Setlist 4-24-2016

This was both the fifth week of Easter in the life of the Church calendar, and Mister Rogers Sunday in the life of ubc.  Mister Rogers Sunday is a commissioning service of sorts where we celebrate our graduates and commission them to continue to seek to be the presence of Christ to the people they encounter as they move on to new things.  Our songs were gathered with both of these themes 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 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:

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Be Thou My Vision

There by Jameson McGregor

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

Doxology

Recordings:

From time to time, we'll post live recordings of the songs from Sunday morning.  These recordings aren't what you would call polished--sometimes guitars are out of tune, sometimes the vocals are off--but they are records of moments we've shared together.  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. 

Future/Past: This song contrasts God's power, might, and status as Wholly Other, with the notion that God has chosen to be God-for-us and God-with-us.  The Resurrection really seals the deal for both of these ideas, and ultimately intertwines them.  And so, as we live out our stories and grapple with our own anxieties in the face of change or struggle, we can lean into the idea that, though God transcends our problems, God is taking them on with us, carrying with God the same Lordship that places God above our problems in the first place.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song as a prayer, voicing together our desire for the Spirit to be with us.  In this season, it is fitting to dwell on the fact that the Spirit of the Living God is in fact the catalyst of the Resurrection.  The Spirit is the power that makes dead things live again. In the call to worship yesterday, we acknowledged that there are many kinds of death that we experience, not all of which involve our hearts ceasing to beat.  Change of all kinds is a kind of death, and change seems to be a fundamental part of life.  The Spirit is constantly working to raise us to life--life to the fullest.  So, as many of us are on the edge of new seasons of life (either because we are moving to new schools, new jobs, or because we are ready to break out of a rut we've been in), we sang this song to petition the Spirit to raise us up once again.

Be Thou My Vision: We sang this song to close this season of life in our community by seeking guidance in the next season.  As a community who seeks to be formed in the way of Christ, to embrace beauty, and to live on mission, we are in constant need of God to be our vision, wisdom, security, and hope, because we are in constant need of transformation. 

There: This song is an exercise in perspective, noting that God was present before any of our problems, is present in the midst of them, and will be present long after they all fade away.  It is also a personal confession of the unhealthy relationship I've built with anxiety, which is somewhere between addiction and idolatry (if there's even a difference in this case).  

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about There's a Wideness in God's Mercy then: We sang this song because it is during Easter that we see just how wide God's mercy is.  We are well-versed at finding reasons why God's mercy would not apply to us, and we are perhaps even more well-versed at finding reasons why God's mercy would not apply to them.  This song shines a light at the lies at the heart of these assumption--God is wilder than we ever dreamed, and God's mercy is no different. 

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 4-3-2016

This was the second 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:

All Creatures of our God and King

Murdered Son by John Mark McMillan

Because He Lives

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

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. 

All Creatures of Our God and King: 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.

Murdered Son: We sang this song for a couple of reasons.  One was to reflect on what God did to and for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  The verses talk about God setting us up above all the stars, raising us high above our station, making us "friends" of God, hiding our faults, and breaking us out of the cycle of dust and grave.  Another reason we sang this song was to think what it took for God to do this.  The chorus praises God's "murdered son."  This language can be jarring, but it is accurate.  It serves as a reminder that what God did for us in Jesus was not simply an act of kindness done at no expense.  Instead, it meant God becoming human and enduring suffering, the one who is powerful taking on the position of one who is on the bottom end of a power differential--it meant God entering into everything God is pulling us out of.

Because He Lives:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Because He Lives then: We sang this song to remind ourselves that the Resurrection has an effect on our daily lives--that it is relevant for our own outlook on life.  Everything is different because of this moment.  Everything has changed.  Every story now gets woven into a greater story, and tragedies don't triumph in the end.

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: This song was written in 1854 by Frederick Faber.  I encountered a quote from it recently that I couldn't get of my head, so I looked it up.  I suppose we don't always choose the things that hijack out brains, so I don't know that I can offer a thorough reason for why I chose to adapt it.  I kept reading this hymn text, and eventually read it with a guitar in hand.  Shortly after, I started chopping it up.  What I ended up with is a fairly small percentage of the total song, but you can google the whole thing if you'd like.  For me, this song shines a light on the scope of the relationship between God's love and God's mercy, as revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then causes us to shine a light on ourselves and the ways we try to put stipulations on the love of God--the line of thinking that leaves us doubting whether or not God could really love us, or sometimes, them.

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