) is really meant to focus on how Christians are supposed to live with, deal with, steward, etc. the 90% of everything we are blessed with that we're actually allowed to keep. Using the tithe as sort of a underlying premise but not the focus is an interesting take so far.

Setlist looked like this:

Filled With Your Glory (Jon & Tim Neufeld)
Be Glorified (Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio)
Holy Lord (M. Roach)

feature tune: One Pure and Holy Passion (Mark Altrogge)

Mighty to Save (Ben Fielding, Reuben Morgan)

Again, nothing terribly interesting or unique in terms of the songset this weekend. Doesn't mean the Holy Spirit didn't show up in a big way, though... the set felt great. We served Communion this weekend, which is sometimes tricky to program in terms of music if attendance spikes. It did this weekend--particularly at our last service on Sunday--and we found ourselves desperately trying to stretch 'One Pure and Holy...' and 'Mighty to Save' to fill the time required by the Communion piece... it was already a bit tight on Saturday and the first Sunday, so I should have known better. We got away with it, but not without a few miscommunications in the lyric display dept. and such... looking forward to the rest of 2009 with great anticipation. I'm confident God has some amazing things planned for this year.

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worship confessional - Christmas 2008

ok, so I got just buried enough in the craziness of the Christmas season at the church, making sure that I was able to spend time with my family and, of course, my outward ministry that I completely defaulted on like, three straight weeks of worship confessionals. So, I'm just gonna recap some of my thoughts on the end of the holiday season with you in one big 'ol Christmas confessional.

December 14.
The weekend of the 14th was especially fun for me 'cause of the feature tune we did. My wife sang 'I'm Letting Go' by Francesca Battistelli which, oddly enough, works perfectly with the story of Mary. I, myself, am a huge fan of using non-traditional Christmas tunes to communicate the many layers of the Christmas story. It was a really tough tune to learn how to play on the piano, and I always dig a good challenge, so that was uber fun. More of the fun Christmas-tunes-interwoven-in-worship stuff, too... I had a really good time with that this year.

December 21.
another weekend I was excited about primarily 'cause of the feature tune. This fall I presented at a national conference that happens to be right here in my backyard in St. Charles, MO called "Write About Jesus"... at the writers' night on Friday, a guy by the name of Don Poythress got up and sang an unbelievable tune called 'Joseph' that silenced the crowd before manifesting a standing ovation. I asked if there was any way he could send a demo my way so I could try to squeeze it into our Christmas season and he burned me a CD right then and there. Unbelievable guy, unbelievable song. I didn't do it justice, but I loved the opportunity to do it... we also did an original video of a modern day Joseph story... kinda based on the idea that if Joseph were here now, faced with the same situation, and decided to self-submit a video for some intervention reality show type thing, here's what it might look like:


December 24.
Ok, so Christmas Eve was probably one of the most special services I've ever been a part of at MSC--for a myriad of reasons. It started a few months ago when we began unpacking the idea of doing something different for Christmas Eve... not different complex, different simple. acoustic. no band. That began to seem a touch lazy, so we thought about how we could do it with some intentionality. We ended up clearing the entire stage and bringing in a Steinway (& Sons) baby grand piano for starters. As it turned out, it ended up being my grandmother's piano that we brought in, which made it very special for our family as it's been in her house since before I can remember. Anyway, we brought in 3 string players and some percussion and filled the stage with candles and it was very cool. We did three original video pieces including this one:

My wife (who is an amazing vocalist) sang an arrangement that I did of 'O Holy Night' with an acoustic guitar, the piano and strings... very cool. Then we sang 'Silent Night' with candles and the whole deal... cheesy? maybe. I love it.

Anyway, so that was our Christmas season... hoped yours was incredible and I look forward to continuing connect with all of you here in 2009! Happy New Year!

worship confessional (12.07.08)

second weekend of the advent season... I'm probably as excited about the worship sets this Christmas season as I've been in the 9+ years (this is actually the 10th Christmas) I've been leading worship here at MSC. It's kinda funny 'cause I have this odd reputation of hating Christmas music, which couldn't be further from the truth. The thing is, I feel like my job is to help facilitate an atmosphere of authentic communication with our Creator during the first 20 minutes or so of our services. Too often, people long to sing Christmas music for the wrong reasons... to satiate the desire for that warm, fuzzy feeling they get when they sing them, to hold on to memories of childhood and/or fond years past, or even just because they really, really like 'em. I actually LOVE Christmas music for those same reasons... but the truth is, none of those accomplish the objective for which we show up in a worship service: to communicate with our Creator in worship.

This year, I've embraced the idea of interjecting the wonderful Christmas hymns of our faith into compelling worship sets in a way that doesn't compromise the objective of our time together. I think (I sure hope) that people have felt that we've been successful at doing that. We continued what has been our m.o. this year with Christmas sets by inserting a small piece of 'We Three Kings' into the middle of the set... just the 'Star of Wonder' piece. Here's how the setlist looked:

Beautiful One - (Tim Hughes)
Indescribable - (Laura Story)
('Star of Wonder' tag)
Break Through - Tommy Walker
O Come O Come Emmanuel

feature tune: Surrender - Marc James
(w/ chorus of trad. hymn 'I Surrender All')

The set felt really good to me this week. Again, transitions were key, and we really never stopped at all between any of the songs. The trickiest was the transition between the 'Star of Wonder' tag and 'Break Through' as I had to switch from capo 1 / cut capo 3 to open strings, removing both capos... the other instrumentalists walked from the F to an F/A, Bb then landed on C, which is where I started 'Break Through.'

We served communion this weekend, during which we sang a 'Surrender' medley, if you will. Starting with the Marc James tune from Vineyard, we pressed through to a couple big choruses at the end and then the bottom dropped out, leaving only a guitar, piano and Beth, one of our vocalists, taking over with the chorus of 'I Surrender All.' Then I played the melody on the acoustic a few times through, accompanied by the piano, before we began building up to the end of the service. 'I Surrender All' was reprised first, several times, and then we launched back into a full-blown chorus or two of the Marc James tune before our Pastor gave the blessing.

Equally as excited about this weekend, can't wait to tell you how it went...


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worship confessional (11.30.08)

This past weekend was one of those odd first-sunday-of-advent weekends to me 'cause it was still November. We had just celebrated Thanksgiving, and we're not even in December yet, but we roll out the Christmas message series and start lacing the worship sets with Christmas tunes... good stuff, though. It was cold and a little bit snowy (not saturday, but it was on sunday) so it was, as they say, 'beginning to look a lot like Christmas.'

I've been working really hard on our transition game... that kinda sounds like something a hockey coach would say... anyway, I've been focusing on really making our worship sets feel like a continuous moment in the presence of God, you know? As far as we've come over nine years in our music ministry, I admittedly have not focused on that near enough. So now I'm really being intentional about that.

This weekend we did a bit more of this new 'bridge-swapping' thing I've been doing... where I'll take bridges and tags of different tunes and throw 'em in the middle of others... it's kinda cool. We only did one Christmas tune this week, although we sang one of my tunes 'The Least I Can Do' which discusses the birth of Jesus in the first verse. I led that song from piano and then went straight into 'O Come All Ye Faithful' ... after we'd done two verses and two choruses, we just vamped on the 'O come let us adore Him' tag several times and the drums entered as we ramped back up into the end of the song. Then we through the very last tag of 'The Least I Can Do' back at the end to wrap up the set. It worked pretty well. Here was our setlist:

You Are Good - (Israel Houghton)
Holy is the Lord - (Tomlin & co.)
The Least I Can Do - (M. Roach)
O Come All Ye Faithful - trad.

feature tune - How to Save a Life - The Fray

I Will Always Love Your Name - Paul Oakley

yeah... I had eluded to it last week on twitter, but that 'How to Save...' tune is all kinds of tough to play and sing at the same time. I love a good challenge, though, and I got through it pretty well all three services. Unfortunately, my best time through the whole song was in run-through on Sunday morning before first service. oh, well :)

Also, at the end of the service we sang 'I Will Always Love Your Name' again (it's a 'thank you' song, and we had it in our set last week) but after the Pastor gave the final blessing at the end, we inserted the 'O come let us adore Him' tag again--different tempo, different key--before we sang the final chorus out. Kinda threaded that tune and sentiment through the service a bit... at least that's what I was trying to do... well, three more ahead before Christmas! stay tuned :)


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worship confessional (11.23.08)

Hey... it's been a few weeks, I know. I didn't lead at MSC last week, and the week before, well... I had this 'Wide Open' event and time to blog was way down the priority list apparently :)

This week was interesting to say the least... I've been trying to really improve transitions inside our worship sets. This week I really tackled 'em head on and we went back and forth quite a bit, throwing bridges all over the place from one song into another. It was fun. Here's how the setlist looks on paper, then I'll unpack it a bit:

A Thousand Hallelujahs - (M. Roach)
I Will Always Love Your Name - (Paul Oakley)
Once Again - (Matt Redman)

feature tune: Imagine (Lennon) with modified lyrics :)

Hosanna (Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown)

Ok, so the first two tunes just kinda went back to back... we started 'I Will Always Love...' just on a droning E and I talked for a few seconds before we sang. That's a great oldie, by the way, for congregations. Really simple, but I forget how enjoyable it actually is to sing. As we ended that one, we launched immediately into a driving intro for 'Once Again' and then the bottom sorta fell out as the first verse started. After a few times through the bridge of 'Once Again' I encouraged the congregation to spend some a few moments w/ God in thanks for the gift of Jesus and the Cross. When we started singing again, we sang the bridge of 'Here I Am to Worship' several times while building instrumentally, then returned to another quiet 'Once Again' bridge. My hope is that all of that stuff really helped fuse together a moment in which we could all really dwell on the gravity of the gift that was the cross...

At the end of the service, during 'Hosanna,' we continued the bridge-swapping by inserting the 'Once Again' bridge after the second chorus... new key, new tempo, and with a four-on-the-floor feel this time... it was nice, I think, and tied that moment back into the end of the service a bit. After Pastor Keith's blessing, we launched into the actual bridge of 'Hosanna' and ended on a few choruses...

How was your weekend?


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worship confessional (11.02.08)

are you kidding me? November? wow.

That said, we had a great weekend at MSC, as I'm hoping you all did as well. Just got some hi-tech sound baffling installed this past week and it totally tweak us out up on stage--in a good way, mostly. We're in a multi-purpose type facility, so our stage is surrounded by painted drywall. Sound (sound = drums for the most part) just bounces all around us and what doesn't keep bouncing around leaps into the congregation. With the new paneling, everything sort of stops after it's played. it's weird. anyway, it definitely helps the room out.

So our setlist was:

All Because of Jesus - (Steve Fee)
Sweet Mercies - (David Ruis)
Holy Lord - (M. Roach)

feature tune: Give Us Clean Hands - (Charlie Hall)

Everlasting God - (Brenton Brown, Ken Riley)

The Fee tune is a great opener... high energy. I usually use my delay and wah on this one in the verses (on my acoustic) so that we kinda get the two electrics vibe going. fun stuff. Sweet Mercies is solid, too... our congregation still really lets go on this one. We came right out of the Fee tune into a driving intro for Sweet Mercies and then completely out as we started the first verse. Holy Lord came after that, a new tune of mine that I lead from the piano. Anyone else ever move from guitar to piano during your worship sets? The transition can be tricky, but I love leading from the piano from time to time. I actually just started doing that--during worship, that is--about a year and a half ago.

Give Us Clean Hands is another classic. Mark Schultz did a version that was on Absolute Modern Worship II a few years back... really cool percussion bed underneath and a full-out choir. I was able to assemble a cool percussion loop, but no choir. :) It was a fun tune, though, we did it during communion, then ended with Everlasting God... good stuff.


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worship confessional (10.26.08)

hey all. I'm not even going to mention my lack of punctuality on the confessional front as I know you've all come to expect such behavior from me... crud, I just mentioned it. nevermind.

Let's switch things up and start with the setlist:

Transformed - (M. Roach, Matthew West)
Give It All Away - (Aaron Shust)
Here I Am, Lord - (Dan Schutte)

feature tune - Give Me Your Eyes (Brandon Heath)

How Can I Keep from Singing - (Tomlin & Co.)

yeah, so the first tune is a crazy upbeat tune I wrote with Matthew West a while ago... most of you have never heard it--it's one of those tunes that people in the congregation ask for a decent amount, which always communicates strength in terms of resonance. I'm excited to let the world hear that one on my next release. the shust tune is great, I've recommended it before and will again. there's an adlib-type bridge on the record we don't do, but the tag he adds to the chorus toward the end functions like a bridge in our version. very congregational. Here I am, Lord is an old hymn... we sang it a ton back when I was a kid in Catholic church actually. It's funny, I call it old, but it was actually written in 1981--so it's younger than I am. anyway, we totally twist that one up into a mid-tempo 6/8 groove and it actually works really well. this weekend's message was on missions so the Isaiah 6:8 reference fit perfectly. hmmm... now that I type that, I guess the time signature fits nicely, too. :)

the brandon heath tune was also a perfect fit thematically for our discussion, which was risk-taking mission. the lyrics to this tune are honest and poignant--great first line or two - Looked down from a broken sky traced out by the city lights | My world from a mile high... best seat in the house tonight. yeah, that's good stuff. anyway, I made kind of a break beat loop that we played with, handclaps and all, loop in the verses and real kit in the rest... it was a blast to play. I actually love making loops. I wish I had a way to give 'em to other churches so they could use 'em, too... I've done a ton of 'em. anyway, good weekend, hope you all had the same.


(this post is also a part of Sunday Setlists)

worship confessional (10.19.08)

man, I'm terrible at getting these written... how do all of you other worship leaders do it? I completely ignored last week--and it was a great service and setlist, too--and now this week, I'm finally getting to it on Thursday night. whew....

ok, so I've been doing these 3 song sets at the beginning of service all through October, right? I've been doing that so I could assure ample time to allow the Spirit to move... to allow room for us to have 'moments' if you will. It's been great so far overall, although on at least one occasion I've felt that it limited our ability to really sink into His presence, you know? It has to be the right 3 songs, that's for sure.

Anyway, this past week, an altogether different blessing came from my prepared 3 song set--a 4th song. I didn't write one, and my pastor or Worship Design Team didn't come up with a last-minute "must-do" worship song... there's this tune by a friend of mine, Gary Durbin that I simply couldn't get out of my head. Literally, for a good straight week it was the only song that would stick in my head morning, noon & night. The song is called Beautiful Scene and it's truly a special tune... honestly, I felt like God was telling me that the congregation needed to hear this song. So, we slid it in to the setlist this week last minute since I had plenty of room for a 4th tune!

Oddly enough (yeah, right... I know better) it fit perfectly within a message about intentional faith development. It's a killer worship song, but it has another layer to it as well... it speaks of how beautiful a scene it is when it's only God and only me... an awesome lyric that doubles as the feeling of intimacy we are able to attain with God in spite of being in a room filled with others communicating with Him at the same time, and also the richness of the time we spend alone with God in prayer and in His Word. Anyway... special tune, people... go check it out.

Setlist went like this:

I Want To Know You (In the Secret) - (Andy Park)
Everlasting God - (Brenton Brown, Ken Riley)
Steps of Faith - (M. Roach)
Beautiful Scene - (Gary Durbin)

feature tune - Deeper (Deliriou5?)

Everyday - (Joel Houston)

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worship confessional (10.05.08)

does anyone else feel like the very first service of the weekend comes off as more of a rehearsal than anything? we battled that for the longest time when we were a portable church--sometimes we were still making sure microphones were plugged in when the service was supposed to be starting--but we're battling it again. I think it's 'cause we're coming into church in the middle of the day on a Saturday, half a day of lawn-mowing, mall-walking, kid-feeding, game-playing already under our belts, you know? anyway, we prayed it all out this Saturday and grabbed on tight to our last fiber of focus as we headed out to the platform. Little mistakes everywhere in our polishing time and full run-through, but we pretty well nailed it in the service. love that. I firmly believe that mistakes, missed entrances, wrong notes, etc.--while they all will happen at some point--become obstacles in our worship services. (yeah, I know that conceit, performance, self-righteousness, smoke machines and worship leaders can too, but that's a whole 'nother Oprah) Anyway, it was nice this weekend to feel like we were able to honor God with our song set in equal measure for three services this weekend. My hope is to continue that trend from here on out. I'll keep you posted :)

setlist looked like this:

As Long As I Have You - (M. Roach)
The Wonderful Cross - (Tomlin and Co.)
Cannons - (Phil Wickham)

feature tune - Please Come by Nichole Nordeman

Here With You - (M. Roach)

I decided to take a moment during 'The Wonderful Cross' and talk about paradox. The title of that song has plenty of it, and the lyric follows suit. the hymn's poetry is astounding, especially in the second verse: See from His head, His hands, His feet | Sorrow and love flow mingled down ... come on, that's poetry. love it. anyway, this whole idea of something so horrific as the cross being described as wonderful, the idea of thorns forming so rich a crown as the one on Jesus' brow, the idea of dying that we may truly live, counting our riches gains as but losses... it goes all the way back to the King of Kings lying in a manger, doesn't it? we took some time to ingest that this weekend as we sang that tune. we bookended that one with a tune of mine 'As Long As I Have You', based on the 23rd Psalm, and an amazing tune called 'Cannons' by Phil Wickham. I'll say this again: if you haven't thrown that tune into your worship set, next week isn't early enough. Great song. I'm waiting for it to become a staple so I can play it instead of 'How Great is Our God' when I visit churches and youth groups... (nothing against the Tomlin tune... just sayin')

anyway, we ended with 'Here With You' again--we usually end with a song we sang two or three weeks before and that one fell in that slot. I'm really amped for you all (outside my church, of course) to hear that one. that's all I have for this week, so until the next... blessings!


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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

worship confessional (9.21.08)

Wow... it's been a tough several weeks here at MSC as we had another untimely death in our congregation, this time a sister of one of the praise team members. To add to the discomfort, we're right in the middle of series called 'Inheritance' and were all set to discuss whether or not we would recognize our earthly relationships in heaven. Once again, I think we pulled through and honored the departed, her friends and family.... and God. Gotta be honest, though. We're hoping this is the last one for a long time.

We also broke out the whole texting thing again in service... are any of you all doing this? I know they are down at Church at Rock Creek, where I played a few months back, but I'd love to hear about your experiences. We're very new at it at this point, but it's been received well thus far. Basically, we are allowing--encouraging, really--people to text in questions during the message and, after being screened, they are forwarded to a screen in front of our Pastor. He answers those he's able to get to with the time allowed. Like I said, it's been well received by and large, although we did end up causing a bit of a stir online after our local paper published a story about us... hit the front page, too... click here for the article, and feel free to join the conversation!

Here was the setlist:

Filled With Your Glory - (Tim & Jon Neufeld)

Here With You - (M. Roach) - brand new tune, can't wait to play it for all of you!

May the Words of My Mouth - (Rob Hill, Tim Hughes)

feature tune: Tears in Heaven (Clapton)

2nd feature tune: Homesick (MercyMe)

Mighty to Save - (Ben Fielding, Reuben Morgan)


This post is also a part of Sunday Setlists

worship confessional (9.14.08) - from the road

Hey all... wow, what a week! This is sort of a strange confessional, as it comes from a string of small shows/services I did this week. My week started early on Saturday as I headed out to New Life Fellowship church in Topeka, IN. It's about 7 hours from my house in St. Charles, MO. I, of course, forgot about the 1 hour time difference and did my best to make some time up on the road. The first four hours went by extremely quickly as I listened to the audiobook version of a book I got from Thomas Nelson Publishing at re:create last year. The book is called The Same Kind of Different As Me and is truly inspiring and thought-provoking. What really gets you is when you're done with the book and you take a second look at the authors' names.

Anyway... I headed to the church, not arriving until just after 8pm their time, and we waited for the drummer to arrive so we could rehearse. It's always crazy leading worship with someone else's band entirely, but it was a cool experience as usual. Rehearsal lasted a while, made for an early morning, but all in all... let's just say that God showed up. Very cool. Setlist for the morning:

As Long As I Have You
Blessed Be Your Name (Redmans)
Beautiful One (Hughes)
The Least I Can Do
You Are

Then, after the morning service was over, the pastor told me that the parent church of NLF, called Nappanee Missionary Church, would love it if I'd play for their young adult service that night if I wasn't busy... all I had planned to do was head to Bethel and chill before the morning chapel I was to lead on Monday, so I obliged. It was very cool, had a great cup of coffee, sat and listened to the message... the music was set to end the service. I hadn't planned it, but from how the message wrapped up, I really felt like we needed to sing 'From the Inside Out' so I asked their presentation software guy if he had it in their system. I kinda sang it with my back to them half the time, 'cause I didn't have the words memorized, but it was very cool 'cause it was just the right song to sing right then.

The next morning I lead worship for the Monday morning Chapel service at Bethel College... they were uber flexible with what I wanted to do, so I just sang some songs, told a few stories and encouraged authentic worship in the room. They definitely are worshipers there, their voices were passionate and voluminous even while singing songs they weren't so familiar with. Of course, I try not to get discouraged by lack of participation--I know that God is able to move in enthusiastic and subdued congregations alike--but it sure is nice to hear His people praising Him alongside you...

worship confessional (9.07.08)

One thing that's been weird the last year or so for me while leading worship at church has been getting used to in-ear monitors. I like 'em a lot for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that (I think) my tuning improves with them as opposed wedges... the biggest flaw I've encountered is the lack of connection with a congregation--and really, I mean an emotional, internal connection rather than an outward, stage presence type connection. I think I've done a fine job in overcoming the awkwardness of in-ears in terms of whether or not the congregation still relates with me. But this week, while we sang 'Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)' at the last service of the weekend, something really cool happened...

I had taken one ear out, as I sometimes do, so that I could get a little more feel of the congregation singing 'Mighty to Save' which was our second tune... the transition came a little quick and when I put my guitar down and headed over to the piano to start 'Amazing Grace,' I didn't have a chance to put my right in-ear back in. As we started singing, I realized two things: first off, people just love to sing Amazing Grace, so I realized that the congregation was at that glorious point of no return in their worship experience, ready to pour out their voices to our Creator. Secondly, I realized that unlike my acoustic--which is panned pretty hard left (so that I can hear it really well even when I remove my right in-ear)--my piano was panned pretty hard right... so I really couldn't hear it all that well. As much as I love to hear the instrument I'm playing, just for tuning and preventing mistakes, etc. I began to hear the swell of voices--400 to 500 strong in our auditorium just filling the place with His praises. I wasn't about to put my right in-ear back in, and I just bathed in the sound of our voices lifted to Him. It was very cool, and I realized once again what I often miss having both of those suckers pluggin' up my ears.

But I digress... it was a great weekend, and our setlist looked like this:

A Thousand Hallelujahs - (M. Roach)
Mighty to Save - (Ben Fielding, Reuben Morgan)
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) - (Tomlin and Co.)

feature tune - I Can Only Imagine (MercyMe) - acoustic version

Hosanna - (Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown)


this post is also part of Sunday Setlists

worship confessional (8.31.08)

Man, I'm bad at doing these right after the weekend, huh? Gary Durbin's was practically up before our last service was over... :) oh, well... way to stay on top of things, Gary! :)

This weekend was one of those that started out brutally, but ended well. Ever have those? Well, mine was self-inflicted as I committed the cardinal sin of wireless in-ear usage on Saturday and neglected to change out my batteries before service. No idea where my head was... and I'm pretty sure those batteries were in the wireless pack since our rehearsal on Tuesday. That's right, that's exactly what happened, and it happened in the middle of the 2nd song of a 4 song set. Brutal. I fought through 2 1/2 songs with absolutely nothing in my in-ear monitors. In the spirit of authenticity, I'm pretty sure the first song and a half was spent going over what could have possibly just happened... and when I finally figured it out during the last tune, I was able to worship and pray that our set would somehow still please God and serve His purpose in worship. ouch.

Sunday was much better... we finally pulled out 'Hosanna' by Paul Baloche this past week. I'm behind most on that one, I know. I talked a bit about the intent behind the song as stated by Paul on his WorshipSource profile. Also, we revisited one of my own, 'All I Can Do is Surrender' which was kinda fun. Keep in mind, we'll sing originals of mine for months or years before they land on a record... we hadn't done that one in a while at MSC. Anyway, the setlist was:

You're Worthy of My Praise - David Ruis

Hosanna - Paul Baloche/Brenton Brown

All I Can Do is Surrender - M. Roach

You Gave Your Life Away - Paul Baloche/Kathryn Scott

Feature tune: Add to the Beauty by Sara Groves

Blessed Be Your Name - Matt/Beth Redman


Seriously, if you haven't already introduced 'You Gave...' to your congregation, don't wait any longer, it's truly an unbelievable congregational tune and you won't regret it. I blogged about it a while back as well...


This confessional is also a part of the ever-growing Sunday Setlists. Check out what other worship leaders around the country did this past weekend and/or post your own!

worship confessional (8.24.08)

this weekend was one of those crazy weekends for me when I have an engagement out of town on Saturday, but I drive back Saturday night for Sunday a.m. services. Of course, we have Saturday night service as well, so it makes for an odd weekend for the whole team in many ways. Ryan, the Associate Music Director at MSC, takes over as worship leader in my absence. This weekend I was in Urbana, IL (more on that in a later post) and we drove about 3 hours and 15 minutes back to STL, arriving at about 1:00a.m. If you know me at all, you know that even though I get up at about 5:45a.m. on Sundays (and only on Sundays) I am rarely in bed earlier than 1:00a.m. on Saturday nights... so this shouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, I had way too much caffeine on the drive home and couldn't get to sleep. So I was running on just under 2 hours of sleep on Sunday after a nice 12-hour excursion to IL for a festival.

That said, it was actually a great morning... especially considering. Wasn't sure my voice was going to come around, but it ended up coming all the way back for worship and it didn't really leave me until Sunday evening and into Monday. It's all good, though, it'll be back again for rehearsal on Tuesday night. Anyway, the setlist was strong this week--in my opinion, anyway--as we closed our 3-part Olympic series with a bang:

Your Grace is Enough - Matt Maher
Give It All Away - Aaron Shust
Holy is the Lord - Tomlin and Co.
Break Through - Tommy Walker

feature tune - Olympic Song by Andy Gullahorn

Happy Day - Tim Hughes, Ben Cantelon

I'm gonna re-iterate a couple of things I'm sure I've already said about a few of these tunes... first off, 'Give It All Away' is a great congregational tune if you haven't tried it. The bridge is awkward in terms of being singable and so we just skip it, but the rest of tune is really strong. It's a bit of a departure from a lot of the other worship stuff we do in terms of melody and form, so it feels fresh in our worship sets. 'Break Through' is just plain great... it's an incredible song, and, as I often do, I took a moment during this song to just encourage people to open themselves up to the Holy Spirit. I invited everyone to welcome break through in their hearts--if not theirs, then those who really needed it at that moment--and to really believe that it can happen right there in that moment. So many people going so many different emotional directions right in front of you, you know? I just wanted everyone to pause and contemplate how vast God really is, and that he's capable--even right at that moment--of breaking through addictions, crumbled relationships, financial burdens, pride, arrogance, any of the myriad of trials facing all of us. If you haven't tried this tune in your services, I can't recommend it highly enough. It's a keeper.

Anyway, our feature tune was a tongue-in-cheek musing by songwriter Andy Gullahorn--a genius in terms of songwriting if you ask me. It's a simple little ditty about get so wrapped up in the Olympics that you convince yourself, if only for a day, that you're heading there in four years yourself to conquer the world and get a medal of your own... clever as usual from Andy, and hook-laden. Went over well, I felt. You can check out Andy's stuff on iTunes, and I highly recommend it.

I'm posting this confessional in collaboration with other Worship Leaders as a part of Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlists

worship confessional (8.17.08)

Tough weekend at MSC, as we lost a special young nineteen-year-old girl to a fatal single-car accident on Friday. She was to turn 20 on Saturday, and our church--young as it is--had literally watched her grow up as her and her family have attended for virtually the entire nine-year life of our ministry. Couple that with the elation that comes with the 30+ baptisms we were celebrating at our Saturday services, and you certainly end up with a strange dichotomy of emotions--and maybe the very essence of the Christian walk.

We've been talking about the Olympics, and the feature tune this week was among the toughest we've ever tried to pull off--more on that later. As we began services on Saturday, we knew the weekend was going to be tough, and I really feel as though we did a great job in worshiping right through the emotional duality in the room. We called it out before we even got started. Just before we sang, I just wanted to name the reality that we were facing. We were staring untimely death and undeserved new life in the face simultaneously... wow. And we worshiped. The setlist, solidified and rehearsed long before the tragedy befell us, was eerily poignant:

Forever - Chris Tomlin
Blessed Be Your Name - Matt/Beth Redman
The Least I Can Do - M. Roach

feature tune - Running On Ice (Billy Joel)

I Stand Amazed - Passion arrangement
All Because of Jesus - Steve Fee

'Blessed Be Your Name' is among the most sung modern worship songs in the country, and most of know that it really shines in the face of tragedy. This weekend, the simple repetitive declaration in the bridge absolutely sucker-punched me... You give and take away | You give and take away | my heart will choose to say | Lord, blessed be Your name. When all was said and done, we simply gave God glory and honor as we attempt to do every weekend, and it felt like the absolute appropriate response to both facets of our emotional state. God is good.

As for the feature tune, Billy Joel's 'Running On Ice,' the piano part alone makes it one of the most difficult songs we've ever tackled--especially considering I played it and I'm not really a piano player. I practiced for hours this week, mainly just trying to nail-down the intro and a ridiculous transition into a quick piano interlude. We recorded some little sound nuggets and artifacts as tracks that we played along to which gave it a little bit more flavor of it's 80's origin, then added some filtered video a la A-Ha's famous 'Take On Me' video. It certainly didn't look like animated charcoal drawings in our version, but it was a cool effect. Of course, all of this came crashing down at the 11am Sunday service when a mute was inadvertently pushed on the channel that contained our click-track. The video started--and restarted--several times (without the click in our ears) before we finally decided to jump ship on the video all together and use our regular metronome. This meant we were going to play it w/ no tracks, which wasn't that big of a deal until we realized half way through the first verse that the video was still playing up in the booth, and now the little sound nuggets and artifacts were bursting through the mains at random times with no rhyme or reason... yeah, it pretty well fell apart. But, the tracks were eventually muted when the video eventually stopped, and we somehow pushed our way through the tune and survived the service... with a few compliments on the feature tune, even :) Ah, nobody's perfect... and technology had it's way with us at 11am this Sunday. If nothing else, we learned something.

I'm doing something new this week, and I'm posting this confessional in collaboration with other Worship Leaders as a part of Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlists