Sunday Set List 7/11/10

Happy Monday!

I don’t know if you like Monday’s or not, but I do. It’s a great day of rest for me after every crazy Sunday.

This past weekend was actually rather difficult. We had some problems that only wanted to happen in the middle of the service, and not during rehearsal or run-through. Some were a big deal, and some weren’t that big of a deal. But it was very… Testing.

For the band, we had Rueben Bidez leading worhsip. Brian Preston on drums. Lloyd Reeves on lead guitar. And John Packer on bass. John just recently started playing with us. He’s a great bassist, and a cool guy to hang out with. And that was it. A really small band compared to usual. Even smaller than last week, which I said was a small band. I know a couple people who didn’t particularly like the small band, but they did a great job. I’m a fan of having a full band with a couple backup singers, but a small band is nice every so often.

The set list was actually kind of light too…

Our God – Chris Tomlin

Who is Like the Lord – Unhindered

Meant to Live – Switchfoot

Yep, “Meant to Live”. Bringing that one back from the nearly dead. Not that it’s a bad song at all, but I got tired of hearing thanks too top 40 radio. Anyways, it really goes great with the series we’re currently in called “A Holy Discontent”. It’s all about God’s calling on your life and how you should pursue that calling. It’s been a great series so far.

It was a little odd for us only doing 2 worship songs. And we actually did “Our God” and “Who is Like the Lord” before the message, and then we did “Meant to Live” after the message. I don’t think we have EVER done a special song after the message. We always do it very first thing in the service actually. And I also don’t think we’ve ever done just 2 songs before the message. And we didn’t do any high energy worship songs either. “Our God” and “Who is Like the Lord” are both slower tempo songs. So the whole set list was actually very, very different from what we typically do. Which is great! It’s so easy to get stuck in a routine of how we do worship, so it was kind of nice to break away from that.

Now, to talk about the stuff that went wrong this weekend. To start things off, Rueben, who led worship, played electric guitar yesterday. As far as set up and band goes, no big deal. But, when it came down to executing things during the service, it got a little hairy. Because Rueben played electric, we had to move his pedalboard out of the way for the message, then put it back after for the closing song. Well, it was great in theory, but not so great in practice. In the first service, the cable that goes out of his pedalboard and into his amp, was stepped on or something and ripped out, jacking up the cable(but we didn’t know that). And when it got plugged back in, there was no signal. Well, there was signal, but it was nothing but really, really loud buzzing. Not good for “Meant to Live” considering the very opening is 2 guitars going back and forth. Not only that, but we were trying to fix it during the prayer at the end of the message. So in the middle of the prayer you hear this super loud buzzing coming from backstage. So Lloyd all of a sudden had to carry the entire song himself. He did great, but there was a really long pause of everyone just staring at the band while they got their bearings straightened out. Not good.

Also, during both of the morning services, the mic Justin, who was speaking this weekend, was using would go out every once in a while. It only happened maybe 5 times all day, and only for 1 word, but it still wasn’t good. We’ve never had these new mic’s do that so I wasn’t sure what was going on. The RF was strong, so I really don’t know. That will be looked at this week.

Then, in the second service, Rueben’s mic started dying right before the closing song. That’s the great thing about the Shure ULXP’s we got. There a battery meter on right on the receiver box, which we keep at FOH. Since I was watching the mic Justin was using, checking the RF and such, I noticed the battery level on Rueben’s mic was really low. So I had to run a new mic backstage real quick(because we didn’t notice it until about 5 minutes before the band was going on for the closer), and give Corey, who was running things backstage, the new mic for Rueben to use. We’ve tried just changing out the battery before when something like this happens, but it’s much easier to just take the dead mic off the stand, and put the good one on it. That wasn’t a big deal and no one else probably even knew it, but it was still a bit nerve racking.

The 3rd service was actually the best as far as all the tech stuff working properly and such. And I was having to run around and do some things during the message so something may have gone wrong then and I have no idea. No, if something went wrong I would’ve heard about it or gotten a phone call when it happened.

So that was our weekend. A lot of things to think about and figure out how to do better. And a few things to fix, like soldering that cable that went bad and checking on that wireless mic. Things have been going so smoothly on Sunday’s lately, it was just time for some stuff to blow up I guess. Actually, we probably could have done some things better to insure some of these things didn’t happen. But hey, you live, you learn, then get luvs!