Message Series: Questions & Answers: Questions & Doubts We Encounter

Song / Version / Key / Leader
“Alive” – Hillsong Young & Free – Key of G – Female 1 Lead
“This is Amazing Grace” – Phil Wickham – Key of A – Male 1 Lead
“Heaven and Earth” – Hillsong – Key of A – Female 1 Lead
“This I Believe The Creed” – Hillsong – Key of E – Female 1 Lead
“This Is Living” – Hillsong Young & Free – Key of G – Female 1 Lead (End Celebration Song)

For our One Year Celebration service we really tried to raise the bar and challenge our team. All songs selected for this service we played with a Multitrack and we had never done this before. However, because of this, transitions were extremely simple. We just let each song ring out until the next track began, which made things pretty seamless.

For our “response” song, instead of ending with something more reflective moment, our team wanted to end with celebrating and thanking God for all He has done in, at and through our church over this past year. So, we chose to introduce “This Is Living” at the end. In order to facilitate this moment, we included our young adults & kids as well. In addition to having one of our young adults do the rap section in “This Is Living,” we had one cue for kids and one cue for young adults where they shot off confetti canons. The kids shot theirs off during the first “this is living now,” while the young adults shot theirs off at the “this is living now” immediately coming out of the conclusion of the rap section. Along with confetti, we also had translucent Connect blue colored beach balls the congregation tossed around.

Even though the transitions and service elements all went smoothly and was exactly what we had envisioned, not everything went completely as planned. Our original opener was as listed above, “Alive”. However, when our drummer went to go cue the track, it skipped to the second track, “This is Amazing Grace”. When the team heard the different count off, our drummer and musical director were able to walk them through the mix-up and no error was made in the execution. Because of this sudden change, we ended up playing “Alive” after the welcome as our second song, which still worked great. On the bright side, this gave us an opportunity to show in real time the values we’ve been teaching and modeling for the past year, excellence and flexibility.  Moments like these make you realize as a leader how grateful you are for the people that lead with you from week-to-week.