A few weeks ago I talked about a new phase of my life – I’m now working with the music team of Seacoast Church here in Greenville. You can read more about it at this blog.
At my first staff meeting, campus pastor Chris Surratt announced that the Seacoast campuses were going to make a big change – head pastor Greg Surratt wanted to implement prayer, Communion and offering stations into the worship.
I was so excited I nearly jumped out of my chair. After reading Dan Kimball’s “The Emerging Church” a few years ago I became interested in this new wave of worship and thought it would meet a need in the Greenville area. A big rule in marketing is to find a need and meet it – and since no church that I know of in Greenville is doing the stations thing, why shouldn’t we be the first?
Greg takes a few weeks off each summer, and last year he visited many of the leading postmodern ministries in the country. He felt that God was nudging him to help the people of Seacoast experience a richer, more involved time of worship.
It’s rare that a pastor of a megachurch would be willing to rock the boat and try something so radically new, but I suspect that’s why Seacoast is as successful as it is – they’re not afraid of new things.
The first Sunday, Greg reported that the new format was a hit – he witnessed a shift from a few people participating to hundreds. Since the main campus is a week ahead of the rest of us, we saw the results the following Sunday. The beauty of the stations concept is that people can choose to actively participate (or not) by moving forward to take Communion, give their offering or have prayer, all options during the praise set. I’ll describe these stations in more detail in the future.
Now that we’re having Communion every week we’re keeping an ear out for more Communion-ish worship songs. Chris Sligh, one of the talented worship leaders here in Greenville has written a fantastic Communion song. I don’t know why this guy doesn’t have a record deal yet – he wrote the music and lyrics, sings on the demo like a Nashville session singer and played the guitars on my track. It’s my first collaboration with a Seacoast artist, and you can download a free mp3 and lead sheet here:
https://worshipideas1.wpengine.com/CommunionSong.html
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