This has been a big week for many reasons, all of which I’ll blog about. But one of the simpler ones to blog about is my church’s entrance into full Acts 29 membership. The A29 blog just published an article introducing us to the network. I’m really excited to be joining the network, there are so many pastors, worship leaders and friends here that I respect.

As far as worship music goes, we do things differently than most A29 churches I know. That’s fine for us and I don’t expect any issues with that. A29 is a pretty diverse organization with a lot of different kinds of churches. We are a Reformed-Charismatic church, reformed in theology, non-cessationist, holy spirit believing, gift empowered body of believers that sing our guts out to loud, thumping, worship music. We are a creative bunch, that use lots of video, “concert” lighting, text messaging Q&A, twitter to organize our home groups, podcasting, vodcasting, live loops…  We’re in downtown Phoenix, in a rough neighborhood that frequently has police helicopters circling our building during night meetings. My point is we aren’t your grandparent’s reformed church.

But then again…we are complementarian, we are firm believers of sola scriptura, we love Piper, Chandler, Driscoll, Keller and many of us are 4.5 point calvanists. (Not a typo, that’s 4 and a half) We practice church discipline, are introducing formal membership, preach the cross relentlessly and by that I mean the rugged cross, penal substitutionary atonement, propitiation and expiation.

We’re a crazy bunch of misfits for sure, but we have deep conviction about what we do and who we are in Christ. We’re excited to team up with the group of A29 churches here in Phoenix and share the gospel with the lost and hurting. I pray this opens new doors for our church and that we’re able to reach more people for Christ.

I mean it…literally. I know playing songs your congregation doesn’t want to hear sounds like a horrible idea and flies in the face of many years of your contemporary worship training, but I don’t know when our job became more about pleasing man instead of Jesus. Now before you get all huffy, let me explain.

First, I don’t mean purposefully playing songs that your congregation doesn’t like stylistically. Although if people only worship Jesus when they hear a Chris Tomlin song then I’d say you have really big worship and idolatry issues to tackle and then maybe purposefully *not* playing Chris Tomlin is a good idea.

Secondly, I don’t think being a contrarian is a sign of leadership maturity. I’m not advocating simply doing the opposite of what other churches are doing, or constantly trying to throw off your congregation in worship simply because seeing them squirm makes you feel like you’re really doing God’s will.

Here’s what I am saying. As worshippers we are constantly battling idols taking the place of Jesus. Idols we’ve torn down will take new shape and present themselves as something new and more worthy and acceptable of worship. If anything takes our worship but Jesus it is idolatry, sin. Colossians 1:18 “And he[Jesus] is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Our congregations worship a lot of things over Christ and we have to expose idols in our worship, tear them down and place Jesus above them as our focus of worship.

Probably not too many of you have any problems with the above paragraph, but here’s where it gets messy…

For the families that worship their own comfort, rest and individualism by showing up 30 minutes late do you think they want to sing about how there is no rest outside of Christ, that even in our sleep we toil, or that they’ve forsaken the gathering because they worship their individuality and comfort? Show them by singing that we only enjoy peace and rest in Christ because of the bloody, violent, death of Christ on the cross and that now they’ve been saved to community, the body of Christ, to sacrifice, serve and worship together.

For the college kids that show up right on time because they love the music, but spent last night partying hard, indulging in their sinful passions, do you think they want to sing about how they are slaves to sin, deserving of death and that unless they get a new heart in Christ their posturing in worship, the jumping, the singing, the Hillsong “woa-oh” chants are worthless clatter. That they worship themselves and can’t atone for their sins by singing loudly. Show them by singing that Jesus is their propitiation, that they are dead in their sins, but that there is life in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That if they truly encountered Christ they’ve be given a new heart, and that they’d no longer desire to live a life of sin.

For the religious church couple that just walked in dignified, that has no reason to get uncomfortable because they were “saved” at a youth camp at age 10 and baptized in the pool so their salvation is secure. Show them by singing the psalms that our hearts cry out, our soul thirsts for Jesus, that we fall at the feet of Jesus and cry “Hosanna”, and that if they don’t, don’t they know even the rocks, even the pews they comfortably sit in, would cry out for Jesus. That their dispassionate hearts show they worship their dignity, which all through scripture is shown to be folly.

Worship leaders, don’t make yourself a petty entertainer. Don’t seek to satisfy your congregation’s idols. Lead your congregation to worship the real Jesus, show them who Jesus is, what he has done and if they get that, they’ll see themselves for who they are, repent and become new creations in Christ. Sing the songs their flesh doesn’t want to hear, sing the songs that wreak havoc in their hearts. Our worship should be a dance of repentance, praise and honor. Worship leaders, seek to have Jesus preeminent in all things, all things.

What songs are you playing now that challenge the congregation and confront their idols? Do you even think about that when choosing songs?

I use about 30 songs in my regular rotation. This is probably on the low end for being the only worship band at our church. I would imagine most churches in a “praise band” setup would have a larger rotation, but I guess we’ll find out in this post. Our vision at LCC is to raise up multiple bands that have small rotations so we aren’t overlapping and if we are they are different arrangements. This results, hopefully, in a few things

1. Tighter set -  bands are playing fewer songs so they have more opportunity to experiment and perfect their arrangements.
2. Familiarity – Congregation gets to connect with songs better and have a chance at memorization so they spend less time staring at the lyrics and more time focusing on Jesus.
3. Freshness – when new songs come in, older songs are getting pruned instead of an ever growing rotation. This takes the pressure off the band for introducing new songs so they don’t feel like their work load gets larger and larger.

The last point is important because we want to keep bringing in new songs but typically it’s at the expense of an older song that just doesn’t seem to be relevant anymore. That’s not to say we don’t play any old songs, because we do. I’ll bring back older songs, hymns that bring diversity to the set and a freshness to the set as a whole.

So how many songs are in your rotation? And it would be great if you could describe in the comments what kind of worship band organization you use, praise band, multiple bands or something else.

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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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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.

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

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

Bryan Nelson at Vertical Resonator recently did a post showing how his church actually syncs two live bands in 2 different rooms for their worship service. He leads worship at Topeka Bible Church and is really doing some great creative stuff. The two bands play the same set, at the exact same time in 2 different rooms and are forced to do this due to the bleed through in the rooms they are in. It’s a really awesome and interesting setup. Here’s the full diagram showing the setup.

Early Sunday morning I got a text from my pastor saying he was up all night sick and that he wasn’t going to miss service but needed prayer. I got the sense at that point this might be one of those “challenging” days. Sure enough during rehearsal we had plenty of technical issues. Cords failing, shortage of cords, piano was sounding awful out of the house, the hits just kept coming. Then service started…

The set was going good, but I felt some disconnect in the worship and was battling in the middle of the set how to address it. We got to the last “ministry” song, Our God Reigns, and I snapped a string at a terrible moment. It was a good time as far as point in the set(last song) but not a good point in that song. Although I’m not sure what a good point to break a string would be. I haven’t broke a string in a looong time, I think Delmore infected me with his string snapping disease.

I did my best to recover and plow through, I finished the song on piano, but I wasn’t happy how that sounded either. Mostly because I’m a terrible piano player and I haven’t played in a few weeks, which showed. Through it all I think God showed his grace and he was glorified. We avoided a complete train wreck of a distraction. The message was awesome and people really responded. Amen!

1. You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band (loop not yet available)
2. Skeleton Bones – John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
3. Lead Me to the Cross – Hillsong United (loop available)
4. Come Thou Fount
5. Our God Reigns – Delirious (loop available)

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

This Sunday was a big day for our church. We announced to the church the new leadership structure with our elders(which I’m part of), the leaving of one elder and addition of another. It really is an exciting new chapter for LCC, we are better positioned to do what God has given us vision and gifting for than ever before. We have an incredible team of leaders ready to execute and I can’t wait to see what this next year has for us.

Worship went really well, got many compliments on the sound (great mix Dave!). We had a few timing issues today, click track wasn’t as loud in our in ears as I would have liked, but from what I hear it wasn’t noticeable to the congregation. We just never seemed to settle in on the click on a song or 2. Haven’t had that problem in a long time, I blame the monitor mix which we’ll fix. We also played the full “Skeleton Bones” by John Mark McMillan today. I recorded an acoustic and shaker loop to go with it and it went really well. It’s an incredible song and I’m excited to have a new high quality fast song in the rotation.

1. Rain Down – Delirious (loop not yet available)
2. Skeleton Bones – John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
3. Hosanna – Hillsong (loop available)
4. Everlasting God – New Life (loop available)
5. (Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen – got cut)

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