Setlist - 23 Aug 2015
Sunday morning at Kings

Tags: baptismss

An excellent meeting. Two baptisms this morning, which always adds a big lift. Even before that there was a rich sense of grace received and grateful response.

The opening for songs flowed very well thematically. 'All Creatures' calls us to worship and finishes praising Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 'Our God Saves' begins gathering us in the name of the Trinity and ends with salvation. 'Before the Throne' explains salvation in beautiful detail, with the relationship of the Father and the son very explicit. 'Let the Weak' ties in with the acknowledgement of human frailty in 'Before the Throne' and centres us on Jesus' death and resurrection.

Even if not everyone in the congregation is conscious of the thematic journey, I think it's tangible that people's engagement with the songs deepens when the flow of content is clear.

After the sermon I led 'Forever' for the first time at Morning Worship. It's well enough known that I decided not to explicitly teach it. It went well.

But I confess to having complicated feelings towards that song. On the plus: it's theologically ambitious, it presents the central truths of the Gospel in a fresh way, and has a memorable, singable chorus. Those are some very big pluses! But on the minus: the three opening lines use Biblical-sounding phrases in a rather distractingly imprecise way, and I can't help but feel that the chorus is just too overblown - it's emotionally exhausting to repeat it more than once or twice. It's a great song, but I can't escape the feeling that it falls short of even higher potential.

We're at our summer low in terms of numbers, but you wouldn't know it from the life in the room.