Tim Hughes | Our Rising Sound

January 18 2010

What songs should we sing in light of Haiti?

Tagged Under : Albert Mohler, Haiti, Tim Hughes, worship

As I prepared for this past Sunday’s worship set I had a very heavy heart. The stories and images coming out of Haiti are truly heart breaking and challenging at many levels. This past week Dennis Miller was asking for Christians to call into his radio show and explain how God allows this to happen. I listened every day as people would call in and espouse 1 of 2 theories.

God had nothing to do with this, this was Satan. or…
This is direct punishment for Haitians sin.

It was frustrating and painful to hear people either run away from God’s sovereignty and appoint the power to call creation into action to Satan, or to run from grace and appoint judgment onto Haiti that all nations deserve and are under. It pains me to hear Christians disavowing the sovereign rule and reign of God over all creation, but it also pains me to hear Christians claiming they know why this happened. What a disgusting measure of pride in both circumstances. If you haven’t read Albert Mohler’s post on “Does God Hate Haiti?” I implore you to go read it.

So all of this is happening in my mind as I pray about what my responsibility is as a worship leader in light of what’s happening. It was a very similar feeling I felt after 9/11 and I remember the feeling that the church had no songs to sing after 9/11 because we tend to overlook worshipping in lament. Though the Psalms are full of worship in lament, our churches are usually void of them.

I felt it important for our church to not run from the gospel and hide in either of the extremes I mentioned above. That in light of what’s happening in Haiti we should respond corporately in a few ways:

1. We should grieve and mourn with those in Haiti

Romans 12:15 spells it out clearly, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Starting out the service with big smiles and happy clappy, dance in the aisles music seemed ill-fitting at best when viewed in the shadow of 50,000 dead with another 100,000 yet to be found. Paul says we should rejoice in our suffering, but doesn’t say we should rejoice in other’s suffering. In fact he says quite the opposite in 1 Corinthians 12:26 when discussing church unity:

“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (ESV)

Before and during our worship set we had a lot of prayer, acknowledging the heartache and suffering. And we mourned with those in Haiti dealing with this devastation first hand.

2. Worship the all sovereign God

The church has to recognize God’s sovereignty in all things. That God’s ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts and he has plans and purposes that we don’t see. I don’t see the number of earthquakes God has held back, the hurricanes he’s calmed or the tsunamis he’s diverted. Matt Chandler said,

“The entire universe is built around communicating to you that you’re tiny and you’re fragile and you control nothing.”

We are tiny and God is great, all powerful, all sovereign and all good. This earthquake as well as all creation should point us to God and illuminate his divine attributes (sovereignty being one of them). Romans 1:20:

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Our worship set was filled with these songs, every song had this at its core. Our God Reigns, The Solid Rock, Whole World In His Hands.

3. Worship the merciful, loving, good God

God loves Haiti, he loves the people of Haiti and his heart is grieved. At the cross we see God’s perfect justice meet his perfect mercy, grace and love. We live in the aftermath of that collision on the cross and our hearts should be eternally grateful. Ephesians 2:4-7

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

We opened with God of This City, a song I think does an amazing job of communicating God’s sovereign rule, but that things aren’t yet as they should be. That God is still at work.

4. Serve the broken and minister to the lost

If all you have is great context and point of view without your heart being impacted and propelled towards acts of kindness and mercy, then there’s a disconnect with the gospel. My heart is warmed by the tremendous outpouring from the Christian community towards Haiti. There are so many different avenues of service and help happening right now and they all are orchestrated under the mercy, grace and sovereignty of God.

I think it it incredibly important for our worship to not hide from any of these things in this time. Our view of the gospel in our worship needs to be enriched not diluted. We can’t hide from this and we shouldn’t try and cloak God or any of his divine attributes to make it more palatable to the world. I beg my fellow worship leaders to point their churches, their community to the gospel in this season. In devastation and loss their is great opportunity for God to be magnified, for the lost to be pointed to Christ and for the church to be mobilized to show Christ’s love.

One of the songs we did which I really felt God appointed for us in this time is a song by Tim Hughes called “Whole World In His Hands.” I’ll finish with the lyrics to that song.

Verse 1
When all around is fading
And nothing seems to last
When each day is filled with sorrow
Still I know with all my heart

Chorus
He’s got the whole world in His hands
He’s got the whole world in His hands
I fear no evil for You are with me
Strong to deliver, mighty to save
He’s got the whole world in His hands

Verse 2
When I walk through fire
I will not be burned
When the waves come crashing round me
Still I know with all my heart

More »

Filed Under (leadership, news, worship) by Kyle

(8) Comments Read more

June 29 2009

Sunday Set List: “Uniting with church family”

Tagged Under : Delirious, Phil Wickham, Ryan Delmore, Sunday Set List, Tim Hughes, worship

sundaysetlist

This week was a special service, we had Pastor Chris Daukas and his core team at Grace Church join us in worship. Chris preached along side our pastor and it was incredible being able to unite with them, worship and fellowship with them. I wish we could do it more often.

The worship set went well, it wouldn’t be complete without at least one hurdle. In the middle of the first set my strap lock snapped off, the guitar stayed on my shoulder, but I had to be very still so the strap wouldn’t completely come off. The transition from song 1 and 2 was long while I switched straps with my backup guitar. But hey, compared to last week’s 2 string snapping extravaganza this was nothing.

I tried to do a relatively simple set since we had some visitors and I wanted them to be able to enter in as much as possible. We did a new arrangement of Come Thou Fount which I thought went really well, I’ll be mixing that this week and see if I can’t release the live recording on the site.

Jesus’ Name – Ryan Delmore
Everything – Tim Hughes (loop available)
True Love – Phil Wickham (loop available)
Come Thou Fount
Our God Reigns – Delirious (loop available)

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

More »

Filed Under (Sunday Set List, worship) by Kyle

(2) Comments Read more

December 22 2008

Sunday Set List – “Our Christmas Testimony”

Tagged Under : church, Delirious, Hillsong, Merchant Band, Sunday Set List, Taylor Sorensen, Tim Hughes, worship

This week was a very special service for us. We looked at the lives involved in the birth of Christ and did some video interviews with people in our church who’s testimony can relate in some way to those lives in scripture. As each character was examined we’d do a worship song to introduce and Pastor Aaron would do about a 5 minute sermonette on that character. Woven into that arrangement was some incredible spoken word by a friend of the church, Brandon “the Rep”, a local christian rap artist. So the entire service wove around music, video testimonies, sermonette and spoken word.

We weren’t sure how it would go over but it went over amazing. I think we proved the format can work and we’ll probably expand on it for other special services. I’ll make sure and post the videos as soon as they are done being edited.

You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band (loop used, not yet available)
Sing (Or the Rocks Will Get To) – Taylor Sorensen
Everything – Tim Hughes (loop available)
What Child Is This (Joseph video)
Silent Night (Mary video)
Where We Belong – Hillsong (loop available) (shepherd’s video)
With Everything – Hillsong (loop available) (innkeeper video)
Our God Reigns (Reprise) – Delirious (loop available)

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

More »

Filed Under (Sunday Set List, church, worship) by Kyle

(6) Comments Read more

December 01 2008

Sunday Set List: “Everyone is turkified”

Tagged Under : Brian Johnson, church, Hillsong United, Jenn Johnson, John Mark McMillan, loops, Sunday Set List, Tim Hughes, Vineyard, worship

Service this week seemed like there was a small carbon monoxide leak in the building. Not enough to injure or kill, just enough to cause people to look asleep while awake. Lots of folks were still on vacation or in a sleeping coma from over eating. We were disjointed as a band, no big mistakes or anything, but we had some monitoring issues that knocked us a bit and we never seemed to get into a groove.

Days like today I’m not sure what to think other than I don’t have a good feeling about how it went. The sermon was fantastic, so I’m excited about that. So I guess it was just worship that was rough. Here was the set, imagine it going well for me would ya?

Salvation Is Here – Hillsong United (loop used, not yet available)
Dress Up – John Mark McMillan
Everything – Tim Hughes (loop available)
So Near – Vineyard UK (loop available)
Where You Go I’ll Go – Brian and Jenn Johnson (loop available)

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

More »

Filed Under (Sunday Set List, church, worship) by Kyle

(3) Comments Read more

November 03 2008

Sunday Set List – “Fight for Life”

Tagged Under : church, Delirious, Hillsong, Hillsong United, Jeremy Riddle, Tim Hughes, worship

Last week was a really rough set, so I really wanted to make sure things went smoothly this week. Fortunately we praise a God full of grace and this Sunday went incredibly well. As we were winding down the set playing None But Jesus, our pastor brought up one of our interns who led us in prayer for life and for the church’s fight against abortion. This woman’s prayer was especially powerful because she had an abortion and has publicly cried out for healing. After her prayer another one of our interns got up and led us in passionate prayer for a spirit of adoption in the church. See this young man was supposed to be aborted, but was saved by the grace of God and adopted by some loving Christian parents.

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.

Solid Rock – Delirious (loop used, not yet published)
Sweetly Broken – Jeremy Riddle
Everything – Tim Hughes (loop available)
Where We Belong – Hillsong (loop available)
None But Jesus – Hillsong United (loop used, not yet published)

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

More »

Filed Under (Sunday Set List, worship) by Kyle

(1) Comment Read more

September 30 2008

Loop available: “Everything” by Tim Hughes

Tagged Under : Ableton, backtracks, Everything, loops, Reason, Tim Hughes

Tim Hughes - Holding Nothing Back This arrangement is identical to the album release as far as song arrangement goes. The instrumentation is a bit different on the intro where I used a rhodes, the string melody on the chorus out is a bit different and the verse breakdown after the chorus has some additional ambient instrumentation. If anyone is interested in using it and would like a version without the guitars then I can post that as well or you can download the reason(rns) file which doesn’t have any guitars. In my band I didn’t want to lose the distorted rhythm guitar by playing these leads so it made sense for me to put the lead on the track.

Song: Everything by Tim Hughes, Holding Nothing Back
Key: C
Bpm: 150
Intro: 4 bar intro

If you download this loop or you’ve benefited in any way or are appreciative of the service, I’d ask that you please consider donating whatever you feel the loop is worth. The amount (including $0) I leave up to you.

Standard Podcast [4:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rate this loop:

Rating: 4.0/5 (1 vote cast)

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

More »

Filed Under (Backtracks and Loops, Podcast, audio, worship) by Kyle

(5) Comments Read more

September 07 2008

Sunday Set List – Merchant Band makes an appearance

Tagged Under : Charlie Hall, Delirious, Kim Walker, Merchant Band, Tim Hughes, worship

We at LCC are smack dab in the middle of our series on Worship Culture and unlike many sermons on worship which target postures, we’ve spent zero time on that topic. But as the congregation is getting taught on redeemed worship and dealing with our idolatry the response and engagement in the music portion of worship has grown. This series is fundamental to our maturity as a church and I think to this point people are really grabbing onto it. We were packed out today with a quite a few families missing, so we really need to add another service quick.

I finally got the loop done to a point that was performable for “You Love Me Forever” by the Merchant Band. I’ve had this song in the queue for quite some time but just hadn’t had the time to finish it. Still a lot of room for improvement in the loop so I won’t post it yet, but we pulled it off and I thought it sounded great.

We Cry Out – Kim Walker
You Love Me Forever – Merchant Band
Everything – Tim Hughes
Our God Reigns – Delirious
Prepare the Way – Charlie Hall (ended up getting cut)

This is part of Sunday Setlists @ Fred McKinnon.

More »

Filed Under (Sunday Set List, worship) by Kyle

(12) Comments Read more

September 01 2008

Sunday Set List – Another step forward

Tagged Under : Delirious, Life Connection Church, Tim Hughes, Tim Smith, Vineyard, worship

Programming loops has been a full time job. I don’t have nearly as much time as I need, but each week we build off the last and take another step forward. 4 of the 5 songs had full beginning to end programmed loops. I’ve never played in a band that had this must richness and fullness in live sound. The congregation is adapting to change, I see a lot less attention being paid to the band and that’s a good thing. Hopefully the lack of attention will be due to a consistency in excellence and not because there’s nothing good to pay attention to. Here was our set at Life Connection Church:

Rain Down – Delirious
Everything – Tim Hughes
Gloria – Tim Smith arrangement
So Near – Vineyard UK
My Jesus I Love Thee (no loop, guitar only)

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Sunday Set List post series. If anyone is interested in hearing the loops for these songs I can post them. Anyone at LCC let me know how the set went.