For years we have encouraged our people to get to the worship center before the official start time of our services…FAIL. We have tried 5 minute countdowns, having the band start 5 minutes before service, pleas from our pastor…all FAIL. But just recently we think we have hit on something…starting the music 4 minutes before service time (vocals, and band). There must be something about people hearing songs being sung that makes them think they are late and need to get moving. The purist in me has trouble with this song: one, people should get to service on time without coaxing and two this song is really a filler piece, nothing really to do with the story we are communicating through the other worship elements.

Bottom line, we want people to be engaged through the whole service and if it takes one extra song, four minutes before service to get them there then so be it.

Here the song setlist from yesterday:

Pre-service O Worship the King arr. Chris Tomlin

Call To Worship Scripture and Prayer *a member of the vocal team led this part of the service. Instructions were to keep the prayer to language that was about welcoming God's presence and His acceptance of our worship.

Songs Arise by Paul Baloche and Don Moen Glory To God Forever by Steve Fee

Welcome

Baptism We usually end up with a baptism in one of our three services. This week it happened in our first service. To bring the whole congregation into the celebration we played the video of the baptism in our second hour service. We need to do this more often

Songs What A Friend *we used an arrangement based on a Brooklyn Tabernacle arrangement, which brought new life to this text.

My Hope by Darlene Zschech arr. by Bradley Knight *our worship choir started their ministry season this week and they led us in this song. My friend Mike Butcher posted a link a video of this song on his blog yesterday.

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This post is my contribution to the blog carnival Sunday Setlists which can be found at The Worship Community.