This past Sunday was the fourteenth 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:
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Wild One by Jameson McGregor
O Love That Will Not Let Me Go by ubcmusic
True Love Will Find You In The End by Daniel Johnston
Eternal Anchor by ubcmusic
This past Sunday was the second 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. 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:
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Where God Has Always Been by Jameson McGregor
Rise Up by BiFrost Arts
Heart With No Companion by Leonard Cohen
Eternal Anchor by ubcmusic
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 celebrate God’s drawing near to us.
Where God Has Always Been: We sang this song to proclaim God’s care for the weary and cast aside.
Rise Up: This song offered us language to petition God to rise to the defense of the vulnerable, and also served to challenge ourselves to live lives in defense of the vulnerable.
Heart With No Companion: This song is about God’s love breaking into desperation.
Eternal Anchor: This song is about God’s grafting of the seemingly least likely into the family of God.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
Yesterday was the sixth Sunday of Epiphany, 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:
Mystery by ubcmusic (adapted from Charlie Hall)
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
For Those Tears I Died by Jameson McGregor
Rise Up by BiFrost Arts
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 directing our attention toward the triune God and meditating on God’s presence among us.
Mystery: This song invites us to consider the death, resurrection, and enduring presence of Jesus as being transformative to the way we navigate our ordinary lives.
Future/Past: This song offers us language for expressing our gratitude that the Eternal has not abandoned us to our own devices, but instead has come alongside us in our time and place.
For Those Tears I Died: This is a song of lament which grasps for the healing of the wounds of the world, and raises a question about how long we are supposed to wait for all of this to be set right.
Rise Up: This song is a petition for God to come to the aid and defense of people who are trampled by our systems of power.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This past Sunday was the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost. Our songs were gathered with this in mind, along with the fact that the sermon would be about Deconstruction. 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 (adapted from M. Bridges)
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Waking Life by Jameson McGregor
Wideness by ubcmusic (adapted from F. Faber)
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 focusing on attention on the God who is greater than our words can capture, who spun the cosmos, entered into our suffering, and is making all things new.
Crown Him With Many Crowns: This song invites us to give voice to the reign of Christ above every so-called authority, whose Kingdom is and is to come, and flips the script on our ideas of power and grandeur.
Future/Past: We sang this song to remember that the love of God comes to us across an impossible gap between what it is to be God and what it is to be human, and this love swallows up the whole of our numbered days.
Waking Life: This song is about God breaking into the systems we make with our brain to organize the world around us. This in-breaking calls into question the ways we reduce our neighbors to empty phrases, and the way we let ourselves off the hook for dehumanizing our enemies.
Wideness: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week’s songs. This is what we said about Wideness then: This song proclaims that God’s mercy is more complete than our minds can handle, and offers a word of repentance for the ways in which we represent God as less merciful than God is.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This past Sunday was both Mother's Day and the seventh Sunday of Eastertide. Our songs were gathered with this convergence 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:
Hope by Jameson McGregor
There by Jameson McGregor
Mother by Jameson McGregor
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
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 offered us language to begin our time together by proclaiming the grandeur of God through observing what God has made and what God has done in the world.
Hope: 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.
There: This song is a proclamation of God's being set apart from every source of anxiety, and offers us an Anchor to still ourselves in the turmoil of the world at the moment.
Mother: This song was born out of a desire to enter into the tradition found threaded through Deuteronomy, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jesus, of using maternal metaphors to speak of God. Put differently, it uses the lens of motherhood as a way to speak of the way that God cares for and loves us.
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: We sang this song to celebrate the self-giving love that God invites us into.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
Yesterday was the sixth 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:
Amazing Grace by Citizens and Saints
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Light and Flame by Jameson McGregor
Heart Won't Stop by John Mark and Sarah McMillan
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: This song offered us language to begin our gathering proclaiming the grace of God that infuses our lives with vitality.
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.
Future/Past: We sang this song to celebrate the self-giving love that God invites us into.
It Is Well: This song offers us language to proclaim an anchor of worth and meaning outside of any given terrible thing we experience, and to look ahead to the re-Creation of all things.
Light and Flame: This song is about the inner identity conflicts that all humans experience and raises the question of whether resurrection is something we go looking for, or something that happens to us.
Heart Won't Stop: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at the songs from two weeks ago (since last week was Children's Sunday). This is what we said about Heart Won't Stop then: 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.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
Yesterday was the fourth 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:
Hope by Jameson McGregor
House of God Forever by Jon Foreman
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
For All That I Don't Know by Jameson McGregor
There's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)
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.
Hope: Among the things we come to find revealed in Jesus is how far God is willing to go to set things right with us. In the incarnation, long before we reach the love revealed in the Passion, we find an act of radical love and empathy: the self-emptying of God into humanity. This song gives voice to a hope rooted in God having demonstrated God's decision to set things right in Creation.
House of God Forever: We sang this song to proclaim the care and belonging that permeate the life and ministry of Jesus, which embodied aspects of the character of God already articulated in Psalm 23.
Future/Past: We sang this song to proclaim God's having chosen to be God-with-us in Christ.
For All That I Don't Know: This song is about the difficulty of believing in God--the One who is love, at least--when the world seems to be getting darker, but finds room for the twilight hope of faith in the midst of the long night of human history.
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 to remind ourselves that our best ideas of God's love fall short of grasping it in fullness. During Epiphany, we hope to suspend our assumptions about God's love along with everything else we think we know about the Person of Jesus, in hopes of encountering Jesus anew.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This was the sixteenth 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:
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
O Love That Will Not Let Me Go
Heart With No Companion by Leonard Cohen
Your Love is Strong by Jon Foreman
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 put words to what we are doing when we gather for worship; namely, to locate ourselves within God's Story, which extends before and beyond the part that we occupy. In locating ourselves within this Story, we both acknowledge that God bends low to encounter us as we are, and greets us with love, and we also make ourselves aware that the way God relates to creation in this Story places a claim on how we are to relate to everything God has made if we are to call ourselves the body of Christ.
Pulse: This song is a confession of our tendency to be selective with our love for people, such that we withhold this love from people we deem to be "others." This confession includes a petition for the Spirit to awaken us to our interconnectivity with the rest of Creation and to relate to everyone we encounter as a creature who is worthy of love.
O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: This song praises God's faithfulness to us despite our own inconsistent commitments to God.
Heart With No Companion: This song is a reminder of God's solidarity with the hopeless, and a proclamation that the love of God meets us at our lowest points.
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: This song gives us words to acknowledge the work of God in our lives in both mundane and significant ways, and rises into an offering of the Lord's Prayer, where we essentially ask God to keep showing up and to transform us into people who relate to one another in a way that is transformed by the grace we have received.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This was the fifth Sunday after Pentecost. Our songs were gathered with this in mind, and heavily influenced by the selection from Psalm 145 in this week's lectionary set. 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 live recordings of a few of them from Sunday morning , 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:
All Creatures of Our God and King
Crown Him With Many Crowns by Jameson McGregor
Lifted/Lifting by Jameson McGregor
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
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 the songs 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.
All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to begin our time by praising God as our Creator and Lord both with our words and with an attempt at grasping for a view of other creatures as equally created and loved by God.
Crown Him With Many Crowns: We sang this song to remind ourselves of the lordship of the Suffering God who has drawn us to Godself by drawing near to us in Christ.
Be Thou My Vision: This song is a petition for God to be our vision, wisdom, security, and hope, and we sang it because this is the sort of divine-human relationship that drives the people of God out into the world to join in God's redemption project in creation.
Lifted/Lifting: This song is a plea for God to continue to develop the things we think we already know about who God is, and also to continue to form who we are more fully in the way of Christ.
Future/Past: This song was a look over our shoulder at last week's songs (I was out of town, so there aren't any thoughts from last week's post to place here).
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This week was the fourth Sunday of Epiphany, and Josh's sermon text was the Beatitudes. Our songs were gathered at the intersection of these two themes. 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:
There's A Wideness In God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)
All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Burn It Down by Jameson McGregor
Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)
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.
There's A Wideness In God's Mercy: Through the Beatitudes, the fourth week of Epiphany allows us to consider the upside-down logic of the Kingdom that Jesus came proclaiming. Those who are truly blessed do not necessarily look like it when viewed through the lens of prosperity that our culture has offered us. This song carries a similar theme in that it proclaims God's love to be broader than our minds can handle, and God's strictness to be much more malleable than we expect.
All the Poor and Powerless: We sang this song to celebrate God's presence among the poor, the powerless, the criminal, the stranger, and all of those who feel hopeless or abandoned. This song serves as a reminder to us of where God stands in conflicts between the powerful and the oppressed, which also serves as a reminder of where we are to stand if we are to be where God is.
Future/Past: This song charts the distance between who God is and who we are, yet notes that God has transgressed this division, drawn near to us, and called us friends. We offer God nothing that God doesn't already have--God has nothing to gain from drawing near to us--yet it is fundamental to who God is to welcome us strangers into God's presence. In our weakness, God calls us blessed. And we would do well to remember that God calls all sorts of the cast-out, rejected, and afflicted blessed as well. With that in mind, if we are to claim to be the people of God, we are bound to offer the divine welcome to all of those people as well.
Burn It Down: This song was originally written for Pentecost 2016. It is a petition for the Holy Spirit to set a fire on our tongues to speak the truth to power for the purpose of standing alongside the parts of God's creation (creatures and otherwise) that are trampled or taken advantage of.
Mystery: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Mystery then: In coming to know the Person of Jesus, we encounter a multi-faceted Mystery. This Person who is infinite, yet finite; divine, yet human; weak, yet strong; defeated, yet victorious; comes to us and calls into question all we think we know to be true about the world. Jesus' identity as Mystery is one of the primary reasons we so desperately need Epiphany to renew our holy curiosity every year--sometimes we forget that we don't have Jesus figured out. This song takes the Mystery of Jesus and champions it using the "formula" of Christ has died//Christ is Risen//Christ will come again, as the chorus. The verses are about the way that Jesus' mystery status meets us in our own lives from without. Here Jesus is the answer to our problems: the sanity and clarity that enters our dissonance, and the evergreen living peace that enters our conflict. But Jesus is also the question to our assumptions about the world: the Eternal Word who is brought low, the cup of salvation that is poured out, the Embodied Love that is broken, and the Trampled Redeemer that is raised and freed. Taken together the verses and chorus of this song champion Jesus as our source of hope when things seem irredeemable--because we learn that Jesus is not limited by what we expect of the way the world works. So in the bridge section, we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus as a symbol of holy subversion to the power structures of the world, and take up singing about this subversion as our own way to subvert oppressive systems of power.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This was the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, and 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
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
This was the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with God's pursuit of reconciliation 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:
Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan
All Creatures of Our God and King
Wild One by Jameson McGregor
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
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 begin with the confession that there aren't any barriers that God is unwilling to transgress to reconnect with God's children.
Be Thou My Vision: With this God of relentless love and grace in mind, we sang this song to ask that God would be our vision, wisdom, security, and hope, forming us into people who love relentlessly as well.
All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to proclaim that God is Lord of all creation, and that God thus cares for all of creation intimately. Keeping the petition from Be Thou My Vision in mind, this song also functions as a charge to ourselves to care intimately for all of creation.
Wild One: We sang this song to worship the Unbound God. These words serve as a pointed reminder to ourselves that we cannot control God and that God's love is not limited to the things or people that we love. God is active and on the move in the world around us, telling a dynamic story that's better than the best kind of story we could think up.
Future/Past: This song is a further response to the theme ofWandering. Beyond God's faithfulness, it traces several layers of God's grandeur, and notes the surprising fact that God has called us friends. The divine-human relationship is an unequal partnership. It's the kind that leaves the lesser party (us) wholly caught up in the undeserved grace of God to allow us to enter into a project of which we are not worthy. God stands before us and beyond us, and somehow still stands with 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
This was the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with God's faithfulness to us despite our brokenness in mind. Or, taken from the vantage point of Josh's sermon, God's making wine out of wild grapes. 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 atjamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs:
Wandering by Jameson McGregor
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Breathe For Me by Jameson McGregor
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
How They Fit In:
There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.
Wandering: This song takes up the theme by noting our tendency to attempt to manipulate the movement of God for our own purposes. Time and again, we go through life as though God is a tool that we can use. We don't always do this on purpose, but it's a posture we slip into rather easily. This posture presents itself so easily because God has partnered with humanity to tell a story. God could no doubt tell this story by other means, so it's a baffling mystery that time and again God chooses to be faithful to us when we are not faithful to the calling of God. Or maybe it's not mysterious at all. Maybe that's just how God is.
Future/Past: This song is a further response to the theme of Wandering. Beyond God's faithfulness, it traces several layers of God's grandeur, and notes the surprising fact that God has called us friends. The divine-human relationship is an unequal partnership. It's the kind that leaves the lesser party (us) wholly caught up in the undeserved grace of God to allow us to enter into a project of which we are not worthy. God stands before us and beyond us, and somehow still stands with us.
Holy, Holy, Holy: We sang this song to step further into the train of thought to meditate upon and proclaim God's holiness. God's faithfulness to us is baffling in light of God's holiness, but this surprising grace itself becomes a central point of what it means for us to say that God is holy.
Breathe For Me: This song was going to be an interpretation of Breathe on Me, Breath of God, but it ended up without a single line from that hymn. So it is its own song. It is in many ways a prayer that acknowledges the parts of the human experience that make us bad partners in God's project, and asks God to step in and do what we cannot--to transform us into vessels of Godself who carry out God's project faithfully. It's an admission that we can't do this on our own--that we can't will ourselves into capable partners in God's redemption project.
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 look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Pulse then: We sang this song to be reminded of the gift of life that God has given to all of creation, and to lament our tendency to ignore the dignity of this gift in people who are different than us.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This was the 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
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
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)
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
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
There by Jameson McGregor
There's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)
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
This week was the second week of Advent, and our songs were gathered around the theme of peace. 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
Hope (There Will Come A Light) by ubcmusic
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Peace (Change Everything) by ubcmusic
Make This Go On Forever (Refrain) by Snow Patrol
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
How They Fit In:
There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.
Hope (There Will Come A Light): I wrote this song a couple of years ago for the first week of Advent. A few months ago, I wrote songs for all the other weeks, too, so we will sing the whole series of songs over the next few weeks. I recently recorded some video sessions of these songs with some friends in Austin. The video for this song has been posted here.
Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to think about the peace that God has extended to us as people who are not necessarily deserving of reconciliation. If you don't know, the "Here I raise my Ebenezer" line is referring to the idea of a monument that would remind us of what God has done for us--it's the "looking back" that we talked about last week as being our source of Hope.
Future/Past: We sang this song to think about the looking back and looking forward that comes along with Advent. The reconciliation that God offers us is not limited to a fixed point in time, but is instead an activity that is carried through all of time--something we can look back at with gratitude and look forward to in faith.
Peace (Change Everything): This is a song that voices a longing for peace. More accurately, this song voices a longing for several different kinds of peace: peace from existential despair, physical violence and threats, less tangible violence and threats that exist in our minds, and the threats that accompany the natural processes that carry our bodies from birth to death. We'll be singing this song a few more times this month, so feel free to listen to it again here.
Make This Go On Forever (Reprise): We once again closed this week's advent song with this reprise from the end of a great Snow Patrol song (spoiler alert: we'll do this next week and the week after as well). The point is to voice the longing that we live in during Advent: while we may not understand how it will happen or when it will happen, we know that God is the One who can save us from this present darkness.
Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things. First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this. Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness. We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of struggle. 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
Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Oceans by Hillsong United
Unyielding by Sarah Dossey Keilers (Dossey)
Wandering by Jameson McGregor
How They Fit In:
There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.
Amazing Grace: We sang this song as an exercise in perspective--to champion what God has done for us already over/against the struggles that we now face. When I find myself in the midst of a difficult or dark time, and I can't see the end of it, that sometimes the only comfort I can find is in looking back on the things that God has brought me through in the past, and that is sometimes enough to convince me that there will be a day when my present pain is something I can look back on as well, knowing that it ended. Probably the most straight-forward line of this song for our purposes this week is Through many dangers toils and snares i have already come//Twas grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home. I want to be clear that I am under no illusion that looking back can cancel out the struggles we face in the present, but I am convinced it can be enough to give us strength to keep moving forward.
Future/Past: I suppose this song, too, is an exercise in perspective. We sang it to put into our mouths an expression of the fact that, though God commands unlimited cosmic power--and is thus a fundamentally superior and more real Person than any of us--God has bent low to regard us not simply as creatures who exist, but creatures with whom God desires to relate; creatures for whom to care. This is great and terrifying news for us, and it makes a difference in how we view both the future and the past. It means that there is significance to every moment that is beyond us; that there is hope in the midst of struggle around which we cannot wrap our minds.
Oceans: We sang this song to proclaim that God not only delivers us from struggles, but is with us in the midst of them. God's faithfulness to us allows us to keep our eyes above the waves of chaos, which is to say that we can maintain a sense of perspective marked by trust in the midst of uncertainty--that our eyes can in some way maintain contact with God, though the rest of us in caught in despair.
Unyielding: Sarah has written a blog about this song on her band site--check it out!
Wandering: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Wandering then: 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.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM
This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of glory. This word is kind of hard to pin down. In the context of these songs, our theme of "glory" points to the aspects of our experience of God that we struggle to even begin to wrap our minds around, and that leave us confessing that God is greater than we can even hope for God to be. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs
Holy, Holy, Holy by Sufjan Stevens
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Noise by Jameson McGregor
You Were There by Jameson McGregor
How They Fit In:
There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.
How Great Thou Art: This song traces the works of God that are evident through creation, the story of Jesus, and the hope of the resurrection, and declares God to be Great. There is language sprinkled throughout this song--experiencing "awesome wonder" in observing the universe, scarcely being able to take in the sacrifice of Jesus, our hearts one day being filled with joy in the resurrection--that extends to us a chance to reflect upon God in terms that are anything but numb, and to reawaken within us an understanding of just how glorious God is.
Holy, Holy, Holy: We last sang this song on Trinity Sunday as we thought about God's Otherness. There are many different layers of what it means to say that God is Holy, but a sense that God is above and beyond our wildest dreams about who God might be is at the center of all of them. This holiness points to the Glory of God.
Future/Past: The verses of this song offer overwhelming and beautiful pictures of the way that God relates to the cosmos. God's holding the reigns on the sun and moon, covering the greatest geological structures of Earth in the breadth of God's wings, and holding the movement in intricacy of the constellations in God's mind--these are all images that communicate something intimidating, overwhelming, and (strangely) beautiful about who God is. These images are contrasted with the line "In this fortunate turn of events, You asked me to be Your friend." I'll admit: this language comes off as trite. But let's not miss the fact that it is nonetheless true: God entering into a relationship with humanity is about as unbalanced as possible, yet that is precisely what God has done. This category-defying action is perhaps the most glorious image explored in this song.
Noise: This song carries a similar theme to the last song in that it highlights the distance between what it is to be human and what it is to be God. Our words fail to capture an accurate description of what God does or what God is like, and our actions consistently fail to live up to "proper"conduct in dealing with God, yet God has promised to be God for us--God with us. In Christ, God took on the depths of the human condition, and because of this, God understands our struggles. This is a miracle, and it is most certainly glorious.
You Were There: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last weeks' songs. Last week, we said this about You Were There: This song is an exercise in perspective: God was there before there was anything evil, God is there despite our present anxiety, and God will be there after everything here is gone (Everything in the universe has a clock that's running out, but God does not). While God is present in the midst of our pain, and understands our pain, God is more real than everything we experience in the world. We can confidently fix our eyes on God in the midst of anxiety, having faith that God is unhindered by the things that overwhelm 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
This week, Josh preached from Luke 13:22-30. Our songs were gathered around the theme of the radical grace 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, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs
All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder* Band
This is Amazing Grace by Phil Wickham
All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters
Bonfire by Jameson McGregor
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
How They Fit In:
There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.
All Creatures of our God and King: This song runs with the idea of the whole of creation praising God--the idea here is that, in creating the cosmos, God is Lord over all of it, and the very existence of stars, planets, and particles way too small to see, declare the glory of the God who made them all. We sang this to begin our service thinking about the grandeur of God.
This is Amazing Grace: This song juxtaposes the grandeur of God with the sacrifice of Jesus--in Jesus, this Holy God chose to become human and to endure the worst that the human condition had to offer. The Incarnation was an invitation for humanity (all of us) to know what the Creator is like, but also to know the Creator.
All the Poor and Powerless: This song focuses on the significance of the invitation to know God for those who are socially disadvantaged, those who feel they have no hope, etc. The hand that is extended in Jesus is for everyone--not just those who society lifts up as ideal citizens.
Bonfire: We sang this song to think about the day when God will make all things new, when the things that are broken inside all of us, and in the world around us, will be mended. All of us are broken in different ways, and we have no ground upon which we may stand and call ourselves somehow better than any other person. In the end, we will likely be surprised at just how many different kinds of formerly broken people God has drawn together.
Future/Past: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. Last week, we said this about Future/Past: We sang this song to emphasize the fact that to be related to God through faith is to love and be loved by One whose perspective is much greater than our own. This means that God is worthy of our trust and worship in the midst of suffering, and that we can be confident that God is weaving human history into something more beautiful than we can imagine.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM