Setlist 7-23-2017

This was the seventh Sunday after Pentecost.  Our songs were gathered with this in mind, and heavily influenced by the lectionary texts (particularly, the weeds & wheat passage that Josh preached from).  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:

Hope by Jameson McGregor

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

There by Jameson McGregor

For Those Tears I Died by Jameson McGregor

Wandering 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. 

Hope: This song clings to the hope that the work of redemption made visible in the Resurrection will spread to the entirety of the cosmos.  This hope is characterized as such because, at the moment, things are still not as they should be--the weeds are growing up with the wheat, so to speak.

Lord, I Need You: This song is a confession of our need for the transformation of the Spirit in our own lives to form us into people who are like Christ, and for the Spirit to hold us together as we face any number of struggles in living in a world that is still broken.

There: This song proclaims that the same God who is imminent with us in our suffering also stands over and above every kind of brokenness as an Anchor that is holding us in place in the midst of the turbulence of history.

For Those Tears I Died: This song holds in tension both the solidarity of Christ with human suffering, and the cry of "how long?" from the worn-thin world.

Wandering: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Wandering then: This song allows us to confess our tendency to, knowingly or not, attempt to use God for our own ends, while also praising God for being consistently faithful.

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 7-16-2017

This was the sixth 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 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

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Up On A Mountain by The Welcome Wagon

Anthem by Leonard Cohen

Lifted/Lifting 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. 

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song to begin our time together with a word of gratitude to the breadth of God's work of creation and redemption.

Wandering: This song allows us to confess our tendency to, knowingly or not, attempt to use God for our own ends, while also praising God for being consistently faithful.

Up On A Mountain: We sang this song as a reminder that Christ has entered into our afflictions, knows the depth of our pain, and that the Spirit is present with us, drawing creation toward redemption.

Anthem: This song acknowledges the depth of the brokenness of the world, and imagines the wounds of existence as the points through which the Light enters our stories.

Lifted/Lifting: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Lifted/Lifting last week: 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.

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 7-9-2017

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

Be Thou My Vision

Lifted/Lifting by Jameson McGregor

Future/Past by John Mark McMillan

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 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

Setlist 6-25-2017

This was the third 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:

Just A Closer Walk With Thee

SMS [Shine] by David Crowder* Band

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

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

Rise Up by Bifrost Arts

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. 

Just A Closer Walk With Thee: We began with this song to give voice to one of the primary reasons we gather together every week--to be more fully formed in the way of Christ.  We might think about two outcomes of this.  First, to be more fully formed in the way of Christ results in living a life that is itself an act of worship.  Second, to be more fully formed in the way of Christ pushes us toward our calling of being the presence of Christ in the world.

SMS [Shine]: One way to think of this song is as a petition for God to revive the hope of Christ in our lives so that we can hold this light up like torches in the world.  This is by some measure what we are focusing on during ordinary time as we take up ubc's core value of missional living more deliberately for the next few months.  

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: This song is a reminder to ourselves that God's mercy toward us is greater than we might deem reasonable.  And it is also a reminder to ourselves that God's mercy toward those we would rather not have it is just as unreasonably wide.

Inbreaking: This song is a petition for the Slaughtered Lamb to teach us how to be Kingdom people and for the Spirit to resurrect what is dead in us.

Rise Up: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Rise Up then: This song is both a plea for God to rise to the defense of the trampled people in the world and a challenge to ourselves as the Body of Christ to be active in defending those whom God defends.

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 6-18-2017

This was the second 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 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

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Rise Up by Bifrost Arts

Breathe for Me 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. 

Come Thou Fount:  We began with this song to confess that we gathered to worship with the hope that the Spirit would form our community more fully into the way of Christ, and to remind ourselves that looking back on who God has been for us is an excellent indicator of who God will be for us in the future.

Wandering: This song is a confession that we have a tendency to make our ideas about God into an idol that can be harnessed and manipulated for our own purposes, and a proclamation that God is somehow able to work in the midst of that.

Rise Up: This song is both a plea for God to rise to the defense of the trampled people in the world and a challenge to ourselves as the Body of Christ to be active in defending those whom God defends.

Breathe for Me: This song is about transformation in the midst of despair.  For any number of reasons, we might find ourselves worn thin by life, and this song offers language for petitioning the Spirit to breathe life into what is dead in us.

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: Since it was Trinity Sunday, this seemed like a good song to begin our time together.  It's a confession of, and implicit surrender to, God's Otherness--a way of saying that God is beyond our comprehension.

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 6-11-2017

This was the first Sunday after Pentecost, which is Trinity Sunday.  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:

Holy, Holy, Holy

All Creatures of Our God and King

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Wild One by Jameson McGregor

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

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. 

Holy, Holy, Holy:  Since it was Trinity Sunday, this seemed like a good song to begin our time together.  It's a confession of, and implicit surrender to, God's Otherness--a way of saying that God is beyond our comprehension.

All Creatures of Our God and King: This song imagines all of creation, ourselves included, singing out in praise of the Creator.  To sing this song is to at least pay lip service to our interconnectedness with the rest of creation, and also to ascribe a dignity and worth to the earth, animals, plants, stars, etc., that we often only afford humans (and sometimes, worse, just the humans that are like us).  In light of Trinity Sunday, we might consider this song to acknowledge the unity of the loving community of the Trinity being painted across all of creation.

Noise: This song traces the vast difference between God and humanity, and also narrates God's transgressing of that difference in the Incarnation.  It explores how God's triunity both accounts for this difference and bridges the gap.

Wild One: This song is about God's always being beyond our full comprehension, and always being able to smash through the idols we make of who we expect God to be.

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Fall Afresh then: We sang this song to step into the Pentecost story by confessing a desire for the Spirit to indwell our community and set us on the way of Christ.

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 6-4-2017

This week was Pentecost Sunday.  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:

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Lifted/Lifting by Jameson McGregor

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Burn It Down by Jameson McGregor

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. 

Fall Afresh: We sang this song to step into the Pentecost story by confessing a desire for the Spirit to indwell our community and set us on the way of Christ.

Lifted/Lifting: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Lifted/Lifting then: This song is about the continual coming-to-understand of the Christian faith.  Any idea that we grasp about who God is can only serve as a placeholder for a deeper understanding of God as we are further renovated into the presence of Christ on earth.

Pulse: This song talks about the Spirit of Life indwelling all of creation, and raises a plea that God would reconnect our hearts to this Spirit.  Wrapped up in this plea is a desire to be transformed into people who work alongside the Spirit in spreading the work of Christ's redemption throughout the world.

Burn It Down: This song is a petition for the Spirit to use the people of God to tear down systems of oppression.

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

Setlist 5-28-2017

This week was the seventh Sunday of Easter, as well as the Sunday closest to the Ascension.  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:

Crown Him With Many Crowns by Jameson McGregor

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

Rise Up by Bifrost Arts

Bonfire by Jameson McGregor

Lifted/Lifting 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. 

Crown Him With Many Crowns: This song is equal parts an acknowledgement that Jesus Christ is Lord and a spoken reminder to ourselves that this is the case.  The values that Jesus' lordship represent are not synonymous with our cultural values, and so this reminder has implications for the way we think and live.

Mystery: As we exit the Easter season, we sang this song to once again proclaim the truth of Jesus' defeat of death and stealing of the bite of systems of power.  

Rise Up: In the Ascension, there is both a direct charge given to the disciples to spread the good news of the Kingdom throughout the world, and an implicit charge to grow in to the body of Christ and continue the work Jesus had begun.  This song is a plea for God to rise up in our midst and transform us into agents of hope, change, and justice--to continue to transform us into the presence of Christ in our immediate surroundings.

Bonfire: This song looks forward to the coming of the Kingdom in fullness, envisioning a great assembling of God's creatures, broken or otherwise, on the shores of a redeemed earth.

You can stream this song for free here. 

Lifted/Lifting: This song is about the continual coming-to-understand of the Christian faith.  Any idea that we grasp about who God is can only serve as a placeholder for a deeper understanding of God as we are further renovated into the presence of Christ on earth.

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 5-14-2017

This week was the fourth Sunday of Easter, and our songs were gathered around the theme of....Easter.  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

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

There by Jameson McGregor

Heart With No Companion by Leonard Cohen

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. 

Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to give voice to our gratitude for God's activity in our lives thus far, and to graft the Resurrection into that list of wonders.  It is an exercise in looking back to inform our looking forward--to examine who God has been to inform our expectations of who God will be.

Fall Afresh: This song is a petition for the Spirit that brought Jesus through death into Life to dwell among us and renew the whole of ourselves.

There: This song gives voice to God's transcendence over/above any anxieties we face in life. We sang it to enhance the idea that we have been carrying about God's immanence in the midst of our pain in the suffering of Jesus.  The Resurrection is a marriage of the immanence of Jesus and the transcendence of God, a Yes that crashes through the No of pain and death.

Heart With No Companion: This song imagines the implications of the vast and shattered love of God.  It is both wide reaching, and acquainted with pain, and thus is able to find us in the midst of our own pain.  The chorus focuses on an oft-overlooked kind of pain that arises out of unmet expectations or a disconnect between passion and circumstance.

Pulse: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Pulse then: This song speaks to the effect of the Resurrection on life in the world.  The Resurrection is driven by the transformative power that spreads through the entire cosmos, the Spirit of God.  And this same transformative power is working to raise what is dead in 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 5-7-2017

This week was the fourth Sunday of Easter, and our songs were gathered around the theme of....Easter.  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:

Chariot by Page France

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

How Great Thou Art

Pain by Jameson McGregor

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. 

Chariot: The chorus of this song captures a central theme of the Easter season: we will become a happy ending.  In this simple phrase, we find the core implication of the Resurrection.  The Love of God is unhindered on a fundamental level, even by death.  God's Yes overwhelms any No that might come before it.  

Pulse: This song speaks to the effect of the Resurrection on life in the world.  The Resurrection is driven by the transformative power that spreads through the entire cosmos, the Spirit of God.  And this same transformative power is working to raise what is dead in us.  

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 gives us language to situate the death and resurrection of Jesus within a broader observation of God's grandeur.  The song begins with an observation of the wonders God has made throughout the cosmos, and goes on to observe the trajectory of God's making all things new.  In the chorus, it offers us a chance to practice channeling this wonder into praise of God.

Pain: In the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we find that God is able to bear the weight of our suffering and somehow paint life on the other side. This Event offers us a picture of what God can make of our own pain, and it stands as an image of Hope.  The chorus of this song,

but the God of the Lighter Load
can take the weight of the pain we hold
until the sting becomes about much more than the pain
it's the place
that we dwell in a  Living Hope
the architecture of the ones who know
that, in the end, healing comes like the day:
from the night

is not suggesting that God takes our pain away, but instead enters into our pain and is carrying out the work of transformational healing.  This Hope hinges on the image of the Resurrection, on the fact that Jesus's suffering was not miraculously alleviated or cut short, but rather was the first part of a broader story that transcended the suffering itself.  

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

Setlist 4-30-2017

This week was the third Sunday of Easter, and our songs were gathered around the theme of....Easter.  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

How Great Thou Art

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

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 narrate again the defeat of death that we observe in this season.  

How Great Thou Art: This song gives us language to situate the death and resurrection of Jesus within a broader observation of God's grandeur.  The song begins with an observation of the wonders God has made throughout the cosmos, and goes on to observe the trajectory of God's making all things new.  In the chorus, it offers us a chance to practice channeling this wonder into praise of God.

Because He Lives:  This song takes a few swings at articulating the ways in which the Resurrection shapes the way we engage life now--particularly life's uncertain elements.  It offers us the chance to pull the thread between Jesus' breaking through one of the more absolute elements of finite existence (death), and any anxieties we might have about life.  Put differently, the Event of the resurrection calls into question what we think we know about how the world works, and gives us reason to hold the stubborn hope that God is actively working to redeem every broken part of creation.  This connection is easy to pay lip service to, but really living as though it were true is a life project. 

Inbreaking: I've been working on this song for a couple of months.  For the first few weeks, I had a handful of lines, but had no idea what they meant.  As I kept working at it, I started to see Easter themes emerging.  Taken all together, this is a song about the Risen Lord raising us also, both as individuals and as the Body of Christ.  It's not squarely focused on the events of Easter, but it is intimately concerned with the role that Eastertide plays in the life of the Church year.

Amazing Grace: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Amazing Grace then: The Resurrection is a transformative act of grace that has implications for the whole of creation.  It is a Yes to life and the created world. This song talks about the implications of the Resurrection for our lives, and we sang it to rehearse speaking the truth about God's ongoing redemption project in our midst.

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 4-23-2017

This week was the second Sunday of Easter, and our songs were gathered around the theme of....Easter.  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 and Sarah McMillan

Amazing Grace by Citizens & Saints

Rise Up by Bifrost Arts

Noise by Jameson McGregor

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

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: In Easter, we find that there are no barriers that God is not willing to cross to set things right with us.  The refrain of "Your heart won't stop coming after me" is about more than just a vague notion of the Love of God, but rather speaks to the redemptive force of the Love of God.  This season offers us an opportunity to consider the work that God is doing in creation, and the God is drawing us into in our own lives.

Amazing Grace: The Resurrection is a transformative act of grace that has implications for the whole of creation.  It is a Yes to life and the created world. This song talks about the implications of the Resurrection for our lives, and we sang it to rehearse speaking the truth about God's ongoing redemption project in our midst.

Rise Up: This song takes up the resurrection theme from a different angle; namely, that of the implications of the Resurrection for justice in the world.  Christ took up the cause of the oppressed (became oppressed), entered the depths of suffering and death, and in rising again, offers a distinct kind of hope that cycles of violence and oppression are not locked into the tracks they appear to be.  Christ's rising offers hope that the lowly to can rise.  The chorus of the song can be looked at in two ways: a plea for God to rise up to defend the cause of the oppressed, and a call to one another, as the body of Christ, to rise up to defend the cause of the oppressed. We sang this song to begin to broaden our understanding of who Jesus is as the Risen One, and who we are called to be as resurrection people.

Noise: This song is about God painting death and resurrection onto our lives by entering into our suffering and drawing us through it.  

Mystery:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Mystery then:  This is a protest song.  And Easter is a protest day.  In the Resurrection of Jesus, we have the defeat of death, yes, but we also have an empire and religious institution put to shame as their supposedly final assertion of power over the trouble-maker Jesus doesn't work.  If the power that corrupt systems of oppression carry is falsified, these systems cannot hope to stand for long.  So, the formula Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again is multi-valent, and one of those valences is of the raised-fist variety.  This was true then, and it is true now.  

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 4-16-2017

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, and our songs were gathered with the death and Resurrection of Jesus 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

Hope by Jameson McGregor

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. 

In the Night: We will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

Death In His Grave: This song narrates the death and Resurrection of Jesus, and underscores the outcome of this Event: the death of death.  It also captures the reality-altering implications of this event for humans that Paul likens to Jesus being a second Adam.  We sang this song to step into this narrative in a more deliberate way and experience it anew.

Mystery: This is a protest song.  And Easter is a protest day.  In the Resurrection of Jesus, we have the defeat of death, yes, but we also have an empire and religious institution put to shame as their supposedly final assertion of power over the trouble-maker Jesus doesn't work.  If the power that corrupt systems of oppression carry is falsified, these systems cannot hope to stand for long.  So, the formula Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again is multi-valent, and one of those valences is of the raised-fist variety.  This was true then, and it is true now.  

Hope: This song uses the image from John of God setting a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome as a reference point for present hope (and interprets this image to refer to the Resurrection).  In the Resurrection, we see in action what we have hoped to be true: that God is present and active in brokenness, and is in the habit of making all things new.  And when we look back on our own lives in the moments most marred by pain, we find that they too evolved into something like broken pieces coming back together.  So when those pain-marred moments are our present moments, we can look back on the Resurrection and the resurrections we have experienced for the hope that God will raise us up again.

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

Setlist 4-9-2017

This week was the final week of Lent (Palm Sunday), 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Here Is Our King by David Crowder* Band

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Anthem by Leonard Cohen

Up on a Mountain by The Welcome Wagon

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

In the Night: We will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

Here Is Our King: We sang this song to engage the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem.  As the people who gathered to welcome him in, our assumptions about who Jesus is and what Jesus is about to do are questionable.  We can say that we understand that Jesus is going to grasp victory through defeat, glory through humility, etc., but there is still something in us that clings to a Jesus whose power looks like whatever sort of conquering images are engrained in us.  We are people who, even though we know how the story of Jesus' death turns out still have to force ourselves to slow down and engage the weight of the suffering and darkness that precedes the Resurrection.  And as a result, we rob ourselves of any hope of grasping the profundity of that Event.

Lord, I Need You: We sang this song for two reasons.  The first is the same reason that we have been singing it during some of the other weeks of Lent: to remind ourselves that the transformation that we are reckoning with is work that the Spirit is doing in us, and to rehearse offering this confession so that we can find these words in the moments we need them the most.  The second is related to the call that is presented as Jesus enters Jerusalem: will we ride with him?  Will we walk the path that he is on?  Will we follow him to the place that not even he wants to go?  If we have any hope of saying yes to any of these, we will need the aid of God.

Anthem: This is a Leonard Cohen song.  Which means it is multi-valent, dense, and profound.  We sang it at the end of Lent because we are exiting a season in which we know that we are not capable of making a perfect offering out of our lives, whether through being burt out by our lenten practices, our on again/off again relationship to our lenten practices, or our failure to even develop and attempt a lenten practice.  Lent leaves a crack in any sense of self-righteousness that we have accumulated over the past year, and makes way for the Light of Easter.  This is something I talked about in the newsletter on Friday (you can read that here), which I suppose also led to this song showing up yesterday.

Up on a Mountain: This song jumps ahead to Thursday night in the narrative of Holy Week, where we find Jesus having a breakdown in the garden of Gethsemane.  In his loneliness and his fear, we find that we are not alone--that the Christ has entered into the depths of the human condition (with more depths to come on Friday and Saturday), and has met us there.  

Be Thou My Vision:  During Lent, we depart from our typical singing of the Doxology to close our time together.  As we wander the wilderness of Lent, learning more about who we are and what we are for, we carry these words on our tongues, time and again asking God to be our vision, wisdom, and security.

-JM

Setlist 4-2-2017

This week was the fifth week of Lent, 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Deliver Me by David Crowder* Band

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

At the Gate by Electrofolk Revival (performed by Emily Hass)

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

In the Night: We will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

Deliver Me: As we draw near to Easter, this song voices the longing that is going to be addressed in the Resurrection.  In the resurrection, our deepest existential anguish is confronted and shattered.  But standing before this moment in our journey through the Christian story, the weight of tragedy, the madness of the world, our own fears, and our own tendency to be driven by scarcity, presses in all around us, and we begin to wear thin from holding on to the hope that this Jesus we have been coming to know is who we think he is.  

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 song speaks a word of mercy into our desert of Lent.  Even as we take time to notice our sin and to lean more deliberately into transformation, we sang this song to remind ourselves that the ever-wide mercy and ever-broad love of God wholly embraces us.

At the Gate:  I asked Emily what drew her to this song.  This is what she said: I forget that eternity is something to look forward to.  This song refreshes my understanding.

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.

Be Thou My Vision:  During Lent, we depart from our typical singing of the Doxology to close our time together.  As we wander the wilderness of Lent, learning more about who we are and what we are for, we carry these words on our tongues, time and again asking God to be our vision, wisdom, and security.

-JM

Setlist 3-26-2017

This week was the fourth week of Lent, 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

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

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Up to the Mountain (MLK Song) by Patty Griffin

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

In the Night: We will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: This song speaks a word of mercy into our desert of Lent.  Even as we take time to notice our sin and to lean more deliberately into transformation, we sang this song to remind ourselves that the ever-wide mercy and ever-broad love of God wholly embraces us.

Pulse: This song is a confession that the love of God and the love that we claim to embody are not always the same thing, and a plea for God to reconnect us to God's active, dynamic, life-giving Spirit and rewrite our notions of love.

Up to the Mountain (MLK Song): This song was selected and sung by Natalie Ramirez, so I asked her for her thoughts on it--here's what she said: There's a lot of humanity and struggle and hope expressed in a simple way in this song. Sometimes life feels like it is too much. Sometimes I question myself and my ability. Sometimes it feels like the good places God wants to take me are going to be too much work or I distrust they won't actually be good. Sometimes God is hard to notice or see or feel and it's hard to see the good or even enjoy the good even when it's there. Sometimes it feels like life is only going to be hard and tiring. But there are moments and glimpses to hold onto where God speaks in what can feel like quick whispers reminding me that I am loved. Reminding me that He asks me to carry on not as an order or a test or to make me more tired but because He loves me and believes in me and is with me.  And even if this life may not have a complete peace, trusting in the Voice that may feel like it's coming and going allows me to hope that I'll hear it again and one day will know it fully.

Wandering: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Wandering then: During Lent, we enter the wilderness to ask the question of who we are and what we are for, using Jesus as our mirror, and ask the Spirit to transform us more fully into this identity.  Though we make a point to do this for 6 weeks, this sort of wilderness wandering is something most of us do often.  The Christian life is a push-pull between being more fully formed in the way of Christ and settling back into the rhythms that we are seeking to be transformed away from.  If we look inside of ourselves for some sort of consistent cause for hope, we will not find it.  But if we look to God, we will find that God is faithful to us throughout our own ebb and flow of learning to live like Jesus.  So if we build our hope on God's faithfulness to us, we are well on our way to having more solid footing to move forward.  We sang this song to proclaim this truth, to worship God in light of it, and to remind ourselves that our overarching life of faith is tied to who God is for us (not solely if we can look in the mirror and see a perfect Christian).  You can find a studio version of this song here.

Be Thou My Vision:  During Lent, we depart from our typical singing of the Doxology to close our time together.  As we wander the wilderness of Lent, learning more about who we are and what we are for, we carry these words on our tongues, time and again asking God to be our vision, wisdom, and security.

-JM

Setlist 3-19-2017

This week was the third week of Lent, 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Wandering by Jameson McGregor

Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle

Shadow by Jameson McGregor

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

In the Night: We will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

Wandering: During Lent, we enter the wilderness to ask the question of who we are and what we are for, using Jesus as our mirror, and ask the Spirit to transform us more fully into this identity.  Though we make a point to do this for 6 weeks, this sort of wilderness wandering is something most of us do often.  The Christian life is a push-pull between being more fully formed in the way of Christ and settling back into the rhythms that we are seeking to be transformed away from.  If we look inside of ourselves for some sort of consistent cause for hope, we will not find it.  But if we look to God, we will find that God is faithful to us throughout our own ebb and flow of learning to live like Jesus.  So if we build our hope on God's faithfulness to us, we are well on our way to having more solid footing to move forward.  We sang this song to proclaim this truth, to worship God in light of it, and to remind ourselves that our overarching life of faith is tied to who God is for us (not solely if we can look in the mirror and see a perfect Christian).  You can find a studio version of this song here.

Fall Afresh: As we enter further into Lent, our introspection can begin to conjure a weight that doesn't seem worth carrying.  We sang this song to ask for help, to ask the Spirit to cultivate transformation in us.

Shadow: There is a theme of Lent that is centered on learning how to die to ourselves in order to be more like Christ.  This song traces the internal struggle that this concept can ignite within us, using the image of talking in our sleep--having the sense of what we are trying to do, without the sense to actually execute it meaningfully.  The end of the song brings in the thought that perhaps God has given us the Word we need.  I'm not talking specifically about the Bible, though the Bible plays a role in what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about the Word-made-flesh of Jesus, who we come to know through the witness of the Bible and the embodiment of Jesus in other people who are being formed in the way of Christ.  The point isn't to offer a "solution" to the "problem" identified in the "talking in my sleep" image, but instead to suggest that God has not left us to our own devices in our transformation.  The word we couldn't call to mind has been spoken for us, and it reverberates around us even as we try to get our mouths to form it ourselves. You can find a studio version of this song here.

House of God Forever: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about House of God Forever then: This song serves as an early reminder that we will need time and again during Lent that God cares for us in the midst of our struggles (whatever they may be).  God brings safety into our danger, a feast into our hunger, and a light into our darkness.

Be Thou My Vision:  During Lent, we depart from our typical singing of the Doxology to close our time together.  As we wander the wilderness of Lent, learning more about who we are and what we are for, we carry these words on our tongues, time and again asking God to be our vision, wisdom, and security.

-JM

Setlist 3-12-2017

This week was the second week of Lent, 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Just A Closer Walk With Thee

House of God Forever by Jon Foreman

Fever by Jameson McGregor

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

In the Night: We will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

Just A Closer Walk With Thee: This song hones in on a particular aspect of Lent: a focusing of discipleship.  It confesses our need for God's help to be formed in the way of Christ, without removing any responsibility from ourselves.  It also confesses that we will likely fail time and again at leaning in to this transformation, but confesses that God has entered our condition, knows how difficult life can be, and carries the weight with us.

House of God Forever: This song serves as an early reminder that we will need time and again during Lent that God cares for us in the midst of our struggles (whatever they may be).  God brings safety into our danger, a feast into our hunger, and a light into our darkness.

Fever: This song is about how the status quo of what we are battles against our efforts to become more like Christ, and imagines this self-correcting-for-the-worse in the same way as our bodies use fevers to restore our biological environments when we are sick.  Keeping with this image, it voices a desire for a wilder pathogen to infect us and overwhelm our built-in defenses to wholly change us.  If you want to give this song another listen, you can find it here.

Lord, I Need You:  We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is was we said about Lord, I Need You then: Continuing to build our vocabulary for engaging the inner struggles of Lent, we sang this song to voice a declaration of our reliance on God's help to have any hope of transformation, and implicitly to voice a petition for God to come to our aid.

Be Thou My Vision:  During Lent, we depart from our typical singing of the Doxology to close our time together.  As we wander the wilderness of Lent, learning more about who we are and what we are for, we carry these words on our tongues, time and again asking God to be our vision, wisdom, and security.

-JM

Setlist 3-5-2017

This week was the first week of Lent, 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:

In the Night by Andrew Peterson

Deliver Me by David Crowder* Band

Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher

Wearing Thin by Jameson McGregor

Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light

Be Thou My Vision

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. 

In the Night: We will be adding a piece to this song every week of Lent.  It traces a thread of struggle through the biblical narrative, ultimately building a case to hold hope in the midst of immense darkness.  We recorded a live version of this song last year, which you can download for free here.  

Deliver Me: As we go through Lent, we will likely dredge up a host of inner conflicts we typically work hard to suppress, and this song prepares us to give voice to the longing that accompanies such pain.

Lord, I Need You:  Continuing to build our vocabulary for engaging the inner struggles of Lent, we sang this song to voice a declaration of our reliance on God's help to have any hope of transformation, and implicitly to voice a petition for God to come to our aid.

Wearing Thin: This song is about the wearing thin that comes with holding a conviction about the way things should be while observing a world that consistently plays out contrary to that vision.  It is also about knowing that something should be done in the name of the-way-things-should-be, feeling powerless, and imagining what it would take to feel less powerless.

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.

Be Thou My Vision:  During Lent, we depart from our typical singing of the Doxology to close our time together.  As we wander the wilderness of Lent, learning more about who we are and what we are for, we carry these words on our tongues, time and again asking God to be our vision, wisdom, and security.

-JM

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