This past weekend I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to the Rainbow Christian Camp in Converse, Indiana where I led worship for a high school retreat with youth groups from Wabash and Bremen, IN. It's always a blast to be involved with high school groups. These kids cracked me up. We got in on Friday night and worked our way through to Sunday morning. It was incredibly exhausting, but worth every minute. The bonus for me was that I got to work with my buddy, Jordan Muck, who is now the Associate & Youth Pastor at Community Gospel Church in Bremen, IN. Jordan is a great friend who I have been through a whole lot with and he's been there for me to strengthen me in my faith, to encourage me when I'm struggling, and to constantly push me forward in following GOD's will. I miss having him (and his family) around so I jumped at the chance to drive 4.5 hours to lead worship for the weekend.
Here's what Sunday morning looked like:
I Have Decided [C]
Heirs [G]
Let Your Kingdom Reign [G]
Message - Jordan Muck - Acts 2:42 - PRAYER
Jonathan David Eckberg - Guitar/Vocals
NOTES: I led all weekend with just the acoustic. It's always interesting to walk into groups like this where you don't really know anyone. I knew the leaders of both groups, but I had no idea what songs the kids would or wouldn't know. This creates some anxiety on my part. On one hand, you want to do mostly songs that they know or at least have heard. On the other hand, you don't want to do a strict diet of songs from 1980. It's also often surprising what songs kids do and don't know. I've had a lot of times where I've put a song into a retreat thinking it's one that EVERYBODY knows, only to have kids look blankly at the screen or fumble through it. Other times I'll have a song in that compliments the message really well and I figure it's on that maybe one or two people will sing along with and then the kids are all over it. You just never can tell. So, after putting a lot of time in to trying to create a balance and get some songs that the kids could grab ahold of this weekend I (with quite a bit of help from Jordan) finalized the list.
I Have Decided - We sang the version off of the "Heirs" album (shameless self-promotion: the 6-song worship album from Until We're Kings is released this Tuesday and should be available on iTunes in the coming weeks - you KNOW I'll keep you updated). It's such a simple arrangement that the kids picked up on it really quickly and I think they had some fun with it.
Heirs - Another song from the, Until We're Kings album. This was the "theme song" for the week. I taught it to the kids on Friday night and we included it in every session on the weekend. It was cool to see the group catch on and really sing it out on Sunday morning.
Let Your Kingdom Reign - This is a chorus I use from Elevation Worship off of their last album, "GOD with Us." I LOVE this chorus. It's so perfectly beautiful. I knew that none of the kids would know it, but I put it in because it is so simple and singable. We repeated it several times and I heard a few kids singing it as we all sat down for the message and even after the session, so I think it went over pretty well.
To see what's happening in worship around the country check out out the Sunday Setlist at theworshipcommunity.com.
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