LCCWorship

In sticking with what seems to have become my tradition, here is my wrap-up from yesterday…

As is normal, we got to the school at 8:00AM and began the setup. This was the first time that we had to completely setup before the service (last month we were able to leave our equipment setup overnight at the school after practicing setup). Not only was this our first time to do a complete setup before the service, but we had more stuff to setup than ever before as we keep adding stuff to our setup (only few items left to add though). Anyway, it took us about 1 hour and 10 minutes to setup. Although this is the fastest we’ve ever done it (1.5 hours was our previous mark), we still are not quite to where we need to be at 45 minutes.

With setup taking a bit longer than expected, we ran late the rest of the morning. Band rehearsal ran about 35 minutes so by the time we actually finished rehearsing it would have already been time for us to start playing for the service, so things were pushed a bit more. Other than being about 10 - 15 minutes behind schedule, the service went pretty smoothly.

The most exciting part for all of us was that we had three new families visit yesterday!

Here’s the setlist…

• Love the Lord (Lincoln Brewster)
• Hosanna (Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown)
• One Way (Joel Houston & Jonathon Douglass)
• Everlasting God (Brenton Brown & Ken Riley)
• Fire Fall Down (Matt Crocker)
• Nothing But The Blood (Robert Lowry)
• Holy is the Lord (Chris Tomlin & Louie Giglio)

Here it is, the set list for rehearsal tonight…

• Great Redeemer (Paul Baloche) - We looked at this last week as well, but it definately needs some more work (especially on timing)
• How Can I Keep From Singing (Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Matt Redman) - This will be the first time we have looked at this song
• Offering (Paul Baloche) - We also looked at this last week, but it also needs some more work.  There is one section in particular that the chords were giving several people issues last week.
• One Way (Joel Houston, Jonathon Douglass) - This will be the first time we look at this song
• Everything (Tim Hughes) - Also a new song

Again, I know this is a lot of new material but with these ‘free’ rehearsals (see my last post) I want to get through a lot of the new music that will be a standard part of our repertoire.

Our second band rehearsal is this week. I pray that it goes as well as last week! This is actually going to be our last ‘free’ rehearsal before our May preview service. No, I’m not going to start charging admission to rehearsal.  I think the band members might stop coming if I did that. I mean starting at our May 8th rehearsal we will start working on the actual set list for our May preview service (May 18th).

I’ll post more later this week on how our rehearsal goes.

Last night was amazing! We had our first worship band rehearsal and had an absolutely fantastic time. It had been almost 4 months for me since I last led worship and it was just very refreshing to be back, leading our worship band and praising God!

God is amazing and never ceases to bless us as long as we follow his will in our lives. Going into last night I had a mix of emotions. I was both excited about what God has been doing in LCC but I was also really nervous since I hadn’t led in nearly 4 months. When rehearsal started we prayed and asked God to meet us there and lead us as a band. He answered with a resounding OK! Did every song we played sound perfect? No. Were we all able to follow the music correctly all the time? No. Are we ready to lead a worship service with the songs we rehearsed last night? Definitely not. Did we have a great time of worship last night through rehearsal? YES!

The only word that I can really use to describe the feeling I had after rehearsal last night is refreshed. God refreshed my spirit and I know he did the same for the other band members. It’s truly amazing how a rehearsal (which can sometimes be very rough and tense) could be so refreshing to us all.

Praise God!

I’m really excited for band rehearsal tonight! It’s our first actual playing rehearsal and I think all of the preparations have been completed.

Here’s what we are going to look at…

• How Great is Our God (Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Jesse Reeves) - warm-up, sound check, group worship time
• Awesome is the Lord (Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Cary Pierce, Jon Abel) - new song for us
• Blessed Be Your Name (Beth Redman, Matt Redman)
• Offering (Paul Baloche) - new song for us
• Great Redeemer (Paul Baloche) - new song for us

I know this is a lot of new songs for one rehearsal, which I typically wouldn’t do, but what do you expect when we are a new band? Pretty much everything will be new.

I’ll post how it went tomorrow.

Since we are a brand new church that is not having services yet I have been debating on what to begin working on in band rehearsals. I know that we need to begin rehearsals so we can be ready for our May preview service, but I am unsure about what to work on. Currently the band is comprised of people who have all played together before at our sponsor church, Brookwood Baptist Church. Since we have all played together before we shouldn’t have any of that initial weirdness trying to feel each other out. I’m thinking the best option is to start rehearsing songs that will be new to us, as we didn’t play them at Brookwood, but also mix in one or two songs that we did play at Brookwood and really start working on making it our own.

My thought process is also compounded by the fact that we currently have no equipment of our own and wont until late June when we get our equipment from Church on Wheels. I have gotten permission to use some of Brookwood’s equipment along with their portable sound system, but this will still make for some rough, ‘nearly unplugged’ rehearsals.

We’ll see how it all goes, we should be having our first playing rehearsal this week (on Thursday). We already met once for me to go over the info sheet and rules and expectations stuff. I’ll post an update later this week…

If anyone has any ideas, post a comment and let me know.