Sunday Setlist 7.5.09

I've been a bit erratic with my worship recaps lately, but today was so awesome that I wanted to share the love just a bit.

We wrapped up our series called Where's My Bailout? with a dynamic set of music, a great group of players and a powerful message.

During this series, we addressed three areas of life: spiritual bailout (uh...that would be JESUS...), financial bailout (basically, let go...unclench your fist) and time bailout. Today's sub-title was "When To Say No".

And by the way - no nods to the July 4th holiday. When we're honoring people - Veterans Day, Memorial Day, etc. - we'll sometimes lean into the observation of the holiday. But we choose to separate this particular celebration from our weekend experience.

The band was stellar - leaning heavily towards musicians under the age of 20. Jenn Hall (Jenn blogs here - you should check it out), Matt Turner, Travis Wagner, Elijah Schiarelli, Paul Myers - rounded out by Patrick Parkins, Dan McCown, Beth Humphreys and me. I enjoyed myself immensely today as a musician; I had complete confidence in the band and they never failed to be exactly where they needed to be. I'm in awe of the natural talent God places in people, and grateful to play alongside these extremely talented folks.

We opened with our 10B4 announcements and then did Washed By the Water as a musical opener. Great, great tune with a wonderful vibe - perfect for a summer day.

Our worship set consisted of Today is the Day and At the Name (which I like more and more each time we do it. Last summer Matt Christenot led worship for a World Changers event and the students brought this tune home with them. It's becoming a staple for us - check it out!)

At the end of At the Name, we plowed right into Jesus Messiah; we put it in Eb for an easy transition and let Beth Humphrey lead it. I was surprised at how easy it was to have a female vocal lead this tune - that's not always the case with Tomlin songs. We pushed it a bit faster but I loved the energy. Brilliant song.

We showed a promo clip from the upcoming Leadership Summit, which is something we usually don't promote from the stage - but I feel strongly that this event can and will be defining for our church this year. I'm hoping to have 100 folks from PCC go this year! We're serving as an assisting church with Saint Paul's Baptist in Richmond and can't wait to join them in preparing for this conference. It's often life-changing.

After the offering prayer, we kicked off Fly Like An Eagle, with a terrific groove from Jenn The Drummer and Patrick, the King Of Grooves. We spun our own vibe on the song - Elijah did a great job with the Motif patches and I had fun playing through a Mac for the first time, since we needed an extra organ patch. I felt my age when somebody asked me, "Hey, didn't Seal write that song?"

uh...Steve Miller, anyone? Remember him? From the 70's?

Yeah.

Anyway, here's the part that was really cool - after we finished the body of the tune - verse, chorus, verse, chorus - the band backed way off, our incredible tech team adjusted the mood of the room down, and we showed this video, made by The Veracity Project. We played the groove underneath the entire thing, and as the In Time ended, we brought the band back up to do the "time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking/into the future" bit and back out.

It worked. Sometimes our weird mash-ups fall short, but this one worked.

Brian brought an incredible message - powerful, convicting. God was speaking to me. When he said that allowing your schedule to be dictated by the needs and demands of others was the easy way out of accepting responsibility for how you invested your time, I listened. Hard.

Brian led us to the end by allowing everyone to simply sit still and be with God. Bob Pino came to the piano and sang, simply but powerful, Be Still and Know It was perfect, a gift of melodic grace.

It was, by far, one of the most meaningful overall worship experiences I've had at PCC.

This post is part of Fred McKinnon's worship leader blog carnival. Check it out!