Setlist - 30 Jul 2017
Sunday morning at Kings

Tags: communion

Summer is a strange season at Kings. Lots of people are away, lots of visitors, regulars just heading to or back from holiday. It's a broader task to call everyone together. I tend to stick even closer than usual to the simple heart of the Gospel. That was definitely the plan this morning.

We sang songs of our need and God's grace. I had the band keep our arrangements fairly restrained so the congregation was regularly carrying songs almost a cappella. A cappella can sometimes feel exhausting, but I find that a strong but restrained energy from the music can inspire people to sing without the music becoming more prominent than the voices.

Tom preached a wonderful sermon on 'prayer of revelation' from Ephesians 1. 'Open the Eyes of My Heart' was a natural response (coming from that passage) and we broke the arrangement down in a way that made an over-familiar song feel fresh. We then dwelt on the bridge of 'You Alone Can Rescue' and into 'Be Thou My Vision' with a very explicit theme of lifting our eyes to God.

This was my first morning using digital chord sheets on the music stand. We've installed OpenSong on a large Android tablet to try out whether that has benefits, with a view to possibly using that for all the music stands and doing away with paper and books on stage altogether. I'm instinctively skeptical about making us any more dependent on electronic gadgets, but it went really well this morning. We shall see!