Coming Back To The Heart Of Worship by Mike Pilavachi

We were challenged to ask ourselves individually, ‘When I come through the door of the church, what am I bringing as my contribution to the worship?’

With a spanking new building, a congregation wearing combat trousers, a PA system that cost thousands and links with the summer festivals, some might have thought that worship wise, a Church like Soul Survivor Watford had it sussed.

Since it began – meeting in school halls with a PA that packed into the boot of a Cavalier – Soul Survivor Watford has always been given plenty of time over to worshipping through music. Over the years people have poured out their hearts to God through it, and there have been plenty of examples of great things happening as a result. However, in the autumn of ’96 we realised that something was ‘up’ with our worship. At first it was difficult to put our finger on the problem. On the surface everything was just fine; many of the musicians had worked out how to tune their instruments and the sound engineers were getting out of bed on time. Each service contained a block of songs that focused on the cross and gave people the chance to get down to business with God. To make this easier, the music was (nearly) up-to-date, the chairs had disappeared and the lights were low: what better atmosphere for young people to worship God?

Setlist – 3/19

Jesus, You Alone – Tim Hughes
Everyday – Joel Houston
You Are So Good To Me -  Ben & Robin Pasley  and Don Chaffffer
Give Us Clean Hands – Chris Tomlin

Song During Offering:
Show You Love – Jackie Velasquez

Closing Song:
All To You – Lincoln Brewster

Setlist – 3/5/06

Let The Praises Ring – Lincoln Brewster

Trading My Sorrows – Darrell Evans

You Are The One – Lincoln Brewster

You Are My King – Billy Foote

Come Together – Third Day

Setlist – 2/26/06

You Are Good – Israel Houghton
Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble – Martin Smith
How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin

Song During The Offering:
Mistaken – Warren Barfield

Closing Song:
Forever – Chris Tomlin

How To Worship…At Church by Tom Holladay, Saddleback Church

Taken from experiencingworship.com

We need to learn to worship God in every area of our lives: at home, at work, in our cars… everywhere. In this article, we’re going to let Psalm 95 give us some ideas for learning to better worship God at church. Believe it or not, worship does not happen automatically the moment you walk through the doors of the church each week! There are some choices that you can make that will bring a real difference to your focus on God during worship. As often as we attend services where we are supposed to worship, we spend very little time talking about HOW to worship. Most of us spend more time training on how to work at our computer than how to worship our creator!

For worship to stay both restful and revitalizing we must:

Get the BIG picture right
Do the LITTLE things right

Here are 4 ideas from Psalm 95

I. HOW TO START

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving…” Psalm 95:2 (NIV)

The big idea:

Start your worship like you start your meals: BY OFFERING THANKS

Worship has a starting line… and if you’re ever going to get out of the blocks you must begin with an attitude of thanksgiving. Let’s take this visual of the starting line of a race a little further. Suppose the gun goes off, and you’re still sitting at the starting line – caught up in grumbling about the details. “My shoes hurt… the track doesn’t look right… my shorts are the wrong color…” You never even get into the race!

I’m not saying you should fake it and say everything in your life is perfect… because it isn’t. But if you want to bring the truth about God’s greatness to both the good and the bad in your life… start with thanksgiving. When you put thanks at the top of the list, it tends to put everything else in the right order.

The little things:

1. Tell someone something you’re thankful for.

What are you thankful for? What person, what circumstance, what blessing, what event, what growth, what characteristic of God are you thankful for? Don’t just think it… say it!

2. Reduce your GPH and increase your TPH.

GPH is “Gripes Per Hour… TPH is “Thanks Per Hour

Setlist 2/19/06

Romans 12:1 – Todd Agnew
King of Majesty – Lincoln Brewster
Majesty – Martin Smith (Delirious)
I Lay Me Down – Darrell Evans

Song During Offering:
You Are My Portion – Darrell Evans

God Of Wonders by Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd

God of Wonders: The Story Behind The Song
By Melissa Hambrick

“This song needs to be big.”

The first time that songwriter Steve Hindalong heard the chord progression brought to him by friend and co-writer Marc Byrd, he felt where “God of Wonders” was leading. Hindalong had been assigned to produce a project that was to express the feeling of community in the church, but at this point it was still untitled, and the notes of the first song weren’t yet recorded.The song was simultaneously number one on three of Christian radio’s charts-adult contemporary (AC), inspirational, and Christian hit radio (CHR)-ordinarily three vastly different musical formats. When Steve Hindalong originally imagined how big this song needed to be, he had no
idea what was in store, and just how expansive the moving music and powerful lyrics could be.A founding member of popular ’80s Christian alternative/modern rock band The Choir, Hindalong knew he was taking a different turn with “God
of Wonders,” although he notes that fans of the band wouldn’t be that surprised at it’s content.”People that followed The Choir know that we had some pretty intensely spiritual themes. Typically the type of music that I come from is more
alternative and tends to be aimed at more of the young adult audience. It’s very introspective, whereas worship music tends to be really broad
and focused more on God and who He is,” says Hindalong.”When Marc played the chord progression and melody, it felt really big. I kind of got a chill-I got goose bumps on my arms. I just thought, ‘This song needs to be big, with really vast language.’ So ‘God of wonders beyond our galaxy’ was as big as I could think.”

Having attended an Episcopal church for the last few years, Hindalong has been introduced to a new inspiration for his songwriting. “The
liturgy, the old words, is kind of new to me. I flipped through The Book of Common Prayer, and I remember ‘Lord of all creation, water,
earth and sky.’ That became the first line of the song.”

Lord of all creation
Of water, earth and sky
The heavens are your tabernacle
Glory to the Lord on high

God of wonders beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe declares Your majesty
You are holy, holy
Lord of heaven and earth
Lord of heaven and earth

But it isn’t the vastness of the song that seems to really impact people, relates Hindalong. “People have sent me emails about the song
and referred to the second verse. I think the real power of the song is there, when all of the sudden it gets intimate. It says ‘When I stumble
in the darkness, I will call Your name by night.’ This God that is the God of not only our earth, but of all the worlds, that is so big-but
when I’m afraid, when I’m alone, when I sin, when I’m in trouble, He comes close enough that I can call His name. It’s the truth that’s
powerful, not the song. It is that particular truth that is so moving.”

The mixture of voices on the original recording is another aspect that Hindalong sees as powerful. “When people sing a song and interpret it a
certain way, a song comes alive. The contrast of Mac Powell and Cliff Young trading off, and with Danielle, really communicated that corporate community thing that was really the goal of City On A Hill. They were the perfect blend of voices.”

The groundwork for “God of Wonders” was laid nearly 10 years ago, when Steve Hindalong produced the first two albums for Common Children, Marc Byrd’s band. Ten years his senior, Steve became a mentor to Marc, and is amazed by how far the two have come.

“Marc is a real screamer and comes from an intense rock background, and I come from this whole folk thing, although I’ve had lots of variety,”
he describes. “So for Marc to get into worship music is really a change, and I think he’s found a lot of joy and peace in it. He’s very natural at it. Writing a song like ‘God of Wonders’ was new ground and opened a whole floodgate of creativity for him.”

Byrd has written a number of well-known songs, including Third Day’s “Show Me Your Glory,” co-written with Mark Lee. Steve and Marc teamed
again for “Holy Is Your Name,” performed on by Bebo Norman and Caedmon’s Call, as well “Sing Alleluia,” both from the third City On A Hill project, as well as the number one Rebecca St. James cut “I Thank You.”

“I think of ‘God of Wonders’ as an offering,” says Hindalong. “It’s an offering to people. The words are to God, the prayer is to God, but as far as the song, that’s for people, to the body of believers. It’s an offering—a humble offering.”

Blessed Be Your Name – by Matt & Beth Redman

A few weeks after 9/11, we wrote the worship song ´Blessed be Your Name´. It wasn´t written consciously in response to those dark events, but no doubt being immersed in the spiritual and emotional climate of those days was an important factor in birthing it. Many people ask if there was a particular life event which triggered off the writing of this song, and in all truth the answer is no. It´s really a song born out of the whole of ´life´, a realisation that we will all face seasons of pain or unease. And in these seasons we will need to find our voice before God. The church (and indeed the world) needs its songs of lament.

The people of God have always had their laments. The Psalms are filled with a whole host of intense emotions and expressions towards God. So many of them were birthed in times of suffering and struggle. Psalm 3 was written as King David fled for his life from his own son Absalom. Psalm 56 was inspired when the Philistines seized him in Gath. In Psalm 57 he´s on the run again, this time from King Saul, and wrote the song whilst hiding in a cave. These are songs formed in the fire of affliction. They are the desperate cries of a worshipper on the road marked with suffering. In fact, Eugene Peterson estimates that around 70% of content in the Psalms is lament-based.

Clearly therefore, songs of lament are a very biblical thing to sing in worship. Yet they are also a relevant thing to sing, for we live in a world full of anguish and heartache. As Christians, yes we live in victory, but in paradox we also exist as strangers in a foreign land, aching for home, and knowing deep within us that the world we see before is not as it should be. So the question is this: if songs of lament are firstly thoroughly biblical, and secondly extremely relevant, then why on earth are there not more songs to help us voice these heart-cries? As Frederich W. Schmidt Jr writes, these Psalms do three things:

´They give us permission to ask our own questions about suffering. They model the capacity to ask questions we might otherwise suppress, but can never escape. And they model how those questions might be asked without fear of compromising our relationship with God or with other people.´

This Week’s Setlist – 2/12/06

Everyday – Joel Houston
Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
You Are So Good To Me – Ben And Robin Pasley Don Chaffer
You Alone – David Crowder
Song During Offering:
I Can Only Imagine – Mercy Me
Closing Song:
Blessed Be Your Name – Matt Redman

Passion ‘05 – Various Artists

Passion 05:
Capturing the cry of over 11,000 college students, the new LIVE recording from Passion 05 is just that..Passionate – It’s about declaring God’s fame, His Glory and His word. Led by the artist-worshippers – Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Charlie Hall and David Crowder Band this new recording brings you songs from the church both present and future. With new songs by David Crowder Band and Matt Redman along with some of this year’s instant classics – Indescribable, How Great Is Our God. You will be singing along and joining in on your journey into God’s presence to worship Him, the famous one.