Church | Our Rising Sound

May 22 2009

Images of worship at Life Connection Church

Tagged Under : Life Connection Church, live, Our Rising Sound, pictures, worship

My dear friend Mark Rohl took some incredible shots last week of Our Rising Sound leading worship at Life Connection Church this past Sunday and I wanted to share them with you. You’d be wise to hire Mark for any of your photography needs, hit em up on Facebook or Twitter.

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Sunday Set List: “Take a breath, but wake up”

Tagged Under : Brian Johnson, Delirious, Jenn Johnson, John Mark McMillan, Phil Wickham, Sunday Set List, Taylor Sorensen, worship

alarms Coming off a big Easter and all the work that went into it, I basically took a week off from working on new arrangements and loops. Well, that’s almost true, we did do a new arrangement of Phil Wickham’s “Messiah” but we just put that together in practice before service. So for the most part the set was filled with familiar stuff which I think was necessary for the congregation after a Easter full of new songs and big productions.

I’m still bummed out about how late people are to the service. Literally there was a handful of people at the beginning and then it filled up by the time worship was over. It really doesn’t sit well with me and it’s not an attitude we ever want to settle for in our church. I know almost every church has the same problem, but I think God made me especially irritable to that kind of laziness. Or maybe it’s my sin issue, probably a combo of both. Here’s the source of my frustration and Life Connection people I hope you are reading this cause I love ya, but let’s get our act together.

Corporate worship in the body of Christ is extremely important, it’s something to be valued, cherished, sacrificed for and given to for the benefit of the entire body, not ourselves, and ultimately for the glory of Christ. What each one of us does, each of our attitudes of worship impacts the entire body. I’m not trying to elevate corporate worship to an idolatrous place and minimize an entire life of worship in spirit and truth, but I’m also trying to make sure we don’t minimize the importance of corporate worship. Folks, sacrifice and give to the body, if it pains you to make it to service on time, that’s good! Set the alarm earlier and give of yourself for the benefit of this body and for the glory of Christ. I said it last week I’ll say it again. This irreverent spirit is us bowing at the foot of comfort instead of the foot of the cross. Pray on it, let’s get humble, sacrifice and get there on time.

Rain Down - Delirious (loop not yet available)
Dress Us Up - John Mark McMillan
Gloria 34 - Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
Where You Go I’ll Go - Brian and Jenn Johnson (loop available)
Messiah - Phil Wickham

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

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Encouraging story of True Love loop used in another church

Tagged Under : church, Easter, loops, Phil Wickham, worship

I released my True Love loop less than a week before Easter so I wasn’t sure if anyone else was going to have time to use it for their Easter service. Then I received this really encouraging and humbling email yesterday from Chris Johnson, worship pastor at East Coast Christian Center in FL, and he had this to say:

We also did “True Love” in our service this Easter and I modified your beat loop to fit what we were doing… We had a HUGE cross laying flat on the stage, kind of creating tension as people wondered what this enormous item was laying on our stage floor… we got to the song True Love, and just as the 2nd chorus dips down and starts into the celebratory bridge build of, “Jesus is alive, Jesus is alive….” the Cross was hoisted into the air by a winch in our ceiling of our auditorium - as the music climbed in intensity, so did the Cross and the lights and it was a relatively simple yet IMPACTING production element. People freaked out in celebration as we sang the closing choruses and we truly felt the sense of victory in Jesus’ resurrection. We couldn’t have done it without your beautiful drum loop. It’s probably one of your all time best.

It’s really an honor to think that my little loop assisted anyone else’s worship service on such a huge day. Thanks to everyone for your feedback on this loop and for the others that used the loop I hope it went well. When I started releasing these I was skeptical anyone else would even be interested much less consider using them, so this really encourages me.

If you did use the loop I’d love to hear how it went and if you modified the loop I’d love to hear what you did as well, any video or audio of your performance would be killer too. Here is what Chris did with it:

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Sunday Set List: “Jesus is Alive!”

Tagged Under : Easter, Hillsong United, John Mark McMillan, Kyle Campos, Phil Wickham, Ryan Delmore, Sarah Reeves, Sunday Set List, Twila Paris, worship

Empty Tomb I can confidently say I’ve never had an Easter weekend like this one. Early Friday morning my wife went into labor which was a bit surprising since the doctor said he was pretty certain she wouldn’t until after Easter. So much for that. After 22 hours of labor Adia Grace Campos was born at 4:15am on Saturday. I’ll do another post on all the baby details, but she was born completely healthy and beautiful and my wife did awesome.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make Easter service for obvious reasons, a wife recovering in the hospital and new baby just figuring out how life outside the womb works. We really had no plan B for our Easter service, we had drama, video, worship and mini-sermons intertwined, it was a complex “artsy” service. My incredible wife however was so supportive and encouraged, released, pushed me to go. So while I was happy and relieved for the church that service would go on as planned I was saddened to have to leave my wife and baby in the hospital. One of the harder “ministry” decisions I’ve had to make. My family being my first ministry I had to make sure they were well and taken care of. Without the blessing of my wife I wouldn’t have done it.

She did bless it though and service was incredible! We had our highest attendance ever at 250 which was awesome. All our preparation and practice paid off and God showed tremendous grace on us and service basically went flawless. There was a lot of room for error being a pretty complex service flow. We saw salvations, we saw and heard Jesus lifted and praised for the greatest miracle of all time, in fact it split time in half, that’s how big. Thank you to all the volunteers who worked so hard to pull this off, you guys are amazing.

Right after service I heard the great news my wife was released from the hospital so I sped over there to grab her and the baby and bring her back to the church BBQ for everyone to see. Leading worship, celebrating the resurrection of our Lord, with the hospital band on my wrist was one of the greatest moments and honors I’ve been part of in my life. Finding the significance of Adia’s birth in the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection was powerful. Adia’s name means “gift of God“, her middle name is Grace. On this Easter day we celebrated God’s gift of grace to sinful humanity and I was gifted more grace with my new baby Adia. Here’s my attempt to show the service flow:

The World Can’t Take It Away - Ryan Delmore
Lead Me to the Cross - Hillsong United (loop available)
Lamb of God - Twila Paris/Sarah Reeves arr.
Mini-sermon / Communion
Death In His Grave w/video - John Mark McMillan (video not yet available)
Mini-sermon
3 Video testimonies (videos not yet available)
How I Live - Kyle Campos (loop available)
Offering
True Love w/drama - Phil Wickham (loop available)
Mini-sermon
Invitation

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

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Sunday Set List: “In spite of the band”

Tagged Under : church, Hillsong, John Mark McMillan, Kyle Campos, Ryan Delmore, Sarah Reeves, Sunday Set List, Twila Paris, Vineyard, worship

Train wreck Yesterday was rough from a music point of view. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you know I’m pretty critical of myself and the music. Well you didn’t need to be very critical to know there were some major problems. So much so that I really wasn’t looking forward to this post at all and was considering skipping it. In short we just had problems hearing the click and our time was all over the place which led to some meltdowns. There’s several things we need to fix to make sure this never happens again and it’s on top of my priority list for this week to fix. Need to turn down the suck asap.

So as we walked off stage I’m feeling really frustrated and wishing we could just have a do-over. I take my 10 minutes to drink some water, cool down a bit and try and get re-focused back on service. I walk back into the sanctuary and Pastor Aaron is preaching on Jesus, who Jesus is, who he is not and who we worship him as. Straight up gospel. One thing you have to understand is we have a lot of new Christians and then some churched folks and I’m not sure which one of those groups has heard less about Jesus or who has a more messed up Christology.

It rocked people to the core and as I walked up at the end to play Lamb of God for the alter call, I was humbled more so than I can remember. People are coming up to give their lives to Jesus and I realize how small I am and how unimportant my “gift” is to the kingdom. And it was GREAT! It was less of me more of you Jesus, played out in front of me. I was crying in the back of the stage because it was almost like I tried my best to screw things up and God showed so much grace that he moved powerfully despite my best efforts.

So worship leaders remember that when you’re thinking that one magic ministry song is really going to usher in the spirit. We don’t boss the spirit around by playing sweet music. Don’t get me wrong, let’s play good music, nobody wants to hear crap…but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking music mediates the presence of God, cause I just saw that it surely doesn’t.

The World Can’t Take It Away - Ryan Delmore
Skeleton Bones - John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
How I Live - Kyle Campos (loop available)
So Near - Vineyard UK (loop available)
With Everything - Hillsong (loop available)
Lamb of God - Twila Paris / closer to Sarah Reeves arrangement (end of service)

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.

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Father stabs son after he refused to take off hat in church

Tagged Under : church, funny, news

When I first started leading worship in high school I led worship with a hat on backwards once. It was the nineties cut me some slack, plus I was an idiot. Anyway someone left the church because of that. Now reading that this guy stabbed his own son for just being in church with a hat on makes me feel soooo thankful that all that person did was leave. To add insult to injury, the dad stabbed him in the butt.

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Top 5 things I dislike about being a worship leader

Tagged Under : church, leadership, Top 5, worship

I’d like to start by pointing you to my post on Top 5 things I love about being a worship leader. It truly is an incredible honor, responsibility and blessing to be a worship leader and something I am forever grateful for. It’s really difficult for me to come up with 5 things I dislike without immediately feeling like they pale in comparison to the incredible blessing it is. Even in the trials I hold firmly to James 1:2

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds

That being said I don’t pretend that there aren’t trials and that there aren’t difficult moments. Here are what I see as the top 5 negatives about being a worship leader:

1. You become #1 or #2 reason why people leave the church

You and the preaching pastor will be the alpha dogs as far as reasons people leave the church, in most cases. As much as I joke about this, it does bother me. I understand that there are plenty of churches, better churches than ours for some and that I have to be true to what God’s called and gifted me to do. But when I hear of people leaving because they can’t stand the music, as much as I try to roll with it, it does sting. Not from an artistic standpoint, that rolls of me quite easily. I know lots of people will dislike my music, that’s not what’s important. But I do have to pray a lot about have I failed as a leader to reach out, teach, relate with, minister to these people that are leaving.

On another level I’m glad I’m not immune to some disappointment and hurt when I hear of people leaving because of me. I don’t want to be some ministry zombie. It doesn’t change the truth, vision and mission I’m charged with, but I don’t want to ignore or neglect what I can do to become a better minister and worship leader.

2. Managing creative types can really stink

Artists, and I use that in the broad sense, are the most sensitive, emotional basket cases on the planet. Heaven forbid you tell them they need to practice more, or that they aren’t in tune, or their song isn’t very good. Who am I to judge them and their God given talent? How dare I quench the spirit! *sigh* I am sooooo blessed to have a team of mature Christian men and women who are all leaders in our church in many more ways than music. For me those days are behind me, although once we start building some more teams, there may be more of those days ahead. I’ve been in some pretty awful situations and lemme tell you, they are all too often the norm in the modern church.

There’s a lot to be said about how you organize and run a worship team and develop artistic talent and spiritual maturity. We’ve done polls on this blog about letting non-christians in on worship bands and such and I’ve learned a lot from my past failures on this topic. I could write a valuable e-book on all the ways not to put together a worship team.

3. As you excel in music, you get accused more of not “getting” the heart of worship

If I were to go up on stage with a junky acoustic, with an average band in support, sing in and out of key but do it with passion, nobody is going to accuse me of focusing on music and idolizing it. But if I practice, prepare, write and do all the things necessary to have a tight great band, get up on stage, sound great and do it with passion. There will be a lot of people that say I don’t really understand the heart of worship and that I emphasize musical excellence to a point of idolatry.

I just find it so ill-conceived that the measuring stick for some looks like, poor music quality = band has a heart after God, great music quality = worship leader wants to be Christian celebrity and doesn’t truly get worship. Let me be clear that I just want to be a good stuard and faithful to what God has placed in my hands. The conviction I feel from God on being lazy, inattentive and wreckless with the gifting and gift of this church body placed in my hands far outweighs your weak accusation, so you’ll have to excuse me while I ignore it.

4. Inability to have a single focus in worship

As a worship leader there’s a lot of responsibilities and trains of thought you have to manage in your head while you are leading a song. From song arrangements, to time management, to engagement of congregation, following where the Spirit is leading, taking cues from the sound booth, signaling your band, the list goes on. When you are the primary worship leader for a congregation and leading 99% of the time you can quickly miss being able to be in the congregation worshiping instead of in front leading worship.

Taking breaks is important and we’re working towards multiple bands at LCC.

5. Walking away feeling completely satisfied

This has less to do with being a worship leader and more about my personality. But I wish I could go through a Sunday, drive home and just feel like,

“Man what a great worship time, sounded great, God moved, the body was united and everything went well.”

Instead, no matter how good it goes I go home feeling like,

“I can’t believe how bad I butchered that one song. The mix sounded like crap today I know it. Lots of strange stares on that new song.”

I wrote a post about the mind of a worship leader the day after that explains a lot of my thought process.

It’s something I’m trying to get balance in, but I am super critical of myself and it’s not often I leave with a satisfied feeling and I’m never completely satisfied. But I do rest in that God will accomplish what he wants to accomplish through these weak hands, I have confidence that His faithfulness, not my talent, is my shield.

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Anthropology Men’s Conference at Life Connection Church

Tagged Under : Anthropolgy Men's Conference, church, conference, Life Connection Church, Ryan Delmore

My home church, Life Connection Church in Phoenix, AZ, is hosting a men’s conference this March 6-7 called Anthropology. We have Ryan Delmore from Vineyard Music and 5 Cities Vineyard coming in to lead us in worship throughout the conference as well as Sunday morning service. And we have Dr. Richard Hanner , professor at CFNI, as our featured guest speaker.

Here is the official conference description.

Anthropology is a gathering of men who desire to walk in maturity, responsibility and authority in Christ. We will confront the tough issues men face, soul ties, sex, addiction, and pornography and encourage and speak God’s truth in fatherhood and restoration. We desire to see men young and old know who God has created them to be and not surrender responsibility, but to be mature men, passionate after Christ, free from sin, bold and mature in their faith, leading their families as Christ intended.

You can get the entire conference schedule here as well as registration info. We also have a Facebook event for Anthropology, so if you aren’t already a fan of the Life Connection Church facebook page, get on it. I hope those of you men in the Phoenix are will come check it out, it’s going to be a blast.