Worship Reflections 01.10.10

Worship reflections are simply my musings about the worship services I lead at First MB Church.

This was week two in our new teaching series, ‘The Amazing Race’, in which our pastor is taking us through the entire Bible in seven weeks.  He is, quite simply, teaching our church to know the overall story of the Bible better. There are charts and hand-outs, which is unusual for us, but I think people are enjoying it. Which is good because we should have some level of understanding of what it is we say we believe and follow.

This week, we reviewed the larger story of the whole Old Testament, but focused on the books of history (Joshua – Esther), specifically, the Israelites’ cyclical relationship with God.

Good thing we’ve all moved beyond THAT kind of thing, right? whew.

See the overview of this series here.

worship service
welcome & news
ministry highlight: compassion international
Love the Lord (Lincoln Brewster)
Glorified (Jared Anderson)
prayer
O God of Mine (Rita Springer)
message
Naive (Chris Rice)

a few notes
Overall, our short set of music went very well and seemed… relaxed. By that I mean, it was an environment of music that people could participate in without anxiety.  But it also did it’s job of pointing us all to God, together. At least, if one were paying attention.

Our pastor asked me on Wednesday afternoon if we could include the song ‘Naive’ because it matched so well with this theme of God’s judgment and our need for Him to come.  I had only a vague memory of the song, which was released by Chris Rice in 1998. We would need to learn it completely at rehearsal Wed night, and it’s an unusual style for us. But I found the music (with a little help from my friends), transposed it for my vocal range (with the short turn-around, I didn’t feel comfortable asking someone else to learn it), and we gave it a whirl. Our musicians nailed it.  I am so SO grateful for people who are willing to give extra time to learning something new.

In the end, ‘Naive’ was the perfect close to this particular sermon.  Like our pastor mentioned to me, it’s a song that expresses almost a desperate anger at God, but it’s wrapped in sweet music so it doesn’t seem arrogant.

Check out the song, and for that matter… check out lots of music by Chris Rice. He’s a great songwriter.

This post is a very late addition to Sunday Setlists on Fred McKinnon’s blog.  Check it out!