I’m posting our setlist in collaboration with other worship leader’s at FredMcKinnon.Com with Sunday Setlists”. Join in on the fun!

It had been a few months since I last led a team with the music/singing. One of the hardest things things about a volunteer worship leader gig is the difficulty in organizing volunteers to fill out the rest of the team. Of course, life happens and the “big” team scheduled for this week didn’t pan out and we ended up with myself on acoustic, John on acoustic, and Duane on keys.

• Everlasting God (Lincoln Brewster)
• Famous One (Chris Tomlin)
• This is My Father’s World (hymn / my version)
• Mighty To Save (Hillsong)
• You Alone (David Crowder)
• You Are the Light (Steve Fee)

I dunno about all you lead-worship types, but whenever I’m set to lead, there is an aspect of “what do I need to do and say to help enhance the ‘experience’ of the singing part of worship?” that I “struggle” with. Now, hear me when I say that I recognize that it’s not about me, but it does enter the picture from time to time in the form of “how is this gonna make me look?”. Sometimes I can “pull it off” and we have a good time singing… and it sometimes ends up as just that — a good time singing with an effort to worship God.

Then, there are times, like my Sunday yesterday, where all the planning happens, but come Sunday morning, nothing planned happens… and God shows up.

The media prepared to “enhance” the songs… nope. The planned stuff was not to happen, and I’ll have to confess, there was a modicum of anxiety and a feeling of inadequacy on my part as 10am rolled around. The team gathered to pray before stepping on stage, and I don’t know if there is a clear way to explain it, but our prayers were a little different than normal.

With prayers concluded, we walked up. The stuff I had prepared to say… nope. We started the service, and it became evident to me that the Holy Spirit was up to something as I greeted and opened in prayer.

Something happened during that prayer, and the congregation seemed to catch *it*. We transitioned into Everlasting God and they sang. They sang it almost better and with more clapping than I’ve heard in a long time from my church.

We sang Famous One and once again, they sang it with as much gusto as I’ve ever heard them sing!

From there, we moved into my rendition of This Is My Father’s World. John and Duane totally made this song come alive, and in hindsight, I think the media piece that I was gonna show in between v2 and v3 might have detracted from what was going on (I suppose it was good that it wouldn’t play through our presentation app).

I spontaneously prayed as a transition to Mighty to Save. This was a new song to our congregation — we hadn’t done it before. So the plan was to teach the chorus and verse. Well, it turned out that they either caught on very quickly, or were familiar with it because of the Laura Story version getting all the Christian radio airplay. I think it’s both.

As we were singing, I got all choked up thinking about the lyrics to this song… and couldn’t sing along, let alone lead… but church just kept on singing… and it was *beautiful*.

Everyone needs compassion
A love that’s never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Everyone needs forgiveness
The kindness of a Savior
The hope of nations

My Savior, He can move the mountains
My God is Mighty to save — He is Mighty to save
Forever, Author of salvation
He rose and conquered the grave — Jesus conquered the grave

So take me as You find me
All my fears and failures
And fill my life again
I give my life to follow
Everything I believe in
Now I surrender

Shine your light and let the whole world see
We’re singing for the glory of the risen King…Jesus

You Alone was next — it was simple and sweet. We scrapped a part we had practiced to add in.

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. It was simple and to the point — “God can deliver anyone from slavery to freedom.”

At the conclusion of the message, we got up to sing 2 songs as a response. Nate, one of our wickedly talented guitar players, got up and approached the stage. I though he was gonna tell me something, but he walked right past me up to the mic.

Nate shared a personal prayer request that fell in line with the message — it was emotional and challenging. We paused to pray for that circumstance and I stepped to transition us to singing Mighty Save again and You Are the Light. I got to talking and got choked up all over again as I affirmed Nate and the message and truth of of the words to Mighty to Save.

We sang!

I don’t know about anyone else in that “sanctuary” but I was ministered to by the songs we sang and the message and the courage and vulnerability that we saw in Nate. I would love to see that kind of stuff happen more often at our church!

I was physically and emotionally wiped out from the morning though! I am encouraged and hopeful that the tide is turning — we’ve been sorta-kinda stagnant in some areas and some growth and change would be most welcomed!

Brian twitpic’d us leading worship up front! Do you like the no-shoes action?  ;-)