Zoe’s Love | brianotte.com

This was a HUGE day for us at Mayfield. All week long we were digging at our order trying to find a few extra minutes to fit everything we had going on. In the end we ended up with a 72 minute plan, a little over our usual hour goal, but it was as streamlined as we could get. In addition to our usual worship elements we had new members joining during service, our traditional advent reading and candle lighting, a lot of announcements including presenting our December mission focus, Heifer Project, a special presentation from our teen choir, and communion. We also had our District Superintendent Dave Scavuzzo with us as our guest speaker. For those of you unfamiliar with the United Methodist system a district superintendent oversees all churches within a geographic area and serves essentially as the pastors’ boss. With all this going on it made for a jam packed service but everything went through and all of our teams came through in a big way. Here’s the breakdown:

Opening

Video: Christmas in a Nutshell > We opened with a great new video from Worship House.  Hit the link to check it out.

Love Has Come (F) > This is a great song from Todd Fields. We’ve been singing it for a few weeks and it’s really caught on. In my opinion it’s one of the more fun songs to play from our current song list. We usually do it in G but dropped it to F this week as an experiment to make it a bit easier to sing for a female vocal range.

Angels We Have Heard on High (G) > We have been doing a hybrid of the Chris Tomlin (YouTube) and Josh Wilson (which doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the internet anymore) arrangements. It’s a great new arrangement and much different from the slow and mellow version we’ve done in years past.

New Members

Announcements

Glory in the Highest (A) > I’ve wanted to use this as a Christmas song since it came out in 2006. The added verse on Tomlin’s newest Christmas project was just the push I needed to throw it in the set. We dropped it to A. It’s a little lower than I like, but we are connecting it with O Holy Night on Christmas Eve so whatever key we choose is also the key for O Holy Night and that high note gets a bit much above A or Bb.

Advent Reading and Candle Lighting

Teen Choir

Message: The Shock of Real Christmas

Communion

Jesus Messiah (G) > I go back and forth on Christmas songs. In years past we’ve made a complete jump to the traditional selections when advent hits. Other years we’ve tried to steer away completely from the “classics” altogether. This year we are blending our sets and this song confirmed that choice. While not a Christmas song per-say it was the perfect closer to the Advent message Pastor Dave delivered.

Service came out to 72 minutes on the dot. Again, a little past our usual hour target, but every element was timed perfectly and the whole service played out exactly as we had planned. Thanks to everyone on our music, tech, greeting, and prayer teams for stepping up today in a big way and welcome and congratulations to all of our new members.

Gabe and I led an acoustic set this week. We were trying to think of a good nickname and since “Shane and Shane” was taken I think the top suggestion was “Two Dudes with Guitars.” And so we saw a bright start for “TDwG.”

It was a great time of worship this week. When you only need two guitars and two microphones all of the usual tech issues seem to no be a problem. Personally acoustic weeks are my favorite weeks to lead because you can really hear people singing along.We stayed with a very familiar song set to try to make people more comfortable participating despite the lack of usual stage volume. Here’s what we ended up with:

Worship Set #1

Salvation is Here (A)

Your Grace is Enough (A)

Worship Set #2

Holy is the Lord (G)

Let My Words Be Few (G)

Closer

How Great is Our God (B) cut for time

Salvation is here works really well with two acoustic guitars and was a lot of fun to play, but the highlight of the week was listening to the crowd sing along with Holy is the Lord with almost every hand in the room raised. I know true worship doesn’t REQUIRE physical expression, but as a worship leader it is such a tangible sign of a worshiping congregation that just lifts me up every time. How Great is Our God had to be cut for time at the last minute, but the transition out of the sermon and into the dismissal was seamless. Pastor Scott and I are finally getting used to reading each other during service.

Next week is “Bring a Friend” Sunday at Mayfield. We had 135 people this week in our 9:30 service. That means that my prayer all week is that we will have 270 people this coming Sunday. I know that is a big dream, but if our church family embraces this call for simple evangelism there is no reason it can’t happen. Our God is a God who can take big dreams and make even bigger realities.