Setlist 8-4-2019

This past Sunday was the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with this in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics.   If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Come Thou Fount

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

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

Be Thou My Vision

Fever by Jameson McGregor

Your Love Is Strong by Jon Foreman

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to set our attention on God’s activity in our lives.

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

For Those Tears I Died: This song is a part of our mass shooting liturgy. It is a lament that asks how long things will be this way.

Be Thou My Vision: We sang this song to petition God to be our vision, wisdom, security, and hope, as we navigate an uncertain world.

Fever: This song is about the ways in which we try to self-regulate our lives into status quos that should be otherwise, and imagines the work of God as a pathogen that overpowers our defenses.

Your Love Is Strong: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week’s songs. This is what we said about Your Love is Strong then: We sang this song to linger on the spirit of the Our Father.

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

Setlist 3-12-2017

This week was the second 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

Just A Closer Walk With Thee

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Fever by Jameson McGregor

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: 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.  

Just A Closer Walk With Thee: This song hones in on a particular aspect of Lent: a focusing of discipleship.  It confesses our need for God's help to be formed in the way of Christ, without removing any responsibility from ourselves.  It also confesses that we will likely fail time and again at leaning in to this transformation, but confesses that God has entered our condition, knows how difficult life can be, and carries the weight with us.

House of God Forever: 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.

Fever: This song is about how the status quo of what we are battles against our efforts to become more like Christ, and imagines this self-correcting-for-the-worse in the same way as our bodies use fevers to restore our biological environments when we are sick.  Keeping with this image, it voices a desire for a wilder pathogen to infect us and overwhelm our built-in defenses to wholly change us.  If you want to give this song another listen, you can find it here.

Lord, I Need You:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is was we said about Lord, I Need You then: Continuing to build our vocabulary for engaging the inner struggles of Lent, we sang this song to voice a declaration of our reliance on God's help to have any hope of transformation, and implicitly to voice a petition for God to come to our aid.

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 6-12-2016

This was the fourth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with the faithfullness of God 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:

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Fever 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'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. 

House of God Forever:  We sang this song to express Psalm 23 together.  If we're honest, this psalm calls us to make claims about the way we trust God that are more intense than we can honestly say most of the time.  Because of this, House of God Forever pulls us along--asks us to claim a greater reliance on the faithfulness of God than we might carry at this moment, but this draws us closer to living in that place.

Wandering: This song contrasts God's faithfulness to us with our own attempts at being faithful that usually have a self-serving bend to them.  The point isn't to beat ourselves up about this--I think this is something we should combat and of which we must be aware, but it is also part of what it is to be human.  Instead, the point is to recognize that God's faithfulness to us is unwavering.  Because of this, we can fail again and again and still be pulled along on the Way of Christ.

Future/Past:  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.

Fever: This song makes a metaphor of the relationship between fever and virus.  Fevers are used to restore order to the body when it has been invaded by a virus/bacteria--to move toward regaining the status quo.  Fever imagines a scenario in which the thing that we keep pulling ourselves back to is in fact the worse thing, and it seeks out a wilder pathogen to overtake the attempts to restore "order." As for what this means, I think that's pretty pliable--you could probably find your own meaning in it.

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: This is a song that deals directly with mercy in the context of Jesus, but that is far from the only lens we can use when looking at There's A Wideness in God's Mercy.  For instance, the Spirit's transformative presence with us is no doubt an example of the wideness of God's mercy.  As we traverse the varied terrain of our day-to-day, we do so in cooperation with the Spirit, who is shaping us and our stories into something new, beyond the measure of our minds.

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

-JM

Setlist 10-4-2015

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

Songs

This is Amazing Grace by Phil Wickham

Because He Lives

All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters

Fever by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

This Is Amazing Grace: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  Here's what we said about This Is Amazing Grace then: We sang this song to think about the radical grace of God, who is clothed in unlimited cosmic power, yet cares for humanity enough to endure suffering and to patiently coax us into a relationship with Godself.

Because He Lives:  We sang this song to proclaim our identity as resurrection people--people who are able to find significance day-to-day because we believe that the resurrection of Christ has fundamentally changed the story of human history, and that all of our stories (even the tragic ones) are being woven into a greater story that is decidedly un-tragic.

All the Poor and Powerless:  We sang this song to proclaim God's identity as a God who is present with the lowly, the powerless, the hopeless, the hurting, the self-loathing, the addicts, on and on.  This is a God who not only lowers Godself to interact with humanity, but the lowest parts of humanity.

Fever: This song acknowledges the tension between the identity that God has given us and the identity that we continually read back onto ourselves.  This song thinks of our various ways of reminding ourselves of how worthless we are as a fever--fevers are our body's way of trying to eradicate pathogens and to return order to our normal biological environment--and thinks of the grace of God as a pathogen that is not so easily eradicated.  The idea is that owning our identity as children of God, as people who are loved by God, does not come naturally, and even when we find ourselves giving verbal assent to this truth, it takes an act of God to truly believe it.

Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things.  First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this.  Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness.  We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.

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

-JM