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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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:

1. The World Can’t Take It Away – Ryan Delmore
2. Lead Me to the Cross – Hillsong United (loop available)
3. Lamb of God – Twila Paris/Sarah Reeves arr.
4. Mini-sermon / Communion
5. Death In His Grave w/video – John Mark McMillan (video not yet available)
6. Mini-sermon
7. 3 Video testimonies (videos not yet available)
8. How I Live – Kyle Campos (loop available)
9. Offering
10. True Love w/drama – Phil Wickham (loop available)
11. Mini-sermon
12. Invitation

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

I feel so guilty that I’ve kept John Mark McMillan’s brilliant song, Death In His Grave too close to my chest.  I did mention in my review of John Mark’s “The Medicine” album that this song was one of the best on the album and I couldn’t wait to do it on Easter. Well Easter is upon us and as we practiced this for the first time I was just as encouraged, moved, convicted, slammed, by the song as I had hoped. It’s the perfect Easter song and I’m so thankful for John Mark writing it. Here are the words:

Though the earth cried out for blood
satisfied her hunger was
Her billows calmed the raging seas
for the souls of men she craved

Sun and moon from balcony
Turned their head in disbelief
Their precious love would taste the sting
disfigured and disdained

Chorus
On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke with the keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ laid death in his grave

So three days in darkness slept
The Morning Sun of righteousness
But rose to shame the throws of death
And over turn his rule
Now daughters and the sons of men
Would pay not their dues again
The debt of blood they owed was rent
When the day rolled a new

(to chorus)

Bridge
He has cheated
Hell and seated
Us above the fall
In desperate places
He paid our wages
One time once and for all

The only lyric I will change is “cheated”, I believe I know the intent there but I think “defeated” is a clearer way of presenting it, so we’ll make that change. I’m sorry if this is the first time you’ve heard this song and it’s too late for you to incorporate in your service. I take full responsibility.

By the way if you don’t already you can follow him on twitter @johnmarkmc and John Mark also started a blog at johnmarkmcmillan.blogspot.com

This is probably one of the most moving videos I’ve seen. Mars Hill baptized 120 people on easter, in the sanctuary, while rocking an amazingly powerful hymn. Seeing people baptized in their street clothes while singing Gloria, man, intense, nothing else to say, so just watch.

I have for quite some time been hoping for a Abelton Live/Reason/synth/jack of all trades musician to come to our church. I love working with it in the studio but I’ve always wanted to get it integrated into our live worship sets. Sadly that person has not walked through the door yet so I got myself  a midi controller(M-Audio Oxygen 8), installed Reason and started hacking away.

I was very impressed with how easy Reason 4 was to work with. I was able to make some real progress really quick, the transport features are similar to standard recording software (Logic/ProTools), the mixer and components are all easy to work with. The patches it comes with are plentiful and give you plenty of avenues of creativity. So I was off and running there. I started looking at Abelton but it felt very Windowsy to me. Being a completely saved man (mac man) I can’t be havin that.  So it’s just Reason for now.

This Easter we tried out our first go at playing with a Reason track. We did a stripped down acoustic version of Mighty Is the Power of the Cross by Chris Tomlin and integrated a reason track I recorded. I think we’ve been reasonably well paced in the progression of musical style in our church and I hope we haven’t left many behind. This was another leap forward and I must admit, my first try at it so it wasn’t all that great but it was a start. For the first time in a long time I was nervous. I was panicking that my computer would shut down or the track would pause or something funky. Thank God it went smoothly, giving me a bit more confidence using this live going forward.

So here’s a 2 minute cut from what we used on the outro. This of course had live vocals as well as an acoustic guitar.

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