A different sort of service

Main worship:

Jesus, Hope of the Nations
In Heavenly Armour
I, the Lord of Sea and Sky
Jesus, my Strength

Post communion:
Be still

Usually, the music starts lively, and winds down with prayers somewhere in the middle.

Sometimes the Spirit leads differently.  I picked these songs a little over a week ago, and the template for my thinking usually goes thus:

• An idea of the theme from whomever is speaking - sometimes I will know in advance, sometimes not
• A song will come to mind from above.  It may be a hymn or chorus, may be praise or worship
• If I have no idea of the theme, a song is invariably forefront on my mind, or I look through my SOFs and database until I get that "pang" - that one.
• After that, I will consider the other members' requests and ideas and see if one or more of them fit in
• From that I can see whether I am missing anything from usual format: 2 lively praise ones, a winding down, and 2 worship
• I gather potential candidates and see how they fit together
• The songs get picked and I get to work with Musescore, chord sheets etc
• I "play" them together in Musescore, play about with keys, then play them myself

Just lately - and this is scary - a theme emerges from them that can only be divine inspiration.  For instance, I may get a theme of "Faith" from the speaker.  This is a huge subject, so often it ends up being a subdivision - but through no effort of my own.

This week's could have ended up being rather long; note 3 "hymn" type ones which played together we could have ended up leaving church about tea time if we had really got going.  Instead, the leader was inspired to split Be Still away and have it after Communion.  It ended up being structured beautifully.

I had no idea what was being spoken about this morning, but you can probably see the theme was "strength".  From a vision at Bible Study, which was a galloping horse, and weakness apparent in the congregation, the sermon which was on provision (feeding the 5000) - they ended up being perfect choices - but I had no idea of the weakness in the congregation, and I didn't know the sermon theme.

Next week - I daren't even blog it, not yet.  Songs are picked, theme has emerged, I'm off to listen to and play them.  And then pray that the message is right.