It’s been a long time since I’ve done a set list post. I thought they were getting a bit monotonous and dry, so I needed a break. I’ve been hearing from folks(inside our church) that they really want to know more about the songs we play so I’m gonna get back to posting the set lists here.

This Sunday was such a beautiful display of God’s goodness and providence. God brought together things that made it seem like we had a lot of things planned well ahead that we didn’t. Pastor Aaron taught on regeneration and gospel freedom as part of our series on Galatians and it just wrecked the place. I was talking with a few people after service and it’s so wonderful to hear a common work being done in the church’s heart. I love when the body is moving together. This series has matured us in the gospel as a body so much and I’m so thankful for it.

I planned to debut a new song by Gungor called “We Will Run” that’s been on deck for quite some time now. I wasn’t aware of the specific of the message but it became clear that this was indeed God’s timing for this song. It became an anthem for the day that supported so well what the Spirit was doing through the preaching. The lyrics to that song were just so spot on.

Create in me a clean heart, For I have turned away from You
Save us from our ways, Oh God, oh God, For we have turned our face from You
Lord have mercy

We will run to you, we will run to you
Turning from our sin we return to you
Father heal your world, make all things new, make all things new

Your Love and mercy build us, shape us
Break and then re-create us now
Lord have mercy

Oh, bring us back to You

We’ve also been opening our sets/services differently. Instead of the normal opening prayer and go into song 1, we’ve been opening up instrumentally and then having a puritan prayer read in concert with the instrumental. It’s not just a dry read over instrumentation but we try and build the tension and crescendo in concert with the prayer. We got the idea from a recent A29 pastors meeting and it’s been awesome! Here’s the full set list.

1. How I Live – Kyle Campos
2. The World Can’t Take it Away – Ryan Delmore
3. We Will Run – Gungor
4. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
5. How He Loves – John Mark McMillan

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.

This past Sunday we were baptizing people on stage during worship. I truly love and cherish these times. So awesome to see people proclaim their devotion to Jesus publicly. The testimonies given were powerful and a real encouragement to the body, they certainly were for me. And then something happened, I’m simply calling it, “the incident.”

On our last baptism we had a bit of a miscue and the person got dunked facing the reverse direction and instead of the water splash going over the intended side, a mini tidal wave came and washed over my pedal board. 3 thoughts rushed through my head:

1. I wonder how bad this is going to hurt when I get electrocuted?
2. Please Jesus spare my pedals, I don’t have the $ to replace.
3. What am I singing and playing right now?

Apparently from the tweets that went out shortly after, I had a terrified look on my face, so I didn’t play it off well. I stumbled through the song we were playing trying to get my head together and just hope no fires started. One of our elders Mark thought quickly and tossed up a towel over the pedal board and started to dry as we sang. He’s an electrician so has no fear of getting shocked.

As far as I know the pedals are fine, few more tests. But it was a great Sunday and I’m so thankful for the work Jesus has done in those people’s lives.

1. You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band (loop not yet available)
2. Jesus’ Name – Ryan Delmore
3. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
4. The Solid Rock – Edward Mote (loop available)
5. True Love – Phil Wickham (loop available)

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

A few weeks ago we rolled out our new home group/community group/gospel community structure and I’m shocked at how much grace God has shown. Our groups are really taking off, people are engaging in community and I really think it’s building a sense of true love and commitment to one another in the body.

This week we announced our first batch of covenant members of LCC which marks another new chapter for us. I’m so excited about rolling out membership and seeing people commit to God and one another in a way that’s so counter-cultural, so against our ingrained, rugged individualism. I’m pumped about what’s ahead and if the last few weeks are any indication God is going to blow away my expectations.

1. Jesus’ Name – Ryan Delmore
2. God of This City – Bluetree (loop available)
3. Lead Me to The Cross – Hillsong United (loop available)
4. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
5. With Everything – Hillsong (loop available)

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

This was a weighty Sunday for me as I prepared a financial update from the church to share with the body. There wasn’t really any good news I could deliver except that we worship Jesus and he can change our hearts. I attempted to lovingly but firmly expose our sin of greed and money worship as a church. Not as an elder condemning with a pointed finger but as a member humbled and convicted of my own sin. I asked this question of the body:

If the only thing you received in return for your giving was a more full revelation of a life after Christ and the only blessing was more of Jesus in your life, would that be enough? I have no other prize to offer.

That’s really all I can say, I don’t have a sales pitch as to why we should give, I can just say if we love Jesus and each other our hearts will respond with overflowing generosity. If knowing more of Jesus, seeing more of Jesus, being filled with His spirit and loving Jesus more isn’t enough of a prize then it doesn’t matter how much you give because you’re missing the giver, Jesus. I pray for our church, I love our church and I desperately want to see God move in the hearts of our church in this area of great weakness, pride and immaturity. I pray that our church would know the kind of giving in 2 Corinthians 8:

“Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.”

Here’s how we worshipped in song…

1. You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band (loop not yet available)
2. Hosanna – Hillsong United (loop available)
3. My Jesus I Love Thee
4. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
5. With Everything – Hillsong (loop available)

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

This Sunday was a huge day for Life Connection Church. It marked our 7yr anniversary, and also the finds our church at one of the most exciting points in our history. We are blessed to have been sustained and blessed with God’s grace over our church and we’re making some incredibly exciting changes to our Connection Groups which I think our entire leadership team is incredibly excited to see happen. We had out anniversary party Friday night which my wife catered and words cannot express how good of a job she did. Absolutely flawless, absolutely delicious. I don’t know how she does it, but she’s incredible.

My pastor Aaron Dailey asked me in the week if I could do “God of This City” by Bluetree, made famous by Chris Tomlin. I’ve had this song in kind of my secondary queue for songs to do, I just needed a lot of time and inspiration on how to remix it. I have 0 Chris Tomlin songs in the current rotation, so I had my work cut out for me. Stayed up until 2am Sat night working on the loop and got it to a point where I was satisfied it could work in the set. I still need to make some changes to it, I’m not completely satisfied, but I’ve included a preview of the loop below and will post separately when completed. I usually don’t make public loops I’ve not yet finished, but it’s been a while since I’ve posted a completed loop so I figured I’d include in the process.

Great day, great service, just one of those services that felt fruitful. Thankful for my LCC family! And congrats to all the LCC interns that graduated, you guys are incredible.

1. Skeleton Bones – John Mark McMillan (loop not yet available)
2. Lead Me to the Cross – Hillsong United (loop available)
3. God of This City – Bluetree (loop preview below, RSS readers must click through)
4. Destructor – Red Letter
   
5. Gloria 34 - Taylor Sorensen (loop available)

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

 

 God of This City Loop Preview [00:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This past Sunday I accomplished 2 things I’ve never done before. I broke 2 strings on 2 different guitars and one of the strings I broke was the D string…on an acoustic! That’s hard to do. I felt sick when I woke up that morning and I knew it was going to be a struggle, I prayed for it not to be, but I knew I was going to have to push through. In fact it reminded me of something one of my old pastors used to tell me.

95% of the Christian walk is digging and fighting in the trenches. Maybe 5% of it is mountain top experiences.

In this worship trench in the middle of “So Near” I snapped a string on my electric which had a 2 pronged effect. Screwing up the back half of So Near and causing me to think what song I was going to play next instead of what was planned. We were planning on doing an electrified remix of Kevin Prosch’s “So Come“, but that wasn’t going to work on my backup guitar which was an acoustic. (note to self, keep an electric backup) So I decided to do “Everlasting God” by New Life acoustically last.

That actually went well and I walked off stage feeling like we weathered the storm. Sure it wasn’t the smoothest of set, but we managed to get through it. At the end of the sermon my pastor asked me to play “How He Loves” by John Mark McMillan. Wouldn’t you know it, in the middle of that song I broke the D string(the D string!) on the acoustic. 2 strings, 2 guitars, 2 awkward recoveries.

I’ve become pretty good at ripping off the snapped string and carrying on, but when you are the only guitarist, there’s no hiding being out of tune once a string snaps. I rarely break strings, never broken 2 in one set and never a D string. I figure I should be good for a long time for string breakage.

1. You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band (loop not yet available)
2. Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
3. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
4. So Near – Vineyard UK (loop available)
5. Everlasting God – New Life (loop available)
6. How He Loves – John Mark McMillan (end of service)

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

I returned this week from our family vacation in California. Stayed for a few days with my brother’s family in my hometown of Santa Barbara CA, then took the family to Disneyland for my son’s birthday. It was awesome and everything I had hoped it would be. Theeeennnnn we got back and let’s just say, the real world set in quickly. One of the roughest weeks I’ve had in a long time. Psalm 73:25-26 ministered to my spirit well:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

It’s always a challenge to prepare worship for Sunday and not bring in all your issues into the set. You end up picking songs that minister to your situation instead of picking songs that minister to the body and glorify Jesus. I’ve spoken before how being an elder in the church has really helped in leading worship because you’re more aware of the pulse of the congregation and if there are corporate issues. This greatly informs my selection of songs, knowing what our body has to worship through and repent of. That being said, here’s what we sung:

1. Jesus’ Name – Ryan Delmore
2. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
3. I Will Trust You – Chris Lizotte
4. Our God Reigns – Delirious (loop available)
5. Reprise (Be Lifted High) – Hillsong United

The set flowed really well I thought. I thought we may be a little out of sync since I missed last week and we hadn’t played for a couple weeks, but the band played really well. I really enjoyed our remix of the “Be Lifted High” reprise, might have to do a little loop to that.

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