Here's how we spent the morning at Community Gospel Church in Bremen, IN:
THE SERVICE:
Opening Song - I Have Decided (C)
Welcome & Announcements
Offering
Marvelous Light (G)
Consuming Fire (G)
GOD of this City (C)
Be Thou My Vision (C)
Message
Consuming Fire - Reprise (C)
THE BAND:
Jonathan David Eckberg - guitar/vocals
Cyndi Leamon - vocals
Larry Ingle - vocals
Jackie Lacher - vocals
Sean Norris - drums
Randy Hepler - bass
Beth Stemble - piano
Kevin Schmidt - sound
THE NOTES:
There are some amazing things happening at CGC right now and Satan knows it. We were under attack today. I felt it early in the worship set, but it didn't really hit me how strong it was until I sat down for the rest of the service. It was nothing big, but a lot of things were thrown at us. Minor sound issues, a few missed slides, people being called out of the service for various reasons. Again, nothing big, and often times things that are complete non-issues, but it just seemed that Satan rolled a lot of those issues at us together that, collectively, could have destroyed the day. The Associate Pastor passed me a not during the service (don't tell my mom I was passing notes in church) that read "We are under serious attack today!". I had just spent the past several minutes thinking the same thing - so it was amazing to see the spirit opening our eyes to it. The cool thing is that it didn't crush the service. I feel very fortunate to be in a place and serving in ministry with a group of people who are killing it for the Kingdom and doing it in such a way that Satan has taken note and is working hard to stop us. I feel even more fortunate to serve with brothers and sisters who are wise enough to recognize it and to respond in prayer and action to see the Spirit intervene in victory over the enemy.
THE SONGS:
I Have Decided - We do the Until We're Kings version of this old hymn. Its a very rocked out arrangement. Granted, we tone it down a touch for Sunday mornings, but we really do try to keep the feel of a good kick-in-the-pants to start the morning. Also, as a side note, it's a whole lot of fun to play!
Marvelous Light - Really did a standard version of this song. Nothing special. The sermon for the morning was moving from faith to action. Last week Pastor Mike Fanning focused on faith and this week was a focus on the actions required by faith. So Marvelous Light was a great way to kick the set off as a song about running toward the power of the cross of Christ.
Consuming Fire - This is a slightly older song (mid-90's, I believe) but it was a new one for our congregation. The focus of this song, to me anyway, is the bridge section that says, "Stir it up in our hearts, LORD / Stir it up in our hearts, LORD / Stir it up in out hearts / A passion for Your name". Really cool to hear the congregation latch on to that and pour over it.
GOD of this City - The recorded versions of this song seem to have a lot of extra space in the song - long interludes and lots of "dead air" for the congregation. The version we do cuts a lot of that out and removes some of the extra measures that seem to be in there. I think this helps keep the congregation engaged in what we are doing and helps remove some of the obstacles of distraction. We changed the arrangement to focus on the Pre-choruse (There is no one like our GOD / There is no one like our GOD) with the chorus almost being secondary. The point we were rolling on was that our GOD is the one and only GOD who can open our hearts to faith move us to action for His sake.
Be Thou My Vision - Another old hymn, but for this one we used a much more traditional arrangement. It capped the set off nicely as it tied our movement to GOD, our passion for what He is accomplishing through the greatness of who He is and finishing with a prayer for a heart like His heart in the direction of our actions according to His good and perfect will.
We then responded to the message with a V1-PC-CH-B arrangement of Consuming Fire - again the focus being that bridge section of the song.
To see how our brothers and sisters from all over the place were worshipping in song today check out the Sunday Setlist at www.theworshipcommunity.com
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