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Today, I’m really happy to say that my worship post has been shared from my wife’s perspective. So, please welcome Diane for her first worship service summary/confessional/setlist/thingy.

Another refreshing Sunday this week, with Awesome Church continuing to have an expectancy and rest in God. It’s been really exciting to see this happen, and a real encouragement to me personally for a multitude of reasons. True humility really thrills me, and I know that’s mostly because I need to be humble myself. It can be a tough lesson to learn, but sometimes we make it harder than it should be.

It’s almost like Pastor Gary is saying ‘ok, I’ll do what God’s called me to preach, and then I’ll get myself out of the way!’ Love it. I really hope and pray this season keeps on going, as a church we do need it. We need it individually and corporately.

Next up is a proposed 24/7 Day of Worship! We don’t know when or how (our pastor will be in Fiji for 2 weeks in December) but it will certainly happen.

Sunday AM

The message was on being an Acts church. We are still part of the book of Acts, as the story of the church continues to be written. We were reminded that Jesus’ ministry was startling and miraculous – there is a time to be meditative and quiet, but as a church we need to move in God’s power to change this world, and do what Jesus did – preach, teach and heal. The Acts church were a church of action, and a people who relinquished their control to God. They were united and prayed together with one accord, and were blessed through that; their experience was the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit’s anointing when they met together, and God’s power was poured out. Lastly, what did they do? They changed the world. We are no different, and this is what we are called to do as well.

Music

1. No Reason To Hide (Houston, Crocker / Hillsong)
2. I Walk By Faith (Chris Falson)
3. His Glory Appears (Sampson, Zschech / Hillsong)
4. I Exalt Thee (Pete Sanchez Jr)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Show Me Your Glory (Murgida / Awesome Church)
…and to close the service…
6. I Exalt Thee
7. His Glory Appears
(though as has become the new norm for us, those last two spent a lot more time in free/prophetic worship than singing the written songs. Just over an hour actually.)

Rachel led today, and I continue to fairly burst with pride when I see these ‘young’uns’ step up to the plate. She’s moved from being a young girl who could sing well and lead nervously to a young woman who really can worship and lead others into the presence of God in a prophetic way. Move over, Kim Walker!

The band were super tight today (give or take the odd stumbled lyric), Tyson did a fab job on drums – again, someone who’s come a long way and has become a fantastic artist. (Editors note: It’s good for our worshippers to ALSO be artists)

The harmonies on His Glory Appears were SO sweet, I love what our team does to this song. We continue to resurrect some oldies but goodies with I Exalt Thee, which really focused the congregation. Many people did not want to leave after the time of free worship, and that is always a good sign on a Sunday morning!

So there you have it, straight from a completely unbiased congregation member. Seriously, Diane is probably less biased than many other people; no messing about with my wife.

As usual when I spend a Saturday in the recording studio, Diane and I didn’t attend the evening service so we could actually spend some time together, otherwise we don’t see each other for quality alone time at all in those weeks.   And Saturday’s session took a long time – the day was over 16 hours for me and the engineer – but it was very fruitful.

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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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Our late spring’s winter continued today, and with our Awesome Youth away at Awesome Youth Camp, we also only had the one service. And just like the camp, it was awesome too.

Sunday AM

One of our pastoral team, Peter Abood, preached a great message on peace – and more specifically living free from spiritual afflictions, the futility of seeking non-spiritual means to be free of conditions brought on by spiritual affliction, and keys to being able to have that peace. Peter is passionate about this subject, and his day-to-day ministry is all about people living free from affliction. It was good to hear him preach it too.

Music

1. Let God Arise (Tomlin, Reeves, Cash / Passion)
2. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon / Soul Survivor)
3. Song From Heaven (Chris Falson)
4. How Great Is Our God (Tomlin, Reeves, Cash / Passion)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Say So (Houghton, Gungor / Lakewood)
…and to close the service…
6. Song From Heaven
7. Happy Day

With the youth away, we were about as acoustic as we get. Meaning we had no electric guitars. So it wasn’t really even close to acoustic, just a bit more laid back and relaxed, helped by the lounge-worship lilt in Song From Heaven, but still anthemic for the end of How Great Is Our God.

We had a beautiful time of prayer, Spirit-singing and soaking at the end of the service for close to an hour. It’s been a while since we had a time freely worshipping like that following the morning service, and it was humbling to be part of that move of the Spirit through the congregation. Our pastor talked about the tragedy of people feeling they need to fake their faith, putting on the “it’s all OK” mask when they’re really hurting, and prayed for that affliction of faking it to be lifted. Some people’s countenances changed in that moment. It’s also been a while since we heard a message like today’s; it was refreshing and timely.

I rarely mention when we have salvations either…but we do most Sundays. Not lots, but a steady stream. Today, another 2 were added to the Kingdom, while a few kids at youth camp gave their lives too. We had a mid-service phone link up, which was fun if unintelligible.

Finally, a note…we had no Hillsong songs today. Yes, I believe that might be a first.

What did you do today?

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With unseasonably cool & wet weather, along with the start of daylight savings, I was expecting we might have a few issues today.  But we didn’t.  Yay!

Sunday AM

The message was on “The Life You’ve Always Wanted”, looking at why we don’t have that, and what we can do to get it.  Bible as self-help…or, not-quite-so-self-help, since it all involved dependence and belief in the promises of God, without doubt.  That’s a key part of actually getting this Christian life to work – no doubt.

Music

1. No Reason To Hide (Crocker, Houston / Hillsong)
2. Send My Sins Away (Murgida / Awesome Church)
3. To Meet You Here (Scarpato, Goodwin / Awesome Church)
4. Song From Heaven (Chris Falson)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. No Reason To Hide
…and to close the service…
6. Song From Heaven

I was back leading today, and since we had a full service with a baby dedication, communion, and lots of visitors, it was a fairly straight-forward set musically – with our retro-rewalk song for the week being another early 90s Chris Falson chorus, Song From Heaven.  The sound was sweet onstage, and I had good reports from off-stage too. Our next recording session on Oct 17 is To Meet You Here, and today was some good preparation, especially for the vocal harmonies. As with all songs I write, it’s got loads of harmonies. I’m a choir boy, remember…

Sunday PM

Our youth totally took over the evening service, which I always enjoy.  They always run the music, but often with a few slightly less-youthy helpers.  Tonight though, it was all high-school and under in the worship, and the message was taken by our youth pastor Mark.  It was about Generational Purpose, and looked at our responsibility to dream big on behalf of the next generation, making the path to greatness as smooth as possible – not being a hindrance, etc.  Very good, though a small turnout since it was the Rugby League grand final. We may well have been the only church in Sydney with an evening service this week

Music

1. All Day (Sampson / Hillsong)
2. This Is Our God (Morgan, Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Shout You Praise (Oroso, Araullo, Reddy / Awesome Church)
…and to close the service…
4. Run (Houston / Hillsong)
5. Perfect Son / Awesome God (Reddy, Mullins)

Joe led for the first time this evening, and with the kids from our creative arts team also joining the youth band on stage, it was a very fun evening. I recorded a snippet on my phone for your enjoyment. Joe’s got a great gift in leading, and having just been inducted as school captain of his school for 2010, I’m sure we’re going to see that leadership skill flourish both in and out of the church.

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This morning’s message was on gifts (ministry and spiritual) and the one gift that every Christian has – the ministry gift of reconciliation. Taken from 2 Corinthians 5:17 onwards, it was a really good spin on the usual way of preaching the great commission.

Music

Sunday AM
1. No Reason To Hide (Crocker, Houston / Hillsong)
2. I Walk By Faith (Chris Falson)
3. Hosanna (Fraser / Hillsong)
4. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Your Love Is My Song (Murgida / Awesome Church)
…and to close the service…
6. free-worship – including Fire Fall Down, but over the chords to No Reason To Hide, and He Is Lord…

Rachael led worship today, and vocally led all the songs apart from No Reason To Hide, which I did. At the end of the service we had a very sweet ministry and free-worship time, and our pastor asked Rach to lead us in free-worship. Rachael is not quite 18, and only relatively new to leading the worship as opposed to leading songs, but she did a truly great job of the free-worship as well as the opening music set, and is excited to take away some great lessons on what she needs to do to keep growing into her gifting.  She’s contemplating studying overseas next year, which would be great for her but a loss for the church while she’s away (especially with Diane and I heading to N.Ireland early next year too).

Sunday PM

Confession : Diane and I took the afternoon / evening off, even though the teaching on the Day of Atonement Feast (Yom Kippur) and how that relates to Christian life would have been great. With me working long days in the studio recording our worship album, and with planning needing to be done to emigrate too, we’ve decided that the weeks I have a studio session on Saturday, we’ll not do the night service. After all, we’ll end up with a video copy anyway since Diane will edit it for TV.

Finally, an update on our album recording.  Yesterday’s session was Your Love Is My Song, which was also the first song we’ve done where the writer didn’t sing lead vocals. There’ll be a few more of those coming up in the next 2 months, and we’re still on track for a pre-Christmas release. I hope. Still a lot to be done, not just with the recording, but the administration side of it all too. I’m taking it all one day at a time. And still really enjoying the job of producer.  Still, time will tell if I’m actually any good at it or whether I just enjoy it. 

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Our run of visiting preachers continued today with Pastor Allan Bagg from The Bay Christian Family Church in Cape Town, South Africa.

He preached for both meetings, and he’s an amazing teacher. He told us he was going to summarise two years of teachings on the blessing and what it really means into 2 hours, and he did it convincingly…while also fitting in time for some healing and a few miracles took place.

Average Sunday then

Music

Sunday AM
1. Run (Houston / Hillsong)
2. I Walk By Faith (Chris Falson)
3. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
4. Where You Go, I Go (Johnson, Mohr / Bethel)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. No Reason To Hide (Crocker, Houston / Hillsong)
…and to close the service…
6. No Reason To Hide

Dante was leading worship, while Marg and I led a couple songs – Marg on He Is Lord, and me on Run and No Reason To Hide. Dante’s heart for worship is always inspirational to me, and as his Bible College mentor I also feel pride in having seen him grow as a worship leader and mentor to the younger team members too.

Sunday PM
1. No Reason To Hide (Crocker, Houston / Hillsong)
2. For Your Glory (Pringle, Smith / C3)
3. Worthy Is The Lamb (Murgida / Awesome Church)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
4. Shout You Praise (Araullo, Reddy, Oroso / Awesome Church)
…and then to close following the healing meeting (wow)
5. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)

Troy led tonight, but really it was a team effort with everyone doing their part in bringing us into the throneroom to worship the King of Kings and prepare us for the teaching and healing that took place afterwards.

There were a few more (different) technical things too – weird stuff with mic levels that just weren’t behaving. Ho hum, but there will always be capacity for distraction if we choose to be distracted, hey!

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Summer has made a very early appearance with temperatures hitting the mid-30s this weekend (that’s the high 90s for you farenheit users over yonder)

The AM series on guarding your tongue continued and really does make you stop and consider everything you say. I’ve always been fairly conscious of that for some reason, but I can still be far more effective at shaping my world through the words I speak and think than I have been. Convicting.

The PM message was on angelic beings, and concentrated on demystifying angels and how we as Christians (humans, created higher than the angels) have them as our helpers in ministry. There were so many verse references that I couldn’t keep up. Having been involved with territorial spiritual warfare, very little was new to me, but was a good refresher on some angelic being basics.

Music

Sunday AM
1. You Deserve (Crocker, Dunlop / Hillsong)
2. For Your Name (Morgan, Gillies, Houston / Hillsong)
3. His Glory Appears (Sampson, Zchech / Hillsong)
4. Lord Of Lords (Fraser / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Run (Houston / Hillsong)
…and to close the service…
6. His Glory Appears (instrumental)

Marg was leading while I had a(nother) week off. I really enjoy being led to the throneroom by her leading. It was also great to have some more intimate worship songs – neither one is an anthem, which we would usually have – and it created a different atmosphere, perfect for the repentence for loose tongue talk which took place after the service. Bridgina led a song for the first time this morning on His Glory Appears and her sweet soprano suits the song perfectly.

Sunday PM
1. No Reason To Hide (Crocker, Houston / Hillsong)
2. Lead Me To The Cross (Fraser / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. For Your Glory (Pringle, Smith / C3)
…and then Worship+…
4. Fire Fall Down (Crocker / Hillsong
5. You Are Here (The Same Power) (Pankratz, George / Hillsong)
6. Perfect One / Awesome God (Mullins + Reddy / Awesome Church)
7. I Walk By Faith (Chris Falson)
8. No Reason To Hide

Troy led tonight, with Julie doing most of the song-leading. So. much. fun. I’m sure if we were set up to allow stage diving it would happen – in a holy way of course.

We had a few technical issues with various things this week, but nothing too insurmountable or distracting. Just quite a few little things. It’s great to feel I don’t need to fix them all though, and that the other members of the various teams are starting to get pro-active in dealing with issues.

What did Sunday hold for you?

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Come and join in with Sunday Setlists over at FredMckinnon.com, and see how churches around the world have been worshipping this week.

It’s been a few weeks since I posted a worship post. There’s LOTS of reasons for that, some of which might become clearer in coming weeks. Providing I blog about them of course.

A new message series started today on guarding your tongue, and should be another great set of messages.

It’s also Father’s Day down here in Australia (and New Zealand), so we only had a morning service to allow everyone to spend the rest of the day with their families. We don’t have that luxury here as our families are faaarrrr away, so Diane and I took advantage of the rare opportunity to catch up on some sleep with a luxurious Sunday nap.

Music

Sunday AM
1. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon / Soul Survivor)
2. I Walk By Faith (Chris Falson)
3. To Meet You Here (Goodwin, Scarpato / Awesome Church)
4. This Is Our God (Morgan, Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Happy Day
…and to close the service…
6. I Walk By Faith

I was leading again today, though basically co-led with Dante since he led songs 2 and 4. We had some sweet free-worship time in the middle of To Meet You Here too.

Various members of the team have also spent the past two Saturdays in the recording studio, and we’ve got another 2 songs done for our album now. Woohoo! Last week was one of my favourite worship songs to come from our church (Worthy Is The Lamb), while yesterday was our fun-pop-praise-summer-sing-a-long type number (well, the chorus anyway – Forever Praise). We’ve got a busy few months ahead to get it completed by the end of the year, but we will get there.

What did you do this weekend?

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