My worship posts are always so long, I’m going to be really brief today.

Stop laughing.

Pastor Gary was back preaching today, and he was on fire. Like, he moved it up a notch or ten in his preaching. Two really awesome messages on seed, faith and breaking fear and life’s storms. Yes, I know that’s a few more than two subjects. Keep up.

Music

Sunday AM
1. Your Name High (Houston / Hillsong)
2. For Your Name (Gillies, Houston, Morgan / Hillsong
3. To Meet You Here (Goodwin, Scarpato / Awesome Church)
4. Hosanna (Fraser / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Now Is The Time (Delirious?)

I was back leading again today, and everything was pretty sweet. But more importantly, there was an expectation in the team for God to move in the hearts of His people gathered today, and He did. Certainly the outward signs were of people praising freely and worshipping intently. I’ve written before about how special it is to hear people worshipping to a song you’ve co-written, so I won’t repeat myself…well, not too much.

Sunday PM
1. I’m Not Ashamed (Andrew, Thomas / Hillsong)
2. Saving Son (Murgida / Awesome Church)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Shine On (NeedToBreathe)
…then for the end of service/Worship+ ministry…
4. You Are Here (The Same Power) (Pankratz, George / Hillsong)
5. With Everything (Houston / Hillsong)
6. More Than Life (Morgan / Hillsong)
7. Run (Houston / Hillsong)

Troy led tonight and led us in his usual enthusiastic style. Always infectious.

Other Stuff

Reports are that the sound was good today, the video problems are close to being resolved (but they were an issue for this morning service apparently…I dunno, I was on stage…)

So, overall … a good day

Note for Facebook readers : remember if I post a video or song, you’ll need to actually click through to my blog to see or listen. You know you want to.

Amazing how missing a week in your home church makes you so hungry to be back there when it really is home.  And it is home.

We started a new series of AM messages titled “Let The Word Do The Work”, so over the past few weeks we’ve also been playing some of the awesome gospel stylings of Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers before and after the meetings. If you look up iTunes you’ll find him, and we’ve been playing his 2009 album The Law Of Confession, Part 1. (I can only link to the Aussie iTunes store…which isn’t much use for most of you who read this…so I haven’t done it. I’m sure you’ll cope.)  Good good stuff, and so far removed from what we could achieve in our team with our whiter-than-whiteness for most of the team.  Oh, and part 1 of the message series was great too – looking forward to the rest!

The PM service was about debt cancellation, and was both informative and inspirational. A good thing.

Music

Sunday AM
1. Break Free (Houston, Ligertwood Crocker / Hillsong)
2. No One Like You (David Crowder*Band)
3. To Meet You Here (Scarpato, Goodwin / Harbourside)
4. This Is Our God (Morgan / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Now Is The Time (Delirious?)
…and for the ministry/end of service
6. This Is Our God (Morgan / Hillsong)
7. Run (Houston / Hillsong)

I was leading again for the first time in three weeks, and it was good fun. I muffed some lyrics in No One Like You, and the drummer set the tempo at about 2 gazillion BPM, but it was still hilariously fun and the congregation are continuing to love this song. The slow songs today were particularly sweet – we had some solid 5 part harmony again, and a virtually acapella chorus in “To Meet You Here” – and I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m looking forward to when we record this song.

Talking of recording, I played the team the rough mix from Saturday’s recording session of “Redeemer”. Everyone was as excited as I was with the result, and Margaret (the writer and lead vocalist) said it’s just as she imagined it when she wrote it. We did some very cool choir things in the studio that have come out really sweetly. Two tracks down, and this novice producer is very happy

Sunday PM
1. Tell The World (Douglass, Houston, Sampson / Hillsong)
2. Hosanna (Fraser / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Say So (Houghton, Gungor)

…and then for Worship+ after the service
4. Awesome God / Perfect Son (Mullins, Reddy / Harbourside)
5. Stronger (Morgan, Fielding / Hillsong)
6. More Than Life (Morgan / Hillsong)
7. For Your Glory (Pringle / C3)

Julie led again tonight, and as I mentioned last time, she’s 15. However, even more exciting was seeing 13 year old Matil do a stunning job song leading for “Hosanna”. Blown away.

Troy led for Worship+, and did a great job as always.

Other Stuff

For the meet & greet fill-in riff, the team tonight played Men at Work’s “Down Under”.  Very funny, since none of them were even born when it came out.  Of course, our former rock band leader pastor started singing it, including the “where women glow and men chunder line”…naturally.  Very very funny.  He even finished by saying “ok, now let’s get back to holy”.  Ha!

Our pastor also talked to Diane at length about a possible ministry opportunity which might be coming up. It would be a paid position. This is unfathomably exciting, but I’ll leave her to share (or not share) further details at this stage…(btw, you should know that she’s far more likely not to share anything)

How about your weekend ?

A quick report, because it’s been yet another great day of music, teaching, prayer and celebration as we came together and worshipped God at Harbourside.

I don’t wanna bore you with repeating the same thing every week. As I’ve said before (oops..too late…), it’s hard to convey just what happened if you weren’t there…

Do any of you feel like that when God is consistently doing big things in your church?

Am I just not trying hard enough?

Music

Sunday AM
1. Forever Praise (Goodwin/Harbourside)
2. Home (Sampson/Hillsong)
3. Rain Down (Seeley/Planetshakers)
4. You’ll Come (Fraser/Hillsong)
5. Now Is The Time (Delirious?)

Sunday PM
1. You Name High (Houston/Hillsong)
2. Stronger (Morgan, Fielding/Hillsong)
3. What The World Will Never Take (Houston/Hillsong)
…and…
4. All Day (Sampson/Hillsong)
5. Shout You Praise (Harbourside)
6. Run (kinda) (Houston/Hillsong)

The youth ran the whole meeting tonight…so it was pumping v.loudly and v.high adrenalin. I mean, even higher than normal.

Great fun, but still reverent too.

How about your Sunday?

Seeing if I can add a bit of structure to these confessionals…let me know if you like or don’t like

Music:
10.30AM
While lots of people were late for our pre-service practice, it went smoothly, but meant we didn’t have time to practice another aspect of the morning…see “Least Favourite Moment” further down the post.

Happy Day (Hughes/Cantelon) – our church is loving this, glad we left learning it til very late in the piece
Now Is The Time (Delirous?) – wow I love this song, and with the chorus being our church theme for the year, finally we had an excuse to learn it. The congregation got into it very quickly, particularly identifying with the social justice themes in the bridge
From The Inside Out (Houston) – it’s been a while since we did this, and I mixed it up a bit by getting Rach to lead instead of me. It’s high in her range, and the fragility was beautiful.
The Simple Truth (Goodwin) – one of mine, uses a synth loop at the beginning before going live band…ends with a HUGE triumphal tag, which kept the congregation hanging for more
Lead Me To The Cross (Fraser) – before the preaching, this was an unplanned sweet soft song. We would usually repeat one of the fast songs. Something different was needed for today
Run (Houston) – after an awesome altar call and time of healing prayer where the team did what we do best – free worship – PsG wanted this to close. So we did

5.00PM
As usual our Ablaze Youth Band led the evening service. They had a rotten practice before hand. The service was amazingly awesome. God is GREAT!

What The World Will Never Take (Sampson/Houston)
Mighty To Save (Morgan/Fielding)
Desert Song (Fraser)

Worship+
The ministry time at the end of our PM service extends into free-worship.  I was part of leading this tonight, which I love almost as much as I love being led into worship by these kids   Tonight we had 1 salvation, and 4 people speak in tongues for the first time. We free worshipped over the chorus of Mighty To Save for around 20 minutes, before we did You’ll Come (Fraser) and Redeemer (Murgida – one of our own anointed songs, and will be the first one we record properly when we hit the studio in April) and free-worshipped over the bridge of that song through to the end of the night, around 50 minutes on these 3 songs.  There is something incredible about being in a place where so many spiritual tongues are being sung with such conviction.

Preaching : AM – Connecting People with God & Others   PM – Three Battles Everyone Faces.  Both great messages, as usual, though the volume was up too loud and the mix was overly sibilant. (I love that word, and I get to use it a lot since it describes my voice all the time). However, considering we have no-one in our church who actually really knows how any of the equipment works, the tech guys do well.

Most Favourite Moment : Apart from the Worship+ time tonight,  the other fave moment has nothing to do with the substance of the day.  This may be a bit sad, but in a day of highlights, picking just one means a fun one is the most likely to make it in here.  There’s a few of us in church who are English language freaks, and often discuss the subject that all preachers obviously take in college teaching them how to artfully create new words, or mix things up in other interesting ways. We call it the Pastor’s Linguistic Anointing.  Today, the anointing flowed most beautifully when my non-twittering pastor made reference to being “bitter and twittered”. I doubt he even knows what Twitter is actually…hardly anyone I know IRL has even the vaguest concept of social media outside Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Least Favourite Moment : We’re trying a new way of opening the service (with a video countdown, yada yada yada).  We didn’t have a lot of time to practice it.  It was OK.  Sometimes I don’t like the showbiz aspects of our church model.  It’s not what I’d personally do, but it’s the vision of my church, so it needs to become my vision too.  It is, but sometimes Satan wants me to think otherwise.  It’s not about me, is it

What about you? How was your “corporate worship encounter” this weekend?