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A fresh season is definitely upon Awesome Church. As I’ve said a few times over the last few weeks, we’ve been having some powerful/beautiful/humbling encounters with God in our services. Pastor Gary today said this is what church should be, and indeed, we have Biblical evidence to support that – music, teaching, prayer, healing, and the Spirit moving as He wills. We’ve said for a long time we don’t want just another church meeting. It’s starting to happen consistently now.

Sunday AM

Today’s message was “Don’t Lose It” which focussed on what we need to do to keep it (not really based on Craig Groeschel’s message/book, but not without similarities). It was great, and timely, and needed, and…you get the idea.

Music

1. Run (Houston / Hillsong)
2. No Reason To Hide (Houston, Crocker / Hillsong)
3. His Glory Appears (Sampson, Zschech / Hillsong)
4. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. No Reason To Hide
…and to close the service…
6. In Your Presence (DeShazo)
7. His Glory Appears
8. Fire Fall Down (Crocker / Hillsong)

Dante led this morning, and as usual, did a great job leading all of us – the team and congregation – into the presence of God, ready for a powerful word from the pastor, and the encounter which followed. It’s exciting that what was once a “special” service is now becoming the norm – visitations of the Spirit to refresh, empower, equip and prepare us for the rest of our week out influencing the world we live in.

And, I have it on good authority that the harmonies in “His Glory Appears” were sweet today. Very. sweet.

Sunday PM

Tonight’s message was a continuation of the morning, with “Don’t Lose It, Part 2″. Full of wisdom served up with humour.

1. One Way (Houston / Hillsong)
2. Hosanna (Fraser / Hillsong
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Glow (Crocker, Houston / Hillsong)
…and to close the service…
4. Stronger (Fielding, Morgan / Hillsong)
5. um, hard to describe…basically a few chords from “Fire Fall Down” over which followed around 30 minutes of free worship covering every part of the intensity spectrum. Love. it. Julie’s gift in prophetic worship really shone tonight.
6. He Is Lord
7. No Reason To Hide
8. Run
9. One Way
10. I Walk By Faith (Falson)

Merv may have been the team leader for the evening, but Darren led more songs, and as I noted, Julie led most of the free-worship. Team work is great. Darren is a natural ham, and when he leads it’s an all-out youth meeting, with his natural theatrics coming to the fore. I love fun praise which remains reverent to the One that these songs is honouring.

One thing I realised tonight – and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long – is the reason why I have enjoyed the music from bands like Spiritualized…even though I struggle with most of their lyrics (especially, and obviously, their anti-Christian songs like “Lord, Let It Rain On Me”, but just the druggy references are enough anyway).  The free worship tonight confirmed for me Spiritualized, and bands like Sigur Ros and even My Bloody Valentine, all create sounds which have some similarity to the free worship we experience at Awesome Church. We don’t really sound like Jesus Culture in our free-worship times (though Diane thinks we did tonight), or Hillsong (ditto), or Lakewood, or … anynumberofotherchurches.   While there’s elements of all of them (the main element being the Holy Spirit, of course) we sound like us.

Since it’s never possible to capture that sound on recording and reflect the real sound with any degree of accuracy (and hence why there’s not much of it on our upcoming album, but we don’t want to fake it either), if you want to get some idea of how our free worship sounds to these ears, without …check out those links…mainly the Sigur Ros one…

I even think the lyrics are all in the clear too. Have an awesome week with God, worship Him alone.

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