This will be a difficult series, but after reading these stories I can promise you it will be one of the most encouraging, rewarding and spiritually beneficial series this blog has ever done. I was reading one of the posts yesterday while eating breakfast at a restaurant and I could not stop crying. It was embarrassing but I think you’ll understand when you read it for yourself. So make sure you are subscribed to the rss feed or subscribed via email so you don’t miss any of these posts.

Worship leaders make sure and use this video as a mentoring tool for those up and coming worship leaders. You can thank me and Pastor Anderson later.

We didn’t really do anything different in preparation this week besides having designated a “Producer” for the service, but that decision was already made before the MTV thing came around. Service was packed out and everyone seemed really engaged. I tweeted after worship service that the fact that service was packed out was encouraging in one sense and convicting in a few others. I think I’m going to withold my reaction to that fact until after next week. In any case I’m so thankful God showed grace and Mark our producer showed excellence and really the service could not have gone any better. I don’t think we’ve ever pulled off a service without 1 technical issue of some kind, but really I can’t think of much of anything we could have done better. So for that I’m extremely thankful and excited about the salvations that occured and the powerful move of the Spirit in that service. Thank you Jesus!

I’ll have video of it posted in the next few days. Onto the worship set…

1. We Cry Out - Brian and Jenn Johnson, Kim Walker arrangement (loop available)
2. Rain Down - Delirious (loop used, not yet published)
3. How I Live - Kyle Campos (original, loop used, not yet published)
4. My Jesus I Love Thee
5. Who You Are - Desperation Band (loop used, not yet published)

I’ve had some emails from people asking for certain loops that I’ve used but not yet published on the site. The reason that I haven’t published some is that I still am modifying them and I’m not yet satisfied with it as a finished product. If you are interested in getting an early release of them just email me and I’ll send it to you.

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

Song: We Cry Out by Kim Walker, We Cry Out (album)
Key: D#m
Bpm: 122
Intro: 4 bar click in w/drums (guitar riff starts on measure 5 in other words)

Download: aif / mp3 / rns (Reason 4 file)

But really it’s going to be an amazing opportunity for us to just be ourselves and let our love of Christ be shown to a lot of people. So for that reason I’m really excited. I’ll make sure and give a detailed report in my upcoming Sunday Set List post. If you’re in the Phoenix area and want to visit Life Connection Church, please check us out and introduce yourself to me.

The loop is pretty sparse besides the main synth/bass riff. I added some synth on the chorus and some shaker, but besides that it’s the synth and guitar riff carrying the song. I had delayed releasing this because I’ve always wanted to take it in another direction at some point, but that direction hasn’t come into my head yet. So I’ll release another version if it ever comes.

Song: Solid Rock by Delirious, Now Is The Time
Key: E
Bpm: 158
Intro: 2 bar click in

Download: aif / mp3 / rns (Reason 4 file)

Jesus trying to remember why he created this instrument.

[via synthtopia]

We had baptisms scheduled for today and usually we do it right after service, this time we decided to move the baptismal tank on stage and do it through worship at the end of the set. Before we get to that, let me say that weeks earlier our baptismal tank was stolen (odd I know) and we couldn’t afford to replace it. We had one member, Deb, so eager to get baptized she bought the baptismal tank for us. So after we finished the normal worship set of 5 songs, we started to play Gloria using Taylor Sorensen’s arrangement, not the Tim Smith, with loop, version we normally did. I got through the song one time through to give my pastor time to get people lined up and ready to go. One by one they came up and gave their testimony to the congregation as we played softly, as soon as they were done testifying we brought up the music and sung the “Gloria” chorus as they were dunked and baptized.

It was going great and then Deb came up and testified. I knowing full well the incredible transformation she had gone through was wondering what she would say publicly. Deb starts by acknowledging the prayers of her daughter and our female leaders that had gone on for 2 years, praying for her salvation. Deb encourages us that God works miracles, real life miracles. I’m blown away by God’s saving grace, and then Deb says it. God has delivered her from the sin in her life that had her captive for so long…homosexuality. Never in my life have I seen someone go from totally lost, fully engaged in the homosexual lifestyle, causes etc… Repent, get saved, and publicly testify to her deliverance of homosexuality. Not testify to her new perspective on homosexuality or how to live as a Christian with homosexual tendencies, but her deliverance. Not a single leader in our church having pushed her to say anything, do anything, only God’s loving grace that drew her to him. Truly a work of God and God alone. I can’t wait to share the video.

The list of incredible testimonies heard is too long to mention. But God moved powerfully and I think this was one of the best services I’ve ever been a part of in my life. Thank you Jesus!

1. Salvation Is Here - Hillsong United (loop used, not yet published)
2. Dress Us Up - John Mark McMillan
   
3. Our God Reigns - Delirious (loop available)
4. Where We Belong - Hillsong (loop available)
5. All I Need Is You - Hillsong United
6. Gloria 34 - Taylor Sorensen

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

If you’re looking for help or critique, after you send me your track through Soundcloud a blog post will be made inviting critique. After round(s) of critique and revisions(if necessary) your loop may possibly be included in the ORS podcast and main Soundcloud profile. Here’s exactly what you need to do to participate:

1. Send me your loop by placing it in the ORS soundcloud dropbox. (Link always in sidebar as shown above)
2. Include the BPM in the track info on soundcloud as well as an helpful arrangement information and links to where we can hear an album version if one exists.
3. Email me (email in sidebar) to let me know it’s your track and where feedback should be sent.
4. A blog post will be made with your loop. If you just want your loop to be heard without critique, then I’ll just make the call whether or not the quality is high enough to include as is.
5. If it’s your track then please link to it from your personal blog.

Ok let’s get this loop party started shall we?

p.s. no I don’t really think Obama is the anti-christ, that’s silly. But whoever won the lottery with those numbers I’m not so sure about. If it’s Rezko I’m going to flip out.

Not the full head gear but close

Now my son enjoys the full headgear

Dads is there anything you do to your son that an older brother or your own father did to you? And maybe my bro will come out from the woodwork and explain how this headgear came to be.

What will get your comment deleted or disapproved?

• Use of profanity. I don’t mind strong language, but if you’re cursing like a sailor you probably don’t have anything valuable to say. Keep it PG-13 please.
• Harsh rebuke or critique without any sensible argument or entertainment value. If you’re going to say how much something sucks or how much you disagree with something, all I ask is you spell it out in an articulate way or at the very least be entertaining. If you wanna be a jerk, than speak well or be funny, it’s that simple.
• Self Promotion Spam. I don’t mind if you want to promote your stuff here. I love helping others out as much as I can. But at least pretend to have read the post you’re commenting on. Throw me a bone here.

What won’t get your comment deleted?

• Thoughtful disagreement. I really don’t mind people disagreeing with me. I disagree with a lot of people, so I’d love to hear your beefs. Just be articulate, concise and don’t cuss.
• Relevant self promotion. If you have a post on your site that is relevant to the post here you’re commenting on, by all means, link away. Just make sure it’s relevant.

It was an incredibly moving time of prayer and passionate worship. I won’t forget it and it again emphasized what’s on the line this election year.

1. Solid Rock - Delirious (loop used, not yet published)
2. Sweetly Broken - Jeremy Riddle
3. Everything - Tim Hughes (loop available)
4. Where We Belong - Hillsong (loop available)
5. None But Jesus - Hillsong United (loop used, not yet published)

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

Remember the purpose of making these loops available is so that any worship leaders out there using loops can freely take and use. I make the Reason file available so you can make modifications if desired as well. If you don’t have Reason and have a simple request like muting a certain instrument then I can give that to you, just let me know.

This arrangement follows the cd version linked below.

Song: Where We Belong by Hillsong, This is Our God
Key: B
Bpm: 91
Intro: 2 bar click in

Download: aif / mp3 / rns (Reason 4 file)

First up we have the Catholic favorite, Virgin Mary suit. I would have thought this is a bit sacrilegious to them, considering they pray to burnt toast and trees with sap in the shape of Mary. No doubt this poor little girl will be made fun of relentlessly.

Next we have the ambiguous Wise Man costume. Look how pleased this kid looks. No doubt his parents are handing out tracks to the local kids. Trick indeed.

This kid is definitely the life of the party in his Monk outfit. As opposed to the above 2, if the parents actually did this as a joke it would be pretty funny. But I’m not sure the kid is going to ever find the humor when his friends are pegging him in the head with candy corn and stealing his candy. Have mercy on this child.

This Padre suit is actually pretty cool. I’m not sure why Neo is in the background, I’m sure the Padre can throw down but my money is on Neo.

For all those attending a “Harvest Party” instead of trick or treating tonight please send me some pics of your home-made outfits so we can pray for your children.

This success of this blog depends on you guys blog evangelizing and spreading the word. So if you know of friends, family, co-workers that might enjoy the blog please encourage them to subscribe. For all you silent subscribers make sure and comment so I can meet you, hit me up on facebook, stumbleupon or twitter.

Here’s to passing 200 in much shorter time!

In December of 2002 my wife and I along with some of our friends went to The Call/The One Thing Conference in Kansas City. Mike Pilavachi was scheduled to speak, I’d never heard him at the time but heard great things(which were all true) and I was really excited to hear Kevin Prosch lead worship. This was Kevin’s return to ministry after his much publicized sexual sin and divorce from his wife. One of the most painful, disappointing, frustrating periods I can remember as Kevin was someone I looked up to as a man of God. You’re probably thinking Kevin’s set was the experience I’m referring to, but you’d be wrong, his was amazing.

Waterdeep was scheduled to open the conference. I had heard a few tunes that I liked from them, didn’t matter though I was just excited to be among thousands of other people eager to praise Jesus. As the time was drawing near for the conference to kick off people were getting more and more impatient. Finally Waterdeep came out, everyone is ready to sing, jump, lift hands, people were pumped!

I don’t recognize the first song, in fact nobody does, it’s not really a worship song. Nobody is singing and everyone is just kind of looking around like, “this is weird“. We all just kind of hum along, still hopeful for some great worship. Song #2 comes along with the same kind of soft, meandering melody that is talking about their college days. What the heck is happening??? Now people are annoyed, I’m annoyed, this is a worship conference for heaven’s sake, probably a good idea to actually play some. Song #3 comes and they introduce it by saying something like, “this is a song we wrote about not having any money and some old car…” The crowd is visibly upset, I’m upset, this feels like a joke, like we’re getting punked. All of a sudden people in the front rows start yelling at the band, “PLAY WORSHIP!!!“. Lead singer of Waterdeep yells back in the mic, “THIS IS WORSHIP!!!” Oh nooo.

Now I have retarded tingles all over and I want to hide, I can’t look anyone in the face. There is a worship mutiny taking place, people are booing, there’s a full out revolt in the conference. I’ve never in my life experienced anything like this. And in the 6 years after this, I’ve never again experienced this or even heard of anything like this. I think finally after this exchange they played one song people knew and words were up so we got to sing a little acoustic worship song. God bless Waterdeep, they are good people and a good band and I’m sure if they haven’t blacked out this moment from their memory they’d agree it was not a good moment.

This was by far the most uncomfortable worship experience ever. I’d love to hear some of your stories. Feel free to change name and dates to protect the innocent. I didn’t change any but my story was 6 years ago and the statute of limitations is up. If your story involves me though, please change my name

In the middle of the set satan sent his XLR demons to strike down a critical cable running from the loop direct box to the snake. All of a sudden in the middle of singing, and playing an important loop, the XLR cable rebelled and worshiped satan instead of working as created and facilitating the praise of Jesus. That cable not only carries the Ableton loop signal it also carries the piano signal to the mains. So while I heard everything wonderfully in my headset the congregation thought I was playing air-piano and was probably wondering…”boy they sure are doing a lot of a cappella today.”

Luckily my pastor walked up on stage and drove out the XLR demon by stepping on the cable which allowed us to complete the last 2 songs as intended. As you can imagine I was in no mood to write this recap last night and I didn’t get much sleep in either. I can’t stand disasters like this. I feel like replacing every single cable on stage now. Anyway here was the set.

1. You Love Me Forever - Merchant Band (loop used, not yet available)
2. Dress Us Up - John Mark McMillan
3. Come Thou Fount - own arrangement
   
4. My Soul Sings - Delirious (listen to loop)
5. Be Lifted High (tag of From the Inside Out) - Hillsong United

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

1. Thank U (Alanis Morissette / Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie) - Most of Alanis’ songs grated on me when I first heard them. I had a strong dislike for her as an artist, her whiny voice, her sometimes ridiculous lyrics. When this song came out in 1998 I despised it. I didn’t listen to it until about a year ago when I heard her do it live and she killed it. I heard it completely different this time almost 10 years later. Now when I hear the album version I can appreciate the lyrics, although some still bother me like, “How bout them transparent dangling carrots”.
2. Lovefool (The Cardigans / First Band on the Moon) - This was all over the radio and of course the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack in 1996. I was a junior in high school and at the time I was a big Matthew Sweet, Smashing Pumpkins fan so this poppy, cutesy, chick song was death for me. The hook in the chorus was too much for any trying to be masculine high schooler to take. But then I started to really dig Gran Turismo a few years later and gave Lovefool another chance. I could tolerate it but wasn’t fully converted. Then Long Gone Before Daylight came out, I got married, had a baby and suddenly Lovefool made sense to me. I don’t know why, but God ordained it so.
3. Rain King (Counting Crows / Across a Wire: Live in New York City ) - I can’t emphasize enough how I loath Counting Crows live not to mention anything they wrote after Recovering the Satellites. My fertile dislike  for them began when I bought tickets to see them around 1997 at the Bowl in Santa Barbara and they canceled that day. Then I bought their live album Across A Wire only to find out that they completely rearrange every single song I liked and Adam Duritz sounds like he’s making up a mumbling melody on the spot for each tune. It’s terrible! Fast forward 10+ years and somehow this version of Rain King has stayed in my iTunes playlist and I actually like his random, mumbling melody. In fact I like it better than the poppy original. I’m still waiting for my ticket refund.
4. What I Am (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians / Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars) - Listening to this song now I can’t believe it came out in 1988. I don’t hear much of any eighties production on this, I would have guessed late 90s just on production. That being said I didn’t get this song at all when it came out, I’m going to chalk it up to just being too young to get. 1988 I was dancing to Michael Jackson and singing to Hall & Oates in the shower, worlds away from this. Now I can really appreciate the genius that went into this song.
5. Do You Realize? (The Flaming Lips / Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots) - The glitter, the balloons, the giant dancing rabbits, it was all too much for me to take in, sensory overload. I thought they were playing a joke on me, no way they could seriously be into this. They just took some acid one night and thought “hey, let’s pretend everyone is on acid, have 20 people on stage dressed in animals costumes and drop balloons on em, they’ll pay for that right?” But after taking a breath, realizing they weren’t trying to play a joke on me, they have some killer tunes. I mean really killer. This was one of the shorter turnarounds, maybe a year or so to go from hate to appreciate.

What are some songs you hated by now appreciate or dare I say, love?

I think this is a great idea but unfortunately it looks like a bit of a hack. First off it only works on Windows and the design, at least aesthetically, is pretty poor. It looks like a crappy modified Myspace page quite honestly. So while I think it’s a good idea and something a lot of bands would find useful, including mine, it needs a lot of work. The fact that they are charging $39.00 for this is laughable. Spend 5 minutes and you can capture an email database with someone’s desired songs in Zoho and distribute the songs yourself for free.

Anyone used this and disagree?

This is too funny. I just preached on “Do Dogs Go to Heaven?” yesterday. Then I blessed the animals. If you’re interested, you can go on the following website and hear the sermon and see some of the pictures taken.

I’m anything but interested, but thanks. The fact that someone actually preached on dogs going to heaven and then blessed animals just makes me ill and angry at the same time. Here’s a great follow up comment.

…I’m a Catholic and I’m not even sure if I have a soul.

That’s just priceless. Now onto probably the best comment ever received. This comment was made by a Mr. Scot Longyear in response to me calling him out on playing a Michael Jackson song in worship in the 10 Commandments of Blogging post.

Listen up Thriller,

Billy Jean is NOT my love. Maybe you should take a look at the man in the mirror. I don’t think you want to be startin’ somethin’, even though it is human nature. I know you just won’t stop ’till you get enough, you pretty young thing. Leave me alone you smooth criminal. Why you wanna trip on me? Just remember the time and keep the faith. Above all, remember it don’t matter if your black or white. It’s easy as A-B-C.

Oooooh whooo

I don’t know how anyone can top that. However, Mike takes the prize for the most chilling comment ever. My post on if non-christians should be in worship bands apparently awoke some hellish anger in him. Although it doesn’t seem like that hellish anger ever goes to sleep.

I wouldnt be caught dead on a stage with bible thumpers! unless I were eating there babys

I love getting comments like