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!!!

last week was just insane for me…it seemed like anything and everything that could go “wrong”, did…and i didn’t even have time to post a setlist…but in the end i survived!!!

i was back in the LIVE services of lima community church…but things were DIFFERENT!!!

we started our services off with prayer for a young man who is leaving for 27 months…he is heading to peru with extreme nazarene ministries…after this i addressed the congregation and just asked them to take their idea of what “church” was supposed to be like and “throw it out the window”…they weren’t going to be told when to stand up or sit down…we were just going to focus on Christ, follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and worship…

1. reign in us…by starfield

2. arms open wide…by hillsong united

then we had baby dedications in two of the services…

3. arms open wide (reprise)

then we used the “I AM God” video from sermonspice…and went right into a short devotional from colossians 1:15-22…it was entitled “Christ is” and challenged people with the question of Who Christ is to them…you can listen to the devotional and the following song here…

4. go tell it…by lee mcderment

then each service was challenged to come and share “Christ is”…and we had open mic testimonies…

after this we had a video announcing an upcoming 12 week series the church if offering in addition to the weekend services…it’s called “experience”…and we also had our offering time…

5. how marvelous…as performed by passion

6. amazed…by lincoln brewster (bridge/chorus only)

7. how He loves…by kim walker (chorus only)

then our connections pastor, cindy porter, came up and set up a prayer/ministry time in each service…

8. arms open wide…by hillsong united

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sooo, as i mentioned earlier in this post…last week was something to remember…and part of that included the weekend services…i got a call on tuesday of last week telling me that there really wasn’t going to be a “message” but more of a devotional…also there would be a time of open testimonies…no one was real sure on how that was going to work, but we needed some more music…and the music needed to be more of the acoustic variety…

tuesday night i went to work, scrapping 90% of our service plan…i called the band and told them to just hold off on music and i would get them a new setlist, no later than thursday…i spent the night just going through music and seeing what would “work” together and how…really just asking God what in the world He wanted me to do and listening for an answer…(cooper was helping me out with that, up until the point that he fell asleep in his bouncy seat…)

wednesday night i was pretty sure of what i needed to do…i headed over to the church and set up the stage with the grand piano and stools in a semi-circle for the band and vocalists…i worked through the new setlist…but i really felt that our BIG cross needed to be front and center, the focus of everything…we made that happen…not exactly a BIG deal, but definitely DIFFERENT!!!

thursday we ironed out details on the flow of the service and things seemed to be ready to go…

fast forward to saturday…i got a call late in the morning, some time around 11:00am…houston we need a speaker for the services…either i was going to be sharing the devotional, or one other person…problem is the other person was not familiar with the service layout and what was planned…also they were now going to have to host the service, get ready for baby dedications(which she had never done), and just had a lot on her plate…

sooo, i offered to share a short devotional saturday night, that i was already going to share with the musicians…that would give her time to prepare something for sunday morning when the crowds are a little larger and the people want to hear from a more important person than myself…i’m just the part-time music guy…i would much rather hide behind an instrument!!!

i headed over to the church 2 hours before rehearsal time…i wanted to make sure that i was ready personally…i had a good study time and worked through the entire service…i rearranged a couple things for the purpose of transitions…and rehearsal started…

i thought there was NO WAY that things were going to come together…JUST BEING HONEST HERE…it seemed like this was just destined for failure…i even asked one of the guitarists for his thoughts/suggestions…”if God shows up it’s going to be awesome, but if not”…not the words i was wanting to hear, but they were ever so true…

we had a great time of prayer and i shared exodus 33:18 with them…Moses responded, “Then show me your glorious presence.”…and we asked God to do just that…we acknowledged that the entire thing was pointless if He didn’t show up…

well, i have to say that God showed up in all three services!!! i ended up sharing the same devotional in all three services and challenged everyone to share Who Christ is to them…some shared a word or two…others shared powerful stories of what Christ has done for them…it was great to see how God works in and through the lives of every day, ordinary people…

overall i would call this past weekend a HUGE success, just because i survived…but not only that because i got to be a part of what God is doing…that’s something that i’ve been soaking up ever since…

sooo there you have it…

sunday setlists…LIVE…and DIFFERENT!!!