Want to know how we roll at Community Gospel Church? Here you go...
THE SERVICE
How Great Thou Art [Stuart K. Hine]
Welcome & Announcements
Offering // Missions Update: Jim Boerckel
Unchanging [Chris Tomlin]
I Am New [Jonathan Eckberg]
Majesty (Here I Am) [Stuart Gerrard/Martin Smith]
Message
Dismiss
THE TEAM
Jonathan Eckberg - guitar/vocals
Beth Stemble - piano
Jess Yoder - vocals
Alli Hutchens - vocals
Cyndi Leamon - vocals
Mike Stemble - audio
Vance Ceaszar - video
NOTES
While the schedule looks light this week, it was actually a very busy morning. We used our announcement time as a prep for our "See the Need, Meet the Need" projects. This is a week of service that our church is doing. We're asking everyone in the church to help out with a number of projects both at the church and in the community. It included everything from digging ditches (not even kidding), doing some spring cleaning for a mission for the homeless to moving furniture for one of our "senior saints." Then during our offering time we had one of our missionaries, Jim Boerckel, share about his work in/around a muslim community market in Michigan. Finally, we were rolling in our worship time and Pastor Jordan Muck had us sing through Majesty for a while longer (more on this below). All of this took extra time than normal so we actually ended up cutting everything after the message.
This week we closed out our "Three" series. It's been an excellent series as Pastor Jordan has walked us through Colossians 3:1-17. You can download the entire sermon series here.
THE SONGS
How Great Thou Art - We tend to follow the Paul Baloche version of this hymn. However, we have been without a drummer for the past several weeks, which forced us to "settle" the song a little bit. It still had a nice push to it, but it missed just a little "umph." I think it has been good for our team and our congregation to function without a drummer for this period in time, but I also hope to have someone filling that role in the near future.
[album: Our God Saves - Paul Baloche]
Unchanging - Chris Tomlin has done a lot of good stuff, but this may be one of my favorites of his. It's such a simple profession of faith in a GOD who is faithful, true to his promises, loving and gracious and a call to respond not only in spirit but with physical action (the raising of hands).
[album: Not to Us - Chris Tomlin]
I Am New - This week was the third week in a row that we've done this song as it has been the "theme song" for this series. People have really seemed to catch on to it and it's always special to hear people singing songs that are a reflection of what they are going through and experiencing as a church family. As I've mentioned before, we are moving in the direction of doing more and more original music. While that can be difficult for some people to understand why we don't just do all the songs that are on the radio, there is something special that happens when we sing praises to our GOD from a personal experience rather than someone else's.
Majesty (Here I Am) - Our congregation eats this song up. It's one of those songs that when we do it you can look out and see people giving themselves over in worship of a majestic GOD. Personally, the last line of this chorus punches me in the face every time we sing it: "Your grace has found me just as I am // Empty handed but alive in Your hands." Absolutely phenomenal. We were rolling in this song, so I added a couple extra choruses to the end. THEN, as we were finishing up Pastor Jordan came up and asked to keep singing it, so we kept worshipping our GOD as a family and it was an incredible experience. We probably sang through the chorus 8 more times.
***As a side note, I think this illustrates why we are attempting to do more music that is original to our community. We started using this song last year during our 7-week series on the parable of the prodigal son. Our congregation made a connection from this song to the series (which impacted our church deeply). As a result there is an authenticity in our worship that pours forth when we sing this particular song together. As we are working on original music we pray that GOD creates these bonds between music and message. And, that we will create songs that our congregation can hear and think, "this reminds me of what GOD has called us to from [insert sermon point here]." Music has to be more than a catchy melody with some good words (even beyond sound theological lyrics). There must be a lasting purpose to the songs we sing, just as the teaching of the word should not be listened to and then forgotten. All that we do in a gathering of the saints should point to an eternal end. End of worship sermon. :)
[album: World Service - Delirious?]
The only thing that was unfortunate about our service today is that since a number of elements ran longer than normal, it forced us to dump the response song to the sermon. While this is not a huge deal, I was really looking forward to doing the song. Alli Hutchens was going to lead us through "From the Inside Out" with Jess Yoder backing her up. I love doing that song and it would have worked really well in conjunction with the sermon. But, when the spirit moves, you just have to let go and let some of your desires slide. I am constantly humbled at how incredible it is to see GOD move in ways that look very different from how I intend.
What a great morning!
To see what brothers and sisters in other churches were singing this week check out the Sunday Setlist at www.theworshipcommunity.com.
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