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.

Our Sunday morning schedule goes, 7:30-8:30 band practice, 8:30-9:30 prayer, 9:30-10-15 mingle, 10:15 service starts. Our morning prayer is in the sanctuary and everyone is involved, leaders, members, interns, you name it. I can’t really remember a time where prayer was lethargic, dispassionate, disengaged and then have service go really well. I can however, remember many services where prayer went poorly and service followed suit.

One topic I took up in prayer was praying against the lazy, irreverent attitude that has crept into our congregation and into our worship. I felt great conviction about us bowing at the foot of comfort instead of the cross and the irreverent attitude that was causing. Prayer was passionate, people were engaged and I think the Holy Spirit brought to the surface a lot of things our congregation has been struggling with corporately though no one was identifying individually. Well it takes individual conviction to address a corporate issue and I think we took a good step this forward this week as a body.

The worship set went really well. We had a great practice the night before ironing out all our issues, from cabling, to sound board, to amps, to new in-ears, to getting my guitar worked on in the shop. I think everything we did in preparation throughout the week large and small was honored and we played well and didn’t provide any distraction which made it easier for the band to worship, which in turn provided a better example of worship, which created a better corporate atmosphere and engagement in worship. Funny how that works huh? We turned down the suck, thank you Lord.

1. The World Can’t Take It Away – Ryan Delmore
2. Solid Rock – Delirious (loop available)
   
3. Hosanna – Hillsong United (loop available)
4. Where We Belong – Hillsong (loop available)
   
5. Lamb of God – Twila Paris/Sarah Reeves arr.
   

End of service ministry:

1. Come Thou Fount
2. How He Loves – John Mark McMillan

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

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.

Today’s set was a close call, a lot of uncertainty down to the wire but we God worked it all out and it went really well. I had been working on a loop for “With Everything” by Hillsong for a couple weeks and I had it completed to a point where I thought it was ready for Sunday morning. I’ve learned that no matter how good it sounds in headphones, monitors, car, whatever…I have to do the final Reason mix for the church PA. Too many times I’ve had a killer mix at home then played it at church and the EQ is totally different, the room is different of course so some instruments get lost and it’s just no good.

This time I did the final loop mix at the church and then bounced it and everything sounded much better. I was really pleased how well the band did with it for the first time. Really the entire set came off without a hitch except that my guitar caught on my in ears cord and I was getting strangled for an entire song. Almost died, but being the true professional I am I soldiered on and nobody could tell the difference. Oh and then I pulled a muscle trying to fix it with my left hand behind my back…man am I getting old.

1. Solid Rock – Delirious (loop available)
2. Joy of the Lord – Twila Paris (I know, me and Twila..funny eh? I do a much different version, great song though)
3. How I Live - Kyle Campos (loop used, not yet available)
4. Come Thou Fount
5. With Everything – Hillsong (loop available)

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