Another fantastic week of music at Momentum! A solid band, great songs, an engaged congregation...all around, one of the strongest weeks we've had!
The service opened with the high-energy "I Am Free" that Joel Chandler introduced a few weeks ago. I'm a little bit skeptical that anyone at Momentum except for Mo is actually, legitimately excited that we are "free to dance" because of Jesus, and that will probably be a line that will always bother me about that song; not because I think there's anything wrong with dancing, or singing about dancing, or singing about being free to dance or anything like that, but because I've never been a part of a body that was actually excited and engaged enough to actually dance. I've heard about such groups, but have yet to witness it for myself. So until we get some high-energy movers bold enough to dance, I will feel weird about singing "I am free to dance." But I digress. It's a great song, though, and the band really played it well.
We introduced a new song, "Lift High", by North Point's Eddie Kirkland. It's a great song, with a fantastic melody, which may be a bit of a stretch for congregational sing-along, but it really works well coming out of our "Jesus is Lord" series and heading into Palm Sunday/Easter. The chorus lyric, "lift high your chains undone....all rise exalt the Son..." has such beautiful imagery, which is particularly poignant with all the teaching on slavery and freedom that was a part of the "Jesus is Lord" series. Unfortunately, I had this placed a bad point in the service for first service as the second song of the opening set, followed by an oddly placed welcome and meet-and-greet. Sometimes you just can't foresee how these things will play out until they actually play out. It just really didn't work too well having a new song that's very reflective and worshipful going on while people were still walking in the doors, followed by the meet-and-greet, which really needs to ride on the energy of a high-energy song in order to have the appropriate feel. We recognized it after first service, and made some pretty significant changes to improve the flow for second service. It was a vast improvement.
Jessica Greer sang lead on "Hosanna," which ended up becoming the closing song for second service, and it was phenomenal. The band really really nailed it. Sarah learned this fantastic little lick on the piano that added just that perfect little ornamental sound, and Chad was all over the super-powerful solo at the climax of the song. All around a really fantastic performance of a really great song, and one that people really engaged with.
All-around, it was just a really strong week. The band was really tight - dynamics, cutoffs, tempos all were right on. I spontaneously inserted a whole section on "I am free," and they totally flowed with it. It was awesome. It was truly a joy to play with them!
Music Team
Patrick Greer - Drums
Stephen Jernigan - Bass and BGVs
Jessica Greer - Lead vox, BGVs
Sarah Hart - Keys, BGVs
Chad Johnson - Electric guitar
Me - Acoustic guitar, lead vox
Songs
"I Am Free" by John Egan
"Beautiful Jesus" by Kristian Stanfill
"Surrender" by Marc James
"Lift High" by Eddie Kirkland
"Hosanna" by Brooke Fraser
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