christ the king

Setlist 11-25-2018

Yesterday was Christ the King Sunday.  Our songs were gathered with this in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics.  Below the songs, you can find a brief example of one way you might think of these songs. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Crown Him With Many Crowns by ubcmusic

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder* Band

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

Hope by Jameson McGregor

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Crown Him With Many Crowns: We sang this song to begin our time together celebrating the reign of Christ in the Kingdom of God.

Death In His Grave: This song invited us to rehearse the story of the death and Resurrection of Christ.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to practice an awareness of our interconnectivity with creation under the care of our Creator and Sustainer.

Inbreaking: This song is a plea for the Slaughtered Lamb to form us in the way of Christ and form our world in the way of the Kingdom.

Hope: This song celebrates the redemptive work of Christ in the life of the world as the light in the darkness the darkness did not overcome, and grasps for the hope that one day every broken piece will find its place again.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM

Setlist 11-26-2017

Yesterday was Christ the King Sunday, and the songs were selected with that in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics.  Below the songs, you can find a brief example of one way you might think of these songs. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Crown Him With Many Crowns

Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)

Pulse by Jameson McGregor

Rise Up by Bifrost Arts

Inbreaking by Jameson McGregor

Chariot by Page France

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Crown Him With Many Crowns: We sang this song because it was basically made to be sung on Christ the King Sunday.  It speaks both to a conceptual crowning of Christ in one's life, and also to a more eschatological vision of the Kingdom.

Mystery: This song proclaims the story of what kind of king Christ is--the kind that would suffer and die for his people. In singing this song, we began to pose a question to ourselves of what Christ's reign might mean for the way that we live and move in the world.

Pulse: We most often refer to the Holy Spirit as the Breath of Life undergirding all of Creation when we sing this song. But Pulse can also be taken to refer to the way in which all of Creation holds together in Christ, which is the angle we took yesterday.  At the bottom of everything, we are connected to the people least like us by our mutual connection to the grace of Christ.

Rise Up: This song is a petition for the King who stands with the oppressed to rise to their defense, and a charge to those who claim to be formed in the way of Christ to do the same.

Inbreaking: This song is a plea for the coming of the Kingdom and the re-Creation of all things.

Chariot: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Chariot then: This song is a looking ahead toward the re-Creation of all things.  This looking ahead in some way embodies the posture of Ordinary Time, insofar as we allow this looking ahead to motivate us to live as though the Kingdom has already come in fullness.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

Setlist 11-20-2016

This week was Christ the King Sunday, and our songs were gathered with this theme in mind.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs:

Revelation Song by Jennie Lee Riddle

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither

Hope by Jameson McGregor

Crown Him With Many Crowns

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Revelation Song: We sang this song to begin our time together with a focused and straight-forward moment of singing about God's grandeur and particularity.  In thinking about Christ as King, we are met with a picture of power and majesty that is distinctly different than we might imagine out of our own cultural expectations--this almighty King abandoned His station to dwell among the disenfranchised and to champion the cause of the nobodies, and is well-imaged as a slaughtered lamb.  In this, we find wonder, mystery, and hope.

Death in His Grave: This song traces the story of Christ, underscoring that Christ's kingship is directly linked to his death--his complete self-emptying--and his resurrection.

Because He Lives: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs.  This is what we said about Because He Lives then: We sang this song to proclaim that our daily hope in the face of uncertainty is located in the risen Christ. 

Hope: This song voices the hope we have in Christ, the fire in the darkness.  In this image that comes into the world through John 1, we find the most fundamental summation of the Christian story--God set a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome.  Fire is more real than the darkness, such that there is no amount of darkness that can overcome the light of the fire. 

Crown Him With Many Crowns: This song well-captures the kind of King that Jesus is: the slaughtered Lamb who receives unmatched and unmatchable praise, who has known intimately the worst of our suffering and conquered it, whose tools of war are peace and love, and to whom all other crowns belong, that we might all find rest and belonging.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.

-JM

Setlist 11-22-2015

This week was Christ the King Sunday, so our songs were gathered around the theme of kingship.  Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.

Songs

Revelation Song by Jennie Lee Riddle

All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder* Band

Be Thou My Vision

How Great Thou Art

Crown Him With Many Crowns

Doxology

How They Fit In:

There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme. 

Revelation Song: We sang this song to begin our time together singing about God's holiness/power/all of those things we might associate with God being above and beyond us all.  While this is not the primary image of God given in the Christian story, it is important to remind ourselves that God is indeed mysterious, powerful, elusive, holy, etc, so that we will realize how scandalous and amazing it is that this same God cares to have a relationship with us.

All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to contemplate and proclaim the significance of God's kingship for the whole of the created order--not just humans.  To say that Christ is King impacts more than humans--it impacts the way stars explode, the way animals go on about their lives, and the way plants climb out of the dirt.

Be Thou My Vision:  We sang this song for a couple of reasons.  First, we sang it to find language to offer along with the people of our congregation who shared their stories with us this week, asking for God's wisdom and presence with us.  Second, we sang it to offer the words of the final stanza in light of Christ the King Sunday.

How Great Thou Art: We sang this song in the middle of our service to proclaim the glory of God in creation (both past and present), the life and death of Jesus, and the future hope of redemption, in the midst of stories that were marked both by tears and bold faith.  In some way, we raised this language to remind ourselves of the story in the midst of which we are living--one where God is putting the pieces back together, not spreading them apart.

Crown Him With Many Crowns: I occasionally ask Josh if there are any songs he wants me to include in a set.  This week was one of the few times he had a suggestion, so I jumped on it.  I had not thought about this song since I was a small child, so I had to go look up the lyrics.  It took all of 10 seconds for me to be convinced that this song needed to be in our Christ the King service.  In many ways, Christ the King Sunday is about speaking the truth of Jesus' Kingship into a world where such an idea seems like nonsense (because of how broken things are).  A thing I love about this song is the way it weaves together God's transcendence and immanence, and God's suffering and victory.  These tensions provide a window into a deeper truth about God and God's story.

Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos. 

-JM