This past weekend we had Ryan Delmore out to lead worship for our Anthropology Men’s Conference. Ryan did an incredible job and was a huge blessing for our men. Ryan also stayed and led worship for our Sunday service and our entire congregation was so blessed and honored to have him. Everyone entered in right away, sang their guts out even to songs they didn’t know. It was a privilege for my band to play with Ryan and we had a blast hanging out with him for a few days.

If you haven’t yet heard Ryan’s music, then you can read my review of his record “The Spirit, the Water and the Blood“ and it has links to purchase. We did a video wrap up with Ryan but unfortunately it looks like it didn’t save to my HD for some reason, project is there but video file is not. It could be that I over-wrote it when my drummer Jon Utter and Ryan did their little tip of the hat to James Brown.

Jon goes Brownalishess with Delmore from Our Rising Sound on Vimeo.

I think you enjoyed this video more than the wrap up anyway. Again HUGE thanks to Ryan Delmore, he’s an amazing friend, worship leader and man of God, awesome to be able to connect with him. I mixed a little worship sampler from the set, a minute or 2 from each song, entire set condensed to 10 minutes. So you can listen to that below. Here was the set:

1. Glory to the King – Chris Lizotte
2. The World Can’t Take it Away – Ryan Delmore
3. Jesus Name – Ryan Delmore
4. Open the Eyes of My Heart – Paul Baloche
5. I Wanna See Like Isaiah Saw – Ryan Delmore
6. You Are So Good to Me – Waterdeep

 

 Ryan Delmore & ORS Worship Set Sampler [10:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Credits:

Ryan Delmore: Lead vocals, acoustic, harmonica
Kyle Campos: Electric guitar, vocals
Jonathan Utter: Drums
Joshua Dailey: Bass
Kendra Rohl: Vocals

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

When I recently interviewed Chris Lizotte I asked him about his most positive memorable worship experience, but what wasn’t on the video was I also asked him about his worst or most embarrassing worship experience. Chris couldn’t think of any but bad memories were flooding my mind like church goers to Olive Garden after service. I mean I had so many to choose from it was really quite sad. But one stands out as hands down the absolute worst, most awkward, worship experience I’ve ever been a part of. Thankfully I wasn’t leading it, I just happened to be there.

In December of 2002 my wife and I along with some of our friends went to The Call/The One Thing Conference in Kansas City. Mike Pilavachi was scheduled to speak, I’d never heard him at the time but heard great things(which were all true) and I was really excited to hear Kevin Prosch lead worship. This was Kevin’s return to ministry after his much publicized sexual sin and divorce from his wife. One of the most painful, disappointing, frustrating periods I can remember as Kevin was someone I looked up to as a man of God. You’re probably thinking Kevin’s set was the experience I’m referring to, but you’d be wrong, his was amazing.

Waterdeep was scheduled to open the conference. I had heard a few tunes that I liked from them, didn’t matter though I was just excited to be among thousands of other people eager to praise Jesus. As the time was drawing near for the conference to kick off people were getting more and more impatient. Finally Waterdeep came out, everyone is ready to sing, jump, lift hands, people were pumped!

I don’t recognize the first song, in fact nobody does, it’s not really a worship song. Nobody is singing and everyone is just kind of looking around like, “this is weird“. We all just kind of hum along, still hopeful for some great worship. Song #2 comes along with the same kind of soft, meandering melody that is talking about their college days. What the heck is happening??? Now people are annoyed, I’m annoyed, this is a worship conference for heaven’s sake, probably a good idea to actually play some. Song #3 comes and they introduce it by saying something like, “this is a song we wrote about not having any money and some old car…” The crowd is visibly upset, I’m upset, this feels like a joke, like we’re getting punked. All of a sudden people in the front rows start yelling at the band, “PLAY WORSHIP!!!“. Lead singer of Waterdeep yells back in the mic, “THIS IS WORSHIP!!!” Oh nooo.

Now I have retarded tingles all over and I want to hide, I can’t look anyone in the face. There is a worship mutiny taking place, people are booing, there’s a full out revolt in the conference. I’ve never in my life experienced anything like this. And in the 6 years after this, I’ve never again experienced this or even heard of anything like this. I think finally after this exchange they played one song people knew and words were up so we got to sing a little acoustic worship song. God bless Waterdeep, they are good people and a good band and I’m sure if they haven’t blacked out this moment from their memory they’d agree it was not a good moment.

This was by far the most uncomfortable worship experience ever. I’d love to hear some of your stories. Feel free to change name and dates to protect the innocent. I didn’t change any but my story was 6 years ago and the statute of limitations is up. If your story involves me though, please change my name