Yesterday was Vision Sunday at Harbourside. This is always a big day, and big weekend for the Vision Team who have a meeting & dinner on Saturday too. Not much free time, but that’s OK – it’s once a year.

For long term members, it might be easy to get a bit complacent with these services as they are fairly similar each year as they go about refreshing the vision and giving the annual theme. However, I always enjoy the presentation and to have the overall goals for the year ahead specifically laid out, including obvious things like carrying out the Great Commission, etc.

I was leading the AM service, while the Ablaze Band (our youth only band) lead our night services which kicked off again for the first time in 2009. This means we are always in the congregation for night services, but we also need to monitor members are in both teams to ensure time commitments are managed well.

The AM Songs were:
Break Free (Houston, etc/Hillsong)
Happy Day (Hughes/Cantelon)
Lead Me To The Cross (Fraser/Hillsong)
Stronger (Morgan/Hillsong)

Happy Day was new for us, and it went better than our praise songs often do first time out. Sure, a lot of people already knew it, but it’s also got a fairly easy melody, esp the chorus.

With the tight schedule, my pastor asked me to be quick but not rushed, which we were, I think…and he decided to have us continue worship a little longer with the tag of Stronger. And no major or even minor stuff-ups. A great morning.

We also shared in the amazing talent of a couple of our high school students who had recently sung at the Sydney Opera House, which led to a radio spot, which led to a talent development contract with a very reputable school/agency. Yay! I’m so proud

Our evening service (or should I say ‘afternoon service’) was a more ‘normal’ format, a shorter service (usually just over an hour) to allow our free-praise Worship+ meeting to follow on immediately afterwards.

The guys did a great job and had us all excited to be in God’s house on that hot, humid evening (which admittedly was more pleasant than the morning!)

The PM songs were:
Salvation (Seeley/Planetshakers)
Run (Houston/Hillsong)
With Everything (Houston/Hillsong)

The message was on catching vision, perishing without vision, what what God does when we focus our vision on him. It focussed on Saul/Paul’s conversion quite a bit, and was an excellent way to get our night meetings started.

Worship+ involved some powerful ministry, with the songs being The Anthem (Planetshakers), and our version of Awesome God (Mullins) to finish, complete with our very own raps. Funny to see the older people in the congregation enjoying rap so much. We’re going to record this some day, I know it It was a shorter time than we’d been doing during the week, or late last year, but that’s OK; it left us hungry for more, so we’ll be back.

Now go and check out all the other setlists and reviews on the “Sunday Setlists” blog carnival at FredMcKinnon.com.

and see what else is going on round here as I go about Shaping The Space.

Australia Day – when we celebrate the English colonisation of our country – the Great South Land of The Holy Spirit.** What a mighty prophecy that was to be spoken over a land which at that time was unknown to the western world, and which has since been noted in lots of prophecy as being the last place on earth to experience revival.

Tonight PsG opened the meeting with an explanation of these prophecies, reading the Prime Minister’s speech from this morning’s festivities, and dedicating the evening to prayer as found in 1 Timothy 2:1-4 : for those in authority.

He then asked the worship team to come up to the platform. I’d prepared 3 songs (as had become the norm for these meetings) – Breathe (Barnett/Vineyard), Still (Morgan/Hillsong) and Welcome In This Place (Webster/Hillsong), but soon after we started on Breathe I knew the He had something else in mind.

An hour and 10 minutes later, I was speechless in His presence. Through the course of one set of chords, He gave me and the other singers songs for this time and place (“We declare this Great South Land is Yours, Holy Spirit”, “We stand in awe of You, our God, our Lord”, “We repent, we cry out to You for mercy Lord for this nation Lord”. That never looks as impressive as I retype it, but some words are for a time, a place, a moment. The atmosphere in the room was indescribable – a tangible presence of God.

As I sang one of the songs – “Wherever I go, I breathe You in, I breathe You out to change this world” – I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to get the band to stop playing, but without me having to do or say anything, one of the other team members gave the direction. I love how God does that We then sang the song a couple more times accapella, then total silence for a minute or so until people in the congregation began worshipping in tongues, which grew and grew and grew. What a night!

The meeting closed with PsG telling us to get out there and share what we did on Australia Day (in addition to the BBQs, which are law after all

While sharing with one of our elders afterwards, she shared her vision of the prayers being offered as like those in Revelation being presented in the golden bowls, and that the angel hosts were joined with us as we worshipped. What a blessing.

If you come around here a bit, you might remember what I wrote last week about having no idea what to expect of this week. That was confirmed tonight, and again, I come tomorrow free of expectation, but just wanting more and more and more of You Lord. I’m excited by the vision for new ministry being dropped into the hearts of the people in our church, and that as worship leader they share them with me, very often before anyone else. Such a privilege to serve in this way. Praise Jesus!

**note that this links to an ugly ugly site, but it has some great info, ok And just a note, this isn’t the place to go into the debate on whether it should be called Invasion Day for obvious reasons…