Setlist from tonight’s service at Farrington Road Baptist Church in Chapel Hill.

Glory To God – Fee
Consuming Fire – Tim Hughes
How He Loves Us – John Mark McMillan
Another Hallelujah – Lincoln Brewster
When I Survey – Isaac Watts

• Your Grace Is Enough – Matt Maher / Chris Tomlin
• Cannons – Phil Wickham
• Consuming Fire – Tim Hughes
• Above All – Micheal W. Smith

It makes me so happy to see new people join us at Story Church.  However, I am even happier at the fact that these new people choose to come back!  Story Church is growing and it’s exciting to be a part of it.  God is opening so many opportunities for us right now that will allow us to support our local community.

I’ve been loving the song Consuming Fire recently and this morning we introduced it in our service.  It’s so easy to sing and the words for me are powerful.  It worked very well, so we’ll definitely be keeping the song in circulation for a while.

I’m starting to tire a little of Your Grace Is Enough.  Think it’s time to hold back a little on it before it’s over cooked.

Does anyone sub-consciously categorise songs like I do?  There are exceptions, but I find myself placing most songs in my library into one of three categories.

1. Fast / Up-tempo / Praise
2. Medium / Praise
3. Slow / Intimate / Worship

I put Your Grace Is Enough in the Fast category which is one of the lesser populated categories in my library.  Most of my library will fall into Medium and Slow.  I have improved over the years by building up my collection of Fast songs, but there’s still not enough to select from sometimes.

Everlasting God – Lincoln Brewster
You Never Let Go – Matt Redman
Hosanna – Paul Baloche
How He Loves Us – John Mark McMillan
Glory To God Forever – Fee / Vicky Beeching

Well, today was Preview #3 for Story Church. It was our first ever Sunday morning service so I knew a lot of our usual support crowd would not be able to come out.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that even though we had less people, we had more NEW faces there than ever before. That is just so cool in my book.

The time slot of this service also meant finding musicians was a challenge. We usually manage to muster together a full band. Not this week.

But we still did ok. Our very own Jon stood up to the plate and played a mighty fine electric guitar.

See what I did there? I used baseball analogy. Jeremy will be proud of me.

Anyway, today we introduced How He Loves Us. I’m not sure how often we’ll use it even though I love the song. Because of our attempt to reach the unchurched I think we need to ensure songs are first or second time singable!

I plan to put Hosanna out of rotation for a while. Been using it quite a bit recently. The remaining three songs are anthems. Very singable and very powerful – great ingredients in a worship song.

Update: I forgot to mention – from today, Story Church will be meeting every Sunday at 10am, in Spring Valley Elementary School, Durham NC.

With a melody known to most as the ‘Shrek Song’, here I am covering Lincoln Brewster’s version (i.e. completely rewritten lyrics) of Jeff Buckley’s (Leonard Cohen’s) Hallelujah.

View on YouTube.

A cover of John Mark McMillan’s How He Loves Us.

View on YouTube.

The Rich Fool

I was reading my daughter a bedtime story a few nights ago.  She loves to hear stories from her “God book” (Stories Jesus Told by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen).  We flipped through and stopped to read the Parable of the Rich Farmer which is based on Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:16-21.

For days later, the story has kept coming back to me and I have been trying to work out what I should take out of it.

¹⁶And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive.

¹⁷“And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’

¹⁸“Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

¹⁹‘And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”‘

²⁰“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’

²¹“So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Taken literally, the story is a warning against building up and storing away all our worldly treasures when we could drop dead at any second.  We should be applying our earthly resources more to the things of God which will bring change that is not temporary, but everlasting.  We should be living for the here and now and not worrying about the future.

I am not putting large amounts of money away every month because we don’t have it.  My only financial safety net for the future is a (weak) personal pension that I contribute to back in the UK.  It’s not quite the barn described in this story.  So, what else could the barn represent?

The Rich Fool

It could represent personal dreams and ambitions.  I might not have anything to put in my barn yet, but if I’m busy designing my barn for that one day when I finally get my breakthrough, I’d be in the same situation as this rich fool.  If I am so focused on my future, how can I be as effective for God as He would like me to be?  I am at major risk of disobeying a command from God that I believe could compromise our current lifestyle or dream future.

But it’s soooo, so easy for me to fall into this line of thinking especially when I have a family and are responsible for their livelihood.  Every financial, or potential life altering decision I make impacts, not only me, but my family also.

There is an amazing truth that has been reinforced to me recently.  God has made us for His purposes.  We were made to worship Him only.  It’s not about us.  It’s not about me, or even my family.  What will happen when we retire, will we all have enough?  The truth is, I don’t know.  All I know is we need to learn to focus more on what God is doing and what God wants to do, not what we are doing and what we want to do.  Our purpose is to worship God and point people to Him.

It’s been great talking over this with my wife Liz and thinking of how, as a family, we need to approach life differently based on this parable.  We need to keep thinking how can we invest more in Kingdom projects and continually put our future in God’s hands.  We’re more valuable than birds, right?

How He Loves – John Mark McMillan
Another Hallelujah – Lincoln Brewster
Mighty To Save – Reuben Morgan, Ben Fielding

It was the first time I’ve used How He Loves. I really enjoyed playing it but the arrangement is a little difficult for people to follow. I will have to play about with it before using next week at our third preview service.

Here’s a slew of recent reviews over at The Joint.  Check them out if you’re itching to freshen up your current music library.

For me, this is the definition of a worship album

It’s new, fresh and totally engages you in worship

If you are a Matt Maher fan you will probably love this album

A great worship cd/dvd package that hopefully will propel Tim Hughes’ music throughout the United States and beyond

A solid album, perhaps lacking a little excitement

Service Notes

It has happened again!  Story Church hosted it’s second public service at Spring Valley Elementary School in Durham, NC.

How did we do against the points raised in our debrief meeting from Preview #1?

1. We all had jobs assigned and setup seemed to be much faster.
2. We had less obstacles this time – but this can always change!
3. We agreed a time when everything should be complete, to give us time to pray as a team and take up our positions before everyone arrived.
4. We had a better sized, and a way groovier screen this time.
5. I think transitions worked a lot better this time but there is still room for improvement here.
6. We are still borrowing from other sound systems, but getting closer to our goal.
7. We used a much better approach with the connection cards this time – i.e. mention it during announcements but let everyone fill them out in their own time.
8. We didn’t fumble when talking about the offering.
9. We had a different drummer this time and it still worked out great.  I loved flowing seamlessly from one song into another.  I’m still not sure people understand me when I talk!  I wanted to ask people to stand.  I should have asked people to stand.
10. Even though it’s hard work at times, it is exciting and fun to be a part of this.  That’s for sure!

Set List

• Praise Is Rising – Brenton Brown / Paul Baloche
• For Who You Are – Marty Sampson
• Announcements
• Glory To God Forever – Steve Fee / Vicky Beeching
• Holy Is The Lord – Chris Tomlin
• Cannons – Phil Wickham
• Message
• Praise Is Rising – Brenton Brown / Paul Baloche

Next Time

Our next preview service is on November 15 at 10am.  Note the time change.  The last two preview services were in the evening.  The next one will be in the morning and it’s going to be different for a few reasons.

• We will need to get up early to setup.  Boo.  ;-)
• The room will be lighter.
• Our pool of musicians may be smaller as people have commitments to other churches.
• Our congregation may be smaller as people have commitments to other churches.
• A few of us will need to know more about sound setup than we currently know.
• I’m flying to the UK straight after the service!