One of the seasons I love is Christmas, but I feel like every year I am faced with the decision of what songs to do during the month of December. Start Christmas music too early, and everyone gets sick of it by Christmas. Put it off and people think you are a Bah Humbug. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas you have 4 weeks, so here is my basic philosophy:
1. Week 1 – Usually I don’t play any Christmas music. All of our music is “Christmas Related” by singing of the Glory or Majesty of God, or songs like “Here is Our King” or “You’ll Come” ushering in the presence of Christ.
2. Week 2 – Seeing as we have our Christmas program coming up, we have some “special” Christmas songs prepared and some that we are working on. Typically we perform one of these songs this week (also acts as a good commercial for our Christmas Program)
3. Week 3 – This is the morning of our Christmas Program so we have another special song prepared. We also play a few Christmas songs incorporated into our worship set.
4. Week 4 – All Christmas music. My favorites to play and lead in a worship setting are: Angels We have Heard on High, O Come All Ye Faithful, O Holy Night, and Joy To The World.
We have begun using Split Click tracks that I have created simply using Apple’s Garage Band to augment our sound on stage. This is a Christmas Song from a few years ago titled Christ is Come that features a lot of strings and orchestration.
Christ Is Come Big Daddy Weave
Key – D
84 BPM (6/8 time)
We have begun using Split Click tracks that I have created simply using Apple’s Garage Band to augment our sound on stage. This track has the electric guitar part in it to fill out our sound. If anyone wants this file without the electric guitar part, post a comment and I will post that file as well.
We launched a new series that deals with the things we keep hidden in our life, our sin, and confessing it to God and others. This first week dealt with lying. Not just about telling lies, but more about living a lie. Do you look and act one way around people but have secrets? We also had Baptism of 11 people after service.
Songs: Salvation – Planetshakers (B)
Let God Arise – Chris Tomlin (B)
From the Inside Out – Hillsong United (C)
Mighty To Save – Hillsong (A)
Attendance: 280 adults in the auditorium, 76 in the children’s area. Total 356
Special Song: Dirty Little Secret by All American Rejects. Worked well to flow into the message. Also the choir joined us for the worship music.
We finished off our short series on end times called “What In The World Is Going On?” (You can find the audio here: http://lakesidepodcast.wordpress.com) I loved the way Pastor Ken really set up a Biblical view on the end of time rather than talk about theories and other people’s view. This is some good Bible Teaching! In fact, these past few weeks have been more like taking a class rather than listening to preaching, but it is good to shake things up once in a while.
Songs:
Salvation – Planetshakers (B)
One Way – Hillsong United (B)
Your Grace is Enough – Chris Tomlin and Matt Maher (G)
O Praise Him – David Crowder Band (A)
Attendance: 259 adults in the auditorium, 68 in the children’s area. Total 327
Song Story: This week I talked about “Your Grace Is Enough” Most of the teaching from this song comes from understanding Romans 8. We are no longer held captive to the things of evil because Christ has set us free and His grace is enough for all of us all the time!
I missed a week, but last week we began a series called “What In The World Is Going On?” (You can find the audio here: http://lakesidepodcast.wordpress.com) Based off the Biblical view of what the End Times are all about (note: This is not a study of Revelation, but rather trying to get an entire Biblical perceptive on all the talk about the end of the world)
Songs:
One Way (B)
Everything Glorious (C)
O Praise Him (A)
Sing SIng Sing (E)
We are doing one less song for a while for two reasons. First it gives me a chance to do something I am calling a “Song Story” where I actually break down the song and look at the theological, Scriptural, and personal makeup of the song. Second it gives the band a little extra chance to spend more time focusing on getting a really good soundcheck before service–we have been having some trouble in this area and need to work it out.
Attendance: 225 adults in the auditorium, 77 in the children’s area. Total 302
Song Story: This week I talked about “O Praise Him” and the awesome oportunity we have to join with the angels in singing to our King! The interesting thing about this song is that in the second verse, it flips on itself and says that when Salvation comes to an individual, the joyful sound is so great the angels join us is worship to our King! I love that concept!
Easter Week at Lakeside was great, as expected! After a week of extra band rehearsal, adding a praise choir, and preparing for Good Friday as well, we got everything accomplished. Here is what the service looked like:
Songs: Let God Arise (A)
My Savior Lives (A)
To Know Your Name (D)
Christ Is Risen (B – Special Song)
Mighty To Save (A)
Hallelujah (A)
I noticed that it is easier for more people to sing songs in the key of A than other keys (such as B, so we transposed the first two songs down.) Also, the addition of our 15 person praise choir was a definite bonus. During the choruses of To Know Your Name and Mighty To Save, they added so much!
Attendance: Up (as expected) to 420 adults in the auditorium, 90 in the children’s area. Total 510
Special Video: We used a video intro for the special song “Christ Is Risen” by Jeremy Riddle. Instead of syncing with a click track we did this a bit more simple, but it was still just as effective.
The purpose of this FREE lunch is to develop relationships with others working with students in local church in the Metro Detroit area. This event is open to anyone interested, and there is no hidden agenda! We will have some FREEBIES and other GIVEAWAYS from SimplyYouthMinistry.com. There will be a brief training about staying focused in our ministries.
If you are interested in more, or if you plan to go you can RSVP to me at kleslie@lakesidechurch.net or simply leave some comments on this blog.
Today I want to highlight Transposr.com, a powerful app that can save you some time if you are trying to get songs in the right key for your band. This app is powered by PlanningCenterOnline.com but is free to use even if you are not a member of PCO.
Just have any MP3 and al you have to do is upload it to their site, allow it to transpose to the key to your choice, then wait for it to download. With a high speed connection this happens in a matter of minutes.
This AWESOME site does some cool stuff for you that used to take me about 30 minutes to do manually, converting the files to WAVs then adjusting their pitch and reconverting to MP3. It has become a great time saver and the quality is amazing! Try it!
Recently I have experienced some dramatic growth in our small groups for our student ministry. There are a couple things that happen when small groups become too big…
The DYNAMIC totally changes! What used to be a few students sharing has become either uncontrolled talking, or silence.
The CRACKS get bigger. It becomes a lot easier for students to stop showing up because they may not be missed as much
The RELATIONSHIPS gets squelched. I have noticed it has become more about just the teaching and not the depth of knowing each other.
So it is imperative to grow these groups into multiple groups…but it is usually not that easy. I honestly don’t really know where to begin. I don’t want to interrupt the growth and the students who enjoy each other by breaking them up, so how do I split these groups up? Really I want to know!
