Last night we held our Xperience Night of Worship. We wanted a chance to play out of the usual Sunday Morning setting so we worked up all original tunes written by both myself and Kerri Crocker. We hope in the future to invite other artists, and or take our group and visit other churches. Included is the video of a worship song called “Awaken Our Hearts”. I will post others once I get them uploaded.
So where does your worship team play other than worship services?
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Cat and Dog from russell martin on Vimeo.
I was going to put this video up as an example of how even though we are different we can still put aside our differences and get along. My wife told me that I shouldn’t do that because they are fighting with each other and that’s not an example of getting along. So I’ll leave it up to you.. what do you think?
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This week at worship we talked about making choices. The scripture was Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25.
Here are the songs:
Every Move I Make//David Ruis
Matchless//Aaron Shust
Blessed Be Your Name//Matt Redman
Fork In The Road//Russell Martin
Only You//David Crowder
To see other worship service recaps and setlists, visit “Sunday Setlists” at FredMcKinnon.Com
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Right now I am waiting on some tires to be put on my car. When I pulled into the shop I was the only one here. Somehow there is a car in front of me now and my car I still waiting. It is at times like this that I wonder what I should do. In all fairness to me I was here first. And from what I can see there is no reason that anyone should be Infront of me. Add to that the fact that I have places to be, family to see and things to do.
I guess I don’t know the whole story though. Maybe the car in front was left here last night and he is getting to it first thing in the morning. Maybe he was having something else done to. Maybe God is just trying to teach me patience.
I don’t remember praying for patience. But I guess it’s a lesson I still need to learn. If not I wouldn’t be sitting here frustrated writing this post.
What do you still need patience with?
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Welcome to by blog My name is Russell Martin. I am a husband, father, worship leader, songwriter, and musician. I lead worship at Williams Memorial United Methodist Church in Texarkana, TX.
I created this blog to share my thoughts, and learn from others in the areas of church, worship leading, technology and life in general.
My mission statement is simple. Use my gifts to glorify God, and help others to do the same.
These posts, thoughts, discussions and ideas hopefully do just that. I would love for you to read everything however, here is a suggested list, arranged by category, to get you started.
How to Make Your Own Worship Backgrounds
Top Ten Apps I Use for Ministry
Simple Worship Stage Design Ideas
Simple Worship Stage Design Ideas: Starlight
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The other night our youth director Russ Bowlin, led a discussion based on the song “Instead of a Show” by Jon Foreman. He has promised me he is going to write a post on it for FITR so I will not share reflections on that right now. During the course of the discussion, the conversation kept going to how we so often read the words, say the words, sing the songs and go through the motions without even thinking about what we are doing in church. Immediately this song called “Breathe Your Love in Me” came to mind. It is basically a song of confession and a prayer that God will revive us. I wanted to share it with you. Maybe you can use it in a worship service, maybe it is something you can play or listen to as part of your own prayer time. I am including a link to the song and to the chord sheet.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
(You have permission to use this song for corporate or personal use. Just don’t record it and tell people it’s your own. I’d love to hear how it is being used so send me an email.)
If you have resources you would like to share please email them to me. If I post them I will give you a link back to your site and a huge thanks.
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To listen click play!
I know there are many churches that use a “sermon series” format for their worship services. This makes it real easy on the worship leader when choosing songs because they have a general theme to go off of for several weeks. This is how I had done things for several years before moving to my current church. Here we use the lectionary. The lectionary is basically a three year cycle of scripture that follows the church liturgical calendar and takes you through most of the scriptures in the bible in three years. Each week there are readings from the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament and Letters, or something close to that. At first I thought this would be more difficult when chosing worship songs but really it just takes a little more work and study. One thing that helps tremendously is the United Methodist Music and Worship Planner, which already is filled with suggestions of hymns and worship songs for a particular Sunday. One of the benefits of this system is that I can tell you the scripture will be one of four passages as far ahead as you would like. As long as we are choosing music along those themes we should be inline with what will be brought in the message.
With knowing that far in advance what is coming it allows us to come up with tentative songlists well in advance. We sat down yesterday and planned basic lists from August 3rd to September 28th. Now this does not mean they are set. Songlists change all the time because we find a song that fits better, or we have people out a particular sunday and the instrumentation is not right for a particular song, or the pastor takes a different focus than we were expecting, but they work as a base to go off of.
Because I know there are some others of you who use the liturgical calendar and preach from the lectionary I am going to provide you the link to our songist. Please use these as suggestions or as a jumping point for your own lists. Also remember that your pastor may not choose the same passage to focus on for a particular week, but these should still be helpful for you.
Songlists August 3 thru September 28
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We keep our songs on a Google spreadsheet to keep track of how many times we use them etc. I was just reading though and thought I would share our list of our top used songs.
In 2007 they were:
God of Wonders
Forever
He Reigns
Let it Rise
Meet With me
Grace Like Rain
Trading My Sorrows
Lord I Lift Your Name on High
You Never Let Go
Better Than Life
It’s My Joy
Stir In Me
Bread of Life
Breathe
Communion
Crossfire
O Praise Him
People Get Ready
Christmas Eve Sarajevo
How Great is Our God
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us
Your Love is Amazing
Your Love Oh Lord
Here I Am to Worship
So Far in 2008 the top songs are:
Trading My Sorrows
Meet With Me
Here I Am to Worship
Open The Eyes of my Heart
Cry Out Your Name
Every Day
God of WOnders
Forever
He Reigns
Let it Rise
Lord I Lift Your Name on High
Stir in Me
Amazing Grace/My Chains are Gone
Awesome God
Jesus Paid it All
Alive Forever Amen
Audience of One
Days of Elijah
I Just Want to Celebrate
Nothing Without You
Proverbs 3:5-6
Worship You
So here is my question. What songs do you use in your worship services?
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I was recently asked in an email for a list of the songs I used at camp. So I decided to list them for you here. These are the one I used at my three weeks of Church Camp, and two weeks of UM ARMY.
Amazing Grace/My Chains are Gone- Chris Tomlin
Awaken our Hearts- Russell Martin
Big House- Audio Adrenaline
Blessed Be Your Name- Matt Redman
Cleft of the Mountain- Ross King
Communion- Third Day
Every Move I Make- David Ruis
Forever- Chris Tomlin
From The Inside Out- Joel Houston
God of Wonders- Mac Byrd, Steve Hindalong
Happy Song- Martin Smith
He Reigns- Newsboys
Heart of Worship- Matt Redman
Here I Am to Worship- Tim Hughes
Hey I love Jesus- Russell Martin
How Great is our God- Chris Tomlin
Hungry-Kathryn Scott
I Am Free- Jon Egan
I Can Only Imagine- Mercy me
I’ll Fly Away-Albert Brumley
Jesus Paid it All- Alex Nifong, Elvina M Hall
Lifesong-Mark Hall
Light the Fire- Bill Maxwell
Lord I Lift Your Name on High-Rick Founds
Lord Let your Love- Russell Martin
Made to Worship- Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Stephan Sharp
Madly- Steve Fee
Meet with me- Lamont Hiebert
Never Be The Same- Russell Martin
Never Let Go- Matt Redman, Beth Redman
Oh How I Love Jesus- Frederick Whitfield, Larry Dalton
Prince of peace- Marc Imboden, Tammi Rhoton
Sanctuary- John W. Thompson, Randy Scruggs
Shout to the Lord-Darlene Zschech
Sing Like the Saved- Matt Redman
Trading My Sorrows- Darrell Evans
Undignified- Matt Redman
Unfailing Love- Russell Martin
Word of God Speak- Bart Millard, Pete Kipley
You are God- Russell Martin
Tell The World- Joel Houston, Jonanthan Douglass, Marty Sampson
So what songs have you used in the past four months?
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Dear Friends,
As you may know I have just finished up a 4 song EP called “Unfailing Love.” It is currently being duplicated and will be available in June to be purchased. However you can get a sneak peek and help me out in the process right now. I have submitted the title track “Unfailing Love” to the indie heaven fan favorites chart. The more votes it gets, the higher on the chart it goes. I would be so grateful if you would visit and give a vote for the song. You can vote once per day.. but you can vote as many times as you would like.
Thank you so much, the link is below. The song you are looking for is “Unfailing Love” by Russell Martin. When you go to the site select “View All” and click on view. The song is currently at 107.
www.indieheaven.com/fanfaves
Please feel free to forward this to all your friends.
–
Russell Martin
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