HOLY HOLY HOLY
Call to Worship: Psalm 121
YES AND AMEN
Scripture tells us that God is faithful, even when we are faithless. Almost every other world religion is about earning, striving, making an ascent to God. But as followers of Jesus, we celebrate the fact that we could never earn, or ascend to God, but God in Christ moved toward us. He took on our flesh and bone, lived a perfect life, died the death we deserved for the punishment of our sin, rose again, and is seated in victory at the right hand of the Father. But Jesus life on this earth was not easy, or pretty - Scripture describes Jesus as the Suffering Servant, the One who is a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And this morning we are going to learn a new song that helps us remember who Jesus is, what He has done, and what His life has accomplished for us. Let’s sing…
SON OF SUFFERING
Sermon: James 5:7-12
Communion
IN CHRIST ALONE
Benediction
Set List
Master Song List
Knowing and measuring the content of the songs we lead and sing in our churches is important. But before you are able to measure each individual song, and weigh the deficiencies in your Master Song List - you have to actually have a Master Song List. At the core, a Master Song List is exactly what it sounds like - all of the songs that make up the diet of your church. But hopefully more than just titles, your Master Song List will give you a way to track, understand, and learn the rhythms of rotation for the songs you lead.
I think the first place to start is with having a tool. I use Planning Center to store my master song list, but you could just as easily use a spreadsheet.
The next step is to keep whatever tool you are using up to date. No information is helpful if it is not correct or current. This is why I ‘archive’ songs in Planning Center that are not a part of the regular rotation of songs we sing. A Master Song List should be just your current songs in rotation - not every song the church has ever sung.
Now that you have chosen the tool, and gotten your Master Song List up to date, besides song titles what should be included and accessible?
Some of the things I have found helpful are the themes that I use for the Gospel Song Liturgy (what elements of the Gospel story does this song cover? Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, Glorification). Standard keys - ones where I am most comfortable, but also the keys that another worship leader may use. This would also include the keys that are most comfortable for a female vocalist to lead. Additional versions - the standard version of In Christ Alone is excellent, but recently we’ve been including King’s Kaleidoscope’s version of the song with a completely different feel. Both of them have their place, so I want access to either version.
You’ve settled on a tool to use, gotten the information current, and know how to fill out your Master Song List with useful information, now what?
Besides having a 30,000 foot view of the diet of songs your church is currently singing, I think a Master Set List helps in your rhythm of building set lists, and here is how: it gives you more skill in planning multiple set lists at the same time. When you plan a set list week-to-week it can be easy to revert to whatever is most familiar, or your personal favorites without holding those things in tension with the long-range vision and direction of your area of ministry. For me personally, the rhythm that has seemed to work best is planning set lists a month at a time. I still give myself flexibility with adapting from week to week, but I aim for the bones to remain the same. Planning multiple set lists at once helps with rhythms for introducing new songs to ensure our new songs are being played with enough frequency to become familiar, but not so often to become tiring.
A few questions to consider in closing:
What is on your Master Song List?
How are you keeping track of what songs you are using?
How do you know where a song falls on the spectrum of heavy rotation, regular rotation, or cycling out of use?
10 July: Liturgy + Set List
GRACE ALONE
Call to Worship: Psalm 50:1-6, 10-12
We serve a God who has no need. Before He created everything and everyone, He was full, content, and complete in and of Himself. We gather together to sing the praises of God not to fill some kind of cosmic void in God’s ego. We gather together to sing the praise of God because He commands it, because He is worthy, and because God delights to share in His life, fullness, and joy with His people. You and I come as people with great need, to a God who has no need, so that we can be reminded of the way that God has met our need in and through Christ. Let’s sing together…
BUILD MY LIFE
HYMN OF HEAVEN
Sermon: James 5:1-6
There is a difference between condemnation and conviction. Condemnation leaves me without hope. And if you are here this morning as a follower of Jesus, Scripture tells us there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Conviction on the other hand is a gift of grace, it is an invitation of the Holy Spirit to return to Christ, to treasure Christ above all things. Let’s let that conviction invite us to confess our sins to God and one another:
Corporate Confession [From the Worship Sourcebook]:
LEADER:
God of grace,
we confess that we have elevated
the things of this world above you.
We have made idols of possessions and people
and used your name for causes
that are not consistent with you and your purposes.
We have permitted our schedules to come first
and have not taken the time to worship you.
We have not always honored those who guided us in life.
We have participated in systems
that take life instead of give it.
We have been unfaithful in our covenant relationships.
We have yearned for, and sometimes taken, that which is not ours, and we have misrepresented others’ intentions.
ALL:
Forgive us, O God,
for the many ways we fall short of your glory.
Help us to learn to live together according to your ways
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
COME BEHOLD THE WONDROUS MYSTERY
WHO YOU SAY I AM
Benediction: Matthew 6:19-21
3 July: Liturgy + Set List
HOUSE OF THE LORD
Call to Worship: We’re glad that you’re here worshiping with us on this family worship weekend. Boys and girls, you’ll see that what we do in this room is similar to what you do in the Clubhouse each week: we read from God’s Word, the Bible, we sing truths together from the Bible, we are taught from God’s Word, and we pray God’s Word together. So I am going to read from the Bible now, and see how God invites us to worship Him:
Psalm 103:13-19
Let’s sing to our King, and our faithful God together…
PROMISES
I LOVE YOU LORD
Sermon: James 4:13-17
Our lives are a mist, our world is passing away, but the steadfast love of God never ends. If we could grasp the deep love of God towards us in and through Christ, how joyfully we would submit everything we have and all that we are to the will of God. Let’s sing about God’s love toward us:
HOW HE LOVES
GOD SO LOVED
26 June: Liturgy + Set List
BEFORE THE THRONE
Call to Worship: Psalm 73:25-26, 28
Every one of us moves through our lives seeking strength, security, and refuge. Whether that is in ourselves, or in something or someone outside of ourselves. Part of what we do when we gather with the people of God is to confess and profess that everything and everyone - including us - will fail. But God will never, can never, and has never failed. So we can join our hearts with the Psalmist saying, who do we have in heaven beside you? God, we desire to desire you more than all things. Let’s let these songs not just shape our time together this morning, but our lives lived in response to our God who cannot fail.
GRAVES INTO GARDENS
HIS MERCY IS MORE
Sermon: James 4:1-12
It is the kindness of God that He reveals our sins to us. When we cover our sin, God exposes our sin. When we uncover our sin, God covers us in Christ’s completed work on our behalf. And it is God’s kindness that He reveals Himself to us as the One who satisfies the desire of every longing heart. Maybe you need to use this time to sit and continue to reflect, remember, and repent. Maybe you need to sit quietly and allow these words to wash over you. Maybe you need to stand and celebrate the One who satisfies your soul. But let’s continue to respond together.
I SHALL NOT WANT
I STAND AMAZED (HOW MARVELOUS)
Benediction
When Songs Don't Matter
I know, I know. Last week I wrote about how there are songs for the season, and this week I am saying songs don’t matter.
Let me explain.
Building a song master song list takes a lot of time, energy, and intention. It must be tailored to the congregation, conscious of the skill and ability of the worship leader and team, and be made up of songs for the season, as well as songs with staying power. Your master song list should include songs that are scripturally sound, theologically rich, artistically and musically compelling, and emotively engaging. Or more simply, as one worship leader described to me: thinking songs and feeling songs. Needless to say, this is a task that requires more thought than merely choosing your favorite song each week.
Several years ago, two interns were working with me to plan set lists for the Summer weeks that I would be away. We were reading the passage of Scripture that would be preached, and trying to list a smaller group of songs from our master song list that they could choose each weekend to lead. About halfway through this process one of the interns said, ‘We could sing any of these songs! They all fit, because we are always singing about Jesus, and always preaching the Gospel.’
If we do the hard work upfront of building, refining, adding, and trimming our master song list we lessen the pressure to make our songs fit the sermon week to week, because the reality is that they all fit! And when they all fit, we can refine even more as we look for through line concepts, same text inspiration, and repeated refrains in songs and sermons alike.
Do songs matter? Of course. But they matter less when you do the hard work upfront.
June 19: Liturgy + Set List
CHRIST BE MAGNIFIED
Call To Worship: Psalm 8:1,3-4,9
We are here this morning to remember and acknowledge that God is God, and we are not. That He is faithful even when we are faithless - let’s sing together:
PROMISES
JESUS PAID IT ALL
Sermon: James 3:13-18
Wisdom must move from our heads to our hearts, and transform our lives. Wisdom that lives in our heads is merely knowledge. But in our own strength, you and I only produce worldly wisdom, we need the Holy Spirit to do the hard work of breaking up our hard hearts, sanding off the rough edges, and giving us Godly wisdom. Let’s pray as we sing that the Holy Spirit would transform our knowledge into Godly wisdom, let’s stand and sing:
BE THOU MY VISION
GOODNESS OF GOD
Benediction: Colossians 3:12,15
Songs For The Season
They say, “Write what you know.” And for the most part, everything I share on my website is things that I have learned and feel that I can grasp with enough familiarity to share. Today, I want to share something I am learning in real-time.
Songs are important. I care deeply about the new songs we choose, as well as the way we introduce those songs to the congregation. I care deeply about the canon of songs that make up our master song list, as well as the way those songs shape our theology of God and the Gospel. I care deeply about whether our songs are purposed for personal devotion, or corporate worship because all songs are prayers. I even believe there are guiding principles that can help us determine what is a good song.
But what I am learning in realtime, is that there are songs for seasons.
I read an article in Worship Leader Magazine last month titled, “Worship At The Speed of Sound.” In it, WLM published the findings of a team of researchers who had studied the lifespan of corporate worship songs registered with CCLI from 1988 to 2019. The researchers had a hunch that the creation, distribution, ascent, and decline of a corporate worship song has increased rapidly over that time period. And understandably, they were correct. Social media, online distribution, ‘worship artists,’ conferences, touring, and radio, were all contributing factors both in the number of songs available, as well as their availability.
Some songs have staying power - think of many of the hymns that have been passed down through the ages or songs like Chris Tomlin’s “How Great Is Our God.” Some songs cut through the noise for a season, and all but disappear - one such song cited in the research is Jesus Culture’s “Fierce.”
I truly believe that the bulk of our diet when it comes to song choice should be songs that have staying power. Songs that ring with resonance in different seasons and stages of our lives. Songs that are sung in the hospital room, at the altar, and during the midnight hour as a parent rocks a child to sleep. But what I am learning is that there are songs for seasons. Songs that are still good, beautiful, and true. Songs that capture a moment in the life of our churches - both locally, and globally. These are the songs that we will look back with sheepish affection, and fondness as we are reminded of the Spirit’s movement in our lives and histories. These are the songs for the season.
What have been songs for the season in your life?
June 12: Liturgy + Set List
HOW GREAT THOU ART
Call to Worship: Psalm 29:1-4
The voice of God cuts through all of the noise and chaos of the world and our lives. So let’s pray that as we sing, and as we sit under God’s Word, and as we come to the communion table we would hear the generative, generous, kind, voice of God, drawing us unto Himself and sending us out on mission.
GRAVES INTO GARDENS
GREAT ARE YOU LORD
Sermon: James 3:1-12
Communion
Let’s use our words to declare what is true of who God is and what He has done, would you stand and sing:
RAISE A HALLELUJAH
Benediction:
June 5: Liturgy + Set List
ALL CREATURES OF OUR GOD AND KING
Call to Worship: Psalm 99:1-5
This morning marks 40 days since Easter Sunday, which means today is Pentecost Sunday in the Global Church Calendar - a day where we celebrate the sending of the Holy Spirit. And if you are here this morning as someone who confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and King with more than your mouth and your songs, but with your life, that is not something that you have done on your own, it is the Holy Spirit who has opened your eyes to behold the truth of who Jesus is and what He has done. So let’s pray as we worship and sing this morning that the Holy Spirit will continue to open our eyes to behold Jesus as Lord of lords, and King of kings…
KING OF KINGS
IS HE WORTHY
Sermon: James 2:14-26
Works are a natural result of real, saving faith. In the same way, a tree does not have to labor over producing fruit, so a believer - empowered by the Holy Spirit - will naturally become people who love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, producing works that glorify God and bless the world. Let’s sing:
10,000 REASONS (BLESS THE LORD)
BUILD MY LIFE
Benediction
May 29: Liturgy + Set List
GOD SO LOVED
Call to Worship: Psalm 24:1-6
We gather to be reminded that God is the creator and sustainer of all things. We gather to be reminded weekly, because we forget daily, to seek the face of God. The One who has revealed Himself in many ways - most clearly in and through Jesus, and through God’s Word. So let’s seek God together this morning, let’s sing…
CHRIST BE MAGNIFIED
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL NAME
Sermon: James 1:26-2:13
The truth is every one of us is more comfortable with people that look, think, believe, vote, live like us. But as followers of Jesus we know that the distance between one sinner and another sinner is nowhere as wide as the distance a holy God crossed toward sinful people. Let’s be reminded of what Jesus has done:
Philippians 2:5-12
LIVING HOPE
Baptism
Benediction
May 22: Liturgy + Set List
HOUSE OF THE LORD
Call to Worship: Psalm 86:1-7
It is a gift of Grace to the people of God that God has spoken to us through His Word. And not just that but that He desires to speak to us through His Spirit as we gather around His Word. He has spoken, He is speaking, but He is also the God who listens and hears. He invites us to pour out our hearts as we seek to respond to His Word preached. Let’s stand and sing in response to God’s Word:
GRACE ALONE
CHRIST BE MAGNIFIED
Sermon: Ezekiel 37:1-14
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. The heavens will pass away, and the earth will pass away but the Word of the Lord endures forever. Why would we seek to anchor our lives to anything other than the immovable, enduring, eternal Word of God? Let’s stand and respond together:
ON CHRIST THE SOLID ROCK
HIS MERCY IS MORE