Inspiration

I love the videos from the grade school choir at PS 22 in New York City. These kids are an inspiration. As you can see they sing from their hearts, authentically, unashamedly, passionately. Kudos to the director of this group as well, who gives the kids the freedom and direction to learn how to sing like this!


Click here to check out the video

Music for Sunday September 13th

The King of Love my Shepherd is!

Sunday was the first day of our sermon series on the 23rd Psalm, really looking forward to digging a little bit more into this Psalm. Each week we are trying to find a song to use that uses some of the words or themes from the 23rd Psalm. If you have any suggestions please let me know!

At 10:00- It was also Rally Day (1st day of Sunday School)- LOTS of kids! Yay! I chose music that I thought the kids would enjoy and sing easily.

pre-service
Awesome is the Lord Most High -in E!- brand new song for us, sung by awesome singer Phil, it went well.
Days of Elijah- one of the kids favorites

Call to Worship
Open the Eyes of My Heart
Holy Holy Holy- the hymn. This hymn is part of the hymn of the month program that I have devoloped to help the kids who go to primarily services with more contemporary music, become more familiar with hymn from years past.

offering
Psalm 23 by Stuart Townend- I found this song written in 1996, doing a theme search on http://www.ccli.com/. Very nice, simple, and sweet. Worked perfectly with the theme, and even had a pretty descant written into the song. I think I'll use this one again during this series. Scott and Phil rocked the harmonies!

Closing
My Savior My God- Aaron Shust

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Additional worship notes: I played the organ for the traditional service Sunday, the closing hymn
was one of my favorites, and a sending blessing:

Go my children with my blessing, never alone.

Waking sleeping I am with you; You are my own.

In my love's baptismal river I have made you mine forever,

Go my children, with my blessing- You are my own.

Go my children, sins forgiven, at peace and pure

Here you learned

how much I love you, what i can cure

Here you heard My dear son's story, here you touched Him, saw His glory

Go My Children sins forgiven at peace and pure

Go my children fed and nourished, closer to Me;

Grow in love and love by serving, Joyful and free,
Here my Spirit's power filled you; here His tender comfort stilled you.

Go my children, fed and nourished, Joyful and free.

I the Lord will bless and keep you, and give you peace;

I the Lord will smile upon you and give you peace

I the Lord will be your Father, Savior, Comforter and Brother,

Go My Children I will keep you, and give you peace

text: Jaroslav J Vajda (1983 Concordia Publishing House)

tune: Welsh 18th century

This post is part of the blog carnival at Fred McKinnon's blog. There you can read about the Sunday worship music choices from churches all around the world! Check it out right here

Music for Sunday September 6

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

I enjoyed choosing the music for this Sunday's Sanctuary service, mixing and matching styles and decades. I don't like to call it blended, I'd say more of a convergence. And even though I think Pastor J may "disapprove" of my use of a dictionary definition... here we go anyway.

From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:


Main Entry: con·ver·gence
Pronunciation: \kən-ˈvər-jən(t)s\
Function: noun
Date: 1713
1 : the act of converging and especially moving toward union or uniformity; especially : coordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed on corresponding retinal areas2 : the state or property of being convergent 3 : independent development of similar characters (as of bodily structure of unrelated organisms or cultural traits) often associated with similarity of habits or environment4 : the merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole


So the songs for Sunday at Sanctuary

Nothing Can Trouble : Taize piece- sang through 2x, read a Psalm verse, sang, Psalm and so on. By the end of the Psalm, the congregation was singing accapella with me off mic. Beautiful!

You are My all in all: (key of F into G) The first time I have used this at Sanctuary in our 6 years! Of course everyone sang their hearts out, on this old favorite.

Blessed Be Your Name: We use this song quite a bit (too much) so I went from the final chorus of You are My all in All right into the prechorus of Blessed Be Your Name....'every blessing you pour out'. We didn't even sing the verses this week. I also took a chance, and during the bridge... 'you give and take away' I asked the ladies to sing the first time by themselves, and then the second time asked the guys, and then the 3rd time asked them to sing it together. I'm not sure if it sounded corny, me asking them to that, but the musical and community singing effect really worked!

It is Well (the hymn) simple piano arrangement, simple vocals.
How he Loves (John Mark McMillan) this was the second week we have used this great song, we use David Crowder's arrangement. Once you catch on to the creatively written verses, you can't really get this one out of your head.

Be the Center (or is it Centre?) Okay this song is written in 4/4, but I accidentally slipped into 3/4 when I introduced in, and just stuck with it. It works, pretty much. Has anyone else who has used that song done that? accidentally, uh on purpose?

Additional notes about the service: The theme was, keeping Jesus at the Center, and the Creating Sacred Space team ( I just made up a name for the ever faithful art team) put the communion table in the very center of the worship space., behind, infront and along side of all those gathered. Nice!

Overall Great Sunday of awesome singing by the congregation! Old songs new songs, hard songs repetitive songs, it didn't matter. Beautiful!


Check out more beautiful Sunday morning worship sets from all around the world at Fred McKinnon's worship set blog right HERE