Message Series: “Hope Has Come”

Song / Version / Key / Leader
“Joy To The World (Unspeakable Joy)” – Chris Tomlin – Key of D – Male 1 Lead
“Here For You” – Chris Tomlin – Key of E – Female 1 Lead
“Love Came Down” – Kari Jobe – Key of G – Female 2 Lead
“When Hope Came Down” – Kari Jobe – Key of F – Female 1 Lead (Special)

For our Connect Christmas service, we opened with “Joy to the World (Unspeakable Joy). Even though this is not a newly released song (2009), it does a great job of keeping the foundational Christmas song (Joy to the World) there and simply building upon it by adding an uptempo, singable addition with the newly written chorus; great for a congregation. We used a Multitrack  for this song to beef it up a little and not lose the full sound it requires with the driving electric guitars and sleigh bells.

We then transitioned via Ableton pad to the key of E for “Here For You,” and vamped on the steady intro as Pastor Devin welcomed everyone. I led this song to give it a different feel and mix up the sound since the opener was male lead. We ended with a down chorus and let it breathe a little with the pad before beginning the piano intro of “Love Came Down.”

Our other female leader lead this song beautifully. It was a great reflective moment and we kept it pretty stripped down until the bridge. The lyrics to this song couldn’t be more perfect for Christmas, “Love came down and rescued me. Love came down and set me free.” We also chose to repeat this song for our response time, because this was the first time we had introduced the song to our church. The message was so on point and the arrangement perfect for a time of reflection at the end.

After tagging “I am yours” a few times we played a video to intro “When Hope Came Down” titled “Hope Is Here This Christmas” from Igniter Media. I cannot say enough good things about the subscription we have with Igniter and Graceway Media. If you are a church, especially a smaller church, they are a huge help for video content, motion backgrounds, sermon titles and slides, and photoshop files for announcements, etc.

“When Hope Came Down” was our “special” song that we had built our Christmas series upon. For this song, we also used a Multitrack to ensure we did the song justice. It has beautiful strings and bells in the recording and we just couldn’t have replicated those elements without the track.