I’ve been listening to Mumford & Sons “Sigh No More” record with equal parts enjoyment and intrigue. Before I knew really anything about the band I could tell the writing was wrestling with a lot of good spiritual issues. After I saw them live here in Phoenix and saw the response in the crowd I was blown away by how the songs were reaching people. Then I discovered that Marcus Mumford has strong Vineyard ties, son of the Vineyard UK regional directors and is friends with some local Vineyard friends. All that to say, I love their music and pray for that band in a different way now.

One of their songs “Awake My Soul” really caught me as something that, in pieces, could work really well in a worship set. I’ve been playing around with it and came up with a few minor, but important, lyric changes and introduced it as a tag this past week. The congregation responded well and I thought it served the aim of the set and what God had been stirring in us. I’m not sure if we’ll do it again, but it’s a possibility. The lyric we sang was very simple:

Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For we were made to love our maker

The bluegrass feel went quite well sandwiching our first song by Ryan Delmore. We teased the tag at the beginning of Ryan’s song and then reintroduced it at the end. Here are the details of the set:

1. The Gift of Gifts – Opening Puritan Prayer
2. The World Can’t Take It Away – Ryan Delmore
3. God of this City – Bluetree (loop available)
4. My Soul Sings – Delirious (loop available)
5. Nothing But the Blood – Robert Lowry (Page CXVI arrangement linked)
6. Our God Reigns – Delirious (loop available)

I’ve been so blessed the past 6 weeks or so with our new instrumental/puritan prayer reading openings to service. I’ve been blessed on multiple levels. First, I’ve loved see more people involved in Sunday service. We’ve opened this prayer reading up to the body and man we’ve had some incredible readings. Secondly, the content is just crushing. We’ve been reading through “The Valley of Vision – A collection of Puritan prayers & devotions” and the prayers are a brutal combination of truth, wisdom, passion, pain, joy…I mean they are just incredible!

Third, the tone we’ve been able to set from the get go with the music in support of the reading has been really beyond my expectations and become something I look forward to the entire week. Every week we work on a new original instrumental arrangement and I’ve been blown away by what we’ve come up with and I can’t wait to turn these core riffs into full songs. Creatively I feel like we’ve hit a real groove and it feels amazing to be part of. If you’ve played in many bands you’ll know that it’s really special when you find that creative groove that seems to come easy, that’s rare.

Here are the songs that made up our set…

1. Opening Prayer – “The All Good“
2. You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band
3. We Will Run – Gungor
4. Nothing But the Blood – Robert Lowry (Page CXVI arrangement linked)
5. How Deep the Father’s Love For Us – Stuart Townend (Chad Gardner arrangement linked)
6. None But Jesus – Hillsong
7. How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin (After Sermon)

I can’t tell you how much the below Driscoll clip resonated with me. I’ve seen up close the destruction that in sues from this idolatrous seeking of some great past experience, some great moment in the church where God moved in a powerful way. The church and it’s leaders become fixated on how to get it back and completely reject what God is doing presently. I’ve seen it close, been part of it, and it’s devastating to a church’s health.

Sometimes the church experiences a tremendous hurt, maybe a leader being removed or caught out in sin, and instead of faithfully walking through God’s restoration in the body, there’s a detachment and this constant day dreaming of what used to be. I’ve see that up close too, and it’s devastating. Worship leaders, make sure you aren’t chasing experiences, for the benefit of yourself and your body…don’t do it.

Currently I’m in day 2 of my week long vacation and as I look back 2 days ago, from way out west on the beach of Santa Barbara, I see God’s goodness, grace and power in the desert of Phoenix more clearly. The closer I am it seems to what God’s doing in my family, friends, church, city, the harder it is to see God’s grace and progression of his will. Whether that be the persistent work of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives as they are made more into the image of Christ, or the unifying work of the Spirit in our church body, or the provision, or the healing, etc, etc…

When I’m in the middle of it I find it hard to step aside and just be thankful for what God is doing, instead I’m usually focused on the work that lies ahead to move forward. Some combination of the two is where I’d like to be and not so dang fixated on the work, but able to rest in the goodness and just enjoy the benefits of being in Christ.

What does this have to do with Sunday’s set? Well as I reflected Sunday night on the set my mind of course goes straight to where we need to improve, the songs I need to finish writing, the equipment we need, the recording time, yada yada yada. Now I’m just thankful for what God did Sunday, his goodness in allowing us to be part of what He’s doing in Phoenix through LCC, and the tremendously gifted musicians he’s brought to LCC. As I’m on vacation, our other worship band “Green House” will be leading worship this upcoming Sunday and I know they’ll do an incredible job. Churches much larger than ours would kill to have the musicians we have. None of them are paid(including me), they come and serve because they are on mission with us and I’m just humbled and thankful for our church body, it’s leaders and servants. Here’s what we played.

1. Puritan Prayer – “God the Source of All Good”
2. Prayer for Faith – Joe Day
3. God of This City – Bluetree (loop available)
4. We Will Run – Gungor
5. Nothing But the Blood – Page CXVI
6. Death In His Grave – John Mark McMillan (loop available)

I’ve always wanted to blog through the process of creating a loop and include folks along the way to get feedback at each portion. Then look back and see the evolution of the song as I made changes. So this post starts that journey.

Part 1. Main Groove

I’ve started to write a loop for an original arrangement of In Christ Alone by Stuart Townend. This arrangement may be pretty far out for those that know the traditional arrangements, but I hear it all coming together in my head well and if you’re a worth anything as a writer, you gotta trust that inner head arrangement. At this point I just have the main groove looping over the verse progression. This was done all in one session, total session time was probably 6 hours or so. I think I spent 3 hours on the drums alone, finding the right kick/snares and making tone adjustments and such. Spending time on each individual instrument’s (drums having many instruments -> kick, snare, toms, etc…) tone is so important.

Here’s how I organize my thoughts when searching for drum sounds. I make a list of all the candidates (all that I think may work) for each sound and then I go through each one comparing one to another and selecting the better of the 2. Repeat process until you only have one left and last sample standing wins!

So here’s what I have so far, just a few measures looped over. From here I’ll peel it back and get the instrumentation for the verse with vocals.

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The charismatic worship formula is pretty well defined and though we don’t follow it in many ways, we do follow it in at least one way…fast songs first. And truthfully this is always the hardest portion of the set list for me for a few reasons, but one major reason being, there just aren’t very many good up tempo worship songs. Most are either super churchy and cheesy or sound like a Kids Incorporated tune. So I have a very limited rotation on the up tempo songs and often it feels like I’m force fitting them into the set.

This week I just had enough of it and said I’m not force fitting anything. Instead I opened with a couple mid tempo songs, though both are high intensity (Burning Ones especially). I thought the transition from our opening instrumental/prayer into Where We Belong was the smoothest opening we’ve ever done. I thought the response was fantastic and God was praised and magnified from the get go. I’m not saying we will never play an up tempo song to open again, but I am saying I won’t force fit them again, so you’ll probably be hearing less of them.

LCC I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you felt it went. Comment publicly with your encouragement and file all complaints with my secretary and she’ll forward them to me.

1. Puritan prayer
2. Where We Belong – Hillsong (loop available)
3. Burning Ones – Jesus Culture (loop available)
4. My Soul Sings – Delirious (loop available)
5. The Solid Rock – Edward Mote (loop available)
6. Jesus Paid It All – Elvina Hall (loop available)

p.s. I don’t have a secretary

There’s a great wave of new, fresh, creative, beautiful arrangements of old hymns. These are the top 5 that I’ve found, please comment below if you have any others you’d like to nominate.

1. Jesus Paid It All – Chad Gardner (Mars Hill Good Friday Live)

I think I listened to this on repeat for a week straight. One of the most powerful arrangements I’ve ever heard of one of the most powerful worship songs ever written. Hard to beat that.

If any are interested in a loop for this arrangement I have one published.

2. Battle Hymn Of The Republic – Page CXVI (Hymns II)

Page CXVI has plenty of awesome arrangements but this is one of the more surprising ones. I didn’t expect to be blown away like I was with this arrangement. It’s hard to rock this one with it’s march shuffle rhythm, but they found a way. When the chorus opens up it’s a beautiful thing.

Other killer songs from their Volume I Hymns album: Nothing But the Blood, Joy

3. Come Thou Fount – Coram Deo Church (Doxology)

Vocals on this are just killer, the lead male vocal channeled his inner Rufus Wainright perfectly. Probably the simplest arrangement on this list, but all the great arrangements of this song I’ve heard are simple, it’s just the way this song was meant to be played I think.

4. I Sing the Mighty Power of God – Ex Nihilo (Rain City Hymnal)

So many great songs of this album, but this arrangement builds on each verse just so well and when it eventually goes for it towards the end, the pay off was well worth the build up. Also for you more adventurous types that dig some electronica, there’s a Sandman Theory Remix of this that’s awesome!

Other killer songs from this album: Doxology (The Northern Conspiracy), The Solid Rock (E-pop), Here Is Love (Ex Nihilo)

5. How Deep The Father’s Love For Us – Chad Gardner (Mars Hill Good Friday Live)

It’s only appropriate that this Mars Hill’s Good Friday Service sit as the bookends to this list. I said before I think that set is probably the best worship set I’ve heard start to finish. Just absolutely incredible.

So what songs did I miss that deserved a mention?

Wow, what an adventure it was right up until start time. One of those weeks where you just have to laugh at how many curve balls were being thrown our way. God brought us through though and service went on as God had planned and it was a tremendous blessing to be part of.

This week’s set was one of the stranger sets I’ve put together. God was working a strange mix of songs in my heart through this week but at the center of it all was Nothing But the Blood (hymn not Redman). I had it earmarked for our series through Galatians but for whatever reasons the timing never felt right until now. We played a version similar to Page CXVI’s incredible arrangement with some instrumental changes. All through the week the chorus had just been wrecking me:

How precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

The line “No other fount I know” was highlighted in my spirit and caused me to reflect on my life in what other hopes I’ve had that have faded and died. And I was faced with the loving reality, that I know no other savior, no other hope for the cleansing of my soul. My heart was filled with so much gratitude and thankfulness as I remembered my record of sins, knowing that Jesus did not.

1. Opening puritan prayer / instrumental
2. Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
3. I Am A Temple – John Mark McMillan
4. We Will Run – Gungor
5. Nothing But the Blood – Robert Lowry / Page CXVI arrangement
6. Fire Fall Down – Hillsong United