Sunday Setlist / 10.31.10

Here's what went down this morning at Highland Community Church in Highland, IL:

I'll Fly Away (F) [Brumley]
     Welcome & Announcements
     Offering
     Choir - Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
Better is One Day (E) [Redman]
     Scripture Reading - Psalm 121:1-8
Holy is the Lord (G) [Tomlin]
Everything Glorious (C) [Crowder]
Nothing But the Blood (C) [Lowry]
     Special Music - Tom Barker
     Message
     Dismiss
I'll Fly Away (F)


BAND: (the usual)
Jonathan David Eckberg - acoustic guitar/vocals
Tim McDaniel - drums
Aaron McDaniel - electric guitar
Joe Szoke - bass/vocals - special "Congrats" are in order for Joe and his wife, Steph, as Steph gave birth to their first child last Sunday!  We are all excited for the Szokes and the addition of their son, Eli, to the HCC family.  We're looking forward to putting him into the worship rotation soon!

NOTES:
In any month that has 5 Sundays we take the fifth Sunday and combine our first and second services for the morning.  While this is a TREMENDOUS (and I cannot emphasize that enough) time of worship with the body of Christ, it can cause a few issues with the team that is leading worship.  In the past we have usually tried to combine worship teams for this and it has worked out ok.  The problem is that we generally practice on two different nights, so to try to coordinate 8-10 people to get together on a separate night than is generally set aside can be frustrating.  We've tried at times just to practice early on Sunday morning, but that always feels cramped on time.  So, for this particular 5th Sunday we just had the first service band lead worship.  The other issue that generally arises with the two services combining is that, since we use different "song books" we are a bit limited on songs that everyone knows or mostly knows.  I've never been opposed to stretching people with a song that they are a little unfamiliar with, but you can only do so much.  This week I tried to use some "standard" modern worship songs along with a few hymns.  I think it bridged the gap well.  Also for this week, I didn't know where Pastor Wise was taking the message.  I didn't have any guidelines to go off of, so we set up the songs as a general time of praise.  This is much more difficult for me.  I always feel that the more information I have and the more focused that I need to be on a topic or theme the easier it is for me to select music.  Whew!  That's a lot of notes, so let's get back to the music.

SONGS:
I'll Fly Away - Nothing fancy with this song.  It's a good old fashioned "hillbilly hymn" and I think we did our bluegrass/country roots proud.  During rehearsal Aaron looked and me and said, "Now all we need is a jug player!" It honestly was a lot of fun to play.  It's a great song to kick the morning off with by bringing some high-energy to the congregation.

Better is One Day - After the offering and the choir we kicked into "Better is One Day".  Pretty standard arrangement, but we did it just a bit faster than when I've done this in the past, but it gave it a nice, subtle rock flavor to the tune.

Holy is the LORD - Again another standard arrangement.  The scripture reading for the morning was Psalm 121 which begins, "I lift up my eyes to the hills-where does my help come from?  My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth."  It goes on to speak of the providence and protection that come from our GOD.  "Holy is the LORD" then seemed appropriate to follow.  The speaks to the goodness and holiness of GOD filling the earth and being evident to all.  When we understand that the war that waging in our souls right now is already won, despite what our individual battles may tell us, and that GOD's provision and protection is always upon us there should be no way that we can contain the joy of His Name.

Everything Glorious - We hadn't done this song in a while.  At one point it was in fairly heavy rotation as one of our drummers, Cory Done, was a wiz with looping and we had a really cool loop that added a ton of depth to the song.  However, when Cory took a job in Missouri we lost his services and so "Everything Glorious" was somewhat swept aside.  We revived it, slowed it down a touch and gave it slight bluesy feel.  It worked, maybe not the way I like it best, but it was good and it meshed well with "Holy is the LORD".  Sometimes you try things musically and you hit a homerun, sometimes you strike out.  This (small) experiment was a solid base hit.

Nothing But the Blood - We flowed straight from "Everything Glorious" into "Nothing But the Blood". This is another of my favorite hymns.  So every time we play this one we keep it really simple and try to let the message of the lyrics fly well over the top of everything.  It's a whole lot of eight note acoustic guitar strumming and vocals with the rest of the band just adding touches of flavor here and there.

That's about it.  We reprised "I'll Fly Away" as the dismissal song.

To see what other congregations are singing throughout the weekend please visit the Sunday Setlist at theworshipcommunity.com.