This Sunday we introduced the newest member of Our Rising Sound, Caleb Dailey. Caleb will be doing guitar work and hopefully become a utility guy. It was nice to have a second guitar player to take some of the responsibility off me. I’m very accustom to playing in 3 piece bands as the only guitarist and it’s shaped my playing style to a great extent. But I’m excited to have Caleb playing with us.

We also introduced a new song by Jesus Culture called “Burning Ones.” You may be asking yourself, didn’t Kyle write a post about how theologically unsound some of the lyrics from this song are? The answer is, why yes I did write a post about that, I also wrote a post about how much I dug the song as a whole and in order to fix the lyric problem I changed them. Simple yet effective solution.

Your love is our reward, that’s why we ask for more of You

became

You set our hearts desires, that all our lives bring glory to You

I thought we played it better in practice than we did live, I certainly sang it better in practice. We might do this 1 more week but then Christmas will be upon us so it probably won’t be heard again until next year. I’m late as usual on Christmas planning. Time to cram.

1. We Cry Out – Kim Walker (loop available)
2. Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
3. Come Thou Fount – Robert Robinson
4. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
5. Burning Ones – Jesus Culture (loop available)

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

Earlier I posted a video of a new song from Jesus Culture called “Burning Ones.” I really dug the vibe of the song and thought the melody was really cool. This past week I started evaluating it to see if we’d do it in service and step 1 of evaluation was writing down the lyrics. Verse 1 was kind of innocuous.

Here inside your presence I’m taken by the wonder of You
Here inside your glory we give our lives wholly to You

Moved on to the pre-chorus which was a simple “Holy, Holy are You” which was good and all. But then I hit Verse 2…

Your love it burns inside our hearts are satisfied by You
Your love is our reward it’s why we ask for more of You

What?!?! God’s love is our reward? Let’s look at the definition of reward to make sure we are on the same page here:

reward: “a recompense for worthy acts or retribution for wrongdoing” or “fair return for good or bad behavior”

It seems entirely ridiculous to me we’d have to dive into this much for us not to see the foolishness in this line. This isn’t extra-biblical this is entirely contra-biblical. It violates the core of the gospel. I don’t like to rant, but folks this line is simply not truth, and I’m shocked and saddened that it would be sung. Here’s what the gospel says about our reward for our actions:

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So our just reward for our actions and fair return for our behavior is death, not God’s love. But the glory of the gospel is the cross, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”. We received grace instead of what we deserved, death. Here’s how God’s love really works:

Romans 5:6-10 “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

We did not and cannot earn God’s love, repeat, we did not and cannot earn God’s love. 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” We can keep plowing through scripture, there is no shortage because it’s the entire narrative of the gospel.

I don’t know Chris Quilala, I don’t know Kim Walker, but I believe they are Christians brothers and sisters who love Jesus and I don’t mean to bash them. In fact I bet you if I asked them, “do you think you earned God’s love or did he love you first, while you were a sinner?” That they’d answer, “no, I didn’t earn it.” Which is why I’m so puzzled that they’d sing just the opposite.

I’ve tried to think of any context that line works in and I can’t, I just can’t. Working in the second half of the line only confuses me more, “that’s why we ask for more of You.” I haven’t a clue what this line means. If anyone has an explanation by all means step in here in the comments and let me in on it, I truly feel like I’m missing something.

Came across this video of a new Jesus Culture song on shawnw.org . This song “Burning Ones” is off the new Jesus Culture album Consumed. It’s a pretty killer song, I dig the vibe, a really cool tag section at the end. Overall I was really impressed, looking forward to checking out the album.

Recently I became heavily convicted about my lack of prayer and focus on preparation. I was almost entirely reliant upon practical decision making, strategy and some sort of prideful and religious sense of continuous prayer in spirit that really meant no real expressed time of prayer. Let me be clear though, there’s nothing wrong with preparation and strategy, but when it takes the places of prayer, communion with God and reliance upon the Holy Spirit, then it’s sin. I needed to repent and make sure my preparation and strategy was an overflow of prayer and led by the Holy Spirit.

I was excited when my pastor made the decision to use our 1hr time of prayer prior to service as a time for the elders to pray for people. It was a blessing for me to be able to minister to those in the body and pray for them. It’s so encouraging to see humble people come forward out of a love and passion for God and to hear their heart and be able to battle with them in prayer. It was the best preparation/warm-up for leading worship that I can remember.

I believe that time led directly to us having one of the best services I can remember. Worship was incredible, people were passionately praising Jesus, corporate engagement was off the charts, it was powerful. I pray that next week we’re able to come with the same humility and passion.

1. We Cry Out – Kim Walker (loop available)
2. Skeleton Bones – John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
3. Live or No Longer Live – Kyle Campos
4. Messiah – Phil Wickham
5. True Love – Phil Wickham (loop available)

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

After a week of resting, prayer, dialogue and study in Portland I was ready to come back home here in Phoenix and worship with my LCC family. I had a great time, it was really everything I hoped it would be. Thanks to Ish Jimenez and the rest of the band for stepping in and leading wonderfully.

I was seeking some revelation on how to breakthrough the wall that I felt in our church body in regards to worship. The Lord led me to Colossians 1:15-18 and that really articulated and brought truth to the disconnect that I was feeling in our worship services.

He[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

I think I’ll expound on this in another blog post, but this bit of truth really rocked me and brought Christ into focus. Our church body values a lot of things, both corporately and individually. When we worship together, those sets of values are brought together and you see the disunity in it all. Amongst the body you see comfort raised high, you see family raised high, you see art raised high, you see many things raised high. But church, we must unite around the preeminence of Christ, that in all things he is valued most, placed highest and worshipped above all.

This is a big step for us to take next and there’s a lot of idols that need to be torn down. I’m excited to get through this because Christ will be glorified in it. Here’s what we chose to sing to Christ as praises to our King, that he might be preeminent in our worship.

1. Rain Down – Delirious (loop not yet available)
2. We Cry Out – Kim Walker (loop available)
3. Destructor – Red Letter (E-pop arrangement)
4. My Soul Sings – Delirious (loop available)
5. With Everything – Hillsong (loop available)

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

Reminder if you would look access to any of the loops that say “loop not yet available” just contact me. The only reason I haven’t made them publicly available is because I want to rework them but haven’t had time to, so I’d rather not make public stuff I’m not really satisfied with. But I’ll send along privately if requested.

The genesis of our arrangements goes a little something like this. I get in the shower and think about the song and work it out in my head for about 30 minutes. Yeah I take long showers, definitely not the “green” way of working arrangements, but it’s what works for me. If I think it’s an arrangement we can nail in pre-service practice we’ll give it a shot. This week I wanted to do Phil Wickham’s Messiah, but we were throwing in a 3rd part, sort of instrumental break with a vocal melody coming over top. We were playing it and it just wasn’t coming together, nobody was comfortable. We took our break for prayer and I decided to play it on acoustic and try the arrangement less “electrified”. Nearly identical arrangement, just different instrumentation and all of a sudden it felt good.

Moral of the story is this, you have to know when things aren’t working and then have the guts to make a change. I’m so lucky to have a team of skilled, humble people that don’t get offended if I tell them their part just ain’t working. Who cares if it’s what you had planned all week, who cares if the drummer was really excited about his part, nobody cares about forethought if the final product sucks and we’re not here to please musicians who love their cool new part. Thank you to my band for being flexible, knowing who we serve and laying their pride at the foot of the cross.

1. We Cry Out – Kim Walker (loop available)
2. Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
3. Lead Me to the Cross – Hillsong United (loop available)
4. Messiah - Phil Wickham
5. How He Loves – John Mark McMillan

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

Dynamics are crucial to a good set. Dynamics inside of a song, dynamics in the set as a whole, dynamics in instrumentation and vocals. This week when planning the set I knew I wanted to break down one of the songs acoustically that we had been doing fully electrified with loops. It ended up being an acoustic version of “None But Jesus” at the end of the set and then a reprise of “My Soul Sings” acoustically as well.

For me both of those were the high point of the set and I thought it really got the congregation focused, me as well, on Jesus where it belongs. At this point so much energy and time is set on Easter service that it’s going to take a lot of prayer and focus not to look past the services before then. Lot to do and need to lean on Jesus to accomplish any of it.

1. We Cry Out – Kim Walker (loop available)
2. Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
3. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
4. My Soul Sings – Delirious (loop available)
5. None But Jesus – Hillsong (loop not yet available)

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

I used to be really bummed out when I’d see people in the congregation who were obviously bothered by the worship music. I would try not to take it personally but as a young worship leader(16-23 or so) it would weigh on me. Nowadays though, I’m older, wiser, about 30 pounds heavier and have a much better perspective and understanding. Now those who give me the blank, sometimes angry stares just make me chuckle a bit inside. Don’t get me wrong, I wish they’d enter in, it’s my desire and duty to lead them in worship. But I know our style is not for everyone and it will turn off some people, especially churched people, that’s just reality.

Coming off our elder’s retreat/strategy weekend our leadership is as unified as ever as to our direction in arts, technology, doctrine, pastoral care, you name it. So I feel like my back is covered. Onto the days events… We ended our countdown video with an amazing video made by Granger Community Church on S.M. Lockridge’s famous “Seven Way King” sermon, a.k.a “That’s My King.”

That’s My King! from Albert Martin on Vimeo.

We went into worship as the video ended, the video is so powerful, blows me away every time I watch it.

1. We Cry Out – Kim Walker (loop available)
2. Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
3. Our God Reigns – Delirious (loop available)
4. Where You Go I’ll Go – Brian and Jenn Johnson (loop available)
5. Everlasting God – New Life (loop available)

Then I got to give mad props to my pastor, Aaron Dailey and my bass player Josh for their spontaneous, incredible acapella leading of Amazing Grace. Sounded amazing!

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