Blended worship services:
The Solid Rock (arrangement from Shout Kids Hymns)
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
Great is Thy Faithfulness (hymn)
In Christ Alone (Getty/Townend)
(response to message) Take My Life (hymn)
Contemporary worship service
He Reigns (Newsboys)
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
To Know Your Name (Hillsong: Matt Crocker)
How Marvelous (Tomlin arr.)
Take My Life (Tomlin arr.)
By the way, I highly recommend the Shout Praises Kids CD’s. I started collecting them when I led worship for camps for 4th-6th graders; the songs are played, for the most part, by real instruments playing real arrangements, rather than keyboard-generated-everything. We have translated several of the song arrangements for use with our church worship teams.
I was blessed to see greater signs of spontaneous, postural responses in all our worship services this week. That’s a loaded statement… because ‘greater’ in the blended services is an entirely different thing than ‘greater’ in the contemporary service. It just always brings a whisper of tears and a lump in the (struggling to sing) throat when I see a person in my church make that huge leap of standing up while all others are sitting. It’s not a measure of anything other than the strength of that one person’s response… but it’s a privilege to see even that.
By that measure, this week’s high impact songs: ‘In Christ Alone’ for the blended crowds, ‘To Know Your Name’ in the contemporary service…. as evidenced by lots of our senior high students standing. Knocks me over every time.
The power of God to move the human soul is always an amazing and breathtaking event! And we are often privileged to witness and cherish just such a moment. May it always bring a “whisper of tears and a lump in our throat!”
I agree, Kim – nothing like seeing the spirit move people in a physical way. It’s a great gift, to witness such a thing…
worship was awesome this week. great song choices. i thought it may have been the fact that i only got four hours of sleep the night before, but i had those whispers of tears too. i’ve had “to know your name” on repeat on the ‘pod so far this week. thanks for a great service, and for your blogging tips…
Matt… so we were able to transcend the joy of having completed your final prom appearance? :) Thanks for your comment. I can’t tell you how funny it is that I of all people would have given anyone anything close to a blogging tip.
Beth & Paul… thanks. This is one of the huge blessings of the job we do, yes?
“Shout Praises Kids” — that’s interesting I’ll have to check them out.
“In Christ Alone” always seems to be a high impact song for us.
SO TRUE!!!
“That’s a loaded statement… because ‘greater’ in the blended services is an entirely different thing than ‘greater’ in the contemporary service.”
I really like Chris Tomlin’s version of Take My Life. I can’t seem to wrap my head around it though, when I try to play.
Way to go.
bridget