Setlist 6-19-2016

This was the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the theme of perseverance (this is the best one-word way I could think of to describe this--more broadly, they were gathered around the theme of clinging to faith in the midst of difficulty). Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Hope (There Will Come A Light) by Jameson McGregor

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

Doxology

How They Fit In:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-JM

Setlist 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 6-5-2016

This was the third Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were once again gathered with the Holy Spirit 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's A Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)

Your Love Is Strong by Jon Foreman

Come Thou Fount 

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

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. 

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: 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.

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 last week: This song is essentially a meditation on the Lord's Prayer, with an emphasis on being transformed into Kingdom people.  When we think of transformation, we think of the Spirit--the Spirit is the One who does the weaving of our stories, who dwells in our interconnectivity and helps to shape us.  We sang this song to ask the Spirit to continue this work.

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to continue to call upon the Spirit to tune us into instruments of grace, and to call upon ourselves to look back on the way God has been faithful to us as we face new challenges in life (that's the Ebenezer part--and I know I've talked about this before, but "Ebenezer" is maybe the most obscure word that we sing on a regular basis.  The idea of an Ebenezer calls back to a moment in 1 Samuel 7 when Samuel makes a monument to embody the recollection of God's showing up in the midst of an impossible situation.)

Pulse:  This is a new song.  As some of you know, I'm recording an album right now called Wild One.  A couple of months ago I started to get kind of burnt out picking apart those 10 songs for the recording process, so I decided to start writing another album to keep my wheels moving.  I've been writing about the Holy Spirit and the Church (and I struggle to speak meaningfully about one without the other).  Pulse embraces the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Life--the breath that we see breathed into Adam in the garden story--and leans into the idea that it is possible to experience life without fully embracing the breadth of what this means (and in turn tries to remedy that disconnect).  Namely, that we are all connected--we are children of the Living God.  We have a tendency to be selective with whom we count as "us."  And we are amazingly skilled at creating various kinds of "them." But this seems to be undermined by the Holy Spirit.  This song is a petition for the Spirit to make this interconnectivity real to us and to teach us how to love one another as we should.

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