LCCWorship

You’ll also notice that we chopped two songs out of Set II, this is because we determined our services were too long with Life Groups in the middle and that by the end people were distracted and ready to go. We still did seven songs yesterday which is still quite a few.

This post is part of the Sunday Setlist Blog Carnival at FredMcKinnon.com.

I’m always looking for the next cool online application. Well today, this post about SUMO Paint came across my blog reader.

This looks like a cool SAAS. Check out SUMO Paint!  While not as fully featured as say Photoshop, it is free and completely online!

Second weekly service is done…

We continued plugging along with our new order of service yesterday. Things were quite a bit smoother, but we definitely still have some refining to do. The whole transition from Life Groups back to the message still needs work.  It was pretty rough yesterday still, but Life Groups as a whole were very good.

From the tech side of things everything was much better.  Easy Worship didn’t lockup once during the service (after the service is a different story though). We do need to figure out how to get the powerpoint viewer running through Easy Worship to stretch to fit the screen. There were also some times where my guitar was clipping.  This was my fault as I adjusted my EQ slightly right after rehearsal and forgot to mention it to the sound guys.

As for the music, it was good.  The congregation response was a little flat again, especially towards the end of the service. I think our service is a little long with Life Groups in the middle, so we have a little work to do there. The band was down one person as well as our drummer had an emergency appendectomy last week and was still out of commission.  He’ll be back this coming Sunday though!

Here’s what our setlist looked like…

Walk-in

• Now that You’re Near (Marty Sampson)

Set I

Yesterday was our official Launch! Now we are having weekly services! That being the case, these should become weekly posts by me.  Here’s a rundown of what happened yesterday and the setlist.

We debuted our new service format yesterday so there were some things that happened that need to be worked on a bit.  Mainly some transition things between the first part of the message, life groups, and the second part of the message.

The music went pretty well.  The band did an excellent job, as always. I’m so proud of our band members and all of the work they’ve put in. Overall though, the worship seemed a little flat for some reason.  I don’t know if it was the volume to new visitors (which are sometimes shy about singing), the increased distance between the stage and the chairs, or what it was.  Pretty good overall though, I had a good time worshiping at least!

We had a total of about 30 people in the worship service including five prospect families.  All five prospect families turned in fully completed connection cards and several said they would be back and invite friends. There were also several great comments about the inclusion of Life Groups in the middle of the service.

Here is our setlist…

Set I

• King of Majesty (Marty Sampson)
• Everlasting God (Brenton Brown & Ken Riley)
• Madly (Steve Fee)
• We Fall Down (Chris Tomlin)

Set II

• Mighty to Save (Ben Fielding & Reuben Morgan)
• One Way (Joel Houston & Jonathon Douglass)

We had to cut two of our songs from Set II due to running out of time, which is ok.  We were doing great staying on time the whole service right up to the very end of the second part of the message, which went a little long.

We also had some huge EasyWorship issues.  It kept on freezing up everytime a video clip was played.  A couple of times it was pretty catastrophic and the computer had to be rebooted to fix the lockup. This is not good and we are looking into the issue.

This is part of the Sunday Setlist Blog Carnival at fredmckinnon.com.

The month between our last preview service and our Launch was used for rearranging the Sunday Morning schedule.  Based on some of the feedback we received from guests at our preview services as well as, and more importantly, an enhanced direction from God we revamped the service order.

Previously we had a pretty traditional order of service.  We started with a welcome, followed by about 25 minutes of worship through music, followed by about a 30 minute sermon, followed by an invitation and offering.  Life Groups then came after the worship service.

At LCC we are all about creating Connections between people (as our name indicates). What we were finding in our preview services though is that people would come for the service, get kind of tired after a 30 minute message, and then go home afterwards skipping Life Groups altogether which is an important part of the whole making connections. So with new inspiration from God the new order of service drops Life Groups right into the middle of the service! Here’s the new order of service…

10:00 - 10:15: Fellowship time as people arrive
10:15 - 10:40: Worship Set I includes welcome and pre-invitation
10:40 - 11:00: Message, Part I
11:00 - 11:30: Life Groups
11:30 - 11:40: Message, Part II (More about application)
11:40 - 11:55: Worship Set II includes invitation and offering

Weird, huh??

What this really does is create a time for more in depth focus on the scripture and message in smaller groups while the topic is fresh in the mind. Life Groups take place right in the worship center.  When the chairs are setup in the morning we set them up in ‘clusters’ to accommodate smaller groups of about 20 - 30 people with a discussion leader.

Some of the initial feedback after the first week of this is that people like the Life Groups right in the middle of the service.  One comment said ‘I always have questions about the sermon that I want to ask the pastor, and with the life groups there in middle I was able to actually ask the pastor in the middle of the sermon!’ That was the Nick’s paraphrased version of the comment, but it gives the general idea.

We do still have some work to do on the new format and everything, but it’s off to a great start.

Have you ever seen anything like this? We haven’t but are curious if other churches are doing something like this so that we might be able to learn from them. Leave a comment if you know of other churches who do something like this.

Til launch!

As the countdown to Launch continues, things are falling in to place…

The worship set and rehearsal have been finished. The EasyWorship schedule is done. Last minute equipment (and backups) have been purchased. We are ready to go!

The excitement is mounting…

2 days ’til Launch!

I’m finally getting around to sprucing up this blog a bit.  I’ve installed a new theme which makes it look a ton better and I’m going to be working on putting together a more personalized header image.

Hopefully I can get this lookin’ great!

The countdown to launch continues…

Where has the time gone?

It seems like it was just yesterday that Keith and I were sitting down at Arby’s across the street from my work and just beginning to talk about the new church God had called him to start…

That was nearly 1 year ago.

I told him that day that Val and I had been praying about it and that we were in for sure. The time has flown by and here we are - 5 days away from our official LAUNCH!!!

We have been scrambling the last few weeks (well not me so much as I was on vacation) completely changing up our service and Life Groups and doing something that we’ve never seen in a church before. Why? You ask. Based on some of the feedback we received from guests at our preview services and a refreshed direction from God we feel that the new service order will better meet non-Christians’ needs, because that is who we are here for.

With all the nerves and last minute stuff that is going on, we are all EXCITED and pumped about what God is doing in LCC and how he has been working out all of the details with ease! We know that God is doing great work and are blessed to be a part of it.