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I was helping out with vocals on Sunday morning and they sang two songs from the Mighty To Save album - “You Alone Are God” and “From The Inside Out”.  I think they are really fantastic songs.

“For Who You Are” is another excellent song off the album that we’ve been singing for a while.

This is an experiment!  I quickly made a video of the song with an inset of the chords for those wanting to learn it.  Apologies for the video/sound quality.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/x92oHGvyAOA]

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/v/x92oHGvyAOA

I Surrender All
Matt Hooper

Verse 1:
Je - sus Earth cannot hold the beauty of Your splendour
Fa - ther Heaven cannot contain Your majesty

Pre Ch 1:
I will trade the best of me
For all You are I’m falling into You

Chorus:
I surrender all
I surrender all I am
To the Saviour who surrendered all (for me)

Verse 2:
Saviour gave up a crown of Heaven for a crown of thorns
Always Yours is the crown of life I’m living for

Pre Ch 2:
Everyday I breathe You in
The sweetness of Your love is all I need

Bridge:
For all You are and for
All I can become
Jesus, I’m laying down my life

Copyright © 2005 Matt Hooper / Abundant Life Music / Wapping Road, Bradford, BD3 0EQ, England

This morning I lead worship in our church. I prepared the song list earlier in the week and at the time was very happy with the songs that I had chosen.

However, practice started at 0930 this morning and was a little rougher than usual. One particular song that I like sounded complete pants. Why had I chosen this song? I wasn’t even sure I wanted to sing it anymore.

After the practice we had a time to pray for a short time.

The service started, a little later than the advertised 11am. The pastor opened in prayer and handed over to the band. We started with “Knocking on the door of heaven”, followed by “Glory”, then “Grace like rain”, followed by “I surrender all”… this is the song that sounded pants during practice, and it still didn’t sound much better 2nd time round.

I quickly moved on to “Thank You for the cross Lord”. During this song, I could see people moving around the front. I knew someone wanted to share something. They did and it really opened up the worship.

More people got up and shared, indicating how the songs that we played had spoke to them. To my surprise “I surrender all” actually managed to touch people, regardless of how we performed it.

God can move in any situation. We just need to be willing and give our best. I’m glad I didn’t drop the song from the set. I’m blessed that God used the song to speak to people at the service. This is what it is all about.

I’ve just finished putting together a set for this Sunday’s service. I’m not usually this organised, but this weekend my kids are off school and we have planned things to do. Normally I would spend a good few hours on the Saturday going through all the songs I have, one by one, picking out ones that I “feel” will fit.

I try to pick the musicians by the middle of the week and get confirmations back that they are able to play. I contacted everyone yesterday (usually four people) and I’m still waiting on two confirmations. I put a rota together recently but it only had the worship leaders on it, not band members. It would make things a little easier if I had everyone on the rota.

I guess I should phone whoever is taking the meeting to find out the service theme, but I rarely do. I try to end up with 6-8 songs. The songs will be ordered by speed and grouped (if possible) by key. I know this is no sure-fire recipe, but this is how it normally goes.

I like to group songs by key so that I can go from one song to the next seamlessly. Sometimes I would do every song in the same key, transposing where necessary.

After I have the songs chosen I need to make sure I have enough sheets for all the musicians that will be playing. Every week involves printing out new sheets as they seem to keep disappearing. My folder never seems to stay in alphabetical order for longer than a week.

Then there is the matter of the mind. I don’t lead worship every week, but when I do have to lead I am more protective over my mind. I am more careful of what I watch on television for example. I thought I was only worship leader who did this, but a friend of mine who leads worship mentioned he did the same thing.

Let’s not forget about the nerves either. I used to get really nervous to the point where it nearly ruined each weekend (for my family) when I was playing. I have improved much in this area over the years and only occasionally get really nervous like that.

How does this compare to your preparations?

One way to keep things fresh is to write your own songs. It’s an area I’d like to work on so I found this post at Tim Hughes’ blog very helpful.

Avoiding Writers Block

Why is that some churches will only sing songs that they have authored in-house and nothing else? This is a rant I don’t have time to write at this time!

Coming Soon: A new worship resource site from Chris Tomlin.

http://www.worshipfrequency.com

A constant worry for worship leaders is over-singing a song. It’s a dangerous thing to do. You risk ruining the song forever. Attempts to revive the song some time in the future will be in vain. Look at songs such as “Come, Now is the Time”, or “Lord I Lift Your Name on High”, or “My Jesus, My Saviour”, etc. The list goes on and on.

This seems to be in stark contrast to secular artists. They can go on tour for years playing the same set of songs over and over and people love it! A worship leader feels the need to keep things fresh by introducing new songs frequently into the worship set.

I think that the reason for this (in part) is that our style of worship is always evolving (why?). Look at how song style is completely different today from 10 years ago. How many songs, apart from hymns do you still sing from way-way back?

Not only has the style of song changed, but I think even the content in some way. This is difficult for me to describe but I seem to remember songs being more intimate, personal and deep.

I remember one time (long time ago) I had attempted an old song revival and someone came up to be afterwards to tell me that they felt they could not sing the song. It was too personal and made them feel exposed. I forget what the song was now. I think this type of response is totally fine. Hopefully they left that day thinking, “Why do I find those words hard to sing?”, “What am I going to do about it?”

I think a lot of today’s songs lack some depth. They seem to step back a bit and use words that anyone could sing without knowing Christ intimately. Maybe it’s because there is simply more worship song writers (and songs) now than ever. I don’t want to come across cynical here, but the christian music industry is big business. Perhaps depth is being sacrificed a little to get cds on shelves faster?

I’m not saying we get into the attic and blow the dust off our old worship books. No way! I like the choice we have now. I like the style and how it is evolving. When I’m selecting new music, the words play an important part for me. The melody also needs to be singable. If it’s difficult for the band to play, will the congregation be able to follow it?

Raking my brain for those old songs reminded me of when we used to sing “I love you with the love of the Lord” and the pastor (always) suggested we look around at each other in the room as were singing. This song made me cringe so much as a kid as I tried not to make eye contact with any girls!

Before writing this post I came across another blog discussing the Top 5 Worst Worship songs. It’s an amusing read, perhaps a little harsh on some of the songs but it’s food for thought.

So, do songs go stale? Yes they do. Do we need to keep evolving? Yes we do.

(Should we get stressed about it? No.)

We recently welcomed a new worship leader to our team. Just before his second outing, we were talking and he mentioned that his stomach was churning and that he was really nervous. I have been leading worship now for around 12 years and I remember that feeling well. In fact it was only the week before that I was feeling the same way!

Yes, I still get nervous, sometimes even to the point I feel ill. Is it wrong to get nervous? What happens when we become too comfortable in our role as worship leaders? What happens when we start to ooze confidence on stage? Is there a danger of it becoming a performance?

We should be relying on God to use us when we lead worship. If we get up to lead worship and appear visibly nervous, how does that affect the congregation? Also, if we are unable to relax in God’s presence, how does that affect our worship?

Even though I might be nervous beforehand, once the service starts I’m able to relax and be open to what God wants. I feel myself developing more in this area over the last year or so, and I’m excited about where it will go.

A few of you may have noticed the return of Jack in 24 for the sixth series. For those unfamiliar with the series, it covers 24 nail biting hours over 24 episodes. Each episode details 60 minutes of Jack’s attempts to save the world.

The format of this series is a relatively new concept and still quite exclusive to 24. However, other programmes and movies do not use this format, but still enjoy similar success.

Ok, the introduction is slightly misleading, but what is currently going through my head is the whole idea of 24 hour worship services. Does God prefer this format over normal worship services? Does your church host 24 hour worship marathons?

I know someone who watched a whole series of 24 on DVD in one sitting!

Can the momentum be kept throughout the small hours, even with different bands participating? Does it make a difference how many worshippers turn up to join in? Should it make a difference?

What is the point of 24 hour worship? Don’t get me wrong, God deserves all the worship we can give and we should be aiming to live worshipful lives 24×7. Does this mean we should be singing all the time (there are churches that run 24×7 worship services)?

Anyway, some thoughts on this would be great.