Setlist 2-26-2017

This week was Transfiguration Sunday, the final 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 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:

Revelation Song by Kari Jobe

All Creatures of Our God and King

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

The Transfiguration by Sufjan Stevens

How Great Thou Art

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. 

Revelation Song: The Transfiguration is one of those moments in the gospel narrative where Jesus' particularity is underscored.  There aren't words to accurately describe the wonder of this moment, but Revelation Song offers language to talk about it sideways through giving voice to various responses to God's wonder.

All Creatures of our God and King: This song is a rallying cry for every aspect of God's creation to sing of God's grandeur, and voice gratitude for God's creative impulse.  This, again, is a sideways response to talking about Jesus' transfiguration, this moment whose significance isn't well-captured by words.  

Mystery: We sang this song to acknowledge that the mystery of the Transfiguration is paradigmatic for the mystery of Jesus in his Person, and settles into the positive affirmation that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again, as a way to talk about Jesus' particularity without attempting to make Jesus into an equation to be solved.

The Transfiguration: This song literally narrates the Transfiguration.  Listen to it, and know that writing a song that literally narrates a bible story without coming off as trite or poetically lazy is a feat of masterful proportions.  

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about How Great Thou Art then: This song is an exercise in wonder.  It allows us to practice connecting the wonders of creation, the redemption story that unfolds in the Bible, and the reconciliation Hope we carry, to the One who is responsible for all of them.  This is ultimately the same function of the season of Epiphany.

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 11-20-2016

This week was Christ the King Sunday, and our songs were gathered with this theme 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:

Revelation Song by Jennie Lee Riddle

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Hope by Jameson McGregor

Crown Him With Many Crowns

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. 

Revelation Song: We sang this song to begin our time together with a focused and straight-forward moment of singing about God's grandeur and particularity.  In thinking about Christ as King, we are met with a picture of power and majesty that is distinctly different than we might imagine out of our own cultural expectations--this almighty King abandoned His station to dwell among the disenfranchised and to champion the cause of the nobodies, and is well-imaged as a slaughtered lamb.  In this, we find wonder, mystery, and hope.

Death in His Grave: This song traces the story of Christ, underscoring that Christ's kingship is directly linked to his death--his complete self-emptying--and his resurrection.

Because He Lives: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Because He Lives then: We sang this song to proclaim that our daily hope in the face of uncertainty is located in the risen Christ. 

Hope: This song voices the hope we have in Christ, the fire in the darkness.  In this image that comes into the world through John 1, we find the most fundamental summation of the Christian story--God set a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome.  Fire is more real than the darkness, such that there is no amount of darkness that can overcome the light of the fire. 

Crown Him With Many Crowns: This song well-captures the kind of King that Jesus is: the slaughtered Lamb who receives unmatched and unmatchable praise, who has known intimately the worst of our suffering and conquered it, whose tools of war are peace and love, and to whom all other crowns belong, that we might all find rest and belonging.

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 11-22-2015

This week was Christ the King Sunday, so our songs were gathered around the theme of kingship.  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

Revelation Song by Jennie Lee Riddle

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

Be Thou My Vision

How Great Thou Art

Crown Him With Many Crowns

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. 

Revelation Song: We sang this song to begin our time together singing about God's holiness/power/all of those things we might associate with God being above and beyond us all.  While this is not the primary image of God given in the Christian story, it is important to remind ourselves that God is indeed mysterious, powerful, elusive, holy, etc, so that we will realize how scandalous and amazing it is that this same God cares to have a relationship with us.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to contemplate and proclaim the significance of God's kingship for the whole of the created order--not just humans.  To say that Christ is King impacts more than humans--it impacts the way stars explode, the way animals go on about their lives, and the way plants climb out of the dirt.

Be Thou My Vision:  We sang this song for a couple of reasons.  First, we sang it to find language to offer along with the people of our congregation who shared their stories with us this week, asking for God's wisdom and presence with us.  Second, we sang it to offer the words of the final stanza in light of Christ the King Sunday.

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song in the middle of our service to proclaim the glory of God in creation (both past and present), the life and death of Jesus, and the future hope of redemption, in the midst of stories that were marked both by tears and bold faith.  In some way, we raised this language to remind ourselves of the story in the midst of which we are living--one where God is putting the pieces back together, not spreading them apart.

Crown Him With Many Crowns: I occasionally ask Josh if there are any songs he wants me to include in a set.  This week was one of the few times he had a suggestion, so I jumped on it.  I had not thought about this song since I was a small child, so I had to go look up the lyrics.  It took all of 10 seconds for me to be convinced that this song needed to be in our Christ the King service.  In many ways, Christ the King Sunday is about speaking the truth of Jesus' Kingship into a world where such an idea seems like nonsense (because of how broken things are).  A thing I love about this song is the way it weaves together God's transcendence and immanence, and God's suffering and victory.  These tensions provide a window into a deeper truth about God and God's story.

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 4-12-2015

This week, Josh preached from John 20:19-31. Our songs were gathered with the second week of Easter 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, 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

Chariot by Page France

Jesus Paid it All

Revelation Song by Kari Jobe

Noise 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.

Chariot: The chorus of this song is "we will become a happy ending."  This statement captures one of the simplest truths we think about in light of Easter--Jesus' death and resurrection have changed history, and we can be confident that all that is broken will be fixed.

Jesus Paid It All: This song captures another implication of Jesus' death and resurrection: the things about us that should separate us from God are overshadowed by the fact that Jesus gave himself up for us.

Revelation Song:  In the crucifixion, we see the glory of God correctly: God was willing to be made a fool, tortured, and killed to save us.  The resurrection is the crown jewel of this moment, where we see that the risen Christ was not vengeful, but patient and loving.  This song proclaims God's greatness in light of this.

Noise: This song rests in the simple truth that, though we have all amounted to broken promises in some way, God is working to redeem 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