Sunday morning at Kings

• Holy, holy, holy - Reginald Heber, John Bacchus Dykes

• We stand and lift up our hands - Chris Tomlin
• I will worship - David Ruis
• All my days - Stuart Townend

• Yesterday, today and forever - Vicki Beeching
• Great is your faithfulness - Chris Tomlin
• I lift my hands - Andre Kempen
• I'm gonna trust in God - Steve Earl

The end of our series on Numbers, which has turned out to have had an overwhelming theme of trusting God.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks for me since I last led worship (Bible Summary, say no more!) so it was important to reconnect with the business of leading at Kings this week.

My sense remains that we need to open up our times of worship: to leave space for Scripture, for prayers and other contributions, and to hear God. It's hard to encourage new things in August, which is always a sleepy month, but I think it's essential.

The sermon today was partly about not getting stuck doing things the way we've always done them just because they were good once, and the worship life of a church is definitely not outside of that challenge.

I've just started a new project: Bible Summary.

I'm summarising the Bible on Twitter, one tweet per chapter, one chapter per day. It's going to take over three years!

I've built a website for the project which is closely integrated with Twitter. I post directly to Twitter from the website itself and there's the option for visitors to sign in using their Twitter account to post comments. You can even have your comments appear on your own Twitter account.

I'm pretty pleased with the techy side of things, and even more excited about the project itself, which is already forcing me to really read Scripture rather than just skipping through.

Do stop by and see what's going on...

• Visit the website: www.biblesummary.info
• Follow on Twitter: @biblesummary
• Subscribe to the feed: RSS

Sunday morning at Kings

• Our God saves - Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown

• Blessing and honour - Gary Sadler
• Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven - Henry Lyte
• Bless the Lord, O my soul - Godfrey Birtill
• Beautiful one - Tim Hughes

• Surrender - Marc James
• In the secret - Andy Park
• Be thou my vision - tr. Eleanor Hull

Just back from two weeks away. I've been at the Ichthus Revive week so I'm feeling the usual mix of spiritual refreshment and physical exhuastion after a week of camping and the long drive home.

This is normally the low ebb in terms of numbers at Kings over the summer but there were still well over 100 people at the meeting this morning!

It's always slightly strange adjusting from the emphasis of a week like Revive to normal church life, but this year I feel that there's a lot that can pollenate over from Revive to our Sunday worship.

Some loyal readers will be astonished to see a Godfrey Birtill song among the list above. His style is quite distinctive and I've not really found an opportnity to use any of his songs at Kings before (despite strong opinions in all directions among various members of the congregation) but we sang 'Bless the Lord' several times at Revive and it seemed a very useful addition to our repertoire.

I think it's time for a little more space in our worship for hearing from God, so I didn't just charge through the songs at the end. There's the pressure to finish on time, but we need to strike the balance between that and leaving enough space to genuinely engage with God as we worship.

Interesting times...

Sunday morning at Kings

• Come, let us worship Jesus - Graham Kendrick

• Jesus, friend of sinners - Paul Oakley
• When I call on your name - Ben Cantelon
• King of kings, majesty - Jarrod Cooper

• Happy Day - Tim Hughes

• To you, O Lord - Graham Kendrick
• The Lord is gracious and compassionate - Graham Ord
• Guide me, O thou great Redeemer - William Williams, tr. Peter Williams, John Hughes

Three baptisms this morning, which always makes for a good atmosphere. Worship was alive!

It was guitar, keys, drums and trombone. It's great having trombone in the mix.

Richard Briggs was preaching on Numbers, so we responded leading to 'Guide me, O thou great Redeemer'.

Sunday morning at Kings

• Far and near - Graham Kendrick

• How great thou art - tr. Stuart K. Hine
• How great is our God - Chris Tomlin
• You alone can rescue - Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin

• When I survey the wondrous cross - Isaac Watts
• Nothing but the blood - Robert Lowry
• Thine be the glory - George Frederick Handel, Edmond Louis Burdy, tr. Richard Birch Hoyle

• Great is thy faithfulness - Thomas Chisholm, Wiliam Runyan
• Who is there like you? - Paul Oakley
• I could sing of your love forever - Martin Smith
• I'm gonna trust in God - Steve Earl

A very positive morning. The first one out of the academic year. We started a new series on Numbers (and related passages from the New Testament) - Richard was in very fine form.

No less than five hymns on the menu today. Sometimes all that will do is singing the great truths of our hope, and this was one of those days.

The meeting opened up significantly after the sermon. I hadn't planned 'I could sing' but it rolls on the same chords as the turnaround for 'Who is there like you?' and fit perfectly with the sense of what else was going on in that part of the service.

Whatever we might feel about the word 'gonna', the chorus of 'I'm gonna trust' is such a rich statement of faith to finish a meeting:

How great is the love of God
How steady is his hand
To guide me through this world
Though I am weak, in him I stand
And you will hear me say, today, in faith
I'm gonna trust in God

Sunday morning at Kings

• Come, people of the risen King - Stuart Townend, Keith & Kristyn Getty

• Let everything that has breath - Matt Redman
• It's rising up - Matt Redman, Martin Smith
• In Christ alone - Stuart Townend, Keith Getty

• Surrender - Marc James
• Adoration - Brenton Brown
• May the words of my mouth - Tim Hughes

This is always a funny week - exams are over, academic year almost over, lots of changes for people, June Project next week...

I went for straight-out praise first thing, leading to the "Jesus is alive" chorus of 'It's rising up' and 'In Christ alone'. Ruth preached on trusting only in God, so that was the tone afterwards.

'Let everything', 'It's rising up', 'Surrender' and 'May the words' are all songs that I used to use very regularly but haven't used much at Sunday mornings recently. They were all pretty fresh this morning.

Sunday morning at Kings

• Blessed be your name - Matt Redman, Beth Redman

• Our God saves - Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown
• Great is thy faithfulness - Thomas Chisholm, Wiliam Runyan
• What the Lord has done in me - Rueben Morgan

• Jesus saves - Tim Hughes

• Strength will rise - Brenton Brown, Ken Riley
• I will bless the Lord forever - Miriam Webster
• You alone can rescue - Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin
• Be thou my vision - tr. Eleanor Hull

Three baptisms this morning.

I used 'Jesus saves' again afterwards. It's a good song, but I'm not sure it will last - the song structure is not quite disinct enough for it to become a favourite, I think.

Richard Briggs continued our series on Judges in very fine form. (These sermons are well worth listening to at the Kings website!)

There's a lot going on at the moment, so I drew things together with a response focussed on looking to God in whatever circumstances.

I've put together a Spotify playlist of songs that we use at Kings. Over 100 tracks! If you have Spotify the link below will lead you straight to it:

• King's Church Durham

PS. I've got a (much needed) new version of this website that I'm currently testing offline; when it's published my worship setlists will link directly to Spotify. Don't hold your breath till after June Project though.

Kids worship at Kings

• Our God is a a great big God - Nigel Hemming, Jo Hemming
• I will lift up the name of the Lord - Mike Burn
• I'd reach for the stars - Mike Burn

A lively set, even without Hannah leading the actions (she has a broken heel!)

After 'I will lift' we thought about how God is pleased when we worship with all our energy, then asked in groups what other things we can do that please God, before singing 'I'd reach for the stars'.

Ichthus have recently added a new House of Worship section to the their website, featuring new songs by Chris and Jennie Orange, Ben Trigg and others.

Ben has recorded great versions of two of my songs for the section - 'I cling to the cross' and 'In the silence of beginning'. It's the first time there's been a full-band recording of 'In the silence'.

The other songs are well worth checking out too...