Setlist 1-31-2016

This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of prayer.  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:

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

Your Love Is Strong by Jon Foreman

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Pain by Jameson McGregor

SMS (Shine) by David Crowder* Band

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to begin our time together conceiving of all of creation praising the Creator.  Interestingly, this song spends a great deal of time regarding the movements of planetary bodies as praise.  We may consider prayer broadly as a form of address to God, so, naturally, praise would fit the bill for some form of prayer.  Thinking this way, we might consider prayer the natural state of the cosmos--a fundamental part of what it is to be.

Your Love Is Strong: This song has Jesus' model prayer (the Lord's Prayer) embedded into its DNA, both broadly in the verses and explicitly in the bridge.  In using this prayer to frame the repeated "Your love is strong," we proclaim to both God and ourselves the driving assurance behind the Lord's Prayer.

Fall Afresh: This song is itself a prayer to the Holy Spirit asking for revitalization.  We sang it, in part, to practice addressing the Spirit in prayer together, and also specifically to practice voicing the desire for the Spirit's presence among us.

Pain: This song is about the fact that God can handle brutal honesty about our pain in prayer.  There is a strong (that almost feels like an understatement) tradition in Scripture of the people of God voicing their pain to God--both in crying out for help and in raising a charge against God--and God never seems to smite people for their honesty.  God can take it.  God can take it because, through Jesus, God understands our pain.  And more than just being willing to listen to us voice our pain, God is faithful in working to weave our most tragic stories into a story that is decidedly untragic.

SMS (Shine): We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about SMS (Shine) then: We sang this song to give voice to the longing that we all share at one time or another to be lifted out of dark places, or at the very least to be given some kind of glimpse of God when we feel abandoned.  We voice this longing confidently, knowing that God hears us when we call and does not cast us aside.  

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

-JM

Setlist 1-24-2016

This week, we celebrated ubc's 21st birthday, and took time to look back over our history to observe God's faithfulness. All of the songs we sang came out of ubc through the ages, and gave voice to some of the core convictions of our community.  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:

Here Is Our King by David Crowder* Band

SMS (Shine) by David Crowder* Band

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

All I Can Say by David Crowder* Band

Wild One 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. 

Here Is Our King: We sang this song to begin our time together embracing the joy of Christmas that shines through Epiphany, in declaring that the Love of God has come to us in Jesus, and to hold this love in our minds as we began thinking about God's faithfulness to our community over the years.

SMS (Shine): We sang this song to give voice to the longing that we all share at one time or another to be lifted out of dark places, or at the very least to be given some kind of glimpse of God when we feel abandoned.  We voice this longing confidently, knowing that God hears us when we call and does not cast us aside.  This song also has a special place in the history of ubc because the community worked together to assemble an absurd number of lite-brites to make this music video, which won a Dove Award:  

Wayward Ones: We sang this to confess that we are broken, unreliable people, and to worship God for extending self-sacrificial love to us nonetheless.  This song has been a great gift that Tye gave our community in his time as Worship & Arts pastor, and it is the title track of an album he released while on staff.  You can listen to it here.

All I Can Say: We sang this to confess that God is with us in our suffering.  One of the great things about this song is that it provides a way to engage God when we have little to nothing to say other than that we are hurting, yet allows us to confess that God is with us even when we feel abandoned.

Wild One:  We sang this song to confess that God is not bound by who we expect God to be, but is instead far greater than our most grandiose ideas of who 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

Setlist 1-10-2016

This week was the first Sunday after Epiphany.  Epiphany is an interesting season.  It begins with the Epiphany (the Star, wise men, etc.), which begins a journey through moments in Jesus' life that serve to reveal Jesus' divinity and mission (baptism, miracles, Transfiguration).  These moments are "epiphanies" in their own right, but the church calendar postures them as looking over their shoulder at Epiphany (that's why its the first Sunday after Epiphany, rather than the first Sunday of Epiphany/the epiphanies).  Anyway. Our songs were gathered around the theme of what the Incarnation reveals to us about who God is.  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:

Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Because He Lives by Bill Gaither

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Holy, Holy, Holy

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: The language of this song is taken from Psalm 139, and it proclaims the fact that we cannot outrun the love of God, and there is no hole that we can dig ourselves that is deep enough to convince God to finally leave us alone.  In the Word becoming flesh in Jesus, God sends a clear message about just how far God is willing to go to set things right with Creation.  And while this self-humbling of God is profound on its own, we know that this is not the part of the Christian story where we see God go the furthest for us.  We sang this song because it reminds us that God-with-us is a label that God took upon Godself on purpose, and God did not ask humanity what we thought first--we are loved, whether we think it is appropriate or not.

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to look at the significance of the Word becoming flesh from a different angle, where we think of the fact that God's choosing to be God-with-us has fundamentally changed the way that we exist in the world.  God-with-us means that we are not left to our own devices, but rather have a Fellow Traveler in the world Who knows our struggles and feels our pain, yet does not mirror our faults.  When this understanding meets the love of God, we find something we might call grace.

Because He Lives:  I normally think of the Resurrection when I hear this song, but I think it carries, at the very least, a double entendre.  We sang this song because the fact that the Word became flesh--the fact that God chose to be God-with-us--means that we can have a new kind of Hope.  The darkness of Advent has been pierced by a Fire in its midst, and the darkness cannot overcome it.  If nothing else, at this early part of the Christian story, we know that the Story is far from over, and this is the hope we carry with us, facing each new day with expectation.

Wild One: We sang this song because the Word becoming flesh reveals to us that God is not pinned down by who we expect God to be.  The people of God were not expecting a Messiah like Jesus.  Our most pristine theological categories struggle to make sense of why God would enter our mess of a world in vulnerability rather than destroying it and starting over.  The aim of this song is to refocus our minds on the fact that it is God--God-with-us-- who is worthy of our worship, not our most comfortable picture of God.  That is to say, we must constantly be looking for a God who is on the move, who is dynamic, rather than assuming that we figured God out long ago.  The God revealed in Jesus is a God who is full of surprises and is not easily categorized or mapped out.

Holy, Holy, Holy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Holy, Holy, Holy then: We sang this song to specifically locate our worship of Jesus within the scope of the Triune God.  

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

-JM