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