SUNDAY SETLIST 12/27/09

The Sunday after Christmas. Is there a weirder time to go to church?

Sunday was actually good...and good for me!

I got back into Tyler around 6:30 Saturday night. I had planned to go up and get church stuff ready, but opted instead for sleep. Yes...I went to bed instead of going to the church in the cold hours of early morning. Aren't you proud of me?

Our team was smaller this Sunday, but it worked.

We had drums, bass, 1 electric, piano, 1 co-leader and me on guitar and vocals. Here's what we played:

MEET WITH ME
The Bethel team can rock this one in their sleep! I love the melody of this tune and the lyrics make it a great opener. I could definitely "hear" the absent organ and 2nd electric that we're used to, but the band did a great job.

A THOUSAND GENERATIONS
If any song suffered from lack of musicians, it was this one. The song went fine, but it really requires a lot of instrumentation. Because it's light on riffs and fills, the song really lives or dies because of groove. Missing that electric, organ and percussion probably robbed the song of some energy. However, it's a great lyric and something we need to be singing. So we did!

JOYFUL, JOYFUL, WE ADORE THEE
This song is a mixed bag for me. Here's why: I really dig the Charlie Hall version (minus the chorus he wrote,) so it was fun to try his chord progression. However, losing the chorus forces a whole new arrangement and shortens the song. I would have liked to stretch the song some, but short of adding new lyrics, there wasn't a lot we could do. I think folks enjoyed singing it, but it fell a little flat for me personally. The band did a fantastic job on the arrangement we had. Charles specifically did some great electric work on it. It didn't require much, but he played it just right.

YOU ALONE CAN SATISFY
This one went like it always does...awesome. This is a song folks love to sing. It's easy to play and wide-open to dynamic creativity.

I AM YOURS
This is actually "Take My Life and Let It Be" as arranged by the very talented Michael Neale. It has a great piano intro but it's a very long song and I wasn't sure how much we'd do. I told our pianist, Andrew, not to sweat it. We started with acoustic and gradually built in. We shorted it by cutting the last double-chorus and tags. In the end, that was a good cool. From my vantage point, the song ended just right.

Mark Kuykendall, our youth pastor, preached he did a fantastic job. I am so humbled by the preaching/teaching talent in our church.

I'm looking forward to doing it all again next week!