Set List, 11/26 - 11/27/11 Fellowship Bible Church

This weekend, we finished our series on John and focused on John 21, examining the calling on us as disciples of Jesus Christ. David Hinkle preached about Peter and how Jesus recommissioned him as a leader and as one of His followers. It was, for me, a fresh look at the life of Peter, and the call from Jesus on His life, despite His faults and failures. You can listen to the entire message here. Because it was the weekend following Thanksgiving, we had some trouble fielding a full band, so I decided we would intentionally do something different and simple, and just use drums, bass, acoustic, and vocals. I am really pleased with how it turned out (minus the moment when I broke a string in the last service...). Sometimes simple is better.

Here's our service plan from this weekend:

Time of Preparation/Prayer "Lord I Need You" (B) [Jesse Reeves, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Maher, Christy Nockels, Daniel Carson] Welcome/Greeting Time Call to Worship -  "Your Grace Is Enough" (G) [Matt Maher] "Hosanna" (G) [Brooke Fraser] "Son Of God" (G) [Tim Neufeld, Jon Neufeld] Thoughts from Ephesians 2 "I Need You" (G) [Kristian Stanfill, Eddie Kirkland] Prayer Video Message - John 21 - "The Call/The Cost" [David Hinkle] Response Time "'One Pure And Holy Passion" (Bb) [Mark Altrogge] Offering/Announcements Dismissal

"Lord I Need You" - We sang this song during our preparation time this week. It was new for our congregation, and I am excited about continuing to teach it going forward. It is a powerful song that takes the idea of the hymn, "I Need Thee Every Hour" and reworks it. It appeared on the Passion Album Here For You. I really love this song, and think it expresses our desperation for our Lord in a clear way.

"Your Grace Is Enough" - This is one of our standards here (I'm sure it is in many other congregations as well), and I think it helped us set up our service well, as it sings, "You wrestle with the sinner's heart" and "You use the weak to lead the strong." These images combined with the declaration of the all-sufficiency of God's grace helped us to get on track to hear of the restoration and constant love of God in the message.

"Hosanna" - As we near Advent, this song served two purposes: looking to the coming of our King, and asking the Lord to give us a heart that aligns to His own. We want our purposes to match His purposes. In seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the bridge offers a fitting prayer: "Heal my heart and make it clean/ Open up my eyes to the things unseen/ Show me how to love like You have loved me/ Break my heart for what breaks Yours/ Everything I am, for Your kingdom's cause/ As I walk from earth into eternity."

"Son Of God" - I think this song is becoming a favorite here. I love how it tries to encompass who Jesus is and what He accomplished for us, and then offers a response of sincere worship when we sing, "You are worthy/ You are worthy/ You are worthy of all my praise/ You are beautiful/ You are beautiful/ I will lift up my hands and sing."

"I Need You" - I prefaced this song by sharing from Ephesians 2, emphasizing how we were dead in our sins and transgressions, and how God made us alive together with Christ. We have no room to boast, because the work of salvation was finished completely by Christ, and Christ alone. He is our hope and our salvation. We need Him. We are desperate for His saving work on our behalf. This song proclaims the gospel as well and as clearly as any song I have ever heard before. It lays it all out there and repeats this chorus in response to the message, "I need You, Jesus/ I need You, Jesus/ I need clean hands/ I can't, You can/ I need You, Jesus." This song may be simple, but I think in this case it only serves to point our eyes more directly to the lyric of the song, which deserve our utmost attention.

"One Pure And Holy Passion" - This song was our response song this week. I don't think I have ever led this song before, and I want this to be my prayer of response to what God has shown me in the message this week. I want to follow hard after the Lord, and be dedicated to His purposes and His kingdom. Jesus is worth every moment of my life being lived as an act of worship that gives glory to Him. I pray that is the case for all of us.

This was a refreshing weekend of worshiping our Savior. Our team did a great job. After the message this week, I am reminded of God's unfailing love and faithfulness to His Church, and His constant call on my life to follow Him.

I hope you had a great weekend of worship wherever you were.

In the Son,

Bill

p.s. don't forget to check out The Worship Community!

Set List, 02/05 - 02/06/11 Fellowship Bible Church

(Photos taken by Shelly Zipperle)

Here's our set from this week:

Pre-Service: "Say Say" [Christy Nockels, Chris Tomlin, Kristian Stanfill] - C Call to Worship: Isaiah 40:25-31 "Everlasting God" [Brenton Brown, Ken Riley] - Bb Welcome/Prayer/Announcements/Offering Greeting Time "God of Wonders" [Marc Byrd, Steve Hindalong] - Ab "Indescribable" [Laura Story] - Ab Communion: "Lamb of God" [original] - Ab Message: "I Believe God Reveals" [Pastor Joe Hishmeh] "All Creatures of Our God and King" [St. Francis of Assisi, William Henry Draper, David Crowder, and Brent Milligan] - D

My third week here in Topeka was a great weekend of worship, with an interesting twist: I was more hoarse than I have ever been in my life, aside from losing my voice completely. Strangely, I was able to control my pitch and volume without any trouble, but it sounded really rough on "Say Say." For the rest of the set, it sounded a little gritty, but I think it was fine. It was a lot of work to control it, to be sure.

I typically have a higher tenor voice, but I have been trying to key things lower for the people in the congregation--specifically the men in our congregation. This week made me think seriously about that. I had already keyed the songs lower (aside from "Say Say") on purpose, but if I hadn't, I don't think I would have been able to sing them at all. I came to a conclusion: if I cannot sing a song when I'm sick, it's too high for most men to sing. I think that's probably a fair assessment. Most guys have as much range as my hoarse voice, which basically has the range of an untrained voice. It will be extremely helpful to have that as a guide for my decisions on song keys and ranges going forward.

"God of Wonders" and "Indescribable" were keyed lower than I have ever had them before, and I thought it was very effective. It seemed like the people were singing more easily with the change (especially on "Indescribable," which is usually through the roof in Bb or B). I think they could have come down even to G without negative effect. I was even more grateful that I had done that when my cold began looming over the weekend.

Also, this was the first week I have shared an original song with Fellowship, in "Lamb of God." We used it during communion, as the deacons and elders were passing out the elements. For me, it was an especially sweet time of thinking on the cross and what our Messiah did for us to redeem us and rescue us. Pastors David Hinkle and Brian Tryhus did a great job setting up the time of communion, too, which made it that much more meaningful.

Pastor Joe shared about God's revelation of Himself through creation, through the Word of God, and through Christ. Because of this, we responded to the message with "All Creatures of Our God and King" as arranged by David Crowder on his Illuminate album. I love this arrangement of this hymn, and it was really fitting for the message today. The guitar part at the intro was a little tricky (Crowder capos up to the 7th fret and place it with G shapes and tons of embellishment), but by the fourth service, I think I got it mostly right. I love some of the stuff that Crowder does on acoustic. It spices things up without going over the top.

All in all, it was a great weekend of worship together. We unveiled a pretty dramatic stage design for the I Believe series, which turned out great. Kip Kraisinger and Wyatt Johnston were the brains behind that one. The images in this blog are from the new set. We set out to link our series on essential doctrines of the Christian faith to the concept of "Legacy," which is where the Tron theme comes in. All it took was some PVC pipe and some lighting, along with aircraft cable and fishing line to rig the pipe boxes. I'm pretty excited about how it turned out. In fact, I'm pretty excited about everything going on here at Fellowship right now. God is so good!

I hope you had a great week of worship wherever you were!

In the Son,

Bill

Sunday Set Lists