Setlist 4-15-2018

Yesterday was the third Sunday of Eastertide, and our 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:

All Creatures of Our God and King

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Heart With No Companion by Leonard Cohen

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

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 find language to worship the Creator, Sustainer, and now re-Creator of all that is.

Noise: We sang this song to voice Christ's redemption in our stories, his entering into our condition and rewriting it.

Pulse: We sang this song to acknowledge the interconnectivity of Creation and to draw ourselves toward loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Because He Lives: We sang this song to speak of the everyday hope that the Resurrection offers us--not merely a hope that it will all shake out in the end, but that the the Kingdom is breaking in in glimpses even now.

Heart With No Companion: This song is a meditation on the implications of the Resurrected Christ; specifically, the hope that reaches every kind of despair.

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 sang about There's A Wideness in God's Mercy then: We sang this song to celebrate God's mercy and to remind ourselves that any view we hold about God's rigid wrath says more about us than it does God.

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 4-30-2017

This week was the third Sunday of Easter, and our songs were gathered around the theme of....Easter.  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:

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

How Great Thou Art

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

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 narrate again the defeat of death that we observe in this season.  

How Great Thou Art: This song gives us language to situate the death and resurrection of Jesus within a broader observation of God's grandeur.  The song begins with an observation of the wonders God has made throughout the cosmos, and goes on to observe the trajectory of God's making all things new.  In the chorus, it offers us a chance to practice channeling this wonder into praise of God.

Because He Lives:  This song takes a few swings at articulating the ways in which the Resurrection shapes the way we engage life now--particularly life's uncertain elements.  It offers us the chance to pull the thread between Jesus' breaking through one of the more absolute elements of finite existence (death), and any anxieties we might have about life.  Put differently, the Event of the resurrection calls into question what we think we know about how the world works, and gives us reason to hold the stubborn hope that God is actively working to redeem every broken part of creation.  This connection is easy to pay lip service to, but really living as though it were true is a life project. 

Inbreaking: I've been working on this song for a couple of months.  For the first few weeks, I had a handful of lines, but had no idea what they meant.  As I kept working at it, I started to see Easter themes emerging.  Taken all together, this is a song about the Risen Lord raising us also, both as individuals and as the Body of Christ.  It's not squarely focused on the events of Easter, but it is intimately concerned with the role that Eastertide plays in the life of the Church year.

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Amazing Grace then: The Resurrection is a transformative act of grace that has implications for the whole of creation.  It is a Yes to life and the created world. This song talks about the implications of the Resurrection for our lives, and we sang it to rehearse speaking the truth about God's ongoing redemption project in our midst.

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 11-20-2016

This week was Christ the King Sunday, and our songs were gathered with this theme 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:

Revelation Song by Jennie Lee Riddle

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Hope by Jameson McGregor

Crown Him With Many Crowns

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. 

Revelation Song: We sang this song to begin our time together with a focused and straight-forward moment of singing about God's grandeur and particularity.  In thinking about Christ as King, we are met with a picture of power and majesty that is distinctly different than we might imagine out of our own cultural expectations--this almighty King abandoned His station to dwell among the disenfranchised and to champion the cause of the nobodies, and is well-imaged as a slaughtered lamb.  In this, we find wonder, mystery, and hope.

Death in His Grave: This song traces the story of Christ, underscoring that Christ's kingship is directly linked to his death--his complete self-emptying--and his resurrection.

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 proclaim that our daily hope in the face of uncertainty is located in the risen Christ. 

Hope: This song voices the hope we have in Christ, the fire in the darkness.  In this image that comes into the world through John 1, we find the most fundamental summation of the Christian story--God set a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome.  Fire is more real than the darkness, such that there is no amount of darkness that can overcome the light of the fire. 

Crown Him With Many Crowns: This song well-captures the kind of King that Jesus is: the slaughtered Lamb who receives unmatched and unmatchable praise, who has known intimately the worst of our suffering and conquered it, whose tools of war are peace and love, and to whom all other crowns belong, that we might all find rest and belonging.

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 11-13-2016

This was the twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs around the theme of hope.  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:

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

There by Jameson McGregor

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Chariot by Page France

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. 

Wandering: We sang this song to begin our time together proclaiming that God is not in the habit of abandoning us--even when we deserve it most.  God's faithfulness to us is thankfully not conditional upon our own faithfulness to God.  Because of this, we can have hope that God is continually working toward reconciliation with us, and in this we can stake our hope.

There: This song is about the fact that God transcends every source of anxiety that we encounter in life, which means the threats we feel around us do not have the same effect on God.  Though God enters into our suffering with us, God is not chained to it.  And in drawing nearer to God, we find a refuge that will deliver us as well.

Because He Lives: We sang this song to proclaim that our daily hope in the face of uncertainty is located in the risen Christ. 

Wild One: This song is about our propensity to create idols out of ideas--the idea of safety, the idea of prosperity, a particular idea of who God is--and the way in which these idols shatter when they come into contact with God.

Chariot: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Chariot then: This song paints a vivid picture of an apocalyptic wedding feast where the varied and broken stories that make up human history are woven into a decidedly untragic ending.  As we think about the communion of the saints and our Christ-centered interconnectivity, it is fitting to begin by imagining the moment in which this interconnectivity is no longer veiled.

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 7-10-2016

This was the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the themes of lament and hope. 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:

Rescue Is Coming by David Crowder* Band

Peace (Change Everything) by Jameson McGregor

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

For Those Tears I Died by Jameson McGregor (adapted from M. Stevens)

All Creatures of Our God and King

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's one 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. 

Rescue Is Coming: In the wake of a week full of pain, anger, and longing, we began our time together proclaiming that this present darkness is not the final word.  Now is a time when we need to address systemic issues of racism, police brutality (both racially motivated and not), cultural addictions to violence, and overall division, but we placed those conversation on hold as we entered worship to reorient ourselves toward our only Hope.

Peace (Change Everything):  As we have been moving through these difficult weeks, we have been singing Advent songs, because Advent is the time where we look around, see how dark the world is, and voice our longing for a Light.  We sang Change Everything again this week because it afforded us the chance to voice our longing for change, and to turn to God as the catalyst of this change.  

Because He Lives:  We sang this song with a couple of things in mind: First, the claims made in this song are true—Jesus is alive in a way that is more  than real.  And so, we as individuals can stake our hope in One who is outside of ourselves and be held there.  Second, Jesus is alive in another way in the people of Christ, those who have been and are being formed by His story and Spirit.  Because of this, the people of Christ are partnered with Jesus in actively reconciling the world to God.  But we need to know that sometimes that might mean doing things.

Furthermore,  we need to know that the true claims to hope that Because He Lives makes are quite difficult for some people to claim for themselves.  Namely, the “calm assurance” that our children can face uncertain days because He lives.  If we listen to the cries of the black community in America, there is a decided lack of this "calm assurance," because their life experience says otherwise.  And, yes, there is a way in which the "calm assurance" of Because He Lives is rooted in what Jesus' resurrection means broadly for the whole of human history, but if the church is the body of Christ, and this body is living and breathing in the present, that should bring some measure of hope to the present as well. 

So we sang this as a proclamation of something true, but also as a challenge to ourselves to take seriously the fact that being the people of Christ demands something about the way we move about in the world, and that when we see that life experience makes it difficult for someone to claim the same hope that we do, we should make it our purpose to do something about that.

For Those Tears I Died:  I came across this hymn text a couple of months ago, and started to reimagine it.  After a few weeks of this "reimagining," I had stripped the text down to about 4 lines, knowing that they contained an important truth, but not knowing how to structure the rest of the song.  In the wake of the attack on the LGBT community in Orlando, I started keeping track of things that I was praying as I expressed anger, confusion, and ultimately self-loathing for my own complicity in systems of hate by not being very vocal in combatting them.  The song continued to take shape this past week as I felt more of those same emotions.  This song isn't finished, and I don't know what it will look like when it is.  At the moment, it's part existential despair, part personal confession, and part proclamation of hope.  Probably the most personal side of it for me is the line in the second verse, "I've made an idol out of comfort, praised by keeping my mouth shut//but now it's found a thirst for blood."  I'm what you might call incredibly talented at not speaking out against something I know to be wrong when I feel I can slip by unscathed if I keep my head down.  This is fundamentally unchristian, and I am attempting to lean into repenting of it.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to stand alongside creatures of all kinds in acknowledging God as our creator, sustainer, and the One who is  reconciling all things to Godself, knowing that the Story that God is weaving is far from over.

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 5-8-2016

This was the seventh week of Easter.  Our songs were gathered with this 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:

Death in His Grave by John Mark McMillan

All Creatures of Our God and King

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Come Thou Fount

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. 

Death in His Grave: We sang this song to begin our final Easter service with a song from our first Easter service, singing about Jesus' victory over the powers of Death.  During Advent, we collectively voiced a longing that God would "change everything." And at Christmas, we rejoiced because God in fact did change everything--God's becoming God-with-us created a new kind of future for the world--one marked by hope.  On Good Friday, this Hope was shattered and put in the ground.  Then on Easter, we saw two things: (1) God was willing to go much farther than we thought to set things right with us--the gap between what it is to be God and and what it is to be human is unimaginably large, but then, having crossed that, God stepped further still into death, and then broke through this full-stop into a new kind of life; and (2) we saw God's real answer to our Advent longing.  In light of Jesus' victory over death, everything changed.  I've posted a video for Death in His Grave before, so I'm not going to do that again.  As I was writing this, though, and thinking about Easter as a further answer to the longing of Advent, I thought about the final Advent song we sang in December.  Here's the video for that song:

All Creatures of Our God and King:  We sang this song to champion Easter hope for all of creation--God did not just do something significant for humanity in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Everything is different now, and the whole of creation is now headed for its own Resurrection.

Because He Lives: We sang this song to focus once again on one way the Resurrection can affect our daily lives--namely, by giving us the drive to get out of bed, knowing that life is not meaningless and that God is working to put every broken piece back in place.

Noise: This song does a couple of things: (1) It narrates the history of the divine-human relationship, underscoring God's choice to be God-for-us even when we don't do a good job at being us-for-God.  (2) It emphasizes the fact that, because of the Incarnation and the suffering that Jesus endured, God understands our pain--both physical and emotional--and does not count our acknowledging or responding to our pain against us.  The significance of this song in light of Easter is that God's human experience feeds back into God's faithfulness, and though we time and again will become "broken promises," God has given us the Promise of Easter--this emphatic Yes to life.

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs, and also to look ahead to Pentecost next week.  This is what we said about Come Thou Fount last week: In some ways, we might think of Easter as a season in which we devote particular attention to a story about God showing up in the midst of tragedy and transforming despair into Hope.  Come Thou Fount is a petition for the Spirit to transform our minds and hearts into faculties that know how to worship God in light of who God has been for us.  The second stanza talks about raising an Eben-ezer, which we can think of as a monument to God's faithfulness--a reminder of God's showing up for us in the past.  With this in mind, we might think of Easter as a whole as an Eben-ezer we have grafted into our Calendar.

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

Setlist 3-27-2016

This week was 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

How Great Thou Art

Hope by Jameson McGregor

Because He Lives

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. 

In the Night: This song is a journey through the biblical narrative, cataloguing the process of struggle and victory, woundedness and healing, etc., strung together by the refrain "In the night, my hope lives on."  We've added a verse to the song each week of Lent as we made our way to this week.  This song as a whole is an exercise in looking back to look forward--looking at what God has done in dark places as a reassurance that God will not abandon us to our own darkness.  

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to proclaim the death of Death in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and also to think about the changes this brings about for our own lives.

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to praise God on perhaps three different levels.  First, we have images of God forming worlds on the cosmic scene.  Second, we have the Easter story.  And third, we have the future hope of reconciliation between God and creation on a large scale.  God's "greatness" in this song might be attributed to the fact that God not only made the cosmos, but takes notice of humanity within that sprawl--and not just "notice," God emptied Godself out for the good of the divine-human relationship--and so, we can expect that God will continue to be this overwhelmingly loving creator for us.

Hope:  On Easter, we get the resolution to a plot we have been following since Advent.  In the midst of the darkness of Advent, we held out hope that a light would come.  And we found on Christmas that God lit a fire in our darkness.  In the weeks since, we have watched with bated breath to see how the Light fared in the darkness.  On Easter, we see conclusively that the darkness did not overcome it.  This song is about that story, and it's about the analogues of that story that we experience throughout our own lives.  God is still lighting fires in our darkness, and the darkness is still not overcoming them.  And now, on Easter, we have reason to believe that this isn't a story, but the story.  

Because He Lives:  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.

Doxology: During Lent, we put the Doxology to bed, and replaced it with Be Thou My Vision.  Now is the time to bring it back.  We will once again close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

Setlist 1-10-2016

This week was the first Sunday after Epiphany.  Epiphany is an interesting season.  It begins with the Epiphany (the Star, wise men, etc.), which begins a journey through moments in Jesus' life that serve to reveal Jesus' divinity and mission (baptism, miracles, Transfiguration).  These moments are "epiphanies" in their own right, but the church calendar postures them as looking over their shoulder at Epiphany (that's why its the first Sunday after Epiphany, rather than the first Sunday of Epiphany/the epiphanies).  Anyway. Our songs were gathered around the theme of what the Incarnation reveals to us about who God is.  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 & Saints

Because He Lives by Bill Gaither

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Holy, Holy, Holy

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: The language of this song is taken from Psalm 139, and it proclaims the fact that we cannot outrun the love of God, and there is no hole that we can dig ourselves that is deep enough to convince God to finally leave us alone.  In the Word becoming flesh in Jesus, God sends a clear message about just how far God is willing to go to set things right with Creation.  And while this self-humbling of God is profound on its own, we know that this is not the part of the Christian story where we see God go the furthest for us.  We sang this song because it reminds us that God-with-us is a label that God took upon Godself on purpose, and God did not ask humanity what we thought first--we are loved, whether we think it is appropriate or not.

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to look at the significance of the Word becoming flesh from a different angle, where we think of the fact that God's choosing to be God-with-us has fundamentally changed the way that we exist in the world.  God-with-us means that we are not left to our own devices, but rather have a Fellow Traveler in the world Who knows our struggles and feels our pain, yet does not mirror our faults.  When this understanding meets the love of God, we find something we might call grace.

Because He Lives:  I normally think of the Resurrection when I hear this song, but I think it carries, at the very least, a double entendre.  We sang this song because the fact that the Word became flesh--the fact that God chose to be God-with-us--means that we can have a new kind of Hope.  The darkness of Advent has been pierced by a Fire in its midst, and the darkness cannot overcome it.  If nothing else, at this early part of the Christian story, we know that the Story is far from over, and this is the hope we carry with us, facing each new day with expectation.

Wild One: We sang this song because the Word becoming flesh reveals to us that God is not pinned down by who we expect God to be.  The people of God were not expecting a Messiah like Jesus.  Our most pristine theological categories struggle to make sense of why God would enter our mess of a world in vulnerability rather than destroying it and starting over.  The aim of this song is to refocus our minds on the fact that it is God--God-with-us-- who is worthy of our worship, not our most comfortable picture of God.  That is to say, we must constantly be looking for a God who is on the move, who is dynamic, rather than assuming that we figured God out long ago.  The God revealed in Jesus is a God who is full of surprises and is not easily categorized or mapped out.

Holy, Holy, Holy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Holy, Holy, Holy then: We sang this song to specifically locate our worship of Jesus within the scope of the Triune God.  

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 11-1-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of redemption.  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

Chariot by Page France

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Because He Lives

Heart With No Companion by Leonard Cohen

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. 

Chariot: The Christian story, in broad strokes, is about God redeeming a fallen world.  In terms of humanity, this means that God chooses to initiate making things right with us, and entering into our stories to weave them into a greater Story.  This song narrates what we might consider to be the end of this story, though it might just as well be called the end of the introduction.  When we sing about a big party at the end of all things, and categorize it as a happy ending, we are proclaiming this alongside the fact that even the most pious of us slip up along the way.  God's redemption of us is in spite of our own failures, and it is centered in the love of God that doesn't play by the rules.

Noise: This song begins with the acknowledgement that there is very little we can say with confidence about God--or at the very least, there is little we can say with confidence in its complete accuracy.  As much as we might think we know about God, we are incapable of getting our pictures of God to line up just right.  This is why the chorus narrows its talk about God to what God has done for us--and leaves it fairly vague in the process.  The song then turns to thinking about what God knows about us, namely, that God understands our pain and our doubts.  Why?  Because God became human in Jesus.  This is a much more intimate knowledge of the human experience than we could assume merely from God's having created humanity.  Instead, God lived humanity.  This is important when we think about redemption because it means we are known in the darkest parts of our being, yet God has still not abandoned us to our own devices.

Because He Lives: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last weeks' songs.  This is what we said about Because He Lives then: We sang this song to name the hope of the resurrection of Jesus over/against the pain of loss.  This is not merely future hope, but infuses every moment of life with great significance, making it worth living.  

Heart With No Companion: This song is fairly simple.  It's about the love of God reaching to us through all measures of pain.  This love comes from beyond this pain, and is untainted by it, yet it is a love that we might call shattered--it's calibrated to reach brokenness.  I think the thing I love most about this song is the variety of images Cohen uses to describe who this love is directed at: the captain without a ship, the mother without a child, the lonely, the wayward, the ballerina who can no longer dance.  While they aren't all the same, many of them point to people who have a passion or a self-identity that they are unable to fulfill.  The love of God reaches this person with the message of "you matter.  you are valuable."  In thinking about redemption, we would do well to remind ourselves that God also wants to redeem the way we view ourselves and our place in this world.

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 10-25-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of healing.  Yesterday we had a celebration service for the life and legacy of Kyle Lake, our former pastor, marking 10 years since his death in 2005.  If you weren't able to attend the service, I'd encourage you to go check out kylesfilm.com where you can read about Kyle's story.  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

Because He Lives

How He Loves by John Mark McMillan

Rescue Is Coming by David Crowder* Band

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Hope by Jameson McGregor

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. 

Because He Lives: We sang this song to name the hope of the resurrection of Jesus over/against the pain of loss.  This is not merely future hope, but infuses every moment of life with great significance, making it worth living.  

How He Loves: John Mark McMillan has a video telling the story of this song--I think it is important to hear him talk about where this song came from, so I really hope you'll watch it. He wrote this song in response to the death of a close friend, and we sang this after Craig, a close friend of Kyle's, had just shared with us about the way in which Kyle was a gift of God to him and to ubc, and about the journey he has had since then.  I suppose there are several reasons we needed to sing this song in this service, but perhaps the greatest is to put a voice to the fact that the love of God is not beaten back by the anger and grief of loss.  Instead, this love holds strong through those seasons--in the midst of those seasons.

Rescue Is Coming: Josh asked me to put this song in the set this week because he remembered Kyle having a visceral and joyful reaction to it one of the first times Dave played it at ubc.  He told the story of that moment before we sang it and encouraged us to join with Kyle in that moment in singing this song.  As with Because He Lives, this song sets our eyes on some sort of future hope, but the purpose is to affect the here and now--to not give up in the midst of pain--to have the courage to let deep wounds heal.  [Note: Letting deep wounds heal does not mean getting the scars lasered away--while wounds can be debilitating, scars are vessels of memory and carry the story of healing in their own way.]

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.

Hope: We sang this song to proclaim a story that is fundamental to the story of the cosmos: God lit a fire in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome.  We can think about this in many ways--creation and the life/death/resurrection of Jesus are pretty straight-forward examples-- but we sang this song to proclaim it as the story of ubc in the past 10 years.

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 8-16-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of communion.  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

Chariot by Page France

Death in His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Because He Lives

When Death Came Calling 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. 

Chariot: We sang this song to live in the idea that history is moving toward something extravagant, that can aptly be called a "happy ending." For our purposes today, we can identify this happy ending as the Resurrection, and it is as resurrection people that we gather to share communion.  

Death in His Grave: In 1 Corinthians 11, we are given the idea that one part of taking communion together is to "proclaim the Lord's death until He comes."  We sang this song to think about one part of the death of Christ--the death of Death, proclaiming that Jesus' death changed the way that death works for all of us.  The end goal of human life is no longer death, but resurrection.

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 last week: We sang this song to reflect on the way the gift of Jesus impacts our outlook on the future--in Christ, God gave us the gift of a hope that makes it worth getting out of bed each day.

When Death Came Calling:  This song puts grief in conversation with the hope of resurrection.  We often hear that when Jesus died, Death "lost its sting."  I have unfortunately heard this often used to try to discourage grieving people from acknowledging their pain.  This is unfortunate.  Death indeed lost its permanence, but anyone who has lost a loved one knows that the sting is very much still felt.  This song proposes that the Resurrection will redeem not simply the loss of life, but the grief experienced by those who live in the midst of a world where their loved ones die.

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 8-9-2015

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of God as gift-giver.  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

Just A Closer Walk With Thee

Because He Lives

Murdered Son by John Mark McMillan

To Be Alone With You by Sufjan Stevens

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

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. 

Just A Closer Walk With Thee: We sang this song to reflect on the fact that the gift of Jesus that we receive in coming to know Him is not a singular occurrence, but is something we receive afresh day by day.

Because He Lives: We sang this song to reflect on the way the gift of Jesus impacts our outlook on the future--in Christ, God gave us the gift of a hope that makes it worth getting out of bed each day.

Murdered Son: We sang this song to reflect on the cost of the gift of Jesus. Identifying Jesus as "God's Murdered Son" feels fairly blunt, but isn't this precisely what happened?  Salvation was a gift given at God's own expense.  We can dialogue back and forth over whether or not God is capable on a philosophical level of giving up any part of Godself, but this is nonetheless the picture that we have in Jesus, and we cannot ignore it.

To Be Alone With You:  This song captures a sense of mutual self-giving in the relationship between a person and God.  It also highlights that salvation is not an impersonal act in which God does what needs to be done to carry out a cosmic transaction of justice, but is instead an action with the aim of repairing the relationship between the Creator and creation.

House of God Forever: While I was out of town last week, Abby Baker played music in my stead, and this is one of the songs she led.  This is normally the part of the blog where I reference whatever was said last week, but since that quote would look like a big blank space, let's think about this song as a declaration that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift that keeps us alive--that the gifts of God are the existential place where we dwell.

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 4-26-2015

This week, our friend Dan Venzin preached to us from Joshua 24. Our songs were gathered with the fourth week of Easter 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, 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

Death in His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Because He Lives

Wild One 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.

All Creatures of Our God and King:  God does not plan on abandoning the world. God is making all things new. The Resurrection means that the created world--plants, dirt, animals, people--have the hope of being made new.  This song is one of those songs that says "oh, praise him," a lot, but there's not much else to say in light of that kind of news.

Death In His Grave:  A glaring part of Easter hope is the fact that death is no longer the end of human life. Though it's hard to see from our vantage point, Jesus changed something fundamental about the human condition: the thing that was broken about us is being fixed, and we get to share in the Resurrection of Jesus.

Because He Lives: The Resurrection redefined human life in such a way that we do not have to mourn the passing of each moment. Life is a gift, and though death is certain, the hope of the resurrection can give us the audacity to embrace each new day.

Wild One: God is not bound by who we expect God to be. The disciples expected a different kind of Jesus than they got.  Reason expected Jesus to stay dead. We can rest knowing that God is greater than we expect, and that God is active in time and space.

How Great Thou Art: We sang this to look over our should at the songs we sang last week. This hymn is ultimately pointing a finger at the fact that God is "great." In the context of Easter, we emphasize the fact that God is great because God did not abandon us to our brokenness, but instead came down low to where we are, suffered, and died, so that we wouldn't have to be trapped in our brokenness anymore.  This is not only the God who made us, not only who knows us, but who loves 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 4-5-2015

This week, Toph preached from Mark 16:1-8 on the Resurrection. Our songs were gathered around the theme of Easter Hope (and resurrection). 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

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Because He Lives

When Death Came Calling 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.

In the Night: We sang this song every week of Lent, adding a verse each week (If you felt like this song just kept getting longer, that's because it was).  This song chronicles examples of God's saving God's people from throughout the Bible--the crown jewel of which was the death and resurrection of Jesus--showing that there is a great precedent for trusting God in the midst of immense darkness.    

Death In His Grave: This song proclaims Easter Hope through an artful narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection.

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to think about what Jesus' resurrection ultimately means for the human condition--God has saved us from our self destruction and we don't have to feel trapped in our brokenness.

Because He Lives: This song reminds us that the resurrection isn't just something we look back on, but something that breathes meaning and purpose into the present and gives us hope for tomorrow.

When Death Came Calling: This song examines grief in light of the Resurrection.  We often hear that, because Jesus has risen from the dead, death has lost its sting.  This phrase can potentially make us think that death shouldn't be tragic for Christians, but this is simply not true.  Death is immensely tragic and worthy of grief, whether one is a Christian or not. The Easter Hope Christians have is for the future--that the end goal of human life is no longer death, but resurrection; that the day will come when there is nothing left for death to take away.  This hope carries us in the present, but we hold this hope alongside our tears, not instead of them.

Wayward Ones: We always sing this song alongside communion, reminding ourselves that none of us is worthy of sharing the Lord's table, yet he invites us nonetheless.

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

-JM