Another good day of worship today.  We blended the worship a bit with Seth and I doing the prelude and the special music and Sandy doing the hymns on the organ.  This isn’t the first time that we’ve blended the worship – however, this is the first time that we’ve used electric guitars and a drum loop.

The day started out with a couple of announcements about two of the new ministries that we are starting up this fall – a Women’s Connexion’s programs and a Small Group Connexions program.  We are passing out surveys for people to fill out so that we can ensure that as we continue to plan for the fall we try to do our best to meet the needs of the congregation in both of these areas.  It is truly a blessing to see the way that God is beginning to work in this body of Christ.

For the prelude we did Fee’s “All Because of Jesus”.  Seth and I were both on electric for this one with me playing rhythm and Seth add the “flavor”  I used my Fender G-DEC 30  to add in a basic double-kick drum loop.  It worked pretty well with the exception of me forgetting to drop out at one point – it didn’t affect the song, it just didn’t allow it to grow like I wanted it to.

We then did two hymns on the organ, “Blessed Assurance” and “Nothing But the Blood” – both great powerful songs.

Chuck preached on Ephesians 1:3-14 (NIV).  The scripture reminds us that we are chosen by god and that it is in Christ that we are chosen, in him that we are redeemed.  So, based on that scripture and where Chuck took the message I felt it was only appropriate to do Big Daddy Weave’s “In Christ”.  This went really well – I was on the acoustic for this one and Seth added the electric in – no loops.

The service closed with “Victory in Jesus” on the organ.

All in all things went really well.  I received some positive feedback about the music we provided which was encouraging.  We didn’t have many of the “younger” crowd in the congregation this week so I was a little concerned.  The one thing that I love about this family is that while that type of music may now be their favorite they are not negative about it.  In all the time that I’ve been there the only negative comment I’ve received was that my guitar was too loud one time and overpowered the vocals (and he was absolutely right).  This congregation knows that in order to reach more people with the Gospel we have to do new things and so they support everything that we are doing.

This post is also a part of the “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at FredMcKinnon.Com – check it out for other worship leader’s reflections.