Congregational Songs – New Songs for Corporate Worship

January 15 Service Planning (Audio Available)

February 22, 2012

Before I get into the ins and outs of planning the service, go here and choose “2012: 1.15 Worship Service” if you’d like to listen to it.

In Luke 19:46, Jesus says, ““It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” On January 15, 2012, Scott exposited this text to help our church focus on a 15-day season of prayer at Grace.

Planning a service that moves toward a sermon about prayer is an interesting practice. I was helped by thinking of the following things:

1. Many songs are prayers. This is a great service to choose some.
2. The only way we can pray to our holy God is by the access we’ve been given through Christ.
3. Before we pray, it would be good to be reminded about the character of the God to Whom we pray.

There Is Joy in the Lord – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace – I picked this as a way to call our people to worship and remind them that the knowledge of God for the believer leads to joy and hope, not fear or despair.
Welcome & Ministry Opportunities
Our Great God – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace – This is one of the best modern songs I’ve found to communicate both the weight and the glory of worshiping God. I placed it here to give us the sense that we do not worship God in song or in prayer flippantly.
Praise Him – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace – This is a great new re-write of the old text “To God Be the Glory” with a new chorus and pre-chorus. Barbara Haynes had been wanting to re-write this one for years and released the new version (co-written with Ben Shive) on her new album, The Now and the Not Yet. I’ve been wanting to build this song into the repertoire at Grace, and coming out of “Our Great God” seemed like the right place to move us from worshiping the God of Creation to worshiping the God of Our Salvation.
Mighty to Save – iTunes, Amazon, Live Recording at Grace- This song continued the focus on Christ being our way to God, and on the power of the cross and resurrection (the Grace version includes a verse on these) to take us into the most holy place.
Scripture Reading – Ephesians 2:11-22 – Drawing from the text in Luke 19, which is in the context of temple practices that were restricting access to the Gentiles, this paragraph strongly states, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Praise be to Him, who has brought us, the Gentiles, near! Sometimes forget about our Gentile roots in the USA.
We Call You Father – Live Recording at Grace – Wendy Wills’ song became our response in prayer to the God who has drawn us near. “Freely we come!”
Come Thou Fount – (the audio is at the end of the full service link at the top of this post) – This was one of my favorite moments while leading worship in a long time. I placed the song here in the service to give us the chance to pray to God as a congregation and ask Him to attune us to Himself and His grace. We usually sing it earlier in the service as a kind of invocation. Since I was placing it right before the sermon, I had planned for the first verse to be a capella and then to start instruments lightly on the second verse. When we came to this point in the service during rehearsal and we had finished the first verse, it just felt right to keep singing a capella. We sang through all three verses, just voices, and I turned and said, “Yep, that’s what we’ll do.” During the service, the congregation responded with loud, confident singing (though several admitted they were watching and waiting, expecting the instruments to come in). It was a powerful, joyful moment – just voices, praying the words of this great classic together.
Sermon – Luke 19:45-46 (sermon audio) – “True Prayer”
Congregational Reponse – I believe we sang the second verse of “Come Thou Fount” after a few moments of prayerful reflection.
Benediction
Praise Him (Reprise)

Filed under: Planning a Worship Service,Service Orders