Worship Confessional (6.29.08) -- from the road

Wow... it's been a while since I've penned one of these, and now I'm a week late on this one. Time just seems to slip through my fingertips. Hey last week we found ourselves in Little Rock, AR at The Church at Rock Creek. Richard Wentz is the worship Pastor over there and we met at this cool conference called re:create that I've been to for a couple years in Nashville. Anyway, the ministry there is quite cool, and we had an absolute blast.

Had some new guys playing with me this past week--Josh Gleave and Keith Harris--not only great players, but great guys. Richard is already doing two of the tunes off of Every Reason Why ('A Thousand Hallelujahs' & 'You Are') in services, so those didn't even have to feel like new tunes to the congregation... I threw 'Amazing' in there as another tune that every finds at least somewhat recognizable and my setlist looked about like this:

As Long As I Have You
A Thousand Hallelujahs
Amazing
The Least I Can Do (w/ tag of 'Here I Am to Worship')
You Are

The church is very unique in a couple of ways... first of all, the third service on Sunday--called the Rock Creek 30--is a legit, 30-minute service. Two tunes, a 15-minute message, prayer and offering. Sound a little strange? Not when you hear them tell you that they've baptized a half-dozen people in the last few months that started out at that service. Awesome. Also, instead of a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night service, they actually have a Monday night service. Also seems a bit odd 'til you see 600-800 people showing up for it.

Anyway, like I said, we had an unbelievable time, Richard and the entire staff were amazing. If any of you ever find yourself in Little Rock looking for a great, God-centered church to visit, don't even hesitate heading over there. If nothing else, there's a Starbucks inside the bookstore--come on, who can beat that?!? Seriously, though, after a long (my son was especially beat) but wonderful weekend, we headed back to the good ol' STL and look forward to the opportunity of heading back there again sometime soon!

East Coast Worship Summit

I'm headed out to the East Coast Worship Summit right now... in fact, I'm stuck in the airport as a result of a flight delay as I type... no better time to blog! :)

So, I get the distinct honor and privilege of leading the morning worship session on Wednesday at the Summit in addition to teaching several workshops all week. I absolutely love leading fellow worship leaders into the presence of God and I humbly pray that the songs we sing will resonate in the hearts of the body of Christ that's attending, that the leaders present experience renewed passion and enthusiasm about their ministries, and that our time together will glorify our Creator above all else.

If you happen to be headed out to Pennsylvania for the Summit, make sure you flag me down sometime during the week and say 'Hey!'... I absolutely love to connect with fellow worship leaders, songwriters and music lovers alike!

...can't even imagine

I was horrified to hear the news today. 5-year old Maria Sue Chapman tragically killed yesterday in an unthinkable accident in her own driveway.

I have a 4-year old son myself. He'll be five in September. I can't even articulate how I think I might feel in Steven's shoes right now. If you haven't seen it already, there's a very sweet video of Maria Sue and Steven on her memorial page... click the picture.

Steven, you've touched so many people you've never even met. May you and your family feel the prayers of those and a million more right now...

'inside out' lands on pureNRG's new record...

Ok, so just before I recorded 'Every Reason Why' I sat down with a few other writers to see if we could co-write something for the record. Matthew West and I have been friends since college, and though we hadn't written much together at all, it was a no-brainer to see what would happen if we put our heads together.

The product of that co-write was a tune that you may have heard if you've seen me live, or if you go to church at MSC where I lead worship almost every weekend. It's a song called 'Transformed.'

Here's where it gets fun: the song obviously didn't make 'Every Reason Why' but we had tried to pitch it to a conference as a theme song of sorts. It landed in the hands of the A&R camp for the tween group pureNRG, and they liked it. The words needing some tweaking to fit the demographic, so Matthew got out his hammer and chisel and made that happen. At the end of the day, the 'new' song, now entitled 'Inside Out' was recorded and recently released on pureNRG's newest project. Check out www.myspace.com/teampurenrg for a listen to how 'Transformed' morphed into pureNRG's 'Inside Out!'

worship confessional (5.18.08)

this past weekend was a crazy one... big weekend in the life of our church, honestly. The numbers came in a few weeks ago regarding the financial commitments for our building initiative Love. Loud. and while it was a lot of money--and represented significant sacrifices from many families in our congregation--it fell substantially short of the figure we needed in order to actually build.

We stood tall, though, and Pastor Mike delivered a powerful, compelling message that reminded us all why we're here... to worship our God without condition. That's what we did. We had started each service with a 3-song set, and after Mike's message we played a video and then launched another 3-song set to close the service. Some people were wrecked by the service as a whole, and I honestly think some people were over it once we hit the first song of the second set. Regardless, I have scarcely been more proud of my church... I'm excited to see--and eventually blog about--the eventual victory God has for this little slice of His church called MSC.

The songset for the weekend was:

Meet With Me - Lamont Hiebert

You Never Let Go - Matt & Beth Redman

We Fall Down - Chris Tomlin
__________

The Least I Can Do - M. Roach

Break Through - Tommy Walker

Everlasting God - Brenton Brown/Ken Riley

Worship Confessional (5.11.08)

This past weekend was, of course, Mom's Day. Usually, we get a packed house on Mother's Day weekend, but for whatever reason (maybe the ridiculously dismal weather) we were not only light on attendance, but a bit blah as well. Now, my friend Gary Durbin in Florida points out in his most recent WorshipSource confessional the importance of not measuring worship by the congregation's response, but focusing instead on God's pleasure... good reminder for all of us, I'm sure, and so I'll move on. :)

The last few weeks, I've been doing something a bit unorthodox with my acoustic--and I'm actually kinda likin' it. I've been plugging my acoustic into a Line6 floorboard, bypassing everything but the delay, and then using the built-in wah pedal as well. This past week, I used this on 'Welcome Song' by Pocket Full of Rocks. I use the Edge-inspired dotted quarter delay, and it manifests that tight, even sixteenth delay when I play eighths. The wah allows me to shape the sound a bit, like an envelope filter. It's cool stuff. Anyway, I'm in the process of replacing the church's Line6 with 'real gear' that will serve the same purpose--a Cry Baby and a DD-20. I'll keep you posted!

Here was the setlist for this past weekend:

The Welcome Song - Michael Farren

Filled With Your Glory - Jon/Tim Neufeld

How Can I Keep from Singing - Tomlin and Co.

Spirit Song - John Wimber

feature tune: Thank You Mom by Good Charlotte

ended with: As Long As I Have You - M. Roach

The feature tune was a crazy find... a hidden track from a Good Charlotte record that actually talks about his mom singing songs of praise and teaching him how to love God and such... we were just looking for a simple Mom's day tune and I was elated to find something by Good Charlotte instead of having to veer toward Bette Midler. :)

Until next week!

Worship Confessional (5.04.08)

Ok, this one's really late, I know, but I have to mention this... we had Mike Lewis, also known as the Jesus Painter, come and be a part of our Celebration services--the culmination of our Love. Loud. initiative. He is truly an awesome guy, and what he does in worship should be incorporated into every church across America and beyond if you ask me. If your church doesn't incorporate visual art or painting during worship, you should click on the painting to the right and check out what he does. Anyway, the services were jam-packed with songs, paintings, kids, baptisms, confirmations, pledges, thumbprints (kind of a way of every saying "I'm in") ... one of those services that triples the number of elements we include in a normal weekend. Great stuff, though, and Mike Lewis was an awesome addition. The tunes we did during the worship set were perfect for the two paintings he did while we worshiped. Here's the setlist:

The Happy Song - Martin Smith

Beautiful One - Tim Hughes

You Are - M. Roach

You Gave Your Life Away - Paul Baloche/Kathryn Scott

over 15,000 views!

yeah... so he's now 4 years old. The video was shot about a year ago. He likes to tell people about how he's on YouTube. But honestly, 15,000 views! That's awesome. So here's a reprise:

worship confessional (4.27.08)

Last week, I got the not-as-rare-as-it-used-to-be privilege of coming to my own church as an attender. Ryan, our Associate Music Director, led worship and I was out in the congregation holding my son in my arms and singing to my Creator--my son singing gently in my ear throughout the worship set... it doesn't get a whole lot sweeter than that.

This week was our last weekend of our Love. Loud. initiative-- that is, the last week before the 'celebration' weekend next week, where we bring forth our pledges and finally begin to put flesh to the bone of our last 4 weeks of discussion. We were headed for an uber long service, and so we preemptively cut a tune from the worship set. That always bums me out, but the day felt all kinds of good in spite of that. Here's the setlist we ended up with:

As Long As I Have You - M. Roach
Pleasing - Glenn Packiam
Enough - Tomlin/Giglio
----
feature tune - Take My Life (a la Passion - Tomlin and Co.)
----
Love Loud (tag) - by our own Ryan Redding

The set felt pretty good... I hate having to change guitars quickly in transitions, but it actually worked out ok. I lead from an electric on 'As Long As...' and played acoustic on the other two. Originally, when we were planning on doing 4 tunes, we had the welcome/announcement piece between the first two songs, so I would have had plenty of time for the switch. When we cut the last tune, we felt like a two-song set after the announcements just didn't feel right, so that left us with a quick guitar transition. At any rate, our congregation typically applauds after the uptempo stuff in the set (does your church do that? I know, that's another discussion entirely) so I had a few seconds to grab the guitar and get to the mic, and then I spoke briefly before 'Pleasing.' That's a strong tune, by the way, if you don't do it at your church, you should look at it.

We did 'Take My Life' differently on Saturday than on Sunday... Saturday I played my electric so I could put a dotted eighth delay on it and really get some cool build at the end, but without that sparkle and percussive nature an acoustic provides, something was missing. Both would have been ideal, but when I had to pick one, the acoustic won the day and I asked our electric player to beef his part up a bit with delay and such. 'Take My Life' is a great song... really fun to play, but we've never done it in a worship rotation, always as a special.

Ok, my rant is done I think. I often wonder if anyone cares about my weekly (ok, not exactly weekly) muses--but hey, if not, I'm keepin' a good journal, right? At any rate, next week is big. Mike Lewis (the Jesus Painter) is coming to town, baptisms, confirmations, and we find out just how loud our congregation wants to love... see you then.

Worship Confessional (3.30.08)

as posted at www.worshipsource.com/markroach

Ok, so it was the weekend after Easter… if your church is anything like our church, the staff is all in recovery mode for most of the week, trying to catch up on sleep, time with family, and anything else that was virtually ignored during the weeks prior to Easter. We were no different, and while Saturday seemed much like a normal service, when we all arrived Sunday morning it was easy to see that we hadn’t quite recovered yet. :) Setlist was as follows:

Filled With Your Glory - Jon Neufeld, Tim Neufeld

Everlasting God - Brenton Brown, Ken Riley

Here I Am, Lord - Dan Schutte

The Least I Can Do - M. Roach

feature tune: The Motions (Matthew West)

You Never Let Go - Matt & Beth Redman

I love ‘Filled With Your Glory’ … I think that’s a sleeper among up-tempo worship tunes. We don’t do the melodic variations on the record in the 2nd verse, just to keep in consistent for congregational purposes… I think it’s a great song. ‘Everlasting God’ has been big for us ever since we started. We do kind of a blend between the Tomlin and the Brenton Brown versions. We do the alt. time signatures in the pre-chorus—I love those. I’d love to hear what version you all lean toward… anyone lean toward the Lincoln Brewster version in church?

‘Here I Am, Lord’ is one of those tunes I grew up with in the Catholic church. Being at a Protestant church, it’s not often I run across older hymns and choruses that I actually know, but this one crossed the divide. Anyway, we change it up quite a bit, put it in 6/8 and change the pronouns so that it’s vertical rather than singing from God’s perspective.

‘The Least I Can Do’ was a fun tune of mine to do on the week after Easter, especially with our theme. The message was called "Now What?" and it dealt with our response to the good news of the Easter story the week before. I led the prayer after the song set, which I don’t do very much any more, and it was an easy transition since the song culminates in a down-verse about the Easter story and really deals itself with the fact that the least we can do is worship. I led the prayer from the piano, right before the tag, and asked God to help us all realize that the least we could do was worship in song right then… then asked if He could help us make that a starting point—that we could follow it with a life of worship from this point forward.

Anyway, it was a strong service overall, except for my brilliant transposing error on Saturday night. I led two songs from the piano, one was The Least I Can Do in the worship set and then Matt West’s tune ‘The Motions’ … well, we had transposed it for my vocal and I was playing it an easier key and forgot to transpose the keyboard before we started. I had one of those fantastic moments where you just stop dead in the middle of an intro and say into the mic, "yeah, I’m gonna need to fix that…" then you fix it and start over. Nothing else I could do, my band doesn’t transpose a half step on the fly. :) I’d love to hear your transpose button / capo-on-the-wrong-fret stories… it’d make me feel better I’m sure!

Many blessings to you all! Until next week…