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December. Already. Wow.

Our Head Pastor Gary Costello is currently in Fiji as the main guest preacher at the Christian Mission Fellowship Youth Conference. I’m looking forward to hearing about his experiences when he gets back in a couple of weeks. This morning, Pastor Peter Abood preached an awesome message this morning on abiding in Jesus. Full of great wisdom.

Sunday AM

Music

1. Your Name High (Houston / Hillsong)
2. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon)
3. Rain Down (Seeley / Planetshakers)
4. This Is Our God (Morgan / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Happy Day
…and then to close the service with the altar call, healing prayers, soaking time…
6. This Is Our God (though – as normal – it was as much singing in the Spirit as it was singing in English)

Dante led us this morning and after a few “cumulative annoyances”, overcame the obstacles and led the team in a powerful time of prayer before the service, re-preparing us to lead the worship, and we certainly brought the people to the throne room of Christ this morning. A definite continuation of the season of soaking in the Holy Spirit that we’ve been in for coming on two months now.

This evening, following a yummy dinner at the beach on this most perfect of days, Diane and I went to the see the I Heart Revolution film, “We’re All In This Together”. It profoundly affected me; I cried for a significant portion of the running time. God spoke to me through the vision, the sounds, and reconfirmed a lot of things that have been formulating for days, weeks, months, years…

One thing is certain : inaction is not an option.

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.

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

Our season of refreshing soaking in the Holy Spirit continues at Awesome Church. We were certainly well soaked today, both in the Spirit and in the natural…with perspiration from the 42C heat (107F)!! Despite this, the people were keen to soak in the Spirit, so we did – especially at the evening service.

Sunday AM

The Actsian church message series continued today. It’s so good to be studying what the Acts church looked like and assess ourselves against that. Are we being the church as it was birthed, and therefore (I believe) as God meant it to continue? Everyone was left anticipating the 2nd part of the message, but time/heat meant it’s been carried over to next week…!

Music

1. For Your Name (Morgan, Gillies, Houston / Hillsong)
2. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon)
3. This Is Our God (Morgan / Hillsong)
4. Come Holy Spirit (Fletcher)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Come Holy Spirit

I was back leading for the morning service, and apart from all going smoothly, we got lots of response from the congregation about God’s presence being “thick” during the worship. We’re all loving mixing up some of the older choruses into our sets of late. This Is Our God was particularly sweet, as we did a slightly different arrangement than usual, with more ebb and flow, and more opportunity for free-worship … which the congregation grabbed on to. It’s beautiful to lead worship and hear the congregation above the worship team. Truly amazing.

Due to the heat, we didn’t extend the service today at the morning service…but we did for the evening service, even though it was quite possibly even hotter by that point. It didn’t matter though; people wanted to worship, so they did.

Sunday PM

Tonight’s message was an insightful look into the story of Simon Peter’s encounter with Simon the Sorcerer. Looking at how people want to buy their way in to the good things of God, not understanding the price to be paid to go deeper in understanding, power, and victoriously living for Him doesn’t involve money.

Music

1. For Your Glory (Pringle, Smith / C3)
2. You’ll Come (Fraser / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Come Holy Spirit
…then to finish the service (Worship+)
4. Come Holy Spirit
5. To Worship You, I Live (Houghton, Houghton / Lakewood)
6. Rain Down (Seeley / Planetshakers)

Julie led tonight, and continued to flow in the spirit of the recent meetings with some prophetic singing. I was actually called up during the Worship+ part of the evening to help lead the free-worship, particularly in Come Holy Spirit and Rain Down, both of which were in male keys, and the male singers had wanted ministry so…kinda just left the girls on stage. I love our youth – so hungry for God! It was a privilege to lead and worship with these guys tonight, and offer some sweet harmonies for To Worship You, I Live, which was debuted this evening and inspired some beautiful, uninhibited free-singing from the congregation.

I love my church!

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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?

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.

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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We had Col Stringer visiting us today for both services. He tells it like it is, and is particularly good for men’s meetings (we had him speak last year for a men’s ministry outreach). He’s had an amazing life, and it continues to be amazing. We’ve really had a lot of guests over the past 4 or 5 months. I’ve not counted them all up, but it would be in double figures. Today Col preached two blindingly good messages, shared testimonies of personal friends (he’s shared most of his own stories on previous visits) and was just generally … awesome. The messages can be summarised as “Don’t just believe in God, believe Him…”

Music

Sunday AM
1. Run (Houston / Hillsong)
2. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon)
3. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
4. Where You Go, I Go (Johnson, Mohr / Bethel)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Happy Day (reprise)
…and for the end of service
6. He Is Lord (reprise)

Rachel led, and I somehow managed to still not get my week off as Marg, one of our other leaders who was rostered on backup today, wasn’t well and needed to preserve her voice for this evening’s service. So, I stepped in. Tuesday practice was interesting due to team illnesses, but a good basic preparation for the team nonetheless. With a guest speaker, we always try and have well-known songs (nothing that we’re still learning), so last week’s newbie will be reintroduced next week. Everything went well, and both He Is Lord and Where You Go, I Go continue to be songs our people really, really worship to. I mean, really.

Sunday PM
1. Say So (Houghton, Gungor)
2. Worthy Is The Lamb (Murgida / Awesome Church)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Courageous (Murgida / Awesome Church)
…then for the end of service/Worship+ ministry…
4. You Are Here (The Same Power) (Pankratz, George / Hillsong)
5. Say So (reprise)
6. Shout You Praise (Oroso, Araullo, Reddy / Awesome Church)

Marg led tonight and ripped it up! So the rest this morning paid off. Worthy Is The Lamb is the next song we’re recording later this month, while Courageous is a new pop-rock tune that the Ablaze Band (our youth team, who play for our evening services) debuted tonight and will be playing a Ferragosto in a couple of weeks. It’s a great tune and I wanna hear it on the radio (hint, hint Marg).

Other Stuff

The sounds was a lot better than last week, but overly sibilant … an awesome word I don’t get to use often enough. I was able to play with that a little for the evening service. One of our amps failed during the week, so we had a loaner from my work while that is being repaired. I’m glad that failure didn’t happen during a big meeting like this morning though. We also had some video glitches again tonight, and it feels like we have the full technology spectrum colluding to ensure maximum frustration. So it’s just as well we’re all awesome and can cope with such minor annoyances without getting too grumpy, huh.

We had a couple of people baptised today too.  I’ve realised I hardly ever mention when that happens, even though it happens quite regularly.  And perhaps that’s why I don’t mention it … kinda like mentioning each time we share communion (also today), or when someone responds to an altar call (and yes, that too…like most weeks).  It’s all good, great, awesome – but not my main purpose in these posts.

Also, despite a couple less songs, both services were a lot longer than last week – both were over 2 hours.  Can’t say I noticed at the time though.

How often do you have guest speakers / preachers?

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.

This post is part of the weekly Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com. Go and check out the other setlists too!

I know I’m repeating myself. We had a big, awesome day in church. Of course, now that we’re called Awesome Church, every day will be a big, awesome day.

We had the honour of having Dr David van Koevering take both our meetings today. If you don’t know who he is (and you likely don’t recognise his name unless you’re an electronic music freak. Like me.), then look him up here, here, and here. You can also find lots of him on YouTube…like this simple explanation of tachyons. You all know all about them already though, right?

Music

Sunday AM
1. For Your Glory (Pringle / C3)
2. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon)
3. Where You Go, I Go (Johnson, Mohr / Bethel)
4. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
5. Awesome God / Perfect Son (Mullins, Reddy)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
6. Happy Day (reprise)
…and for the end of service
7. He Is Lord (reprise)

Sunday PM
1. Shout You Praise (Orosa, Araullo, Reddy / Awesome Church)
2. You’ll Come (Fraser / Hillsong)
3. He Is Lord (Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Who Tha King? (Reddy, Losurdo, Costello / Awesome Church)

Worship+
We didn’t have Worship+ in its normal format, as the ministry time from the night service extended on with Dr van Koevering’s synthesised music of the table of elements (yes, you read that right) and his plasma hand screens. Amazing. Sorry, I mean … awesome!

Other Stuff

Interesting that on a day we had a sound expert, and particularly as sounds relates to all matter (remember Switchfoot’s “Everything Is Sound” album? Title inspired by all this sort of thing), we had lots of feedback “fun” for no good reason. Not really surprising I guess, since Satan likes to play these sorts of games. In addition, there was some “fun” with the computers too. Fun all round really. And awesome, of course.

So since most people who read this probably had a relatively low-key day following Independence Day, tell me all you know about tachyons.

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 anyway.

This post is part of the weekly Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com. Go and check out the other setlists too!

Firstly, it’s not Father’s Day in Australia. That doesn’t happen until September. I have no idea why. But it at least explains why there’s no mention of it anywhere else in this post, huh.

I really don’t know how to describe today. On the one hand, Diane was unwell and stayed home to sleep. And on the other, our encounter with God in both today’s meetings was precious, rejuvenating, beautiful…but incomplete because I wasn’t sharing it with my wife. *sigh*

One day, and I hope it will be soon, the messages from our church will be available as vodcasts on iTunes. Then I won’t need to try and cursorily summarise them here

The AM message was part 2 of the “Let The Word Do The Work” series, and it was one of those messages that was filled with lightbulb moments.

For some scant details on the PM message…have a look further down the page, under the PM music section. Just mixing it up a little.

Music

Sunday AM
1. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon)
2. For Your Glory (Pringle / C3)
3. Lord Of Lords (Fraser / Hillsong)
4. Worthy Is The Lamb (Murgida / Harbourside)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Forever Praise (Goodwin / Harbourside)
…and for the ministry/end of service
6. Let It Rain (Farren)

Margaret led this morning, pulling down heaven into the room in the most awesome of ways. Her exhortations were exactly right for the service today, and all the songs fit together this morning perfectly…with both the opening upbeat songs having a similar-ish feel, and both the slower songs being in 3/4 time. I don’t know about you, but songs in 3/4 time (apart from making me want to waltz on the stage) always seem to get the congregation worshipping more intimately, passionately.

Question: Do you find there are time signatures that just click better with your congregations ?

The ministry time included some lots of spontaneous worship in tongues and meditating on Jesus’ name. After which, no-one wanted to go. It always amuses me when that happens. “Come on people, you’ll be back again in a couple of hours…go and get some lunch.”

And after being the hit of the evening service last week, the riffing on Men at Work’s Down Under become the meet ‘n’ greet background music once again. However, as I was on stage, I got to do my very best exceptionally bad Colin Hay impersonation and sing about chundering men. Fun though.

Another question : do you, my readers from across the globe, know what “where women glow and men chunder” means?  Is that an appropriate question to ask in a worship post? Whatever…it’s been asked…too late now.  And it’s my blog anyway; I’ll ask what I like

Sunday PM
1. Salvation (Seeley / Planetshakers)
2. This Is Our God (Morgan, Fielding / Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
3. Shout You Praise (Orosa, Araullo, Reddy / Harbourside)

Julie led yet again tonight, even though she didn’t vocally lead any of the songs. She handled this really well, and she’s gonna be a great worship leader well before she turns 16 at this rate.

We didn’t have Worship+ tonight, as after the message and altar call, Pastor played us a song called There Is A King In You from the Donald Lawrence album The Law Of Confession, Part 1, which I talked about last week…so have a look in that post for more information…or Google him, or find him up in iTunes…or watch listen to the video mp3-masquerading-as-a-video of the song that closed our service. Click through to YouTube to find some more of his stuff too.

Other Stuff

Um, I think I covered most of this in other places. Like, under the hyper extended music section above. As I said…mixing it up a bit. Or just not organised. You choose.

So what did you get up to today ?

This post is part of the weekly Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com. Make sure you check out the other setlists too!

So, the biggest weekend ever in the history of our church is over. Exhausted yet exhilarated. And very very glad that it all went so smoothly we had some unexpected leisure time in the midst of it all. Praise God.

On Friday, I had the day off to prepare myself for the meeting, and came into the evening well rested and calm. This was v.good, as most other people were running on lots of nervous energy and were a bit on edge about the enormity of what was happening that night for our little church.

Dr Jerry Savelle rocked the house with a powerful service which essentially summarised his 40 years in ministry – and specifically what he’d learned about trials and applying God’s word in those times, despite what the world thinks. I’d just recently finished reading his ministry biography “In The Footsteps Of A Prophet”, so much of it was fresh in my mind…but that didn’t lessen the thrill of meeting the man briefly following the service. He was gracious and friendly (though the jet-lag was obvious too), and it was a little like meeting the Queen with key people in the church lining the room where we met to share supper, and he went around shaking hands and briefly greeting everyone.

Rewind to the meeting again though, after he preached he laid hands on everyone there.  I want to give special thanks to our church Love in Action team members who co-ordinated the packed house to move through the church building up to the front in a fast, orderly manner.  Jerry finished by laying hands on the worship team (we’d been ministering while he laid hands on the rest of the people), and the guys did well to make sure at least one instrument was always playing throughout this process.  Awesome.

On Saturday, a lot of people went to the Benny Hinn meetings, but Diane and I had some stuff to do with the sale of our home, visiting my mum, and trying to get 100 pics of stuff taken.

Then on Sunday, Rev Barry Tubbs from Kenneth Copeland Ministries preached a message on “A Little More Help”.   This message was packed so full of references that we took 3 pages of notes…or rather, Diane did, as I had to run up the back of the church to check on some minor technical hitches. Nothing world-stopping, but needed to be attended to.  And a rare weekend where this was literally the only thing that went wrong (at least that I’m aware of, and being on the board, I know about most things fairly quickly)

Barry was a truly humble man, and Diane was, I think, a little taken aback by the depth and quality of his message.

Anyway, on with the week ahead…

We’re hosting the Kenneth & Gloria Copeland conferences this coming weekend at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. So while that will be bigger than this weekend just gone, it’s not on our own church premises, and we’re also not providing the worship – just lots of volunteers and team captains. And when I say just, I mean 40% of the church volunteered. Awesome.

Music

Friday PM
1. I’m Not Ashamed (Andrew, Thomas/Hillsong)
2. Run (Houston/Hillsong)
3. Redeemer (Murgida/Harbourside)
4. All For Love / Shout Unto God (Webster, Sampson/Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Happy Day (Hughes/Soul Survivor)
…and for the ministry/end of service
6. Rain Down – bridge only (Seeley/Planetshakers)
7. Shout Unto God (Sampson/Hillsong)
8. Run (Houston/Hillsong)

Wow! I have no words to describe how it felt to be leading an over-packed house in praise and worship. The whole team has been excited about this night since it was announced a few months ago. I was the main leader, but I got all the worship leaders to get involved in the leading – kind of like Hillsong do (surprise, surprise) – and we are likely to do more of this, it worked so well.

Apparently, Jerry was very impressed, and he was singing along, which I’m told is significant (!). Importantly, the team were all thrilled with how it went, as was our pastor…

So much so, that he decided he wanted the same team for Sunday morning, so late on Saturday I chased everyone up and got it organised.

Sunday AM
1. Salvation (Seeley/Planetshakers)
2. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon/Hillsong)
3. Rain Down (Seeley/Planetshakers)
4. This Is Our God (Morgan/Hillsong)
…then following tithes, offerings, news…
5. Run (Houston/Hillsong)
…and for the ministry/end of service
6. Shout Unto God – just the chords, no vocals (Sampson/Hillsong)
8. Run (Houston/Hillsong)

Dante led this morning, and is getting better and better both as a leader and a singer. He did an awesome job directing the team – including asking me for advice when he wasn’t sure. I love that too – team members willing to ask when they need help.

Our night services have been cancelled for the next couple of weeks to give everyone a chance to breathe in the midst of the busy-ness. Hallelujah! So Diane and I took advantage of the most perfect day in ages, put the top down in the car, and headed for the beautiful Blue Mountains. But Diane will be blogging about that soon…I hope… At the moment she’s a little caught up with all things Eurovision though. Fun!

And yes, Run is our pastor’s current favourite song. I might have mentioned that before. We also do it really well if I don’t say so myself. Happy Day too for that matter. Cue self-congratulations all round.

How was your weekend ?

This post is part of the weekly Sunday Setlists blog carnival over at FredMckinnon.com. Make sure you check out the other setlists too!

Time for our weekly worship vlog aka Return of the Lipsmackers.

This week includes the singing that we hinted at last time, but you have to endure wait right til the end.  Apologies for the slight distortion in there…I clearly needed to reduce the gain on my mic when I was singing (ie: be further away .  Then there’s the other rubbish I did in place of harmonies.  Anyway…

We had a GREAT day today…one of those that’s becoming more common; where the Holy Spirit takes over and the program gets put to the side. I. Love. This. There’s a bit about that in the vlog. Kinda.

So have a look, and share in our Easter. HE IS RISEN!

Music

Good Friday
1. Worthy Is The Lamb (Murgida/Harbourside)
2. Lead Me To The Cross (Fraser/Hillsong)
3. At The Foot Of The Cross (Ashes To Beauty) (Scott/Vineyard)

No words needed, it’s in the vlog.

Resurrection Sunday
1. Tell The World (Houston/Hillsong)
2. Happy Day (Hughes, Cantelon)
3. This Is Our God (Morgan, Fielding/Hillsong)
4. Mighty To Save (Morgan, Fielding/Hillsong)
…and…
5. The Anthem (Seeley/Planetshakers)
6. How Great Is Our God (Tomlin, etc)
…and closed with Happy Day again.

Again, it’s all in the vlog.  Except to say we did a great transition from This Is Our God to Mighty To Save that was refreshing and unexpected without being confusing – it’s good to mix up arrangements a little here and there.

Other Stuff

Healing testimonies continued…this week, a young guy who broke his arm and had it in plaster testified of it being completely healed.  His doctor agreed and removed the plaster after only a few days of it being on!

Today though, the key phrase was free favours from God. Read Luke 4:18-19 in the Amplified version to see what that’s all about, and have a great Easter! Today, and everyday!

Tell me about your Easter : how did God show His presence in your church this week?

Oh, Happy Day, Happy Day

You washed my sin away

Oh, Happy Day, Happy Day

I’ll never be the same

Forever I am changed

What a glorious, glorious day

I’ll never be the same

(Tim Hughes / Ben Cantelon, 2006)

On Good Friday, remember why it is GOOD

Throughout the weekend, remember what JESUS has done for you

On Resurrection Sunday, celebrate LIFE

Forevermore

walk in the Light

desire the Light

be the Light