Setlist 4-14-2019

This past Sunday was both Palm Sunday and ubckids Sunday, 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Here is Our King by David Crowder* Band

Just A Closer Walk With Thee

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Be Thou My Vision

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 traces the thread of God’s presence within struggle throughout the biblical narrative, and invites us to step into the lineage of hope-in-despair.

Here Is Our King: We sang this song because honestly what other song would you sing for Palm Sunday while a parade of children danced in waving palm branches?

Just A Closer Walk With Thee: This song gets to one of the primary concerns of Lent: being formed in the way of Christ.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to invite the Spirit to continue to transform us and to guard our faith from complacency.

Lord, I Need You: This song offered us a prayer to carry us through the end of Lent.

Be Thou My Vision: This song will accompany us through Lent, reminding us to turn to God for our vision, wisdom, and security.

Setlist 1-13-2019

Yesterday was the second Sunday of Epiphany, and the beginning of an important conversation in the life of our church.  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

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

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

The Word Is Yet Flesh by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

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 begin our time together to focus our attention on the God who is greater than our most polished theological systems can account for.

All Creatures of Our God and King: This song invites us to contemplate our familial relationship and unity with all of creation.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to invite the Spirit to refresh the dry places within us and to reinvigorate our being formed in the way of Christ.

The Word Is Yet Flesh: This song is a plea for the One in whom all things hold together to hold together the fractured body of Christ.

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

Pulse: We sang this song to petition the Spirit to reawaken us to our interconnectivity and to teach us to love one another as Christ loved 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 11-11-2018

This past Sunday was the twenty-fifth 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:

Heart Won’t Stop by John Mark and Sarah McMillan

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

There by Jameson McGregor

Anthem by Leonard Cohen

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. 

Heart Won’t Stop: This song finds its place in late ordinary time as a proclamation of God’s enduring love for us which breaks past the defenses we construct and is unfazed by the depths we might descend in the mire of life.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to maintain an awareness of our dependence on the Spirit of God to form us in the way of Christ, inviting the Spirit to continue to make all things new in us.

There: This song offered us language to praise the One who is constant throughout all measure of uncertainty, and to anchor ourselves to the Eternal One.

Anthem: We sang this song to maintain a grip on hope in the midst of brokenness.

Pulse: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week’s songs. This is what we said about Hope then: This song is a prayer that God would reawaken us to the interconnectivity of creation, and to teach us to love our created 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 8-5-2018

Yesterday 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 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:

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Just the Same by Jameson McGregor

There 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. 

Noise: This song acknowledges the wide gap between what it is to be God and what it is to be us, and proclaims that in spite of this gap, God has moved toward us.

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

Fall Afresh: This song offered us language to seek a rekindling of the Spirit in our lives, reorienting our attention toward God and the Kingdom of God in the world.

Just the Same: This song is about the versions of faith that we evolve through over time, how, for better or worse they never really leave us, and it grasps for some sort of security in the midst of this.

There:  This song looks to God as an Anchor within the chaos of life.

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 5-20-2018

Yesterday was Pentecost 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:

Bonfire by Jameson McGregor

Fall Afresh  by Jeremy Riddle

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Waking Life 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. 

Bonfire: This song is about the contrast between God and humanity and the contrast between the already and the not yet of the Kingdom.  We sang this song to acknowledge what God has done and to look ahead to the re-Creation of all things.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to petition the Spirit of God to reawaken us to the presence of God among us and to draw us into what God is doing in our world.

Pulse: This song is about the Breath of Life in all of creation, and petitions the Spirit to reawaken our hearts to our interconnectivity to all creatures, that we might be moved toward loving as God does.

Waking Life: This song is about the Spirit crashing into the stories we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it, offering us a different way to live and move and have our being.

Hope: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Hope then: This song looks at the mini-Resurrections that God has spread across creation in order to look ahead to the re-Creation of all things.

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 4-29-2018

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

Songs:

Jesus Loves Me

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

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

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-JM

Setlist 3-4-2018

Yesterday was the second Sunday of Lent, 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:

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

Deliver Me by David Crowder* Band

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to give language to our need for the Spirit to occupy the wilderness space of Lent alongside us and carry out the Spirit's vitalizing work of transformation.

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: Lent can be a daunting season as we come to terms with our sin.  We sang this song to remind ourselves of the enduring love of God.

Deliver Me: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Deliver Me then: We sang this song as a petition for God to deliver us from the cycles in our lives that push against being formed more fully in the way of Christ.

In the Night: This song carries us through Lent all the way to Easter.  It is a record of God’s showing up in the midst of despair throughout the biblical narrative.

Be Thou My Vision:  Throughout the Lenten season, we will close our liturgies with these words to reaffirm our desire to seek our vision, wisdom, and security in God alone.

-JM

Setlist 11-19-2017

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

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: 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

Setlist 6-11-2017

This was the first Sunday after Pentecost, which is Trinity 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 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:

Holy, Holy, Holy

All Creatures of Our God and King

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

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:  Since it was Trinity Sunday, this seemed like a good song to begin our time together.  It's a confession of, and implicit surrender to, God's Otherness--a way of saying that God is beyond our comprehension.

All Creatures of Our God and King: This song imagines all of creation, ourselves included, singing out in praise of the Creator.  To sing this song is to at least pay lip service to our interconnectedness with the rest of creation, and also to ascribe a dignity and worth to the earth, animals, plants, stars, etc., that we often only afford humans (and sometimes, worse, just the humans that are like us).  In light of Trinity Sunday, we might consider this song to acknowledge the unity of the loving community of the Trinity being painted across all of creation.

Noise: This song traces the vast difference between God and humanity, and also narrates God's transgressing of that difference in the Incarnation.  It explores how God's triunity both accounts for this difference and bridges the gap.

Wild One: This song is about God's always being beyond our full comprehension, and always being able to smash through the idols we make of who we expect God to be.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Fall Afresh then: We sang this song to step into the Pentecost story by confessing a desire for the Spirit to indwell our community and set us on 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.

-JM

Setlist 6-4-2017

This week was Pentecost 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 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:

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Lifted/Lifting by Jameson McGregor

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Burn It Down 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. 

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to step into the Pentecost story by confessing a desire for the Spirit to indwell our community and set us on the way of Christ.

Lifted/Lifting: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Lifted/Lifting then: This song is about the continual coming-to-understand of the Christian faith.  Any idea that we grasp about who God is can only serve as a placeholder for a deeper understanding of God as we are further renovated into the presence of Christ on earth.

Pulse: This song talks about the Spirit of Life indwelling all of creation, and raises a plea that God would reconnect our hearts to this Spirit.  Wrapped up in this plea is a desire to be transformed into people who work alongside the Spirit in spreading the work of Christ's redemption throughout the world.

Burn It Down: This song is a petition for the Spirit to use the people of God to tear down systems of oppression.

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 5-14-2017

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:

Come Thou Fount

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

There by Jameson McGregor

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. 

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to give voice to our gratitude for God's activity in our lives thus far, and to graft the Resurrection into that list of wonders.  It is an exercise in looking back to inform our looking forward--to examine who God has been to inform our expectations of who God will be.

Fall Afresh: This song is a petition for the Spirit that brought Jesus through death into Life to dwell among us and renew the whole of ourselves.

There: This song gives voice to God's transcendence over/above any anxieties we face in life. We sang it to enhance the idea that we have been carrying about God's immanence in the midst of our pain in the suffering of Jesus.  The Resurrection is a marriage of the immanence of Jesus and the transcendence of God, a Yes that crashes through the No of pain and death.

Heart With No Companion: This song imagines the implications of the vast and shattered love of God.  It is both wide reaching, and acquainted with pain, and thus is able to find us in the midst of our own pain.  The chorus focuses on an oft-overlooked kind of pain that arises out of unmet expectations or a disconnect between passion and circumstance.

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 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.  

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 3-19-2017

This week was the third week of Lent, 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 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

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Shadow by Jameson McGregor

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Be Thou My Vision

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.  

Wandering: During Lent, we enter the wilderness to ask the question of who we are and what we are for, using Jesus as our mirror, and ask the Spirit to transform us more fully into this identity.  Though we make a point to do this for 6 weeks, this sort of wilderness wandering is something most of us do often.  The Christian life is a push-pull between being more fully formed in the way of Christ and settling back into the rhythms that we are seeking to be transformed away from.  If we look inside of ourselves for some sort of consistent cause for hope, we will not find it.  But if we look to God, we will find that God is faithful to us throughout our own ebb and flow of learning to live like Jesus.  So if we build our hope on God's faithfulness to us, we are well on our way to having more solid footing to move forward.  We sang this song to proclaim this truth, to worship God in light of it, and to remind ourselves that our overarching life of faith is tied to who God is for us (not solely if we can look in the mirror and see a perfect Christian).  You can find a studio version of this song here.

Fall Afresh: As we enter further into Lent, our introspection can begin to conjure a weight that doesn't seem worth carrying.  We sang this song to ask for help, to ask the Spirit to cultivate transformation in us.

Shadow: There is a theme of Lent that is centered on learning how to die to ourselves in order to be more like Christ.  This song traces the internal struggle that this concept can ignite within us, using the image of talking in our sleep--having the sense of what we are trying to do, without the sense to actually execute it meaningfully.  The end of the song brings in the thought that perhaps God has given us the Word we need.  I'm not talking specifically about the Bible, though the Bible plays a role in what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about the Word-made-flesh of Jesus, who we come to know through the witness of the Bible and the embodiment of Jesus in other people who are being formed in the way of Christ.  The point isn't to offer a "solution" to the "problem" identified in the "talking in my sleep" image, but instead to suggest that God has not left us to our own devices in our transformation.  The word we couldn't call to mind has been spoken for us, and it reverberates around us even as we try to get our mouths to form it ourselves. You can find a studio version of this song here.

House of God Forever: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about House of God Forever then: This song serves as an early reminder that we will need time and again during Lent that God cares for us in the midst of our struggles (whatever they may be).  God brings safety into our danger, a feast into our hunger, and a light into our darkness.

Be Thou My Vision:  During Lent, we depart from our typical singing of the Doxology to close our time together.  As we wander the wilderness of Lent, learning more about who we are and what we are for, we carry these words on our tongues, time and again asking God to be our vision, wisdom, and security.

-JM

Setlist 10-30-2016

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

Songs:

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Wash Me Clean by Page CXVI

Come Thou Fount

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. 

Future/Past: We sang this song to begin our time together expressing the example God has set in seeking out the Other in love--specifically, God's reaching out to us despite the infinite distinction between who God is and what we are.

Pulse: 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.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song as a prayer that the Spirit would reawaken us to the transformative call of the Kingdom.

Wash Me Clean:  This song is equal parts confession and hopeful longing.  It admits our need to forgiveness and transformation, and also imagines, with the prophets, the kind of transformation that God has planned for human history.

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Come Thou Fount then: This song asks that God would tune our hearts to sing the story of God's presence in our lives, as well as confesses our proneness to wandering.  Perhaps it is in having a clear understanding of the way that God has entered the broken places in our lives in the past that we are able to make it through brokenness in the future.  So, like the prayer offered before we sang this song (that will be posted with the Liturgy blog on Wednesday), we has God to flood the dry and broken places within us with a renewed understanding an appreciation of who God has been for us in 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 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 7-24-2016

This was the tenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with the intent of re-tuning ourselves to enter into the work of God. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, 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:

How Great Thou Art

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Hope 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. 

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to begin our time together with a confession of God's greatness.  After another in a series of weeks marked by pain and uncertainty, it is easy to lose sight of all the glory in the world.  In voicing these words, we began to tune ourselves to regain whatever has been lost through navigating the complexity of the world this summer.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to confess our need for the Spirit to transform us into people who are working together with God in God's reconciliation project.  We are prone to growing so familiar with our own ideas of who God is and what God is like that we functionally fall asleep to the movement of God.  Thus, we continually need a wake-up call from the Spirit, breathing new life into our dry bones.

Lord, I Need You:  We have had many reminders over the past few weeks that we are a part of several systems of violence.  Our complicity in these systems is at odds with our being formed in the way of Christ, and is thus sin.  This song speaks to personal struggles against sin, and allows us to rehearse turning to God for help rather than only attempting to self-regulate ourselves out of destructive behavior. 

Hope:  For the past several weeks, the offering song has been used to give voice to lament.  This week, it seemed fitting to give voice to hope.  Lament and hope are directly connected to one another, and may well be considered two sides of the same coin.  Lament is but noise without the hope of change, and hope is only a facade if it is not born from lamentable circumstances.  This song picks up on the image in John 1 of God setting a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome.  We might see this as a statement about the Incarnation in general, the Crucifixion in particular, or maybe the Story of God and creation as a whole.  This image gives us hope because it acknowledges darkness and almost axiomatically establishes that the darkness will not overcome the light.  

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 was said of There's a Wideness in God's Mercy then: We sang this song to meditate on God's mercy.  For the past  several weeks, we have been bombarded with news of various horrific kinds of violence.  Humans are particularly skilled at finding ways to reject the divine image in one another.  With what I know of God from Scripture, my assumption is that God is deeply grieved by our violence, and if we had one of the prophets writing today, God would most certainly talk at length about how God wanted to be rid of us.  And rightfully so.  But God's not going to rid Godself of us.  Because that's not who God is.  The Noah story shows us this quite clearly.  God wanted to start over, and started that process, then realized how terrible that was--how deeply painful that was--and resolved never to do that again.  Instead, God decided to fix things from the inside, entering into the story to suffer our violence and conquer it with love.  That conquering is accomplished, but still unfolding.  It's horribly slow for my taste, but it's there 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

Setlist 6-19-2016

This was the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the theme of perseverance (this is the best one-word way I could think of to describe this--more broadly, they were gathered around the theme of clinging to faith in the midst of difficulty). 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:

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Hope (There Will Come A Light) by Jameson McGregor

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to proclaim the saving work of God in our lives, and to cite the ways that God has been faithful to us in our stories as cause to expect God to continue to be faithful to us.  

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to ask the Spirit to continually renew our zeal for life, to provide strength to press on through woundedness, and to transform our hearts of stone into hearts that are attuned to the movement of God.

Noise: This song traces out the gap between what is it to be God and what it is to be us, acknowledges our tendency to make broken promises of our lives, and rejoices in the reality that God continually works to repair us.  As no recorded version of this song exists, you can listen to it again through this video:

Hope (There Will Come A Light): Before I played this song, I read the following preface:

In December, we enter the season of Advent, where we sort of put blinders on and enter a drama where Jesus has not yet come.  During this time, we look around and see how dark the world is and how it very badly needs a Light.  And then on Christmas, God puts a light in the darkness.  Over the next few months, we watch the Light grow, until, on Good Friday, the Light is snuffed out.  But then, on Easter, the Light comes blazing back onto the scene, and we see that things are changed. And they are. But sometimes this feels less true than others.  Like the Kingdom of Heaven, this change is already and not-yet. It’s as if Hope has been planted in the midst of creation.  Paul gives us an image of history being “pregnant”—Hope is among us and it is growing. And so, we wait.  We wait for a Birth.  And now the story has circled back on itself, hasn’t it?  In a minute, I’m going to play an Advent song called “Hope,” because we carry the longing of Advent with us all the time, and—even through grit teeth—it is fitting to proclaim that a Light will come into this darkness.

Future/Past:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Future/Past then: This song presents the grandeur of God and underscores the fact that God has called us "friends." Taken with the idea of God's faithfulness, this song bolsters our assurance that God is with us in the same way in the midst of the joy and the pain of life, and that, just as our past has been marked by this, we can remain confident that our future will be 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 5-15-2016

This Sunday was Pentecost, the day that we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit as the initiator of the movement we now call the Church.  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:

Holy, Holy, Holy

How Great Thou Art

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Burn It Down by Jameson McGregor

All Creatures of Our God and King

Doxology

Recordings:

From time to time, we'll post live recordings of the songs from Sunday morning.  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. 

Holy, Holy, Holy: We sang this song to begin our time together singing about the particularity of God, as we acknowledge the Spirit as part of the Trinity for the first time in the Christian calendar this year.

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to focus on our worship of God in three particular realms--God as Creator, God as Savior, and God as Transformational Presence (Spirit).  In order to do this, we rewrote the third stanza to read, "O Breath of Life, when I recall the moment//You came down low to dwell within our midst//You tune my eyes to see Your subtle movement//You draw us forth, to all begin again."  The structure of this song is essentially three passes at pointing out something about God, and responding with praise, the ever-simple "How great Thou art."  When we sing this together, we are simultaneously expressing praise in that moment, and also learning the proper response to coming into contact with the activity of God.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to engage the Pentecost moment through considering our own need for the presence of the Spirit among us, as we battle against our own complacency regarding our own transformation into people who are more like Jesus.

Burn It Down: In the book of Acts, as soon as the Spirit comes on the scene, walls begin to fall down.  Walls that took the form of communication barriers, government powers, particular understandings of the story of God and the people of God, prejudices the fledgling church had absorbed from their culture, and probably many more.  This kind of destructive behavior is also evident in the prophets of the Old Testament.  By the power of the Spirit, they were able to speak truth to power--words that amounted to firebombs against the walls that had been built to make the religious feel pious, good, and safe, while simultaneously keeping the poor and cast out from engaging the Hope of God.  It is safe to say that the Spirit is in the habit of knocking down walls that would hinder the Gospel and keep Hope from people who need it most.  This song is about this "destructive" side of the Spirit, and ultimately petitions the Spirit to fold us in to this rebellion and use us to knock down these walls.

All Creatures of Our God and King:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about All Creatures of Our God and King then: We sang this song to 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.

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 5-1-2016

This was the sixth week of Easter (and Easter itself for the Orthodox Church).  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:

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Come Thou Fount

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

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. 

Wandering: This song is about the relentless faithfulness of God to God's commitment to be God-for-us by being God-with-us.  Throughout the Easter season, we are compelled to think seriously about the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection for the divine-human relationship.  A main theme of Wandering is our tendency to observe the movement of God and, intentionally or not, attempt to harness this movement for our own purposes.  It is no secret that Jesus' followers were fully expecting His mission to culminate in an overthrow of Roman oppression and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.  They saw what Jesus was doing, thought it meant temporal power and deliverance, and thus thought the crucifixion was the end of the story for them--that they had gotten up their hopes for nothing.  On the other side of things, the Jewish authorities that partnered with the Romans to have Jesus eliminated thought they were protecting the movement of God as they understood it, and sought to protect what they held to be the Truth in killing Him.  In the Resurrection, we see Jesus return not with vengeance, but with love--an emphatic yes to God's creation.  God chose to be God-for-us even when we chose to be against God.  Why?  Because that's what God is like.  God is telling a story with us, but God is fully willing and able to cut back against our attempts to derail the story.

Come Thou Fount: 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.

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

Heart With No Companion: This song imagines a greeting that stretches across the gulf of sorrow and despair to give hope to those who feel worthless, aimless, or simply stuck.  This greeting is comprise of a love that is "vast and shattered," which we might imagine as the kind of love that Jesus embodied; the kind of love that Jesus carried through torture, crucifixion, and death.  On Easter, I finished our series of Lent readings by talking about Jesus as a Mirror that was shattered and put back together, but with a series of cracks.  This image might help think about this song--the kind of misery that Jesus experienced allows His love to greet us in the midst of our own struggles.  Furthermore, if the shattering of Jesus means Hope for creation, this love carries with it the Hope of meaning into the most stalled-out circumstances we might face.  

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 4-24-2016

This was both the fifth week of Easter in the life of the Church calendar, and Mister Rogers Sunday in the life of ubc.  Mister Rogers Sunday is a commissioning service of sorts where we celebrate our graduates and commission them to continue to seek to be the presence of Christ to the people they encounter as they move on to new things.  Our songs were gathered with both of these themes in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Be Thou My Vision

There by Jameson McGregor

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

Doxology

Recordings:

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

How They Fit In:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-JM