Worship Leader’s Redux: Easter Weekend 2010 Part 1

I’m sitting at home enjoying a scoop of cookies and cream ice-cream. Easter Monday is a public holiday in NZ and so I’m savouring this time to unwind and catch up on errands and jobs around the house. But as I sit here I’m reflecting on the Easter Friday and Sunday’s services at Howick Baptist Church.

Here are a number of things that I felt, by God’s grace, went well:

  1. Double-dipped tunes. When choosing songs this Easter, I deliberately kept an eye out for songs that worked thematically on both Friday and Sunday services. We sung “Glories of Calvary” and “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us” in this way: as we had the same music team covering both services, it was therefore easier on them to not have to rehearse two different songs instead. Two things we tried that helped to vary the two versions of each song included, firstly, using a different solo instrument on Sunday vs. Friday (in our case trumpet vs. violin); and secondly, emphasising different parts of a song on different days. For example, on Friday we ended “Glories of Calvary” slightly earlier in the song with the words: “… to sing of Jesus who died for me.” – while on Sunday we took the song to its high-octane, triumphant response of “Oh take me deeper into the glories of Calvary.” Even by varying bits and pieces like this we were able to use the same song but bring out different aspects for the congregation to consider.
  2. Early warning systems. Getting as much of the music out earlier than the Thursday night rehearsal was a definite advantage, especially considering that we tackled two new songs across the weekend. I’m grateful for the dedication of the musicians that made the effort to look at the music beforehand: as a result, the Gethsemane Hymn clicked together very quickly during practice. If there are new songs that I’m planning on using in future, I think it will be much more effective to distribute them (e.g. via email) earlier in the week so it’s not a sight-reading rehearsal come Thursday night, and there’s more time available for fine-tuning rather than learning a piece.
  3. The James 1:19 principle. During the Friday service, I was able to hold my tongue and let most of the songs speak for themselves, and interjecting at a bare minimum. It seemed to cause less distractions that way and the focus was drawn more to the lyrics, in particular for the new songs we tried. You can check out our team’s attempt with “To See the King of Heaven Fall (Gethsemane Hymn)“, by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend in the Youtube video below (if you’re reading this in a feed click through to the site here).

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In the next post I’ll expand on things that could have been improved on to help serve the church better.

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– William

Completely Done

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I woke up this morning humming the words to “Completely Done”, a song from Sovereign Grace Music’s album “Sons and Daughters”.

Completely Done

By Jonathan Baird, Ryan Baird, and Rich Gunderlock
As recorded on Sons & Daughters

Lyrics

What reason have I to doubt
Why would I dwell in fear
When all I have known is grace
My future in Christ is clear

My sins have been paid in full
There’s no condemnation here
I live in the good of this
My Father has brought me near
I’m leaving my fears behind me now

Chorus
The old is gone, the new has come
What You complete is completely done
We’re heirs with Christ, the victory won
What You complete is completely done

I don’t know what lies ahead
What if I fail again
You are my confidence
You’ll keep me to the end
I’m leaving my fears behind me now

© 2009 Sovereign Grace Worship (ASCAP)

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You can download it here for free:

http://www.sovereigngracestore.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=M4270-02-51

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-William

To See the King of Heaven fall

In preparation for Easter weekend…

… have a listen to this song (click  through to see the video), and hear not just how Jesus Christ died, but why He was crucified on Good Friday almost  two thousand  years ago.

Worship leader Jamie Brown aptly points out:

It’s not enough to sing a song that says Jesus was crucified and leave it at that. A sad sounding, minor-key song might set the right mood, but not point people to why Jesus died and what he accomplished on the cross. This song is a gift for worship leaders looking for a song that derives its emotion out of the truth it contains.

Here are the lyrics:


To See the King of Heaven Fall (Gethsemane)
To see the King of heaven fall
In anguish to His knees,
The Light and Hope of all the world
Now overwhelmed with grief.
What nameless horrors must He see,
To cry out in the garden:
“Oh, take this cup away from me —
Yet not my will but Yours,
Yet not my will but Yours.”

To know each friend will fall away,
And heaven’s voice be still,
For hell to have its vengeful day
Upon Golgotha’s hill.
No words describe the Savior’s plight –
To be by God forsaken
Till wrath and love are satisfied
And every sin is paid
And every sin is paid

What took Him to this wretched place,
What kept Him on this road?
His love for Adam’s curséd race,
For every broken soul.
No sin too slight to overlook,
No crime too great to carry,
All mingled in this poisoned cup —
And yet He drank it all,
The Savior drank it all,
The Savior drank it all.
Stuart Townend & Keith Getty Copyright © 2009 Thankyou Music

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2 Cor 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

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-William

On John Piper’s sabbatical

John Piper

John Piper, preaching pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN, announced his upcoming sabbatical from all public commitments and explains why:

“Noël [John’s wife] and I are rock solid in our commitment to each other, and there is no whiff of unfaithfulness on either side. But, as I told the elders, “rock solid” is not always an emotionally satisfying metaphor, especially to a woman. A rock is not the best image of a woman’s tender companion. In other words, the precious garden of my home needs tending. I want to say to Noël that she is precious to me in a way that, at this point in our 41-year pilgrimage, can be said best by stepping back for a season from virtually all public commitments.”

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As a naïve  husband on the opposite end of the age and ministry spectrum, I need to take note. John is humble in saying that even 40 years into their marriage, there is work to be done, and there are needs to be tended to. That is something I can only glean from older, wiser followers of Christ.

Who are we to haughtily assume we won’t be drawn to similar challenges in a later season of our marriage?

Who am I to brazenly throw around platitudes like “our honeymoon doesn’t have to end”, as if by being just over a month into our marriage we’re at an elevated level of sageness? It is foolishness for me to think so.

Who am I to be proud of having a marriage I don’t deserve?

For those who care for us, please hold us to account on this issue. Don’t let us get carried away in our married pride.

That’s right, knock us off our prideful perches and tell us how to be more humble, more Christ-exalting.

And most of all, pray for us, that we would continue to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness (Matt 6:33).

– William

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Technology tells us we can’t sing

ChristianWeek columnist Michael Krahn  writes a perceptive column and points out  the rising trend in people who say they cannot sing. An excerpt:

“I see a parallel between the lack of confidence in singing and the world of visual images in tabloid and fashion magazines. Photoshopped images create unrealistic body expectations. In the modern era of music autotuned recordings give us unrealistically perfect sounds…

… The problem is not that there are people with uncommonly attractive bodies or uncommonly strong voices; the problem is that we have bought into the idea that unless we possess perfection in body and voice we are in the minority and should keep ourselves both hidden and unheard. This idea is an affront to human dignity and to God, who created our bodies and our voices in all their glorious variety.”

I would whole-heartedly agree that as a solid session of  the whole church  singing God’s truths can be revitalising, and almost a foretaste of things to come.  But it’s true sometimes we can get unrealistic expectations of what good singing is  from the pitch-perfect commercially-successful music playing on our stereos. In autotuned recordings, vocal lines are digitally altered so that their singing  becomes perfectly in tune (here’s a notorious example by Cher). And if that inhibits our desire to sing, then that’s not good.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that only the talented vocalists sing worthily. It doesn’t say that Mary passed Grade 5 singing exams before praising God with her Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). When Miriam and the ladies celebrated following their Exodus from slavery (Exodus 15:21), the Bible doesn’t say they weeded out the bad singers and sang with a hand-picked choir.

The worthiness of our singing, like anything we do, should be  assessed on whether it’s done  to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31) – why we sing matters more than how we sing. If  I’m in the pews and singing because of my immense gratefulness of the salvation I’ve received, then whether I sound as nice as  John Mayer or  KT Tunstall  naturally becomes less of a concern.

The whole article is worth reading: http://christianweek.org/stories.php?id=886&cat=worship.

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Do you think  auto-tuning has  made  us more reluctant to sing God’s praises? What else makes you less likely to sing during a worship service?