Setlist 7-31-2016

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

Songs:

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Come Thou Fount

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

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

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

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

Pulse: We sang this song to be reminded of the gift of life that God has given to all of creation, and to lament our tendency to ignore the dignity of this gift in people who are different than us.  

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

-JM

Setlist 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 7-17-2016

This was the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered with the weight of systemic violence 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:

There by Jameson McGregor

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

Up On A Mountain by The Welcome Wagon

Burn It Down by Jameson McGregor

Be Thou My Vision

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

There: We sang this song to begin our time together proclaiming God's transcendence.  God was there before there was anything (including the kind of pain that we've been living in the midst of in a particularly acute way for the past several weeks), God is there now, and God will continue to be there after the last star burns out.  This song focuses on the fact that God stands above and beyond any source of pain or anxiety, and so there is always hope--God will not be toppled by even the most terrible evils we experience in the world.  This transcendence is a part of what we can say about God, but it is thankfully not the only thing we can say.  If it were, this transcendence would mean little to nothing for us in the midst of the world's chaos.  In truth, God has chosen to be involved in what God has made, interacting with creation with the most absolute of loves.  This love from-without is the source of our hope.

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: 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.  

Up On A Mountain:  We sang this song to contrast There, and to proclaim the work of Jesus.  Up On A Mountain contrasts There because it focuses on God's immanence.  God is not just "out there," removed from the weight of the violence of the world.  Instead, God came down low and entered our mess, experiencing anxiety, fear, betrayal, suffering and death.  And so, we aren't alone.  Jesus has shared our experiences, and has sent the Spirit to carry us through the best and worst parts of life.

Burn It Down: This song is a plea for the Spirit to shape us into people who can tear down systems that impede the hope of Christ.  These systems are legion--we could think of the rampant racism and xenophobia that we encounter so often through our TV's, phones, and laptops, or perhaps the ways that culture elevates the voices of particular kinds of people, while silencing the voices that have not been endowed with the privilege of assumed legitimacy, on and on.  Yesterday, Amy preached an incredibly brave and prophetic sermon on sexual violence.  When we talked about sexual violence during Lent, one of the driving themes was that the Church's silence on that issue in some way authorized the prevalence of sexual violence that plagues our culture, and that this silence was sin because it did not mirror in any way the response of Jesus to affronts on the dignity of a human person.  So we sang this song in order to petition the Spirit to shape our lives and words into firebombs that target the system of sexual violence that we are living in. 

Be Thou My Vision: We sang this song to close every liturgy during Lent, which was also when we were first wrestling with our place within a culture of sexual violence.  We sang Be Thou My Vision today in response to Amy's sermon and the Litany of Commitment we read together as a way of acknowledging that we rely on God to shape our imaginations to enact change within systems of violence.

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 7-10-2016

This was the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the themes of lament and hope. 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:

Rescue Is Coming by David Crowder* Band

Peace (Change Everything) by Jameson McGregor

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

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

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. 

Rescue Is Coming: In the wake of a week full of pain, anger, and longing, we began our time together proclaiming that this present darkness is not the final word.  Now is a time when we need to address systemic issues of racism, police brutality (both racially motivated and not), cultural addictions to violence, and overall division, but we placed those conversation on hold as we entered worship to reorient ourselves toward our only Hope.

Peace (Change Everything):  As we have been moving through these difficult weeks, we have been singing Advent songs, because Advent is the time where we look around, see how dark the world is, and voice our longing for a Light.  We sang Change Everything again this week because it afforded us the chance to voice our longing for change, and to turn to God as the catalyst of this change.  

Because He Lives:  We sang this song with a couple of things in mind: First, the claims made in this song are true—Jesus is alive in a way that is more  than real.  And so, we as individuals can stake our hope in One who is outside of ourselves and be held there.  Second, Jesus is alive in another way in the people of Christ, those who have been and are being formed by His story and Spirit.  Because of this, the people of Christ are partnered with Jesus in actively reconciling the world to God.  But we need to know that sometimes that might mean doing things.

Furthermore,  we need to know that the true claims to hope that Because He Lives makes are quite difficult for some people to claim for themselves.  Namely, the “calm assurance” that our children can face uncertain days because He lives.  If we listen to the cries of the black community in America, there is a decided lack of this "calm assurance," because their life experience says otherwise.  And, yes, there is a way in which the "calm assurance" of Because He Lives is rooted in what Jesus' resurrection means broadly for the whole of human history, but if the church is the body of Christ, and this body is living and breathing in the present, that should bring some measure of hope to the present as well. 

So we sang this as a proclamation of something true, but also as a challenge to ourselves to take seriously the fact that being the people of Christ demands something about the way we move about in the world, and that when we see that life experience makes it difficult for someone to claim the same hope that we do, we should make it our purpose to do something about that.

For Those Tears I Died:  I came across this hymn text a couple of months ago, and started to reimagine it.  After a few weeks of this "reimagining," I had stripped the text down to about 4 lines, knowing that they contained an important truth, but not knowing how to structure the rest of the song.  In the wake of the attack on the LGBT community in Orlando, I started keeping track of things that I was praying as I expressed anger, confusion, and ultimately self-loathing for my own complicity in systems of hate by not being very vocal in combatting them.  The song continued to take shape this past week as I felt more of those same emotions.  This song isn't finished, and I don't know what it will look like when it is.  At the moment, it's part existential despair, part personal confession, and part proclamation of hope.  Probably the most personal side of it for me is the line in the second verse, "I've made an idol out of comfort, praised by keeping my mouth shut//but now it's found a thirst for blood."  I'm what you might call incredibly talented at not speaking out against something I know to be wrong when I feel I can slip by unscathed if I keep my head down.  This is fundamentally unchristian, and I am attempting to lean into repenting of it.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to stand alongside creatures of all kinds in acknowledging God as our creator, sustainer, and the One who is  reconciling all things to Godself, knowing that the Story that God is weaving is far from over.

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 7-3-2016

This was the seventh Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the theme of transformation. 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

Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) by Hillsong United

Peace (Change Everything) by Jameson McGregor

I Love You by Mike Robinson

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. 

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to begin with a plea that God would transform us into people who know how to find God in the world around us and how to express ourselves when this happens--the second stanza is the heart of the first reason (raising an "Ebenezer" is depicting solidifying the realization that God has been with you), and the second reason is embodied especially in these lines: "tune my heart to sing thy Grace" and "teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above." 

Oceans: We sang this song to ask God to make us into people who are willing to traverse uncertainty and seek God in the midst of that uncertainty.

Peace (Change Everything): Like the Advent song we sang a couple of weeks ago in the wake of the attack on the LGBT community in Orlando, we sang this in response to the attacks in Istanbul, Bangladesh, and Baghdad.  Advent is a time where we look around and see how dark the world is and how very badly it needs a light, but there are moments all throughout the year that remind us of this darkness without our having to take the time to think specifically about it.  We sang this song to make a plea to God to transform the world around us.  Since this song has not been recorded, here is a video of it if you would like to listen again:

I Love You: This is a song written by Mike Robinson, a professor at UMHB and a beloved part of the ubc community.  The lyrics depict the narrative of the last supper, and Mike shared it with us this week because we were participating in communion.

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