This blog is a part of a blog carnival title Sunday Setlists, where a number of worship leaders post the songs and worship elements that were used at their church. It is a great way to gather information of what is helping engage people in worship around the country. December 20th's conversation takes place here.
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Wemade the attempt Sunday to use 90% Christmas songs in a context that helped
people engage in the conversation of worship that kept with a style which is
consistent with other weeks of the year.
Luke
2: 12-14. The worship leader read this scripture and on the last words, ‘glory
to God in the highest’ the band started intro of first song.
Here we tried to capture the style
of the Hillsong version of this song without adding their refrain and making it
as simple for the congregation to grasp as possible. We did so this way: used
the intro also as a turnaround between verses; used the traditional refrain; used
the extended measures on each verse, not just the first. (key of F)
Starting on the chorus of this David
Crowder song in the same tempo as the song before. We also only used the chorus
and 1st verse followed by repeated refrain ending on the words “Alleluia,
He is holy.” (Key of F)
O
Little Town of Bethlehem
To complete this set we used the
third verse of this song, ‘cast out our sin and enter in.’ This thought
finished painting the picture of Christ as ‘new born King’ to ‘savior King.’ (Key of F)
Baptism
Song
This song has been used for the last
two weeks. The spoken intro was a challenge to the congregation to remember the
shepherds and wisemen and the gifts of worship they brought to the Christ-child
and respond in worship through the words of this song.
Welcome
Song
This Christmas season we have used a
number of songs based on arrangements from the Casting Crowns Christmas
recording. This week the song was Away In A Manger. The vocal team lead this
song pretty much as it was recorded, splitting the voices with solos and
harmonies. One difference was that we lowered the key to make it more
accessible to the congregation.
We started with the first verse as
solo and then asked congregation to join on the chorus. The last portion sang of
this song was the bridge: “I’ll never know how much it cost to see my sins upon
the cross.’ It was intentional to leave the congregation with this thought as
we moved to the sermon, which was taken from Philippians Chapter 2. (Even
though it was intentional, we did not come up with the idea until the final
Sunday morning run through.)
Sermon
Delivered by our pastor, Mark
Marshall and taken from Philippians chapter 2.The title was "the Point of No Return." It seems odd to use this
scripture for a Christmas sermon but it works because it focused on the purpose
of Christ’s coming to earth.