Setlist 5-6-2019

This past Sunday was the third Sunday of Eastertide, 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.  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:

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

Pulse by ubcmusic

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. 

Wild One: We sang this song to celebrate God’s not being bound by our expectations of who God is.

Wayward Ones: This is our communion hymn, and it contemplates Christ's self-giving love that is displayed and remembered in the eucharist.

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to rehearse the death and Resurrection of Christ.

Inbreaking: This song is a petition for the Slaughtered Lamb to work Resurrection in our midst.

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 petition for the Spirit to work Resurrection in our hearts and form us in the way of Christ.

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

Setlist 11-25-2018

Yesterday was Christ the King Sunday.  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 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:

Crown Him With Many Crowns by ubcmusic

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

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

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

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. 

Crown Him With Many Crowns: We sang this song to begin our time together celebrating the reign of Christ in the Kingdom of God.

Death In His Grave: This song invited us to rehearse the story of the death and Resurrection of Christ.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to practice an awareness of our interconnectivity with creation under the care of our Creator and Sustainer.

Inbreaking: This song is a plea for the Slaughtered Lamb to form us in the way of Christ and form our world in the way of the Kingdom.

Hope: This song celebrates the redemptive work of Christ in the life of the world as the light in the darkness the darkness did not overcome, and grasps for the hope that one day every broken piece will find its place again.

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 9-16-2018

This past Sunday was the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost.  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 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:

Holy, Holy, Holy

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

There by Jameson McGregor

Just the Same by Jameson McGregor

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

Holy, Holy, Holy: We sang this song to orient our attention toward the Creator and Sustainer of us all, confessing the limits of our knowledge of God while also expressing wonder at the love and power of God in our midst.

Death In His Grave: This song rehearses the death and resurrection of Jesus, and we sang it to continue to immerse ourselves in the story of God’s re-creation of the world.

There: We sang this to proclaim God’s constancy above and within the chaos of our world.

Just the Same: This song swims through the dance of evolving faith, grasping for truth while knowing that whatever we find is only a piece of the whole.

Mystery: This song offers us a shorthand version of the Gospel story (Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again) as an anthem to raise in the midst of struggle, and a reminder that the way of Christ is costly.

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

-JM

Setlist 6-17-2018

Yesterday was the fourth Sunday after Pentecost, as well as Father's Day.  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 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:

Your Love Is Strong by Jon Foreman

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Rise Up by BiFrost Arts

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

Your Love Is Strong: We sang this song to begin our time by proclaiming God as our Father whose love is the strength that binds us together in life.

Death In His Grave: This song allows us to rehearse the story of Jesus' death and resurrection, the embodied expression of God's love for us.

Rise Up: We sang this song as a way of grasp for words to ask God to come to the defense of the families and children who are being separated by our government at the border.

Inbreaking: This song is a plea for God to enter into the brokenness of our time and place and set about redeeming it.

Be Thou My Vision: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  Here's what we said about Be Thou My Vision then: This song is a plea for God to be our vision, wisdom, security, and hope in the whole of our lives.

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 4-22-2018

Yesterday was the fourth 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:

Heart Won't Stop by John Mark and Sarah McMillan

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Shadow by Jameson McGregor

Pulse 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. 

Heart Won't Stop: We sang this song to articulate and celebrate what Easter shows us about how far God is willing to go to set things right with us.

House of God Forever: We sang this song to echo Psalm 23, which was one of yesterday's readings, celebrating God's care for us.

Death In His Grave: This song allows us to rehearse again the Resurrection story as we go through the Easter season, emphasizing both the suffering of Jesus and the victory of Jesus over death.

Shadow: This song is about the difficulty of being formed in the way of Christ.

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 acknowledge the interconnectivity of Creation and to draw ourselves toward loving our neighbors as ourselves.

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 4-1-2018

This past Sunday was Resurrection Sunday, 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Hope by Jameson McGregor

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

When Death Came Calling by Jameson McGregor

Be Thou My Vision

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 stream of stories about God showing up in the midst of despair in the Bible.  It carried us through Lent, and on Sunday it was our entry into Easter.

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 give voice to the hope of Resurrection.

Death In His Grave: This song narrates Jesus' defeat of Death and rescue of humanity from destruction.

Mystery: We sang this song to proclaim Jesus' rise from death at the hands of political and religious oppressors, and raised this as a challenge for us to rise to the aid of the oppressed.

When Death Came Calling: This song is a song of grief and resurrection.

Be Thou My Vision:  Throughout the Lenten season, we have closed our liturgies with these words to reaffirm our desire to seek our vision, wisdom, and security in God alone.  On Easter, we added the final stanza into the mix, and asked Christ to be our victory as well.

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

-JM

Setlist 1-14-2018

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

Songs:

How Great Thou Art

Death in His Grave by John Mark McMillan

There by Jameson McGregor

Anthem by Leonard Cohen

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

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

How Great Thou Art: As we travel through Epiphany, most of the gospel readings will depict someone acknowledging Jesus as Lord.  This song offered us language to join in this posture of acclamation. 

Death In His Grave: As we come to know Jesus again this year, this song in some way hits fast-forward on the story, moving on to the Resurrection, but it also contains an extremely important insight: Jesus was executed as a criminal because his teachings and ministry posed a threat to the religious and political order.  

There: This song offers us the chance to step back and notice that, though God is present with us in any given situation, God precedes and will outlast any source of anxiety, and the story-we-live-in says that God intends to bring us along to the other side of sorrow as well.

Anthem: In this season of Light, this song reminds us that the Light of hope enters through the cracks of brokenness.

All Creatures of Our God and King: This song echoes the posture of acclamation that we took up in the first song, and offers us the chance to be present to our interconnectivity with the whole of Creation.

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 10-29-2017

This was the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost.  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 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:

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Ascend the Hill)

Murdered Son by John Mark McMillan

Bonfire by Jameson McGregor

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

Wandering: We sang this song to proclaim God's faithfulness to us in the midst of our tendency to attempt to steer God toward our own devices.  In doing so, we reminded ourselves that God has decided to pull us into God's story, and our own shortcomings or inconsistencies are not powerful enough to change God's mind about that.

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go:  This song gives voice to the hope against hope that not even death can separate us from the love of God.

Murdered Son: This song proclaims the work of God in Christ, holds up the truth about how far God was willing to go to set things right with us, and ultimately poses an open question to us about what this means for a group of people who are seeking to be formed into the presence of Christ in their time and place.

Bonfire: This song traces the vast distance between what it is to be God and what it is to be human, and looks ahead to where that divide is ultimately transgressed.

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Death In His Grave then: We sang this song to tell again the story of Christ's entering into suffering to the point of death and emerging victorious over Death and sin.  This story is the foundation of our hope, and one of the most revelatory moments regarding the lengths to which God is willing to go to set things right with us, and it is also an image of the re-Creation that God is actively working in history.

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 10-22-2017

This was the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost.  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 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:

How Great Thou Art

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

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

Wild One 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. 

How Great Thou Art: This song offers us the chance to rehearse responding to the wonder of what God has made, what God has done, and what God will do, with an acknowledgement of God's greatness.  In Ordinary Time, this becomes important because how we respond to this wonder is indeed a part of discerning what it means to be the people of God in our particular time and place.

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to tell again the story of Christ's entering into suffering to the point of death and emerging victorious over Death and sin.  This story is the foundation of our hope, and one of the most revelatory moments regarding the lengths to which God is willing to go to set things right with us, and it is also an image of the re-Creation that God is actively working in history.

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: This is a reminder that we offer ourselves and one another about God's grace and mercy toward us.  We are quite adept at thinking of ways which we might be excluded from the love of God--thinking that it might be true for other people who are less flawed than we--but the truth is that the love of God is much broader than our broadest notions of this love.  Aside from thinking of how this love relates to ourselves, this song also reminds us that the same is true for those who are different than us--those who we might not care much for at all.  Taken together, this song offers us the opportunity to lean further into loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves (which also presupposes that we love ourselves well).

Wild One: This song seeks to remind us that who God is and who we expect God to be are not the same thing--that God is in fact greater than our greatest assumptions.  This idea poses a challenge to us in Ordinary Time to continue to carry the holy curiosity of Epiphany.

Crown Him With Many Crowns: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Crown Him With Many Crowns then: We sang this song to give voice to the lordship of Christ, with language of power-in-weakness.  In doing so, we call ourselves to imagine how this self-giving savior would have us live and move in the world.

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 8-20-2017

This was the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.  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 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:

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

Inbreaking 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. 

Pulse: This song is about the interconnectivity of creation--that the Spirit of Life is woven through the whole cosmos. It's also about our propensity to completely ignore this and decide instead which parts of God's beloved creation we want to consider worthy of love.  It is a confession of our brokenness and a petition for God to make us new.

Death In His Grave: This song is about the defeat of Death by the Resurrection of Jesus.  It stands as a reminder to us that the most fundamental existential victory has been won, and the final word about God's creation has been spoken.  It is a celebratory declaration of the work of God in the world, and a hopeful proclamation that the story of creation has been rewritten.

Mystery: "Christ has died/Christ is Risen/Christ will come again" is a refrain that has been present with the Church since its inception.  It is shorthand for the core of our story, and it is also shorthand for the fundamentally revolutionary roots of our faith.  It is a protest anthem.  Against death.  Against evil.  Against oppressive powers of all sorts.  It says, "Not even death can silence the Hope of Christ." 

Inbreaking: This song is a confession of the brokenness of the world, of the church, and of ourselves, and a petition for the Slaughtered Lamb to show us how to exit our tombs.

Crown Him With Many Crowns: We sang this song to look over our shoulder from our songs from two weeks ago.  This is what we said about Crown Him With Many Crowns then: A central focus of Ordinary Time is on seeking to be the presence of Christ in our particular time and place--that means to seek to be formed in the way of Christ in such a way that our lives are outposts of the Kingdom.  This song praises Christ as Lord, and speaks of the fact that his Kingdom is marked by peace and self-sacrificial love, thus helping us recenter on our minds on who we are called to be.

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 4-16-2017

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, and our songs were gathered with the death and Resurrection of Jesus 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

Hope 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 will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

Death In His Grave: This song narrates the death and Resurrection of Jesus, and underscores the outcome of this Event: the death of death.  It also captures the reality-altering implications of this event for humans that Paul likens to Jesus being a second Adam.  We sang this song to step into this narrative in a more deliberate way and experience it anew.

Mystery: This is a protest song.  And Easter is a protest day.  In the Resurrection of Jesus, we have the defeat of death, yes, but we also have an empire and religious institution put to shame as their supposedly final assertion of power over the trouble-maker Jesus doesn't work.  If the power that corrupt systems of oppression carry is falsified, these systems cannot hope to stand for long.  So, the formula Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again is multi-valent, and one of those valences is of the raised-fist variety.  This was true then, and it is true now.  

Hope: This song uses the image from John of God setting a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome as a reference point for present hope (and interprets this image to refer to the Resurrection).  In the Resurrection, we see in action what we have hoped to be true: that God is present and active in brokenness, and is in the habit of making all things new.  And when we look back on our own lives in the moments most marred by pain, we find that they too evolved into something like broken pieces coming back together.  So when those pain-marred moments are our present moments, we can look back on the Resurrection and the resurrections we have experienced for the hope that God will raise us up again.

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 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 10-16-2016

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

Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan

Be Thou My Vision

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Noise by Jameson McGregor

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. 

Heart Won't Stop: This song is centered on the idea that nothing can sever use from the love of God.  The shame we carry is a false narrative about who we are that is shattered by the love of God.  The true narrative about who we are says that we are God's beloved children.  That's not to say there is not a place for guilt when we do what we should not, but instead that we are not capable of amassing a guilt that cancels out the love of God.

Be Thou My Vision: We sang this song to practice asking God to override the false, shame-driven, narratives about ourselves that we replay time and again in our heads.  

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to proclaim the story of Jesus' death and resurrection, reminding ourselves in a more particular way why our shame narratives are false.  The things we do are not able to change who we are in light of what Jesus has done for us. 

Noise: This song made an appearance because of this line in the chorus: when i was a broken promise, You made me another one. There are several ways you could interpret that line, but for the sake of this week, let's go with this one: God does not leave it up to us to reconcile the rift in the divine-human relationship.  God is reconciling us to Godself, and our inconsistent leaning-in to this doesn't get to override what God is doing.

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 last week: This song confronts our tendency to try to talk ourselves out of any confidence in God's faithfulness to be God-for-us--as though we could disqualify ourselves.  Instead, it reminds us that the love of God is not limited by our own sense of what kind or degree of mercy we deserve.

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 9-18-2016

This was the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs around the theme of discipleship.  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:

Just A Closer Walk With Thee

Death in His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Heart With No Companion by Leonard Cohen

Pulse 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. 

Just A Closer Walk With Thee:  We sang this song to begin our time together by expressing a desire to be more fully formed in the way of Christ. Of particular note is the second stanza, which highlights that we are not left to carry the burden of our failures in following Christ alone.  

Death In His Grave:  This song rehearses the story of Jesus' defeat of death.  We sang it because the whole of the Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus.  Within this song, we celebrate the self-emptying of Jesus for our sake, showing us what love looks like, as well as the power of the resurrection to break the fundamental cycle of life and death.  This is the story that we are seeking to model as followers of Christ, constantly dying and rising in different ways, hoping to learn something about life and love.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to acknowledge our dependence upon the renewal of the Spirit to grow as followers of Jesus.  Be it on a great or small scale, we all experience the cycle of renewal and stagnation in the life of faith--the cycle in which our brains seek out an easier status quo than we are called to--and we thus continually need the help of the Spirit to pull us forward.

Heart With No Companion: This song is a love letter from God to the afflicted that offers the shattered Love of God to those who feel like their lives lack meaning. It carries within it a promise that those who experience the existential anguish of not being able to be what they know they have been created to be have not been forgotten.  Furthermore, it is a message that who you are and what you do are two very different things (in the song, you have a captain with no ship, a mother with no children, a prima ballerina with no dancing, etc.).  Within the context of this week's songs, it is a word to the person who feels like they aren't "good" at being a follower of Christ, reminding them that they carry an identity that transcends their religious prowess.

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 acknowledge the presence of the Spirit in every living thing, to petition God to reconnect our awareness to this interconnectivity, and to show us what this means for the way we love one another.

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 7-31-2016

This was the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with God's gift-giving 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

Come Thou Fount

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Pulse 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. 

Death In His Grave: We sang this song to begin our time together by singing about the gift that God gave to humanity in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  In the Incarnation, God gave Godself to the world. In the Crucifixion, Jesus gave Himself for the world. In the Resurrection, God gave Hope to the world.  And through all of this, God gave us a story that we now carry that critiques the assumptions we have about love, life, sin, death, and the divine-human relationship as a whole.

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song as a petition that the Spirit would tune our hearts to embrace and be grateful for the many gifts that God gives us, knowing that it's difficult to get this right even on our best days, and knowing that we have wandering hearts that threaten to skew the way we think about where our gifts come from.  Also, we sang it to make a blanket statement of the "Here I raise my Ebenezer" line--an Ebenezer is a monument of sorts that signifies the gift of God's active presence that has carried us through every chapter of our lives.  (I am aware that I explain "Ebenezer" pretty much every time we sing this song, but let's not pretend that isn't an obscure concept.  If you already know what it means, that's great, but many people probably don't.)

House of God Forever: This song is more or less an arrangement of Psalm 23, and we sang it to voice the gift that God gives us in providing for our needs.  This makes it possible for us to let go of our anxieties.  I am personally not good at acknowledging this gift--worrying comes quite naturally to me and I do it all the time.  I have a feeling I'm not the only one.  We sang this song to put voice to the truth that God is our provider and comforter in hopes that we would embrace this idea a little more.

Pulse: 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.  

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 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 10-11-2015

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

Songs

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Just a Closer Walk With Thee

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Diamond by Sarah Dossey Keilers [Dossey]

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-JM