An Audience Of One | A Worship Leader's Blog | Matt Kerr

God is Able – Hillsong

makuw — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:20:54 +0000

With Easter coming up, it’s great to connect with some fresh songs that speak of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and resurrection. Hillsong has a great song of praise titled, “God is Able” which would be a solid addition to your church’s worship services this season (and year round). Here’s an acoustic arrangement that Hillsong has on YouTube. Beautiful!

Sunday Setlist – August 7, 2011

makuw — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:37:32 +0000

This past Sunday was a powerful service. Thank you to all who came out to worship our God together! It was great to connect with so many visitors as well. Thanks for taking the time to come and chat with me.

Here’s what our services looked like:

9:15 Service

Jesus Saves
My Saviour, My God (chorus x 2, V1)
Forever Reign
scripture / offering
Our God
No One Higher / The Stand
message
Humble King

11 am

Jesus Saves
My Saviour, My God (full)
Jesus Paid It All
scripture / offering
Our God
O How I Love Jesus
message
Humble King

We also had our monthly communion service in the evening. I led from the piano. Here’s what it looked like:

Here I Am To Worship
Jesus Messiah
reprise of chorus from “Here I Am To Worship”
message
Come Thou Fount
time of personal reflection – We Fall Down (instrumental)
bread – Uncreated One (instrumental)
drink – Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus (instrumental)
Here is Love (Redman arr.)
closing prayer

Setlist for upcoming Hillsong United worship night in Toronto

makuw — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:35:10 +0000

I’m stoked about the upcoming Hillsong United worship night at the Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto. An awesome venue and a sweet band touring for the recent album, Aftermath.

I looked up some recent setlists for the band to get a hint at how the night may look at to familiarize myself with some of their songs that I may not yet have heard.

Anyways, I’m putting the list below from their March 11, 2011 concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, NY along with links to the songs on YouTube. Check out the songs below but pickup their albums (in particular the new Aftermath album) in the iTunes music store or at your local brick and mortar music store.

Go
Break Free
You
Take it All
Check out HU’s commitment to their craft … learning some of their songs in spanish
Search My Heart
Mighty to Save
Hosanna
Lord Over Everything
Nova
All I Need is You
Aftermath
Freedom is Here
Shout Unto God
Like an Avalanche
Rhythms of Grace
Oh You Bring
The Stand
From the Inside Out
With Everything
encore – Your Name High
encore – Yours Forever
encore – Take Heart

Sojourn Church takes a look at the hymns of Isaac Watts

makuw — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:32:37 +0000

My friend Jake dropped me a link to this video by Sojourn Music. It looks at their recent album, The Blood and the Water, which is a modern retelling or revoicing of the hymns of Isaac Watts. It’s beautiful to consider the generations of music being lifted up to our God who sits above all time. Sojourn’s doing a great job at remembering our place in the bigger picture of the historical Church. We have to be careful not to plow past the old just because it’s old. There are many amazing pieces of worship that are still suitable for the Church today, even as we seek to sing a new song of praise to our God and King.

Anyways, thank you Jake for sending me the link. Awesome stuff. If you’re on Twitter people, follow Jake at @jakemedia. Seriously, follow the guy now. He does some sweet work with video.

check out this album preview.

Blaze songs #7 – Our God

makuw — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:14:43 +0000

Here’s a great modern anthem of the Church that has come out of the Passion conferences (and now Passion Church in Atlanta, GA). Our God is a powerful song of declaration and I’m looking forward to hearing all the kids voices singing together, “Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God You are higher than any other.”

Download the chord charts and song list here (pdf)

Blaze songs #6 – Rock of Ages

makuw — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:40:48 +0000

Here’s another Blaze camp favourite and a good worship song as well. The kids really get going in the chorus of Rock of Ages.

Download the chord sheet and song list (pdf)

Blaze songs #5 – Days of Elijah

makuw — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:43:52 +0000

OK, here’s Days of Elijah … a classic at camp. Not much to say. Download the chord charts. Watch the video. Learn the music.

Download chord charts and song list (pdf)

Blaze songs #3 – Rise and Sing & No One Higher / The Stand

makuw — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:18:40 +0000

Here’s a look at 2 other songs we’re going to use at Blaze day camp this summer. The 2 songs are Rise and Sing and the medley No One Higher/The Stand. Again you guys can download the zip file with the song list and chord charts below.

Download zip file with chord charts (pdf)

Stage Design – Summer 2011

makuw — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 05:53:39 +0000

Last fall we made a significant design change to the stage in our gymnasium; we painted it completely with theatre black paint. For drama presentations in the past we’ve hung giant black drapes to black-out the background of our stage. Given the combustible nature of some fabrics and to clean up the look we decided to take the step of painting it. There are some significant benefits I’ve found:

You can see people on the stage much better with the black background. We had a lighter wall colour before (obviously) and it is a stark difference in how people stand out to those sitting in the gym.
There is a much greater perceived depth to the stage. We have a fairly shallow stage at Faith and while painting the walls black hasn’t gained us any real estate for the musicians or dramas there is a deeper look to the stage which has improved the look of the stage.
The black background has given us a versatile blank canvas on which to create fresh new stage designs for different seasons of the year.

We started with a Christmas design, then had a winter layout (which spread into Spring). And now we have a different design for the Summer. Barb Hartwick, our drama team director and a seamstress extraordinaire, and I talked about using some “sails” and bouncing some light off of them. The end result was really effective. Thanks to Barb’s husband Dave for his help hanging the sails. It was a fun night

Blaze Songs #4 – Break Free

makuw — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 05:38:16 +0000

Yes I can count … and I know that the #3 video isn’t up yet but I’m having some issues with Vimeo which I’ll hopefully resolve soon.

Anyways, all that to say that here’s another video chat for the Blaze 2011 worship team to check out. This time we’re looking at Hillsong’s Break Free. Again, you can search and listen to the full version on YouTube. Of course, we’re paring it down to the camp/acoustic/limited instruments version but it’s going to be a great camp song for our chapel sessions together. Again follow the link below to download the zip file containing the chord chart pdfs and song list.

Download the chord charts and song list (pdf)