New songs for modern missional worship, rich in Christian teaching and contextualized in modern culture. Contemporary hymns, psalms, songs of lament and praise written by members of the Louisville, KY-based Sojourn Community.
1. Come and Sing, by Sojourn’s own Jeremy Quillo. Written to represent the “call to worship” on our liturgically-themed Before the Throne CD, that’s exactly how we used it in this service.
Luke Daugherty, a pastor at fellow Acts 29 church Karis Community Church in Columbia, Missouri, recently wrote a great article about this song on his blog. You can pull up the chord sheet from our Before the Throne page, and listen to the mp3 from the Facebook fan page of Sojourn Music.
2. Psalm 3, by Sojourn’s Rebecca Dennison, adapted from Isaac Watts, adapted from King David. The mournful lament of the verses give way to the lyrical and musical punch of the chorus of this song that will be featured on our upcoming CD project:
Arise, Oh Lord, fulfill Your grace
while I, Your glory sing;
My God has broke the serpent’s teeth
and death has lost his sing.
3. Psalm 57, also a Jeremy Quillo song. We recorded this one on These Things I Remember. You can hear the mp3 from virb.com/sojournmusic, and view the chord sheet from the These Things I Remember page here. I’ll be doing an audio interview with Jeremy later this week on sojournmusic.com and our podcast, Sojournmusic.com Radio, where Jeremy talks about Psalm 57 as part of our discussion on using scripture in worship songs.
4. Great is Thy Faithfulness, hymn text by Thomas Chisholm, music by William Runyon. We used this classic as a celebration of assurance:
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
After this song we entered into the Passing of the Peace portion of our liturgy, welcoming each other in Christ. Following this we listened to a sermon from Romans from a guest speaker — the teaching pastor at fellow Louisville church Clifton Baptist, Tom Schreiner. Tom is also a New Testament professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has authored several books including a commentary on the book of Romans. His text today was Romans 9:1-29, “The Freedom and Faithfulness of God.”
5. Holy, Holy, Holy, hymn text by Reginald Heber, music by John Dykes. We use an arrangement created by Sufjan Stevens for his album, Songs for Christmas. We’ve sang it at various points in past worship services; today it was our communion and offering hymn.
6. I Sing the Mighty Power of God, by Isaac Watts, music arrangement from Mars Hill Church (Seattle). We’ve been doing this one since last fall. It’s a powerful arrangement and melody to go with Watts’ creation-encompassing text in common meter.
7. You, by Tim Hughes. This song has been a Sojourn staple for years but we haven’t sang it in awhile. It was nice to belt it out together again:
Your love can melt the hardest heart
Your words can bring the dead to life
Nothing is impossible for You.
Awesome God humble King
You terrify, yet welcome in
Your glory echoes all around the world.
The only difference in our two evening services was that the evening band substituted “From the Depths” by Jeremy Quillo for “Psalm Three.” You can hear “From the Depths” and view the chord sheet from our Before the Throne page in the Music section.
Worship band for the 9:30 am and 11:15 am services:
Mike Cosper — lead guitar
Robert James — bass guitar
Alex O’nan — drums
Rebecca Dennison — vocals
Jeremy Quillo — vocals and guitar
Worship band for the 5 pm and 7 pm services:
Mike Cosper — lead guitar
Charlie Lucas — bass guitar
Smitty Smith — drums
Dan Cassin — keys
Lindsey Lewis — vocals
Jamie Barnes — vocals, guitar, banjo