This past Sunday was the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and 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. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs:
Chariot by Page France
Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher
Where God Has Always Been by Jameson McGregor
Noise by Jameson McGregor
Mystery by ubcmusic (adapted from Charlie Hall)
Yesterday was Christ the King Sunday, and the songs were selected 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:
Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
Rise Up by Bifrost Arts
Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor
Chariot by Page France
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.
Crown Him With Many Crowns: We sang this song because it was basically made to be sung on Christ the King Sunday. It speaks both to a conceptual crowning of Christ in one's life, and also to a more eschatological vision of the Kingdom.
Mystery: This song proclaims the story of what kind of king Christ is--the kind that would suffer and die for his people. In singing this song, we began to pose a question to ourselves of what Christ's reign might mean for the way that we live and move in the world.
Pulse: We most often refer to the Holy Spirit as the Breath of Life undergirding all of Creation when we sing this song. But Pulse can also be taken to refer to the way in which all of Creation holds together in Christ, which is the angle we took yesterday. At the bottom of everything, we are connected to the people least like us by our mutual connection to the grace of Christ.
Rise Up: This song is a petition for the King who stands with the oppressed to rise to their defense, and a charge to those who claim to be formed in the way of Christ to do the same.
Inbreaking: This song is a plea for the coming of the Kingdom and the re-Creation of all things.
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 is a looking ahead toward the re-Creation of all things. This looking ahead in some way embodies the posture of Ordinary Time, insofar as we allow this looking ahead to motivate us to live as though the Kingdom has already come in fullness.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This was the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, and it was also youth Sunday. That means the songs were picked by the youths. 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:
Chariot by Page France
Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle
Wandering by Jameson McGregor
Wild One by Jameson McGregor
Up On A Mountain by The Welcome Wagon
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: This song is a looking ahead toward the re-Creation of all things. This looking ahead in some way embodies the posture of Ordinary Time, insofar as we allow this looking ahead to motivate us to live as though the Kingdom has already come in fullness.
Fall Afresh: This song is a petition for the Spirit to infuse our lives with vitality and purpose, and to protect us from growing numb to the work of God in the world.
Wandering: We sang this song to proclaim the faithfulness of God, despite our tendency to be selectively faithful toward God.
Wild One: This song is a reminder that our ideas about who God is are never synonymous with who God in fact is, and draws us into a posture of worship predicated on our inability to comprehend God fully.
Up On A Mountain: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Up On A Mountain then: We sang this to proclaim Jesus' solidarity with us in suffering, the depths of human pain, and the ongoing presence of God with us via the Spirit.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This week was the fourth 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:
Chariot by Page France
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
Pain by Jameson McGregor
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
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 chorus of this song captures a central theme of the Easter season: we will become a happy ending. In this simple phrase, we find the core implication of the Resurrection. The Love of God is unhindered on a fundamental level, even by death. God's Yes overwhelms any No that might come before it.
Pulse: This song speaks to the effect of the Resurrection on life in the world. The Resurrection is driven by the transformative power that spreads through the entire cosmos, the Spirit of God. And this same transformative power is working to raise what is dead in us.
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: 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.
Pain: In the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we find that God is able to bear the weight of our suffering and somehow paint life on the other side. This Event offers us a picture of what God can make of our own pain, and it stands as an image of Hope. The chorus of this song,
but the God of the Lighter Load
can take the weight of the pain we hold
until the sting becomes about much more than the pain
it's the place
that we dwell in a Living Hope
the architecture of the ones who know
that, in the end, healing comes like the day:
from the night
is not suggesting that God takes our pain away, but instead enters into our pain and is carrying out the work of transformational healing. This Hope hinges on the image of the Resurrection, on the fact that Jesus's suffering was not miraculously alleviated or cut short, but rather was the first part of a broader story that transcended the suffering itself.
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
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
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
This was the twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs around the theme of communion of saints. 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:
Chariot by Page France
Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
When the Saints by Jameson McGregor (adaptation)
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
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: 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.
Heart Won't Stop: To think more deliberately about Christ-centered interconnectivity we talked about, we sang this song to single out the connective tissue in this relationship: the love of God. In this love, we find an unmatched relentless pursuit that cannot be severed, even by death. It is this death discarding love that allows us to cling to the hope that we are connected to one another through Christ beyond time and space.
Pulse: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Pulse then: This song is a prayer that God would reconnect us to the Pulse of the Spirit in creation, and that we would learn to base our love for one another in our mutual status as creatures of God. There is no person for whom this does not apply, and, though it is at times seemingly impossibly difficult, we do not get a pass on our call to love everyone.
When the Saints: This song was requested by David Wilhite, our guest preacher this week. He asked me if I had a rendition of it, and I did not. After listening through about 30 versions, I realized that I was ill-equipped to do the song any of those ways, so I made my own. In that process, I became acquainted with the sense of longing that drives this song--an awareness that the journey of faith is one where we follow in the footsteps of people who have died, seeking to be drawn further in to a story about resurrection and redemption, cutting against the brokenness that we find in the world around us.
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
This was the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with anticipation of the Kingdom 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:
Chariot by Page France
Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
Bonfire by Jameson McGregor
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
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: This song embodies the longing for God to break into history and deliver the distinctively untragic end to the story God is weaving. The history of Christianity has been marked by a constant sense of waiting on this moment, and this waiting is significant in at least two ways. The first is direct in that we await the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. The second is indirect in that this waiting for God's redemptive project to be completed colors the way we move about in the world--namely, we should allow the vision of the Kingdom in fullness to be the pattern that we live by. We don't have to wait for the Kingdom to come in fullness to live as though it's already here. Because it is here--or can be-- among those who have been shaped by the story of Jesus.
Amazing Grace: This song engages our anticipation of the fullness of the Kingdom of God by reflecting on the way that God's rule has already been present in our lives through God's grace, and it also looks ahead to the joyous abundance of the Kingdom (when we've been there ten thousand years...).
Pulse: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Pulse then: We sang this song to be reminded of the gift of life that God has given to all of creation, and to lament our tendency to ignore the dignity of this gift in people who are different than us.
Bonfire: This song traces the vast difference between what it is to be God and what it is to be us, and looks forward to the fullness of the Kingdom where the pain brought by this difference is mended. It also notes the fact that the Kingdom breaks through even now and undermines the fears that we have called our refuge.
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
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
Heart With No Companion by Leonard Cohen
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
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
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
When Death Came Calling by Jameson McGregor
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
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
This week, Josh preached from Matthew 20:1-16. 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 or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs
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: This song uses two images to talk about God. The first is a chariot (a la swing low sweet chariot). The second is a wrecking ball. We can think of the wrecking ball as God's breaking into human history and breaking through the barriers of our brokenness, and we can think of the chariot as God's drawing us out of our sinfulness. The refrain, "So we will become a happy ending" is an extremely simple phrasing of the result of these things, but it is no less true. The "we" who will become a happy ending is more than just humanity--though humanity is certainly included. It is, rather, the entire cosmos--God is working to redeem the whole of creation. This "we" also includes God. God is not making us new simply to abandon us, but to draw us near to Godself forever--a happy ending, indeed.
This Is Amazing Grace: The verses of this song explore a multitude of great things that God has done/is doing, while the chorus ultimately says, "This same God--who is above and beyond anything we could ever hope to be--has chosen to enter into our story as a human and experience extreme suffering (when even the slightest suffering would have been undeserved) so that we can be saved." Saved from what? Selfishness, pride, isolation, anger, fear, anxiety, nonexistence (death), on and on. This is grace--amazing grace--because there is nothing about us that deserved this. God did this freely because that's what God is like.
Lord, I Need You: Though the death and resurrection of Christ have changed what is true about humanity--that we are no longer slaves to sin, destined for death, but rather creatures who are in the process of being made new, destined for resurrection--we are constantly tempted to live as though this were not true. The Spirit is working within us to transform us into people who live like Christ. We sang this song to remind ourselves of this, and to express our awareness of our dependence upon God.
Noise: The gap between what it is to be God and what it is to be human has been called by some an un-crossable boundary. Because of this, we can only attempt to say true things of God--our words always fall short of their mark. One thing we can talk about with a bit more clarity is that God crosses this boundary to have a relationship with us. In the Old Testament, God established several covenants (read: promises) with God's people--this binding relationship is something that God chose to initiate with humans. The people of God time and again fell out of sync with the kind of lives they were supposed to live in relation to God, but God remained faithful and continually found new ways to be God with us. This culminated in God becoming human in Jesus, breaking through that un-crossable boundary between God and humanity. In doing this, God became ever-more intimately aware of what it is to be human--of what it is to suffer, and humanity became aware of what kind of life God would have us live, if God were human.
Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of several 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
This week, Josh preached from John 20:19-31. Our songs were gathered with the second 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
Chariot by Page France
Revelation Song by Kari Jobe
Noise by Jameson McGregor
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 chorus of this song is "we will become a happy ending." This statement captures one of the simplest truths we think about in light of Easter--Jesus' death and resurrection have changed history, and we can be confident that all that is broken will be fixed.
Jesus Paid It All: This song captures another implication of Jesus' death and resurrection: the things about us that should separate us from God are overshadowed by the fact that Jesus gave himself up for us.
Revelation Song: In the crucifixion, we see the glory of God correctly: God was willing to be made a fool, tortured, and killed to save us. The resurrection is the crown jewel of this moment, where we see that the risen Christ was not vengeful, but patient and loving. This song proclaims God's greatness in light of this.
Noise: This song rests in the simple truth that, though we have all amounted to broken promises in some way, God is working to redeem 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
