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Worship Recap - March 7, 2010

Jonathan Shipman led worship again this morning at Life Church, and did a great job. I had the opportunity to be a participant in the congregation for the second week in a row, which is very refreshing.

We began today with our pastor, Tom Bedford, exhorting us from Ezekiel and John chapter 10 about the promise of God to be a shepherd to us, and to lead us into everything that has to do with real life. We confessed our need for Him to come and inspect us, draw us near, feed us, rub salve on our wounds, and lead us into His peace.

We took our time entering into an awareness of the Lord in this way, and Jon and the team did a great job of 'stirring the atmosphere' as we waited on God for 20 minutes or so before actually moving into the song set. Here are the songs used this morning:

1. The More I Seek You  (Zach Neese, Gateway, CCLI #  4447991). The band played this as an instrumental for pre-service / 'walk-in'.

2. Liberated (Matt Shipman, Life Church). Matt wrote this song a couple of years ago, and it always help us explode into the freedom purchased for us by the blood of Jesus.

3. I Worship You (Esther Filip, Maranatha Music, CCLI #5087594). I believe this is only the second we've done this beautiful worship song. It was very powerful today.

4. Revelation Song (Jennie Riddle, Gateway Music, CCLI #4447960). I love throneroom songs, and this is definitely in that category. You can't just pull this one at any moment, but we definitely were in the place where it was appropriate.

It's as though we started out seeking the Good Shepherd, and He came and led us gently and lovingly into the place of being able to see Him as He is - high and lifted up, seated on the throne, well able to care for our every need because He is the Great I AM, ruler of all worlds, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Trey Allemang began a teaching series on the book of Romans today. Trey is a fantastic teacher of the Word of God, and gave us an overview of the historic setting of Romans, and some key insights into Paul's life and experience, in order to help us understand his perspective as he wrote. We made it through verses 1-8 of chapter 1 - more to come!

If you're from Life Church, please leave a comment with your insights into the morning's events. If you're from elsewhere, I hope you had a great day in the presence of God, and feel free to leave a comment as well.

Take a look at Fred McKinnon's worship blog at theworshipcommunity.com, to see what happened in worship all over the place.

Worship Recap 02/28/10

Life Church Worship 02/28/10 from Harold Forbis on Vimeo.

Jonathan Shipman led worship today. He and the team did a great job, as you can see in the video - which includes clips from worship and personal interviews. (I know, very cool). Special thanks to my assistant videographer, Evan Forbis.

We had visitors from the Philippines with us this morning, Bobby & Noemi Pino and their oldest son Jon Rey, and Jaime and Dessie Ton, who are all in the states for a missions conference at Heartland next week. We have the privilege of having them with us for a few days as well.

Bobby shared with us about the radical change God's brought to his life over the last several years, in seeing the church as a family. He made the point that "how can two walk together unless they are agreed" has to do with knowing the will of God and agreeing with Him, and then walking together with each other to fulfill His purposes. Churches can only achieve real spiritual growth by walking together with Christ, who is the head, and our brothers and sisters, who are His body.

Jon and the team led us in these songs this morning:

1. Worshiping You - A (Jonathan Stockstill, CCLI #5097319)

2. Blessed Be Your Name - in A (Matt Redman, CCLI #3498438)

3. Let My Soul Cry Out - in G (Charity Long, from Christ's Family Church, Omaha, NE)

4. Open Up The Sky - in A (Jonathan Stockstill, CCLI #5097302) 

Bobby spoke at this point, then we prayed for the whole crew from the Philippines, and several people had prophetic words for them. We also prayed for Abigail Veatch this morning, who's moving to Tacoma, WA, later this week.

Please leave a comment. Hope you had a great time with the Lord and His people as well today. Take a look at Fred McKinnon's worship blog at theworshipcommunity.com to see what went on in worship all over the place.

Sunday Setlist - 02/21/2010

In last Thursday night's worship team meeting, we gave ourselves to a time of prayer and intercession for God to move on us and on our church. I think we were living in that prayer this morning, starting with a passionate time of seeking the Lord in prayer before we began to rehearse.

Paul Shipman led our team superbly today, and we got through the following songs:

1. You Are God Alone - in G (Billy Foote, Integrity, CCLI #4243463) instrumental for pre-service.

2. Tis So Sweet  - in F (L. Stead/W. Kirkpatrick, Public Domain, CCLI #22609). We did this one following an opening exhortation from Trey Allemang. Trey read from Rev. 1, encouraging us to think about who Jesus is before we entered into worship, remembering who we're worshiping and why we're worshiping him. It was really helpful, and people's 'worship engines' were revving as Trey finished. We began to just lift up praise and worship to the Lord before launching into Tis So Sweet. We started 'hymn-style', then kicked it up a little bit style-wise.

3. You, You Are God  -  in Bb (Walker Beach, Gateway, CCLI# 4389918). We modulated to C at the end of this high-energy praise song, which set us up to go into the next song. Jon keep the kick going as we finished this one, and went into...

4. Happy Day  -  in C (B. Cantelon, T. Hughes, ThankYou Music, CCLI #4847027). I just can't get enough of this song. We were missing our electric guitar player, who got snowed into his driveway, but it still went great.

5. Here In Your Presence  - in C (Jon Egan, Vertical Worship, CCLI #4882707).

Danny Dunn shared a brief message (but a good one!). Tom Bedford talked to us last week about living lives set apart to God. This morning, Danny talked about being set apart by sonship. When we're saved, we become sons of God, and that's what sets us apart to Him, not our hard work, good intentions, etc. It was a good word, thanks Danny.

I hope you had a good day in the Lord where you are as well. You can read about what happened all over the place in worship at Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist worship blog at theworshipcommunity.com. Have a great week!

Sunday Setlist - 02/14/2010

Interesting Valentine's Day at Life Church. Rebecca Charles led worship this morning, and had a great list ready to go. We practiced every song in rehearsal but one - and that wound up being the only song we did this morning. So here's our setlist for today...

Irresistible  -  in G (Darlene Zschech, Hillsongs, CCLI #3375710).

This was intended to be our "walk-in" song, and we didn't practice it in rehearsal. Sometimes we do that with a song we're at least somewhat familiar with, because people aren't paying that much attention when we start playing it, and so we have a bit of opportunity to refresh ourselves as we go (great plan, huh? Hey, it works!).

But today, as our pastor Tom Bedford came to exhort us to worship at the beginning of the meeting, we just kind of got caught in one of those 'spiritual updrafts' that carry you into the presence of God - or releases His presence to us - or causes us to become aware of His presence - theologically, it's one or more of the afore-mentioned, but I can't honestly say I know which. At any rate, we found ourselves past the 'warm-up', past the 'enter-His-gates-with-praise' songs and the  'transition-from-fast-to-slow-by-slowing-down-the-last-chorus-of-the-last-fast-song' spot, and there we were in the presence of the Lord. There's no going back, songwise, at that point, and we wouldn't want to.

We worshiped with this song and free songs of worship for around 45 minutes. Rebecca sang a prophetic song about being bought by the Lord, we are His, He is ours - she sang it first to the Lord personally, then boiled it down to a two-phrase chorus that she led us in, as we all sang it together in worship. Awesome.

Tom preached basically just from his heart about being set apart to God, separated from the lives we lived without Him, separated to the life of holiness and blessing He's designed us to live in for His glory. Some of the couples who went on this weekend's marriage retreat came up and spoke about the impact of the weekend on them, and related it to what Tom was talking about, in terms of living separated, on holy ground, in our marriages as well as in every area of life.

If you're from Life Church, please leave a comment about what you feel like God's been doing among us lately. If you're from elsewhere, feel free to leave a comment as well, and I hope you had a great day in the presence of God also.

Read about what happened in worship all over the place at Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog at theworshipcommunity.com.  God bless, and have a great week! 

Sunday Setlist - 02/07/2010

We try to be led by the Spirit of God in every corporate gathering (hey, hopefully in all of life as well!), and today was no exception. Ruth Pingel led worship, and Danny Dunn was scheduled to preach, but didn't get the opportunity, as we never made it that far.

Here's the songlist we moved through in worship this morning:

1. Bless Your Name  - in D (by our own Ruth Pingel). This is a great 'opening' song to help us make the initial corporate decision of faith to come to the presence of God, and we started with it today, following an exhortation to come to God in worship by Trey Allemang, who was one of the guys leading the meeting this morning.

2. Happy Day - in G (B. Cantelon, T. Hughes, ThankYou Music, CCLI# 4847027). Always a tune that helps us lift up praise, this one went great today.

3. Glory  - in E (Reuben Morgan, Hillsongs, CCLI# 3744592). Great song, and today, this was our jumping off point, where we moved into a spiritual place where we knew we couldn't just go ahead and do another song. We waited on God and ministered to Him for...I really don't know, but somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, maybe longer.

There were a few prophetic songs, and a couple of exhortations, but we mostly just ministered to the Lord. His presence came and overshadowed us, as we waited for Him to do whatever He wanted to.Then, after 10 or 15 minutes of just being still, pastor Tom Bedford came and gently exhorted us to keep worshiping, and we went to the next song (which we had really hoped we'd be able to get to!)...

4. A Mighty Fortress  - in C (Nathan & Christy Nockels, EMI Christian Music Publishing, CCLI# 5488935). This was our first time doing this song, which we've all listened to a lot and have really liked. Interestingly, some of the scriptures read in prophetic exhortations before we did this song had to do with God being a refuge, a fortress, etc. So when we got to this one, it really gave expression to what it seemed God was revealing of Himself to us.

Bethany Shipman was on keys today, and did a beautiful job with A Mighty Fortress. I was on acoustic guitar, and capo'ed on the 3rd fret, playing this one in A to give a higher voicing, after a suggestion from Jon Shipman, our drummer this morning.

Ruth did an awesome job of leading this song (as well as the others), and it really took us further into the glory of God. Doug Davenport came and read this passage to us from Psalm 65, after which a spontaneous shout to God erupted:

"Praise is awaiting You, O God, in Zion; and to You the vow shall be performed, O You who hear prayer, to You all flesh will come. Iniquities prevail against me; as for our transgressions, You will provide atonement for them. Blessed is the man whom You choose, and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your courts, We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, of Your holy temple." [Ps. 65:1-3 NKJV]

It was awesome, waves of shouting and declaring the greatness of God kept coming and coming.

You know, I have to take a minute to brag on our team today - 3 of our musicians worked the night shift on their jobs, then came and played for over four hours straight with great energy and anointing (so did everybody who got a full night's sleep, by the way).

Hopefully, we'll hear from Danny next week, I know he has a great message on being contributors in the Kingdom, carrying on from where Tom left off last week. But I think we got where we needed to go this morning. I hope you had a good morning in the Lord as well. You can read about what happened in worship all over the place on Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog at theworshipcommunity.com.

Sunday Setlist 01/31/2010

Veeve Holtz and our new gospel worship group did a fantastic job of leading us into the presence of God this morning at Life Church. What a great day, as we broke through into what really felt like a fresh outpouring of the Spirit of God. New sacrifice and offering, new glory. God is good!

Veeve led Larry, Tim, Charmayne, Omose, Briana, and Mallory as singers, with Jeff on drums, D'Markus on bass, and CJ on keys, as we took our first journey with this team into corporate worship with gospel music. I think these guys did a great job of making these songs accessible to us, so we were very easily able to participate and worship, rather than feeling like we were at a concert. God's helping us get out of our box, and we'll be incorporating this team into our regular schedule once a month or so.  

Here are the songs we did this morning:

1. Is There Anybody Here (Deitrick Haddon version)

2. Come Bless The Lord With Me (Darwin Hobbs version?)

3. Here I Am To Worship (Tim Hughes, ThankYou Music, CCLI #3266032, Israel Houghton version-ish).

4. Release Your Power (T.D. Jakes). We stayed on this one for a long time, as the request for God to bring his presence and release His power became a real heartfelt prayer, and then it became a prayer He was answering. We lingered in His presence and received His power for what He's calling us to do as individuals and as a church. It was awesome!

Tom Bedford brought us a word today, titled "The Cost of the Culture," about bringing the culture of the Kingdom by paying the prices required in our lives - holiness, loss of things if necessary, doing without certain things and experiences - all with the understanding that God paid the first and highest price to establish the church and bring His Kingdom from heaven to earth by giving His Son Jesus.

We all came to the altar at the end of the meeting to commit ourselves again to the Lord, and went back into "Release Your Power" as a song of consecrating ourselves to Him.

This morning's worship team came over to our house for lunch, and Lori, Evan, and I had a ball hosting them.

If you're from Life Church, what did you think of our worship time? If you're from somewhere else, hope you had a great day in the Lord. Read about what happened in worship all over the place at Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog carnival at theworshipcommunity.com. Have a great week!

Sunday Setlist - 1/24/2010

Over the past few months, we've been trying some different team configurations in worship on Sunday mornings, to break us out of the "same ol', same ol' " routine. Today, instead of a full band and singer team, Ruth Pingel lead from the keyboard, with Jon Shipman and I playing acoustic guitars and singing. We did this several weeks ago, and it went well, so we put it on the schedule again for this month. Jon and I try to play different voicings on the guitars to help fill out. We were going to add some hand percussion today, which didn't happen, but overall things went well.

Tony Fajkus lead the meeting today, with Trey Allemang and David Bost. He opened by calling everyone together to have them go back to fellowshiping for the first 10 minutes - really gave us a family feel to start things off with, and an opportunity to say hello to new folks right at the outset.

Here are the songs we did today:

1. We Worship You  -  in E  (Ruth Pingel) This is a great worship chorus Ruth wrote a couple of years ago, that I don't remember if I'd heard before or not. It helped us transition back from fellowship with each other to fellowship with the Lord.

2. Let My Soul Cry Out  -  in E  (Charity Long) This one's by our friend Charity in at Christ's Family Church in Omaha. It's a great upbeat tune, and got things going.

3. Today Is The Day  -  in Bb (L. Brewster/P. Baloche, Integrity's Praise, CCLI #5200924). Always a favorite of ours, this one worked well today, and it was fun doing it with just the three of us.

4. My Jesus, I Love Thee  - in E (William Featherston, Public Domain, CCLI #27817). Ruth started this beautiful hymn out solo, and Jon and I joined in with guitars and harmonies, including an instrumental verse after verse 3 that made space for worshipful reflection. I'm not always big on instrumentals in corporate worship, because sometimes it puts people in 'concert mode,' where they're watching us worship. But this was well-placed today, and I think was an effective tool to help people open their hearts and express their love to the Lord. We came back in vocally on the last line to finish the verse, and sang the 4th verse before flowing into...

5. I Could Sing of Your Love  - in E (Martin Smith, EMI Publishing, CCLI #1043199). We just sang the chorus of this one, interspersed with free worship. We went from this right into the bridge of...

6. One Thing  -  in E  (M. Sampson/D. Zschech, Hillsong Publishing, CCLI #4869957). After singing of our love for Jesus, and then His love for us, the bridge of this one, "I will seek your face, call upon your name, Jesus, all I want is you, Jesus" was powerful. We had a couple of exhortations in the middle of this one, about how God was opening the door for us to come to Him, and then sang the chorus - "Lord your name is higher than the heavens," etc., before closing the worship time.

A few people shared about the after-school outreach that they're starting this week. It's really great to hear what's on people's hearts about loving our community. Then my friend and fellow worship leader Paul Shipman brought us a great word titled, "Preserving Love - the Vehicle of God's Purpose." After last Sunday's message from Dave Richard about God opening doors to us, this was a timely encouragement for us to really devote ourselves to the Lord, to know Him, know His word, and to obey His commands so He can have His way in us and through us. Paul was very passionate and personal in sharing his heart and the word of God with us.

I'm excited about next Sunday, when Veeve Holtz is going to be leading us in worship along with a gospel music team she's been working with, which includes some singers from a gospel choir at Truman State she's worked with that we've begun to get to know. I'm expecting it will be an awesome time, and I'll let you know how it goes!

Hope you had a great day with the Lord and His people. Read about what went on all over the place in worship at Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog carnival on theworshipcarnival.com. 

Sunday Setlist - 1/17/2010

It was good to be at home today at Life Church. Jon Shipman led worship, and did a great job. Jon played acoustic guitar and had a full team, including five singers, plus Jeff on drums, Lary on electric guitar, D'Markus on bass, Bob on sax, Bethany on keys, Kathy on flute.  

 

We had the apostolic team and friends in Kirksville this week, meeting with us and our leaders. Dave Richards from UK, Buck Hudson from Sweden, Frank and Betina Anker-Wiik from Copenhagen - with a group from the house they all live in there - and a pastor from southern Denmark were with us this week. Doug and Denise Kreighbaum from Pittsburg, KS, joined them late in the week. We had a great time with these guys in a worship and prayer meeting Wednesday night with the whole church, and in a home group leaders meeting Saturday evening.

 

There was a real prophetic sense in worship today, and Jon and the team led us in the following songs:

 

1. For Who You Are – in E (Marty Sampson, HIllsongs, CCLI #4591799).

 

2. Liberated – in G (from our own Matt Shipman). This is a great upbeat tune Matt wrote a couple of years ago that lets us declare the freedom we have by the blood of Jesus.

 

3. Sing to the King – in E (Billy Foote, EMI Christian Music, CCLI #4010902).

 

4. I Worship You – in Bb (Esther Filip, Maranatha! Music, CCLI #5087594). This was a new one to me, and it was really powerful, coming after we'd spent some time in free worship, and had a couple of prophetic words.

 

Before singing I Worship You, Abigail, a 7-yr-old girl, brought us a prophetic picture that the Lord was reaching down from heaven and picking us up, lifting us up into heaven. Buck Hudson then brought a prophetic word he's had for us this week that brought application to Abigail's picture. It was from Jer. 38, where Jeremiah was put down in a pit because he was prophesying the word of the Lord that people didn't want to hear. Then he was lifted out, brought before the king, who wanted to hear what he had to say. Buck felt the Lord saying that's what's happening to our church, as God's bringing us out of obscurity in our region and in the nations. To fulfill the call of God, we must be lifted up by the Lord's hands, and not our own. We were invited to the altar to respond to the Lord.

 

Dave Richards preached this morning, about open doors, from Rev. 3:7-8, where God opens doors no one can shut.  He said we have the key of David - worship, government, warriors. David knew different anointings for different seasons. Doors open when we're keepers of His word, and we're patient endurers, like the Philadelphia church. God sets it before us, and we must 'behold and see' it.

 

Doors speak of opportunities in life, work, business, ministry. When God opens a door, 1) it's always in the proper season, 2) He connects you to 'destiny carriers'  who can help you open the door, to help you on your journey. Paul had Ananias and Barnabas, Ruth had Naomi, Jesus had John the Baptist, 3) I Cor. 16:8-9, open doors can be walked through even in the face of adversaries.

 

The altar call centered around these questions - can you see your open door, as a church, as individuals? How many are waiting for us to see and walk thru the doors God's opening for us?

 

I noticed that Jon's list had 3 other songs they didn't get to. It's always good to be prepared, right? Hope you had a great day at your place today. Take a look at what happened in worship today all over the place at Fred McKinnon's worship blog carnival on theworshipcommunity.com.

Sunday Setlist - 1/10/2010

My wife, Lori, and I were in Omaha this weekend for the Interchange conference, along with 30-35 others from our church.I will have a post up on the Travelogue tab about that shortly - awesome time with 150-200 folks from all over the place, including Brits, Swedes, and Danes, focused on the 18-35 age group sharing their lives in God together. Incredible (yes, we're way older - we just tagged along!).

Paul Shipman led worship at home, at Life Church in Kirksville, MO, this Sunday. Here's the list of songs he did with the worship team:

1. Arise Shine   (Harold Forbis, OneVoiceWorship.Org, CCLI #3451658)

2. Blessed Be Your Name (Matt Redman, CCLI #3798438)

3. How Great Is Our God (Chris Tomlin, CCLI #4348399)

4. I Will Worship You (Matthew Ward, CCLI #3480320)

5. Breathe (Marie Barnett, CCLI #1874117)

6. Great Is The Lord (Steve McEwan, CCLI #10769)

I hear worship was great, and Roger Moore brought a word about living our lives making right choices, based on having heard from God.

I hope you had a great weekend at your church as well. You can read about what happened all over the place at Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog carnival at theworshipcommunity.com.

Sunday Setlist - January 3, 2010

Happy New Year everyone! We had a great kickoff for the new year this morning at Life Church in Kirksville, MO. We had a few people out traveling today - some still on family holidays, others in Raleigh NC, with European and U.S. apostolic team folks for an eldership ordination at Christian Life Fellowship.

We've been in a place as a church in the last several weeks where we've really felt the Lord drawing us to Himself, with the realization that He's wanting to envision and empower us to serve Him in ways that only come from a deeper life of fellowship with Him. This didn't dissipate over the holidays, and we came together this morning with the same expectation and sense of being drawn to Him.

I mentioned something to the guys who were leading today, that they had me share to open the meeting. I was reading in Exodus 24 where God calls Moses up the mountain to meet with him. Aaron and his sons and the 70 leaders of Israel couldn't come all the way up with Moses to the presence of God, they had to "worship from a distance." And the rest of the people couldn't come onto the mountain at all - only stand at the base and see the fearsome presence of God descend on it in a cloud. This made me think about Heb. 12 in reference to that situation, where the writer says we haven't come to a physical mountain like they did, but to Mount Zion, the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to God Himself. How blessed we are to have the privilege of coming directly to the Lord Himself, rather than being warned to stay away, all because of the blood of Jesus which atoned once for all for our sins, adopted as children of God. Praise God! And we did.

As a worship team, we are having a lot of logistical trouble right now for some reason - making the schedule out for this month (thanks Ruth!) was very difficult, our sound board is falling apart, etc. This morning was no exception as the person scheduled to lead hurt her back yesterday, one of the scheduled singers e-mailed me at 1:00 in the morning to say he was throwing up, and another singer scheduled for today just didn't make it. But it really felt like we had everyone we needed, and we had a great time ascending the mountain together. Here are the songs we did this morning:

You Deserve It  -  in B (by our own Bethany Shipman). I love this song! It got us up and moving, and we went right across to the chorus of ...

You, You Are God  -  in B (Walker Beach, Gateway Publishing, CCLI #4389918). Awesome song, keyed in on the last phrase "I want my life to praise you."

All Of My Life  -  in F, G (Harold Forbis, OneVoiceWorship.Org, CCLI #5611458). This is a song I wrote a couple of years ago that's on the To Carry the Glory CD I just released. It's pretty simple, with a message of walking with the Lord, to become like the Lord, to be able to live for the Lord, with a bridge that prays "consume me". We modulated from F to G in the middle, then went straight across to the chorus of...

The Potter's Hand  -  in G (Darlene Zschech, Hillsong Publishing, CCLI# 2449771). This became a real song of consecration for us, and we went back to it at the end for an altar call, asking God to come fill us so he can use us to live real lives of worship, filled with His presence, His power, and His purpose, enabled to reflect His light in our world.

Tony Fajkus brought us an excellent word about how the expansion of God's Kingdom comes through discipleship. He talked about how we are to become disciples and to make disciples, making three main points from the book of Acts: 1. Disciples are about the business of seeing lives changes, 2) Disciples are about changing cities, and 3) Disciples are about transforming culture.

We heard an announcement about one particular outreach opportunity that D'Markus Thomas is heading up - an afterschool program, which is a great chance to reach into our city with the love of Christ. And, again, we ended with an altar of consecration.

Hope you had a great day in the house of God as well. Read about what took place in churches all over the place at Fred McKinnon's Sunday Setlist blog carnival. God bless, have a great 2010!