I thought it would be fun to post the playlists for the Praise Group at our church and maybe write a little about the songs. (Much more fun than mowing the lawn or reclaiming the garden during the mid-day heat in high summer!) I just went through my stack of lists & found that I have them back through January of 2011. They are on the back side of old page-a-day calendar sheets featuring cat cartoons. If I get really ambitious I'll post about some past lists.
Usually we are scheduled for the 4th Sunday of each month, but we're flexible, so this month it is tomorrow. Most of the time our group consists of myself on the piano and a guitarist and cellist. Sometimes we are joined by a violin or two, when they come home for a visit. Occasionally we also have a guest instrument. A while back our church got a new (to us) baby grand piano and set it in a different place than where the spinet was and I love the new arrangement.
Our pastor chooses the music we sing during the service. I think he does an amazing job of not only choosing music that fits with the sermon and the various parts of the worship service, but also working with the style of each service's pianist or organist.
I do most of the choosing for the prelude & postlude. (So if you don't like the music, now you know who to blame!) I like to make photocopies of everything and put them into a ring binder. It cuts down on bringing a stack of music books and also lessons the likelihood of the music blowing or falling off the piano.
Here's tomorrow's list:
Prelude:
Make us One - Twila Paris
How Great Are You Lord - Lynn DeShazo
I Will Glory in My Redeemer - Steve & Vikki Cook
There is a Hope - Stuart Townend
Service:
Beautiful Saviour - Stuart Townend
To See the King of Heaven Fall (Gethsenane) - Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Give Thanks With a Grateful Heart - Henry Smith
Jesus I Come (Out of My Bondage) - (Old hymn words with new RUF tune)
Faith of Our Fathers - #570 - Trinity Hymnal
Threefold Amen - #740 - Trinity Hymnal
Postlude: Make Us One
Various things influence my choices. Tomorrow's over-arching theme is Key of C!!! (It is summer after all, when the living is supposed to be easy!) I also really love Celtic music, so a lot of what I pick has a Celtic flavor. I'm also a hopeless Anglophile, so if it comes from the British Isles, my ears perk right up. I've also discovered that Kingsway Music UK and Worship Together Music offers free sound files, lead sheets and sheet music every week, so that has been a great source of new music. "Make Us One" by Twila Paris, for example, was the free-song Friday offering a few weeks ago on Worship Together.
So how about the rest of the songs?
How Great Are You Lord was done by Robin Mark on the Revival in Belfast album. I love Robin Mark! Each of his CD's is a mixture of his own compositions and those of others and I have used a lot of those songs in my playlists. I just wish we had a penny whistle player!
I Will Glory is from Sovereign Grace Music and was on Bob Kauflin's "Upward" hymns CD. Not only is a lot of their music appealing, but the lyrics are theologically sound, which makes them great candidates for congregational singing.
I first heard There is a Hope as I was using youtube as my radio and poking around listening to various British praise & worship music. The version on youtube has an extended uillean pipe solo that is totally gorgeous, but I also like the song's melody and message. We have added it to our congregational repertoire.
Beautiful Saviour is one of the first Stuart Townend songs I heard and I'm not even sure where I first heard it. It's been part of the congregational repertoire for quite a while now.
To See the King of Heaven Fall was one of the free song offerings on Kingsway and was so beautiful and moving that we incorporated it into our worship repertoire right away.
Give Thanks - it's an oldie but goodie copyrighted 1978. Just today I looked through "The Source" (a huge hymnal-style book of praise and worship music compiled by Graham Kendrick) and found a really nice arrangement of it to use tomorrow. We are singing it during the offering.
Out of My Bondage is found in our Trinity Hymnal, but the version we are singing tomorrow is to a new tune by Reformed University Fellowship. Their mission is to take old hymns and introduce them to a new generation. I'm not crazy about all their efforts, but in this case, I think this tune is a huge improvement over the one in the hymnal - lyrical, singable, and nicely complementing the words, which are wonderful.
Faith of Our Fathers - some songs don't need modernizing and this is one of them. Each month we do at least one hymn that the praise group hasn't done before (not on purpose, just happens that way) so slowly but surely I am scanning the Trinity Hymnal into my computer and creating my piano player's version that fits into a ring binder.
Three-fold Amen - a lovely way to end the service!
