Rebel Christmas (from the stage)
About a week ago RebelChurch had it’s third official service. Being that we’re approaching the holidays, we threw some Christmas bling on it and gave it a little twist. We ended up partnering with Spring of Life Church’s food distribution ministry. It’s a local organization that collects food and puts it in the hands of those that need it the most. Great ministry, great people, perfect partnership for rebel. As it turns out, we ended up filling their truck to the gills with food, success!
And although Chrissy and I brought food to rebel that night, I had a somewhat different perspective. When the trucks were getting loaded and food collected, the rebel band and I were busy making sure everything sounded just right. For, you see, this was the first RebelChurch that didn’t have a headliner. First Dominic Balli, then Brenton Brown, now… just us.
And not only did we need a whopping ten songs prepared, but half of those were Christmas songs. And not only were they Christmas songs, they were rebelized Christmas songs, different renditions, different arrangements, JUST for RebelChurch.
Now, in my line of work, ten songs usually isn’t a big deal. Just pull a few from the archive and bust ‘em out. But RebelChurch is different. First of all, this is only the third official service. We’ve been playing “rebel worship” for only three services, three months. You’re typical church has something approaching 50-60 songs in their rotation. We have like, six. Like I blogged before, I’m trying not to use any songs from the Calvary Kendall archive.
Secondly, it’s Christmas! It’s usually enough preparing Christmas songs for one church, but two?! Pure craziness… in which I thrive in of course. But still, there was work to be done for sure. So you can imagine we were practicing like crazy the month prior to this service. The week before we practiced four times, a few of which lasted until midnight.
Here’s something else that made it scary, I played electric for the first time leading worship at this event. At the two prior rehearsals, I practiced with the electric. So that was my third time playing those songs with an electric guitar. Cool, but crazy! And being that some songs required acoustic as well, we had someone swapping guitars for me, which was ANOTHER completely new and different situation! Needless to say, this was a scary, stretching, exciting event for me.
The payoff was amazing. The band played like pros, they sounded legit. Christmas songs turned out totally tasty and the worship was out of control good. At the end of the event, right after we hit the last chord, I had to gather the band and pray to God, praise Him, thank Him, thank my team. It was a time of rejoicing, of victory and triumph. I couldn’t believe what God had done, how amazing my band did, and how well the night went.
And can I just say, we have the most incredible RebelChurch team ever imaginable. Every person produces a bucket of sweat each by the end of these services. They all deserve RebelChurch gold medals.
There’s some great recap shots on our Facebook page here (some of which are above).
Oh, and in case you were wondering, here was our set for the night:
Joyful E/135
Rise and Sing B/144
You B/144
Angels We Have Heard G/118
O Come O Come Emmanuel G/118
Freedom Is Here A/118
break / teaching
Silent Night A/144
O Come All Ye Faithful A/105 (just chorus)
Our God A/105
With Everything A/74
The Stand A/74 (just chorus)
altar call: Break Free G/80
closer: Joyful E/135
