Message Series: “Alive: Celebrate the Resurrection” | Easter Sunday

Song / Version / Key / Leader
“Alive” – Hillsong – Key of G – Female 1 Lead (Multi-track song)
“Only Your Love” – Kari Jobe – Key of E – Female 2 Lead (Multi-track song)
Video Testimony
“In Christ Alone” – Kristian Stanfill – Key of G – Male 1 Lead
“Forever – Shorter” – Kari Jobe  – Key of G – Female 1 Lead
“My Heart Is Yours” – Kristian Stanfill – Key of A – Male 1 Lead (Response)

Easter Sunday, the “Superbowl” for the Church as some people like to call it, is here. For this set, I won’t necessarily break down thematically why we chose these songs, because I’m pretty sure you can guess: they all enforce the story of the Cross. I am mainly going to talk through transitions.

We opened with “Alive” by Hillsong, which was a new song for our congregation. I know introducing a new song on Easter isn’t the most recommended. However, with it being an opener and it fitting perfectly with “Alive: Celebrate the Resurrection,” there just wasn’t a better choice lyric and feel wise. Instead of ending abruptly like the recording, we decided to do a trashcan ending to lengthen the time of celebration at the end and give Pastor Devin more time to get to the platform for the welcome.

During the welcome, we transitioned to the key of E via pad and softly played the intro of “Only Your Love.” When Devin began the invocation prayer at the end of the welcome, we faded the pad and hit the Multi-track for the song, which has pads on it and a pretty lengthy intro. We had coordinated with him how long the intro was, so he could say amen just in time for us to come in at the verse.

We also did a trashcan ending for this song but less celebratory than “Alive,” which followed with a testimony video. The video was mainly talking about what Christ had done in your life since being at Connect. This video was a perfect transition to the song “In Christ Alone,” in which we chose the new Stanfill arrangement with the added bridge. We ended with the tag, “till He returns or calls me home…” and then transitioned to “Forever” in the same key. We chose to do the shorter radio edit version of this song because the previous songs in our set were so lengthy, we needed to cut to keep worship around 20ish minutes.

For our response time following the sermon, we chose “My Heart Is Yours,” which is great for an Easter salvation message, especially for those dedicating or rededicating their life to Christ. For us, this set was a great opportunity to give and create an array of powerful celebratory and reflective moments. It provided a great progression of the message of Christ and His sacrifice for us on the Cross and ended with a declaration of surrender in the song “My Heart Is Yours”.