01: Lead Me To The Cross [Brooke Fraser - 00:00]
02: Unfailing Love [Brian Wahl - 04:15]
03: How He Loves [John Mark McMillan - 08:17]
The YouTube Worship Sessions are a series of live worship sets and free downloads. I’ll be uploading more regularly, so check back often!
In this video I talk a bit about the my songwriting process, and I highlight two brand new songs that I’m in the middle of writing. Both songs are more simple ideas – they’ll both need a bit more work before they’re complete.
This one is based on Psalm 131, which is a Psalm about humility.
Lyrics:
My heart is now proud
My eyes do not serve themselves
My heart is not proud
I will quiet myself
My hope is in the Lord
Both now and forevermore
This song is about how God chooses to work through sinful and destructive people to bring restoration and hope to the world
Lyrics:
My soul is a garden of thorns
But there is beauty struggling through
My heart is a shadow of love
Behind the darkness is beauty shining through
This is my redemption song
What is broken is building a kingdom of love
This is my redemption song
From this dried up ground is growing a garden of love
This is the second week where I’ve done two totally different setups for Evergreen and River Oaks. I lead worship for two separate churches that meet in the same building. In the past, we’ve had the same band lead both services, but recently we’ve decided to go different directions for each church. Here’s how we did it this week:
Full band (drums, bass, acoustic, electric, vocals)
Links will take you to YouTube videos I’ve made of these songs. You can get charts and tutorials for most of these songs at Worship Tutorials.
We had a shorter message this week, so we did a few more songs than usual.
I did this service solo, but I did use backing loops. For two of the songs I had full backing tracks that I pre-recorded myself (one was a song from my latest album). This was the first time I used full backing loops in a live setting, and it went very well. I was able to stay right in with the click track, which was something I was worried about, especially when talking during a song (calling out the next line, etc). I think I’ll do a video or something and talk about the gear I’m using to use loops and tracks in a live setting soon.
I had planned one more song at the end after the message, but we ran out of time so we cut it.
It was a great morning, especially when you do something brand new and it works, ha!
Jeremiah 29:11 is a pretty famous verse. I’m guessing that many of you know it – or at least you may know the first few words:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
What most people don’t know is the context in which these words were written. The heading for chapter 29 reads “A letter to the exiles”. God’s people, the nation of Israel, had been exiled to Babylon. They were far away from home, and most of them were feeling pretty hopeless. God instructs the prophet Jeremiah to write a letter to His chosen people. God starts off by saying “settle down, have kids, get comfortable, seek peace”. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear when all you want to do is go home.
God continues by saying that they are going to be there for a while – 70 more years. I’m 32 years old. If I was told it would be another 70 years before I got to go home, I’d give up. For most of the people of Israel, this news meant they were going to die in Babylon. But God isn’t finished, He goes on…
Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
These are my favorite verses in this famous passage. No matter where we are, God is with us. He will never let us go. In fact, when things feel utterly hopeless, God still has big, huge, awesome plans for us. And one day, He will bring us home. We will go to live with Him forever. Amen.
This is not your home
I have a plan for you, a plan for you
So don’t lose hope
I have a plan for you, a plan for you
In these dark days you’ll find me
When you call my name you’ll find me
When you seek my face you’ll find me
I have a plan for you
I will be good to you
I am the Lord, your God
And I will not ever let you go
I’ll bring you home
I’ll bring you home
So don’t lose hope
I’ll bring you home
“I Have A Plan For You” is available on the album Unfailing Love, which can be purchased at BandCamp or iTunes.
This past Friday night we officially released the new album and put on benefit concert for Lemonade International, a local charity here in Raleigh. We invited all our friends and gave anybody who donated to LI a free copy of the new album. I’m pretty excited to share that we helped raise $1491 in total. What a great night!
Here are some photos:
For our final performance on our Georgia weekend tour, we had the privilege of leading worship at Calvary Chapel McDonough in Stockbrige, GA. Dillon, our bass player, used to lead worship here before moving to NC.
This was a communion service, and during communion I sang one of my originals acoustic – I Will Send My Son.
My new album “Unfailing Love” released a few weeks ago, and I’m finally geting around to posting a video with a few announcement about it. You can read more about the album (including the 22-page digital booklet) by visiting the album page.
The new packaged deal that I’d like to share is that you can buy both Unfailing Love and You Have Rescued Me for $15 (CD format only).
Continuing our Georgia weekend tour, as soon as we finished up our set at the Statesboro Festival, we packed up and headed toward Atlanta. Statesboro is about 3 hours from Locust Grove, and we had about 4 hours until we needed to be at the church to sound check. We booked this one tight.
After we checked into our hotel, we went to the church. What an awesome place – SouthPoint has such a cool vibe. Rather than talk about it, it’ll be easier just to show you a bunch of photos, so here you go…
We played this show along with Marvin Mumford – you can see him in the photos above. The young man you see playing drums with him is his son, Marvin Mumford Jr. They both killed it. Well done, Marvin and Marvin! Mumford and Mumford? Mumford and Son?
We left Raleigh with much anticipation. This was our first road trip as a band. We were headed to Statesboro, GA to play in the first annual Statesboro Music Festival. Our first stop was in Savannah for dinner. Beautiful city. We ate at the Mellow Mushroom. My wife was disappointed because, you know, you can eat at the Mellow Mushroom just about anywhere. Maybe we should have gone to Paula Deen’s place. She likes butter. So do I.
We pulled into Statesboro around 8:00p or so. Things did not look good. Lots of rain, and lots of lightning. We stopped by the fairgrounds to see who was playing on the Friday night slot, but everything was pretty much shut down. On to the hotel. We watched Spinal Tap. You know, gotta prepare.
Our slot to play was Saturday around noon. We showed up at the festival around 10a, and it was wet – really wet. The rain started coming down slowly around 11:30, so we were moved into a barn area. We played our show, and it was fun. Unfortunately, because of the miserable weather, the crowds were a little smaller than we hoped.
I’ll say this – the people in Statesboro would have had a pretty awesome festival if the weather had cooperated. There were two really big outdoor stages, tons of games, vendors, etc. We felt terrible that the rain killed a lot of the buzz. We still had a great time, and the people we met were all great.
We didn’t get any photos of our actual performance, but here are some from the road:
At this point, we figured we would be done. Initially, we had a 45 minute slot. But, because of all the craziness going on, we were told we had another 20 minutes or so, so I went into a solo acoustic set:
And we finished up with a few songs with the full band:
We are headed out to Georgia this weekend for a mini tour. It’s going to be fun, and we’re going to do our best to rock as hard as possible. We’d love it if you’d join us!
If you live in the Statesboro or Atlanta area, you are in for a treat! Here are the details:
We’re playing at the Statesboro Music Festival in Statesboro, GA. We’re going on right around noon on the main state. Visit the link to buy tickets. Visit the Facebook event page for more details.
Saturday evening we’re playing at $1 Coffeehouse at SouthPoint Fellowship Church. Free show // Facebook event page (more details). We’re playing this show with Marvin Mumford, which is pretty awesome!
Sunday morning we’ll be leading worship at Calvary Chapel McDonough, and we’d love to worship with you if you’ll be in the area.
I’ll do my best to take lots of photos and videos, so be sure to connect with me on Twitter and Facebook to get all the updates.
Visit the Gigs page for more details on all these shows.
Cilantro Crema Grilled Chicken - Bahama Breeze. http://t.co/QSmid1DI
Thinking of selling my current camera rig and getting something that's better for video. Any Panasonic G3 users out there? #fb
Huevos Rancheros at Foster's Market in Durham. http://t.co/dtCPloyW
