jon mark music

sooo, this is another post submitted as a part of the craziness over on fred’s blog…it’s a weekly hot spot for worship leaders to blog about what all happened in their weekend services…go check it out!!!

i was back for week nine in the LIVE services of lima community church…after a great weekend off…so here we go…

our service kicked off with a short video announcement clip and our weekly meet and greet time…

1. let God arise…by chris tomlin

then we had our communion set up by our service host…saturday night that was done by our lead worship pastor, tim thurston…on sunday morning that was done by our executive pastor, vince nelson…

2. revelation song…by gateway worship

we just hung out on the first verse and chorus in each service, until the ushers were done passing out that elements…then we took of those elements as one body…and finished out the song…

3. Jesus paid it all…as performed by kristian stanfill

4. marvelous light…by charlie hall

then we had our offering set up and prayer time for our youth mission trip…again this was done by the service host…

5. center…by charlie hall and matt redman

this was week one of new series called “life verse”…GREAT roll-in by our media staff…the message was done by our new connections pastor, cindy porter…the verse she used was psalm 19:14…and she KNOCKED it OUT of the park!!!

6. from the inside out…by hillsong united

then cindy came back up and closed out our services by having everyone pray the verse together…

_____________________________________________________________

overall this week went GREAT…i tried to really communicate with cindy in advance about her message and what i could expect…i also shared with her the song that i would be doing leading into the message time…i made sure to find out what all she wanted from me and from the music side of the service…after talking with God she replied with how God said to tell me to “let it loose”…UHHH OHHH!!!

that’s like taking me to st. arbucks and telling me to just get whatever i want!!!

i had five songs arranged so that the service would be high energy…sooo once we took of communion together people would really “let it loose” and celebrate what Christ has done for us…then on thursday afternoon i got an e-mail from cindy telling me the final illustration of her message…and that we needed a song at the end…sooo, i did what any “music guy” would do when they’re told to “let it loose”…i added song #6!!!

the band did a great job of pulling all the music together…especially when we showed up on sunday and had songs in wrong keys on cd’s, compared to planningcenter…and the drummer never checked his e-mail after thursday to see the song that was added…oh yeah, and we had a first timer in the band on keys…but God is sooo much bigger than all that!!!

cindy’s message was very powerful and challenged everyone with our need to be in God’s word and in constant communication with him…she shared from her own experiences…with her husband having lost his job and going unemployed for nine months, while they have two girls in college…and her last illustration was using two bowls and sponges…one with clean water and the other with coffee and grounds in it (torture for me…i wanted to drink it!!!)…the idea that when life squeezes us…what is going to come out is what we have been filling ourselves with…

saturday night was a pretty typical laid back crowd…i will say i felt a little laggg in the 9am service sunday…we’ll blame that on fireworks…and then our 10:45 service just blew the roof off the place…from the minute i said good morning to them, they were READY TO GO!!!

sooo there you have it…

sunday setlists…LIVE…take nine…

sooo in the past couple weeks my son is making some steps in development…with molly that was always exciting to me because she was my first child…it’s a little different with cooper…i can look forward to those changes and kind of know when they are coming…but regardless, there is still a great deal of excitement when he does new things!!!

the coolest of these new steps in development is how attentive he is…if kasey and i start talking to him, his eyes get big…then he gets this big smile on his face…his legs and arms usually start going 100 mph…and he really tries to talk back to us…it’s just awesome…

you can catch a glimpse of this in the photo above…i’m whispering to him and his eyes are WIDE OPEN…he’s attentive…

i needed this picture…i needed a reminder of how attentive i should be to my Father’s voice…and right now that is my desire…to be attentive to all that He has to tell me…that’s what i want…

i really do!!!

sooo, last night we traveled to fort wayne, in…there is a brand new ballpark that we wanted to visit…and my family absolutely LOVES baseball, even after watching way too many of my games growing up…sooo we stopped, picked up some sonic and headed to these seats…

third row!!! it was almost as good as catching a game…but not really…

it was  actually a very good game to watch…especially considering my LOVE for the sound of wooden bats…there were a few homers and they were breaking bats left and right…it was great to see the players from south bend give a couple of their broken bats to kids sitting next to the dugout…there were also plenty of games and activities for the fans in between innings…just an amazing atmosphere…i even got to chat with a father of one of the south bend players…

this was our view in the seventh inning…just amazing!!!

we headed out from the game in the middle of the eighth…great timing because it just started pouring down rain out of no where…we drove right along side some CRAZY lighting that was contained in two HUGE clouds…it made the drive home go much quicker…i have to say it was great trip…i absolutely…

loved it!!!

sooo, after EIGHT straight weekends (with the exception of a couple saturdays)…

i’m OFFF!!!

i have the entire weekend to just hang out with my family…i even took tomorrow off from my real job…we are going here…then we are going here…and finally going here…

we are going to visit with one of molly’s best friends, camden…catch some rays…do some reading…relax…and of course i will be visiting as many st. arbucks as i can find!!!

though i will miss worshiping with familiar faces…i will LOVE worshiping with my family this weekend…and i have to say that i am JACKED because…

i’m OFFF!!!

sooo, this is another post submitted as a part of the craziness over on fred’s blog…it’s a weekly hot spot for worship leaders to blog about what all happened in their weekend services…go check it out!!!

i was back for week eight in the LIVE services of lima community church…here we go…

our services started off with baby dedications done by our lead pastor and our children’s nursery coordinator…then i shared a quick father’s day story about how molly brought me my gift first thing sunday morning…”happy father’s day daddy, this is for you!”…then she started ripping open the cards and the bag…it was great(but you probably had to be there!)…then we had our meet and greet time…and we jumped right in…

1. let the praises ring…by lincoln brewster

2. You never let go…by matt redman

3. sweetly broken…by jeremy riddle

then we had a quick prayer and offering set up…during the offering we played a five minute video of the 23 kids that were baptized during a week of camp…they each shared a quick testimony on the video…

we had our final week of “txting”…TOUGH topic this week…our lead pastor addressed the question “will i hold u in heavn?”…it deal with the lost of children through miscarriage, still birth, abortion, or death at a young age…TOUGH topic!!! he shared a brief story about eric clapton and the loss of his son at four years of age…how it lead him to write a song…

4. tears in heaven…by eric clapton

the last part of the service was an announcement handles by our lead pastor and one of the church board members…the announcement was in regards to a much needed sabbatical that our lead pastor will be taking…and the board gathered around him and prayed over him…

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

as i look back at the service, i am very pleased with the outcome…the music was cut way back from usual…due to baby dedications and camp video and father’s day and the sabbatical announcement…i doubt that anyone in the service even noticed that it was cut back at all…

but this seems to be an ongoing theme for me…i have this opinion if you will…that there should only be one “extra” thing thrown in a service…like baby dedications or videos or announcements…i’m curious to know whether any churches out there have a rule (written/unwritten) about this…to me it seems that we tell God we only have so much time for worshiping Him through our song and giving…and only so much time to study His word…because we have all this “other stuff” to get done…anywhooo, just an opinion…not something i will fall on my sword for!!!

sooo there you have it…

sunday setlists…LIVE…take eight…