Today, we wrapped up our series entitled “When Love Comes to Town” with “Love Celebrates.”

Our goal today was to just be ourselves. We wanted to do what we do best and we are best when we worship. It wasn’t about flash, or the most creative effort for shock-n-awe value. Today was about celebrating the gift God gave to us in His Son.

We didn’t have any “specials” or dramas, or anything fancy. It was just a worship celebration with a message.  

We did have some creative plussing. 

1) We opened up the service with a loop of Steve Fee’s “All Creation Sing.” It was the first four bars of his song just looping over and over like a record skipping (Jason programmed this into Reason). Then on the cue the band came in and we sang “Let Creation Sing.”

2) We then went into “The Beauty of Christmas.” This is a song Troy wrote a couple of years ago. 

3) Next, we sang an arrangement of “O Come O Come Emmanuel” that I had written a last year. I added a second “chorus” and ending, then Jason put his touch to it and gave it a good vibe in the chord progression.

4) From here we went into the announcements and then Jessica sang “When Love Comes to Town.” She sang it in the original key and tore it up.

5) We then transitioned to the message with the bumper video leading into a video of Dan C., our Executive Pastor, talking about God’s will to adopt us into his kingdom. Dan S. then came out and preached on this subject for a couple of minutes and pretty much laid out the salvation message.

We then went to another video of Dan talking about adopting their child. It ended very powerfully. Dan S. then came out and gave the invitation. 

Instead of having people come forward for a response, we did something a little different that lead into the candlelighting segment. For those who made a response to the message, we asked them to light their candles first.

It was cool to see the small amount of candles shining in the service.

6) During the candlelighting we sang the first half of “How He Loves” by John Mark McMillan, but we did the Eddie Kirckland Arrangement. 

When we got to where the bridge would be, Dan S. came out and asked for those who responded to begin to light the candles of everyone else. Talk about a powerful moment. It was awesome seeing this. It was a great way to display the effect that light has. 

We then went the bridge of “How He Loves.” It was funny to see how many people have trouble with the line that say’s “Heaven met earth like a sloppy wet kiss.”

After than Dan S. brought the people into celebration mode and we ended with “All Because of Jesus” and took that into “The First Noel.” 

// Sidenote (we had 3 songs in 6/8) It is a good thing it only happens once a year // 

Our production team did an amazing job of making every transition and making the atmosphere help connect people. 

It was an awesome day and I was privileged to sing with Troy and lead O Come O Come Emmanuel.  What makes it better is we get to do it 4 more times (2 on Tues, and 2 more on Wed.) Except I will be playing drums this time. Our band is going to rock… Troy and Jason on Electrics, Jimmy on Acoustic and Electric, Dave Luvin on bass, and Jason Morris on keys. 

I love my job! Here are some pics from the day.