I did not grow up in, nor do I now attend, a church with a strong, orthodox practice of the observation of Lent. I understand the history of the season as it relates to Easter, but I never experienced an intentional tie between Lent and the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and life.

I’m sure there are people within our church who have been observing Lent in a very disciplined way for years. But we want to invite our church family as a whole to take part in this season in order to walk through the fullness of both the sadness and the joy of this season. 

So, my question… do you take a serious approach to linking Lent to the celebration of Easter? what does Lent look like for you? 

For largely logistical reasons, we decided that our three worship services would be identical this Easter. We’ve taken this approach before, but this is the first Easter we’ve had since moving to our current service configuration, so our journey to this decision was new. I do think it was the right decision.

Setlist & flow (songs in bold are linked to iTunes store) 

Crown Him with Many Crowns: traditional hymn. full orchestra & choir.
welcome, set stage for the morning
Rejoice the Lord is King: traditional hymn. full orchestra & choir.
Happy Day (Tim Hughes): came directly out of ‘Rejoice’.  worship band, orchestra, soloist, 20 voice ensemble.
scripture:  Rom 6 (Message) and Gal 6:14 (NIV) (link between resurrection & our own lives)
The Power of the Cross (Keith Getty, Stuart Townend): orchestra & choir.
I Stand Amazed (How Marvelous): came directly out of “The Power”. 4 vocalists & worship band.
Message: ‘Changed’: the story of Paul.  Ended with an invitation to write down where we land in our level of being ‘changed’ by God, whether it be ‘wish it would happen faster’ or ‘I don’t believe at all’.  
Jesus Paid it All (Grape, Nifong, Hall. Hal Leonard arr.): 4 vocalists, piano, strings.
You are My King (Billy Foote): came directly out of “Jesus Paid”. 4 vocalists, worship band, strings. 
verbal transition to offering
Do it, Lord (Tommy Walker): worship band, orchestra, soloist and 20 voice ensemble.
Closing… Rejoice the Lord is King (1 verse): Led by full orchestra and vocal ensemble.

Behind the scenes

I have the distinct joy of working closely with a very talented, creative, and open-minded choir/orchestra director. (She is also my neighbor and the mommy of 2 of my kids’ very best friends. Suffice it to say, our lives are intertwined.) She usually plans and leads our 8:30 classic service.  She works with the choir (about 35-40 people) for that service, works with a smaller contemporary vocal ensemble (about 20 people), and works with the orchestra.  There is nobody better at sifting through mounds of choir & orchestra music to find really beautiful, powerful arrangements of well-written music.  Plus she values contemporary music as well as more classic styles.

Like I said, it is a joy to work with her.  

For a service plan like this one, we bring our two worlds of music together and collaborate in ways that we usually don’t. Using a full orchestra in worship is…well…amazing!  The power and the beauty of the music is incredible when used well.  But it presents a very different dynamic for our worship band, who are used to working off of chord charts and call-it-as-we-go transitions and repeats.  Most orchestral music that includes a band come with musical score for those players… but that score involves things like notes and staffs and measures and doesn’t include the lyrics. So we created chord charts that match the score exactly to cut down on confusion in rehearsal. The orchestra and band rehearsed separately, then came together a week ahead for a rehearsal without vocalists. On Wednesday night we put everyone together and it seemed to go very smoothly.

Musically, it can be tricky to move between songs that are such different styles.  We chose songs based on their themes, of course, but then considered arrangement & keys. For example, ‘Rejoice the Lord is King’ and ‘Happy Day’ were in the same key.  ’Rejoice’ ended with a big, full orchestral build… ‘lift up your voice rejoice again I say… re… JOICE!’ but on that syllable ‘joice’, the band kicked in with the intro of ‘Happy Day’, and the orchestra soon followed.  Choosing the right songs is important, but it takes great musicians to literally make it ‘sing’.  We are blessed to have such musicians.

What I won’t soon forget

Three full worship services.  Full.
Serving all morning with such a great group of musicians. Seriously. 
The beauty of some of the music… ‘The Power of the Cross”, the strings on “You are My King”, “Do It, Lord”
Singing my heart out with the choir.  I don’t usually get to do that.
Watching my friend conduct.  She is amazing.
The vocal harmonies that happened on ‘I Stand Amazed’.
Faces.  People.
My friend who stood up alone in the back of the room during “Do it Lord”.  Made me cry.
Speaking of “Do it, Lord”, what an amazing song!!!! 
A message that asked great questions. 

One little pic…
Took this before third service started, from the stage.  Wish I could have pulled off an effective shot while the orchestra was playing, but… yeah, not really possible as one of the singers. Shows the room filling up, the orchestra seats, etc.

One final point of interest:  because of some complications in our current building process, the ceiling over the back half of the auditorium, including the storage balcony & rear screen visible in this pic, will be torn up for about 3 weeks beginning today.  This also includes our A/V area which is to the right of what you see in the pic.  We managed to stay  ’all dressed up’ for Easter, but starting next Sunday, things are going to look quite different.

This post is a part of Sunday Setlists at Fred McKinnon’s blog.  
Check it out for Easter worship recaps from everywhere!

This is the main part of our auditorium sound system. Recoil in horror if you like, but except for an amp rack and the part of the board you’re not seeing in this pic, this is our usual set up.

This is Betty.

Betty is the personal property of our extremely talented tech director.

Betty came to visit for Easter and, can I just say, she made all things new.

We love Betty.

On and around the platform we had a 50 voice choir, a 35 piece orchestra, 6 piece band, and 3 worship vocalists leading in various ways throughout the service. All the songs had orchestrations that we followed, although we cut and altered and melded them to make the arrangements more ‘congregationally friendly’. Here’s the flow of our service, the songs we used, and some notes about them:

Welcome…. greet each other…. opening prayer

Alleluia! Alleluia! (to Ode to Joy, Beethoven; arr & orchestrated by Robert Sterling)
Alive Forever, Amen (Cottrell, Moffitt, Smith; arr & orchestrated by Robert Sterling)
- these two were a part of a medley that came as one piece of music, including narration which we cut. The ‘Alleluia!’ piece was big, choral, heavy orchestration, but written as a very short ‘intro’ piece. ‘Alive Forever Amen’ was new for our congregation and was led by band and worship vocals (which choir backing). Love love love this song. We’ll keep it in our repertoire for the worship bands, but it was excellent to incorporate live orchestra with it this time around.

Crown Him with Many Crowns (Bridges, Thring/Elvey; arr & orchestrated by David T. Clydesdale)
- flowed directly out of ‘Alive Forever’. A choral/orchestral arrangement that allowed for congregational singing as well.

Message part 1: We Were There: the Story of Peter, the failure

Once Again (Redman; arr & orchestrated by Robert Sterling)
In Christ Alone (Townend, Getty; arr & orchestrated by Robert Sterling)
- these two arrangements were the ones we altered the most, allowing them to flow together. Worship band & vocals were the lead musicians, but the addition of orchestral parts was absolutely breathtaking. We’ve been singing ‘In Christ Alone’ for several years, but it still makes me cry.

Message part 2: We Were There: the Story of Peter, the forgiven

Amazing Grace (a cappella)
That’s Why They Call it Grace (Bosarge, Johnson; arr & orchestrated by David T. Clydesdale)
- male solo, choir, orchestra

Prayer/ message conclusion

Worthy is the Lamb (Zschech) with All Hail the Power (Perronet & Holden; arr & orchestrated by David T. Clydesdale)
- female solo, choir, orchestra, with congregation joining.

Christ the Lord is Risen Today (postlude)
- a piano, organ, orchestral arrangement that is incredibly powerful. The organist, who was a first time player with us, became ill over the weekend, so this piece got cut down for piano and orchestra only.

The thematic flow of the morning worked very well; I’m so grateful for a senior pastor who gets how music and spoken word can support each other. The collaboration between choir/orchestra/worship team also worked well and will be something we’ll likely do more of as we move toward transitioning our worship services to a new format in the coming months. Despite the fact that there’s a part of me that wishes for a completely contemporary Easter service sometime, there is something undeniably powerful about voices and instruments covering every singable and playable octave in praise. And there is something beautiful about watching the people I play with every week work hard to unify complicated rhythms and effectively add their ‘voice’ to a differentl kind of larger picture. It moves me to tears, actually.

We know from verbal and written feedback we’ve received, that there were many who were challenged by the message of the day, and some who were emotionally flattened by it. We pray that God will continue the work he started in all of us.

Station 1: the crowd (Jesus enters Jerusalem; worship)
Station 2: Mary Magdalene (acceptance of Jesus’ work in our lives)
Station 3: Judas (idolatry, betrayal, forgiveness)
Station 4: Peter (betrayal, forgiveness)
Station 5: Pilate (self-preservation, justice, righteousness)
Station 6: the crowd (the call for Jesus’ crucifixion; understanding who Jesus really is)
Station 7: the Lord’s Supper (Jesus’ sacrifice)
Station 8: the cross (invitation for all to come to the cross with thoughts, prayers, and confessions from the journey)

You’re welcome.

A few pictures….

This is what our auditorium looks like normally… this was our 11:15 service on Sunday. Our building is 20 years old. This room was intended to be only temporary worship space, so it is very much multi-purpose. There is a movable air wall (visible in this picture in it’s storage position: far left side, tall rectangular panel) that can be set in three different positions in the room, separating it front to back. The tracks are visible in this pic as the darker horizontal lines on the ceiling. This picture was taken from our tech booth in the back corner of the room.

This is a view of the same stage later Sunday afternoon. It is being set up for communion in a ‘last supper’ sort of configuration. This will be one of the final stations of the pathway. The purple platforms (with pillows on top) are large, movable pieces that can form a bottom tier of choir risers (the other tiers are built into the platform…can’t really see that in this pic). Here, they function as benches on either side of long tables in the middle. There is also a smaller table on the floor that will provide communion elements for those who can’t climb the steps to the stage.

This is now the view from the stage, looking toward the back of the room. This is the basic set-up for the station that is pictured here (final form in 2005). The air wall has been put in place (the wall behind the cross) so the auditorium has been cut in half. The tech booth is now about 30 feet beyond the air wall. But the main speakers are now in this part of the room. (Makes for interesting sound engineering, should anyone ever want the wall up and full audio support.)

That’s only 2 of the 8 stations; there was much progress made on the others, I’m just going to hold off on the pics until it’s all completed. We will spend the next 3 days on things like lighting, audio, signage, and ‘dressing’ each station. I am SO grateful for the incredible volunteers who made this all happen on Sunday. When everyone else had left, we walked through each space to make a our punch list. While sitting in the Judas room (which is filled with photos of things that can distract us from following Jesus), I made this comment out loud with my husband in the room: “the next step for this room, the next time we do this, would be to bombard people with images & video using several flat-panels… sort of a visual noise thing”

I don’t know what I was thinking . You don’t mention that kind of idea around my husband and the 2 other hyper-creatives who were there.

Ten minutes later, our friends had decided to buy a flat panel TV (they had been thinking about it anyway) to be used in the Judas room, there was an idea afloat about some kind of truss to hold the tv, and my husband had already begun mapping out the video content.

Sigh. For one brief afternoon, we were ahead of schedule. :) We’ll see what happens next!