Setlist 4-29-2018

Yesterday was both the fifth Sunday of Eastertide and Children's Sunday.  Our songs were gathered with these things in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics.  Below the songs, you can find a brief example of one way you might think of these songs. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Jesus Loves Me

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

There's a Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Jesus Loves Me: The littlest of our little ones began our gathering by offering us this theological gut-punch that proclaims the truth of Divine Love, God's strength in weakness, and our connection to the Word of God in Christ that is mediated through the Bible.

Lord, I Need You: We sang this song to speak of our dependence upon God in our journey to being formed more fully in the way of the Resurrected Christ.

Fall Afresh: We offered this song as a petition for the Spirit to reinvigorate our hearts and help us to seek to know God more fully.

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: We sang this song to offer ourselves a critique of the limits we place on the love of God, and to celebrate God's generous mercy.

All the Poor and Powerless: This song reminds us that God stands with the poor and powerless, and offers us a challenge to proclaim the Gospel: God's freedom for the captive, vindication of the oppressed, and weaving together of history to raise the lowly from the depths.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 1-21-2018

Our last liturgy was the second Sunday of Epiphany, and the songs were gathered with that in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics.  Below the songs, you can find a brief example of one way you might think of these songs. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Bonfire by Jameson McGregor

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

Shadow by Jameson McGregor

How Great Thou Art

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Bonfire: This song explores the contrast between God and humanity, and looks forward to the coming reconciliation of all things to God; the reconciliation that is sometimes glimpsed in the world around us in justice, redemption, and love. You can hear an album version of this song here.

All the Poor and Powerless: This song is about the hope of Christ in the lives of the oppressed, trampled, criminal, and hopeless, and more broadly about the love of God for God's creatures.

There's A Wideness In God's Mercy: We sang this song to remind ourselves that our best ideas of God's love fall short of grasping it in fullness.  During Epiphany, we hope to suspend our assumptions about God's love along with everything else we think we know about the Person of Jesus, in hopes of encountering Jesus anew.

Shadow: This song is about the impossibility of dying to self and the vision for humanity embodied in the person of Christ. You can hear an album version of this song here.

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about How Great Thou Art then: As we travel through Epiphany, most of the gospel readings will depict someone acknowledging Jesus as Lord.  This song offered us language to join in this posture of acclamation. 

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

Setlist 1-29-2017

This week was the fourth Sunday of Epiphany, and Josh's sermon text was the Beatitudes.  Our songs were gathered at the intersection of these two themes.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

There's A Wideness In God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Burn It Down by Jameson McGregor

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

There's A Wideness In God's Mercy: Through the Beatitudes, the fourth week of Epiphany allows us to consider the upside-down logic of the Kingdom that Jesus came proclaiming.  Those who are truly blessed do not necessarily look like it when viewed through the lens of prosperity that our culture has offered us.  This song carries a similar theme in that it proclaims God's love to be broader than our minds can handle, and God's strictness to be much more malleable than we expect. 

All the Poor and Powerless: We sang this song to celebrate God's presence among the poor, the powerless, the criminal, the stranger, and all of those who feel hopeless or abandoned.  This song serves as a reminder to us of where God stands in conflicts between the powerful and the oppressed, which also serves as a reminder of where we are to stand if we are to be where God is.

Future/Past: This song charts the distance between who God is and who we are, yet notes that God has transgressed this division, drawn near to us, and called us friends.  We offer God nothing that God doesn't already have--God has nothing to gain from drawing near to us--yet it is fundamental to who God is to welcome us strangers into God's presence.  In our weakness, God calls us blessed. And we would do well to remember that God calls all sorts of the cast-out, rejected, and afflicted blessed as well.  With that in mind, if we are to claim to be the people of God, we are bound to offer the divine welcome to all of those people as well.

Burn It Down: This song was originally written for Pentecost 2016.  It is a petition for the Holy Spirit to set a fire on our tongues to speak the truth to power for the purpose of standing alongside the parts of God's creation (creatures and otherwise) that are trampled or taken advantage of.

Mystery: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Mystery then: In coming to know the Person of Jesus, we encounter a multi-faceted Mystery.  This Person who is infinite, yet finite; divine, yet human; weak, yet strong; defeated, yet victorious; comes to us and calls into question all we think we know to be true about the world.  Jesus' identity as Mystery is one of the primary reasons we so desperately need Epiphany to renew our holy curiosity every year--sometimes we forget that we don't have Jesus figured out.  This song takes the Mystery of Jesus and champions it using the "formula" of Christ has died//Christ is Risen//Christ will come again, as the chorus.  The verses are about the way that Jesus' mystery status meets us in our own lives from without.  Here Jesus is the answer to our problems: the sanity and clarity that enters our dissonance, and the evergreen living peace that enters our conflict.  But Jesus is also the question to our assumptions about the world: the Eternal Word who is brought low, the cup of salvation that is poured out, the Embodied Love that is broken, and the Trampled Redeemer that is raised and freed.  Taken together the verses and chorus of this song champion Jesus as our source of hope when things seem irredeemable--because we learn that Jesus is not limited by what we expect of the way the world works.  So in the bridge section, we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus as a symbol of holy subversion to the power structures of the world, and take up singing about this subversion as our own way to subvert oppressive systems of power. 

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

Setlist 8-28-2016

This was the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs around the theme of power from below.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

There's a Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

God of the Dead by Seth Woods

Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: We sang this song to begin our time together by thinking about the wideness of God's mercy and the breadth of God's love.  More specifically, in terms of the theme that unites this week's songs, the fact that our deficiencies are precisely what place us in the path of God's love.  Despite our tendency to attempt to construct boundaries around the love of God, the love of God transcends our limitations and reaches those who deserve it least by even the most generous human standards.

All the Poor and Powerless: This song continues the theme from There's A Wideness in God's Mercy, underscoring the fact that what we might consider as a hindrance in life--poverty, loneliness, heartbreak, etc, actually postures us to encounter and worship God in a way that is nearly impossible in the absence of adversity.  God is for the socially less-than when no one else is.  

House of God Forever: This song uses the language of Psalm 23 to think of God's provision for the people of God--a provision rooted in a power that is outside of any of us and is not determined by our own ability.  We sang it to practice locating our hope in God and not in ourselves.

God of the Dead: This is a song by Seth Woods, a guy who used to play music at ubc every now and then.  He has an album of songs that were recorded at ubc (by Jon Davis, who is still around) that I came across a few months ago.  It's $7 and it's great.  So buy it.  I'm drawn to this song for the assortment of images it associates with God that essentially amount to names for God (God of the dead, God of the breathing again, God of the earth, God of the grave, God of the rising and the raised......I would go on, but you can just click the lyric link).  These names aren't super familiar to us, and that's important.  Because they offer us fresh vantage points from which we might look at God.  And in contrast to verses that offer new names for God, the chorus is a petition that God would breath our new names.  That God would teach us who we are in a fresh way.  That we would hear names that were stripped away of all the things we build up for ourselves in the identities that we construct. 

Heart Won't Stop: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Heart Won't Stop then: We sang this song to begin with the confession that there aren't any barriers that God is unwilling to transgress to reconnect with God's children.  

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

Setlist 4-10-2016

This was the third week of Easter, and our songs were gathered around that theme. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan

Amazing Grace by Citizens and Saints

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons and Daughters

When Death Came Calling by Jameson McGregor

All Creatures of our God and King

Doxology

Recordings:

From time to time, we'll post live recordings of the songs from Sunday morning.  Here are a couple from this week.

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Heart Won't Stop: This song echoes Psalm 139's sentiment that there is no place we can go to escape God; that God keeps choosing to be God for us, regardless of whether or not we are good at being people of God.  That idea is huge from the vantage point of the Psalms, but it seems like it is wholly overshadowed in light of the Resurrection--it's not just that God is God for us regardless of where we hang our hats, but rather that God has chosen to be God with us in the midst of our darkest moments, and rewrote the cycle of life and death to make this known to us.  If you've never heard the original version of this song, you should go look it up.  In the meantime, here is a video of John Mark McMillan performing it....with Stand By Me mashed in their too...

Amazing Grace: While we spent the season of Lent thinking about sin, we will spend the season of Easter thinking about grace.  This song by no means captures the fullness of what might be said of the grace revealed in the death and Resurrection of Jesus, but it's a good start.  I think most poignantly, it doesn't just speak to the effect of grace upon our salvation--that gets a lot of airtime (and, yeah, it's important)--but instead speaks to the way grace affects our lives here and now.  In choosing to be God for us by being God-with-us, God has given us a vantage point from which we can truly be alive:  the end of the human life is no longer death but resurrection.  The Resurrection wove a new kind of beauty into life that we can now embrace.  This is a grace to us.  

All the Poor and Powerless: The Resurrection is good news in too many ways to count.  Some look to the Resurrection at the moment in Jesus' life where His divinity was finally made clear, which makes sense, since even the disciples seemed to be on the fence up until the end.  So we might think of the Resurrection as the moment where all the things that people knew to be true of Jesus became things they knew to be true of God in a new way.  One of those things was that Jesus stood with the people on the bottom rung of society--with the ones other people didn't care for or think were good enough in general.  The Resurrection made it clear that this wasn't just some guy who, from some vantage points, was also worthy of very little attention, but instead was God.  That's the kind of thing you'd want to shout from a mountain--that God stands with the afflicted, the unimportant, the cast-off and unloved--and that's why we sang this song.

When Death Came Calling: This is a song about grief in light of the Resurrection.  We often hear associated with Easter that death has lost it's sting.  That's always been perplexing to me, and I didn't have to live very much life to realize that the most literal meaning of that phrase was simply not true.  Death stings.  Sometimes it's a sting that causes debilitating emotional pain.  Sometimes it's a sting that seems to carry a toxin that leaves your entire body and mind numb.  For a while, I thought I was a bad Christian for wearing grief heavily, but then I finally acquired some context to put behind the famous "Jesus wept" verse--Jesus wept because He was grieving, and He was grieving because death is grief-worthy.  And I think this is still true after the Resurrection.  The sting that death lost is a sting of a different kind, perhaps better labeled "finality."  It's a sting that we will find missing later, replaced by the beauty of creation reborn.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about All Creatures of Our God and King then: We sang this song to begin our time together proclaiming that the resurrection of Jesus affected more than just our personal salvation--it was an emphatic yes to life, to creation as a whole.  Now every inch of the cosmos sings a song not just proclaiming that it was created by God, but that God entered into it, took on the cycle of life and death that permeates the whole of creation, and ultimately broke through that cycle and crowned it with Resurrection.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

Setlist 2-7-2016

This week was Transfiguration Sunday, which, fittingly, is the Sunday we read and reflect on the story of Jesus' Transfiguration in front of Peter, James, and John.  Our songs, in one way or another, focused on the glory of God.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

How Great Thou Art

This is Amazing Grace by Phil Wickham

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons and Daughters

The Transfiguration by Sufjan Stevens

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to begin our time together singing about the grandeur of God, which is precisely what is at the center of the Transfiguration story.

This is Amazing Grace: We sang this song to think of the glory of God in a different way.  While the Transfiguration points to a visually spectacular display of the glory of God in association with Jesus, we may find a much more accurate picture of God's glory in placing descriptions of God's cosmic power side-by-side with a description of God's grace in the sending of Jesus to set things right with us.  This is a Transfiguration all its own when the God whom we have every reason to fear is revealed as the God who loves fiercely and is in the habit of choosing grace over destruction.

All the Poor and Powerless: We sang this song to reiterate a primary theme from the previous song--that, while the Transfiguration shows Jesus infused with power and glory, He came to those who have neither of those things in life.  So, lest they assume that their lack of prestige or "good luck" is a reflection of God's opinion of them, they too witness a Transfiguration when Jesus snubs the social and religious elite and takes notice instead of the nobodies.

The Transfiguration: This song is a real jewel in that it essentially just narrates the Transfiguration without coming off as trite.  This is why we sang it, but I'd also like to point out the portion of the song that focuses on the cloud descending on the mountain.  Sufjan leans into the visceral side of this experience that includes the confusion and perhaps terror of being in the midst of this cloud that is talking, with this barrage of repetitive and mysterious phrases.  Also, if you haven't heard Sufjan Stevens play this song, please look it up.

Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things.  First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this.  Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness.  We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 12-13-2015

This week was the third week of Advent, and our songs were gathered around the theme of joy.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Hope (There Will Come A Light) by ubcmusic

Peace (Change Everything) by ubcmusic

Joy (Brightest) by ubcmusic

Make This Go On Forever (Refrain) by Snow Patrol

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

All the Poor and Powerless: I've pointed out before that this song can come off as insubstantial and/or repetitive.  The chorus basically just repeats "everyone will praise God," and the bridge basically just repeats "grab a megaphone and tell everyone who God is."  I don't think there's any serious problem with the content of these lines, but their repetition feels like it drains their potency.  But here's the thing.  The verses of the songs create or portrait in which the people for whom this is good news are the poor, the feeble, the underrepresented, the depressed, the complacent, the ones at the end of their rope; and over/against these seemingly hopeless states of being, we find a God who has neither forgotten nor abandoned them.  The hallelujah's of this song are what we might think of as "cold and broken hallelujah's"--praises that come from places we might not expect--and since these praises are directed toward the God who loves and is redeeming a fallen world, we find in this song a portrait of joy.  This is the stubborn joy that comes along with fixing one's eyes on the faithfulness of God, that refuses to be swayed by our circumstances or our emotions.  It's a joy that can coexist just fine in peace and in chaos, in contentment and depression.

Hope (There Will Come A Light):   I wrote this song a couple of years ago for the first week of Advent.  A few months ago, I wrote songs for all the other weeks, too, so we will sing the whole series of songs over the next few weeks.  I recently recorded some video sessions of these songs with some friends in Austin.  The video for this song has been posted here.  

Peace (Change Everything): This is a song that voices a longing for peace.  More accurately, this song voices a longing for several different kinds of peace: peace from existential despair, physical violence and threats, less tangible violence and threats that exist in our minds, and the threats that accompany the natural processes that carry our bodies from birth to death. We'll be singing this song a few more times this month, so feel free to listen to it again here.

Joy (Brightest): This song contemplates the strange nature of the joy we find in Advent--it's a joy that puts our feeble expectations of joy to shame in a way that might be considered destructive.  The good news we await on Christmas day just might be bad news for certain aspects of ourselves.  I've been more reserved in the descriptions I've offered of the Advent songs as a whole, and this has been intentional.  I feel like you could take these songs in many different ways--especially when you take them all together--so I would prefer instead just to direct you to listen to these songs and read the lyrics and think about them for yourselves.  As always, you can email me or comment at the bottom of the page if you want to talk about them further.  The video of this song is available here.

Make This Go On Forever (Reprise): We once again closed this week's advent song with this reprise from the end of a great Snow Patrol song (spoiler alert: we'll do this next week and the week after as well).  The point is to voice the longing that we live in during Advent: while we may not understand how it will happen or when it will happen, we know that God is the One who can save us from this present darkness.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: We sang this song because of the way it marries rejoicing with the hope of peace/reconciliation, which incorporates every Advent theme through which we've journeyed thus far.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 10-11-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of the divine-human relationship.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Just a Closer Walk With Thee

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Diamond by Sarah Dossey Keilers [Dossey]

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to reflect on what God has done for us in Christ.  In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God changed the way that death works for humanity.  Thinking in terms of the divine-human relationship, these events become something of a starting point or center.  These events are God's extended hand to humanity--they pose a question; something to the effect of, "i have come further than seems appropriate to make things right--are you willing to enter into reconciliation with Me?"  Or perhaps, "I have fixed what was broken between us.  Do you realize what that means for you?"

Just A Closer Walk With Thee: This song explores the tension between the kind of life we are inclined to live when let to our own devices, and the kind of life that Jesus has shown us how to live.  We have a tendency to beat ourselves up when we knowingly fail to live like Jesus, but this song suggests that there is a better way to handle failure.  The line in the second verse, "In this world of toil and snare//If i falter, Lord, who cares?//Who with me my burden shares?//None but Thee..." God does not wait for us to fail so that God can have cause to be angry with us, but instead shares our burdens--God knows how far the gap is between the way we are and the way Jesus has shown us to live, and carries this weight with us.  Instead of lingering in self-pity or self-disgust, we can move forward knowing that we are not alone.

Wandering: We sang this song to proclaim that God is faithful to us even when we consistently misconstrue what it is to be faithful.  The verses of this song imagine various ways in which we recognize the power of God, then try to harness this power for our own devices--with what seem to be the best of intentions--and how God chooses to continue to journey with us anyway, coaxing us into understanding that God is not one to be tamed.

Diamond: To read Sarah's thoughts on this great song, visit the blog on her site here.

All the Poor and Powerless:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last weeks' songs.  This is what we said about All the Poor and Powerless then: We sang this song to proclaim God's identity as a God who is present with the lowly, the powerless, the hopeless, the hurting, the self-loathing, the addicts, on and on.  This is a God who not only lowers Godself to interact with humanity, but the lowest parts of humanity.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 10-4-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of identity.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me atjamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

This is Amazing Grace by Phil Wickham

Because He Lives

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Fever by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

This Is Amazing Grace: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  Here's what we said about This Is Amazing Grace then: We sang this song to think about the radical grace of God, who is clothed in unlimited cosmic power, yet cares for humanity enough to endure suffering and to patiently coax us into a relationship with Godself.

Because He Lives:  We sang this song to proclaim our identity as resurrection people--people who are able to find significance day-to-day because we believe that the resurrection of Christ has fundamentally changed the story of human history, and that all of our stories (even the tragic ones) are being woven into a greater story that is decidedly un-tragic.

All the Poor and Powerless:  We sang this song to proclaim God's identity as a God who is present with the lowly, the powerless, the hopeless, the hurting, the self-loathing, the addicts, on and on.  This is a God who not only lowers Godself to interact with humanity, but the lowest parts of humanity.

Fever: This song acknowledges the tension between the identity that God has given us and the identity that we continually read back onto ourselves.  This song thinks of our various ways of reminding ourselves of how worthless we are as a fever--fevers are our body's way of trying to eradicate pathogens and to return order to our normal biological environment--and thinks of the grace of God as a pathogen that is not so easily eradicated.  The idea is that owning our identity as children of God, as people who are loved by God, does not come naturally, and even when we find ourselves giving verbal assent to this truth, it takes an act of God to truly believe it.

Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things.  First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this.  Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness.  We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 8-30-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of grace.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

Heart Won't Stop by John Mark and Sarah McMillan

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) by Hillsong United

Hope by Jameson McGregor

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters 

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Heart Won't Stop: We sang this song to begin our time together proclaiming the relentless love of God that breeds a grace that isn't contractual or begrudging, but is instead a passionate force that is born out of God's decision to be God-with-us. 

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to think about the fact that the grace of God does not simply extend forgiveness to us that we don't deserve, but is something that transforms us into people who are more like Jesus.

Oceans: We sang this song to think about God being with us as we navigate our lives, specifically the more chaotic territories of life. The grace of God is not something that merely affects us in the end, but in the midst of life.

Hope: I've been working on this song for the better part of a year.  For a long time, I only had the lines, "You lit a fire in the darkness the darkness did not overcome," (loosely pulled from John 1), and "You sang out Hope into the dead of night, and it echoed off the edge of time," (which I pulled from an Advent song I wrote called Light).  Sitting with this, I started to wonder what this "darkness" or "night" might be in the scope of this song.  I thought about what I would label dark points of my life, and the dark times I've walked through with friends.  

I thought about the alcoholics I know.  They tell me that their addiction is a life condition--it's not something they're going to "get over," so no matter how long they are sober, they will still self-identify as an alcoholic.  They can't go back, and life will never be quite the same. 

I thought about my dear friend who is hemmed in by both bipolar disorder and depression, knowing that if he runs out of medication, or if something about his biological environment changes, his world will quite quickly become a dark and untrustworthy place.  There was a time when he lived free of this diagnosis, but he can't go back to that time--his life will never be free of the potential of this darkness.  

I thought about the conversations I've had with friends--and with myself--on the other side of a major life change, where what was has an allure that is lacking in what is, and the weight of this loss is unbearably heavy.  We can't go back; life will never be the same.  

It was this collective sense of darkness, and the ubiquitous not being able to go back, that I had in mind when I wrote this song.  I wrote it for them.  I wrote for me.  I likely wrote it for you.  

Each verse of this song ends with me putting these words into the mouth of God: "I've called you mine."  After the third verse, this changes to, "I've called you mine, and you can't go back."  Of all the things, great and small, from which we can't go back, this is the most enduring.  The conditions of life find their resolve in death, but the condition of being a child of God can't be erased by something as temporal as death.  God chose to be God-with-us in the midst of the darkness, and no shade of darkness can change that.  This is grace. 

This is a piece of what this song means to me, but there is much more going on.  Reading the lyrics will be a start to understanding this song better, but if you want to talk about it at all, please send me an email.

All the Poor and Powerless:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs, which were gathered around the theme of singing.  This is what we said about All the Poor and Powerless last week: We sang this song to turn our attention to humans.  There are two refrains in this song that involve what humans cry out in worship to God.  One is "Alleluia" (familiar?) and the other is "He is God."  I'll admit: part of me recoils against taking something as complex as the worship of God and reducing it to such simple phrases, but I feel like what I said about the previous song fits here as well: Simple? Yes. Legitimate? Yes.  What else is there to say?  The most complex praises of a theologian or business person (or whoever) can probably all be reduced back to this one idea. 

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 8-23-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of singing (meta, I know).  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

The Lark Ascending (Trying to Make You Sing) by David Crowder* Band

All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder* Band

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters 

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Death in His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

The Lark Ascending (Trying to Make You Sing): This is a song about singing--not like in a "come on, sing along" kind of way, but its about what value singing might have, which was great for yesterday, since that's what the sermon was about.  If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to click the link in the previous section and read the lyrics to this song.  The first verse connects singing to being alive--it's something that we need, that pours out from whatever place deep within us that belief resides, that makes us feel alive.  We added the second verse for yesterday, the main idea of which was to say: in singing, we join a song that has echoed since the moment there was something rather than nothing--singing proclaims that we are alive, yes, but more than that, we are creatures joining in the song of Creation.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to think more about the "melody of stars" from one of the last lines of the previous song.  It's easy for most of us to wrap our heads around the idea of people worshipping God, and it's perhaps not a huge stretch to think about animals worshipping God (because, you know, cartoons), but what about things that seem otherwise inanimate (stars, elements, etc)?  This kind of personification is rampant in the Psalms--especially Psalm 19, where we see the "The Heavens declare the Glory of God," line.  This is a singing without words, a singing that is woven into the fabric of existence that never ends.  This song chooses "Alleluia" as the content of this song, which means (some variation of) "Praise God." Simple? Yes. Legitimate? Yes.  What else is there to say?  The most complex praises of a supernova or tectonic plate can probably all be reduced back to this one idea.

All the Poor and Powerless:  We sang this song to turn our attention to humans.  There are two refrains in this song that involve what humans cry out in worship to God.  One is "Alleluia" (familiar?) and the other is "He is God."  I'll admit: part of me recoils against taking something as complex as the worship of God and reducing it to such simple phrases, but I feel like what I said about the previous song fits here as well: Simple? Yes. Legitimate? Yes.  What else is there to say?  The most complex praises of a theologian or business person (or whoever) can probably all be reduced back to this one idea. 

Noise:  We sang this song to think about the kind of song God is composing in creation.  One in which God stands as Lord over all of creation, yet wants to have a relationship with God's creatures so much that even when we make broken promises of ourselves, God makes new promises of us.  

Death in His Grave: We sang this song for two reasons.  First, we are in the habit of singing a song from the previous week's set every week after the sermon.  Second, Josh's sermon yesterday gave us the idea that singing roots ideas and stories deep within us.  Death In His Grave contains some of the most hopeful content of the story of Redemption, and is thus a perfect song to sing when we are most conscious that the words we sing are going to be etched deep within us.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 6-28-2015

This week, Josh preached from Luke 13:22-30.  Our songs were gathered around the theme of the radical grace of God.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder* Band

This is Amazing Grace by Phil Wickham

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Bonfire by Jameson McGregor

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.

All Creatures of our God and King: This song runs with the idea of the whole of creation praising God--the idea here is that, in creating the cosmos, God is Lord over all of it, and the very existence of stars, planets, and particles way too small to see, declare the glory of the God who made them all.  We sang this to begin our service thinking about the grandeur of God.

This is Amazing Grace: This song juxtaposes the grandeur of God with the sacrifice of Jesus--in Jesus, this Holy God chose to become human and to endure the worst that the human condition had to offer.  The Incarnation was an invitation for humanity (all of us) to know what the Creator is like, but also to know the Creator.  

All the Poor and Powerless: This song focuses on the significance of the invitation to know God for those who are socially disadvantaged, those who feel they have no hope, etc.  The hand that is extended in Jesus is for everyone--not just those who society lifts up as ideal citizens.

Bonfire: We sang this song to think about the day when God will make all things new, when the things that are broken inside all of us, and in the world around us, will be mended.  All of us are broken in different ways, and we have no ground upon which we may stand and call ourselves somehow better than any other person.  In the end, we will likely be surprised at just how many different kinds of formerly broken people God has drawn together.

Future/Past: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  Last week, we said this about Future/Past: We sang this song to emphasize the fact that to be related to God through faith is to love and be loved by One whose perspective is much greater than our own.  This means that God is worthy of our trust and worship in the midst of suffering, and that we can be confident that God is weaving human history into something more beautiful than we can imagine.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 5-17-2015

This week, Josh preached from Acts 1: 15-26.  Our songs were gathered around the theme of the Ascension.  The Ascension is the moment when Jesus "was taken up" and "hidden by the clouds" in Acts 1.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

Come Thou Fount

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons and Daughters

Oceans by Hillsong United

Up On A Mountain by The Welcome Wagon

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to think again about the work of Jesus in light of the Ascension and to begin anticipating the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost (next week). This song can be understood to be firmly planted between the Ascension and Pentecost--especially when we look at the stanzas out of order.  The second stanza talks about raising an "Eben-Ezer"--a throw-back to the time Samuel made a monument to signify God being with Israel in a battle against the Philistines (1 Sam 7:12)--to remember what God has done for us in Jesus.  The third stanza looks back on the work of Jesus as well in acknowledging the fact that we stand as debtors in light of what Jesus did for us [Note: We are not debtors in the sense that God has a cosmic ledger that shows us in the red--Jesus wiped that ledger clean.  We are debtors in that we know that Jesus did something for us that we can in no way repay, and our gratitude drives us to respond in love.] Ok. So. We look back before the Ascension in the second two stanzas.  In the first stanza, we look forward to the coming of a "Fount of Every Blessing" that can "tune our hearts" and teach us a song sung by "flaming tongues above." This fount that we call for is the Holy Spirit.  

All The Poor and Powerless: In the Ascension, we see that Jesus did not simply rise from the dead for a time, only to die again.  Instead, He stepped beyond the realm that we might call physical to be with the Father.  He didn't die--he left.  The power of the resurrection held true.  This means that the hope of the resurrection and the hope of the Kingdom movement that entered the world through the ministry of Jesus live on, even in the absence of Jesus walking among us.  This is means that the poor, the powerless, the lost, the lonely, thieves, cowards, and all those who society would quickly rid itself of if given the option, can find their Hope.

Oceans: Before Jesus' ascension, He promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come empower them to continue His work.  In His leaving, Jesus called His followers to stay the course.   We too are called to continue His work--and seeking to do this can be equal parts confusing and overwhelming.  Oceans uses the image of walking on water to illustrate at least two things: doing things that we are literally incapable of doing without God's aid, and entering into chaotic and unknown territory.  As we contemplate what it means for us to be Jesus in the world, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are neither able nor expected to do it alone.

Up On A Mountain: This song reminds us of the dread that Jesus had before the crucifixion (like any of us, he did not want to die), and that He was aware of what would ultimately become of the human race if he did not die.  Despite all of this, the third verse points out that the work of Jesus for us did not cease after the cross.  Though Jesus is no longer among us in flesh and blood, Jesus is still intimately concerned for the human race--He is praying on our behalf and is with us through the Spirit. Though Jesus ascended, He is not wholly gone--we are not alone.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM