Immersion Worship

Set 1
Rain Down
Name Above All Names
Look To You

Set 2
You Never Let Go
Surrender

Thoughts
I think yesterday we experienced a rebound effect. Last week it was messy for one reason or another, but yesterday it was in a different league. First of all, the energy was massive. The entire team, especially the vocalists, just took the stage presence and atmosphere to a new level. Second, the band where tight. It really worked, in my opinion, having the band more compact and ‘together’ on the stage, and the congregation responded to that display of unity.

The new song, Name Above All Names, was received excellent, and in fact out of the three songs we did in the first set, it was the song that the congregation responded to the most. There was an air of excitement and truth about it that was encouraging and affirming.

The second set was intense. INTENSE. You Never Let Go followed the message well and from the get go there was a gifted and unified response that saw us connecting with God on an intimate level. It was powerful and humbling and intense.

Set 1
Oh Praise Him
Look To You
Your Grace Is Enough
You Never Let Go

Set 2
This Is Our God
Here I Am To Worship
How Great Is Our God
How Great Thou Art

Thoughts
I have mixed thoughts about this weekend. On the one hand, personally I connected very intimately with God and saw that other people did too, and that of course is the primary motivation and focus behind leading worship. But on the other hand, some things went wrong. My guitar cut out during the intro for the first song, and stayed out the entire time. This in turn threw the band off as they were waiting to hear certain cues from me, and we missed changes and transitions, so it sounded sloppy and unrehearsed. However, the vocals were completely locked on; it’s the best the vocals have sounded so far, and major kudos goes to Camille and Jaime for being able to do that while the rest of us were battling through other problems.

Steve Crowder was with us this week (David Crowder’s brother), and he led the second set of worship. It was awesome and that’s when I personally connected with God the most. I also had some great conversation with him and came away with some fresh vision and new ideas for the team, and further cemented my approach of being content but never satisfied; always striving to get better.

Here are some pictures from Launch Sunday (January 21st) at The Summit. Thanks to everyone who was praying for us and thinking of us; God showed up and enabled us to do what He wanted us to do.

Q: What do you get when you take five ‘J’s, one ‘C’, and mix them with a new church in Orange County?

A: The most awesome worship team any worship leader could ever ask for.

From left to right…

Joey, Jaime, Camille, Joel, James, and Joe

I’m going to openly plagiarize Kurt’s idea and attempt to run a regular ‘Weekend Wrap Up’, with my thoughts about each Sunday. Starting with yesterday…

Set 1
Awesome is the Lord Most High (Chris Tomlin)
Your Love Is Amazing (Vineyard)
Salvation Is Here (Hillsong United)

Set 2
Everything (Lifehouse)
‘Til I See You (Hillsong United)

Thoughts

The thing that I’m really struggling to accept is the fact that we set the bar so high for ourselves on our first week that we haven’t quite hit that bar since. However, I also need to realize that the bar that was set was comprised of different components; lots of friends and family eager to support the new church, a band that had rehearsed the same set for almost a month, an energy that comes with expecting the unknown. I can’t and shouldn’t expect that every week.

Now, having said that, I still think things went great. We had some trouble with the in-ear click track right after the first song, and so we were less tight on ‘Your Love Is Amazing’ and ‘Salvation Is Here’. And Joey had some problems with his bass rig such that it just cut out half way through one of the songs and cut back in again really loud later.

By set 2, though, we had ironed out the technical issues and the last two songs ushered in a powerful time of worship. It’s funny that when we get ourselves and our issues out of the way, God moves in and does what only He can do. The Lifehouse tune worked especially well.

I’m still amazed at my awesome team; their talent and dedication and desire to worship. It’s important to recognize that without the people, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing. You can take away the sound system and the in-ear monitors and the microphones any day of the week, and we will still have a team of awesome people who love God and love to worship Him. And that is undeniably the absolute best part of every week.

Here’s a new song that I’ve recorded. I wrote it about two years ago after seeing a compelling video illustrating Psalm 139. There was one line in the video where the screen went black and the voice over simply said “And I think to myself, ‘He even sees me in the dark’”. It struck a chord with me and out of it flowed this song.

The song is called ‘You See Me’, and you can download it here.