Youth Event Setlist: Friday 24th April

HT: Sunday Setlists (even if this was a 'Friday setlist')

I seem to be having trouble with days and dates at the moment.

There was so much going on last night at Powerpoint! First of all at our practice and during the event some of the guys who have been in the band were being our 'techies' for the night - recording, videoing and taking pictures of the event as well as doing some video interviews with some of the organisers for a promo video for the event. We were worried that it would be a distraction, but I don't think it was. The young people were just THERE. In the moment, and ready to sing and dance to God.

It was also a bit of an experiment as we had more monitors on the stage (I had 2 of my own so I could actually hear myself properly for the majority of the event. Handy for staying in tune...!) and some different mics and a wee screen with the DTP words that Neil (lead worshipper) and I could see. The band as a rule work hard to learn songs by heart, but it's good to have the words there as a back up, but also to know what those in the congregation are seeing on the DTP screen.

And there were no chairs during the first half like we usually have....oooooooooohhh!

Here's the setlist - I'm trying to do this part from memory, so apologies if I've made any mistakes or left any songs out/put them in the wrong order!!

1st half setlist:

Blessed Be The Name - Matt Redman

How Great Thou Art - Stuart Hine

How Great is our God - Chris Tomlin

Hosanna - Brooke Fraser 

Almighty One - Neil Costley

Amazing Grace - John Newton/Chris Tomlin

2nd half setlist:

You Never Let Go - Matt Redman

Beautiful One - Tim Hughes

Because of your love - Al Gordon/Tim Hughes

Dancing Generation - Matt Redman

O Happy Day - Tim Hughes

We did have a few other songs planned, but one we cut after we heard the recording from the practice (yeuuuccch) and then we cut a few others in the 2nd half because we didn't need them. Which is fine. Setlists I think should have flexibility to them, because you just don't know what God has planned. 

Instead of having a 'speaker' this week, we had a game based on the the nights theme of God in my emotions where each of the young people was given a slip of paper with the title of one of five songs when they came in the door.

Each song represented one of 5 emotions - anger, jealousy, fear/anxiety, love and joy.

On our cue, they had to sing the chorus of their song to find the others with the same song as them. From there we split the 5 larger groups into smaller groups (about a max. of 10) to do a bible study based on that emotion, with a youth leader guiding each group of teens through it.

This seemed to go really well with the exception of the acoustics in the hall, which meant that it was difficult to hear what people were saying in the group unless they REALLY projected their voice well.

We had about 250 young people present last night. Wow. And I got the privilege of leading a group at the last minute as we were short a couple of youth leaders. My group were looking at jealousy if you're interested. And some wise thoughts came out of it too about why jealousy can be so deconstructive, the difference between jealousy and ambition, and how we can seek real peace in replacement of jealousy in our hearts.

For me the best part though was in the 2nd half - the young people just went for it, and several times we just stood back from the microphones and were overwhelmed by the beautiful sound of 250 voices in unison singing. Wow.

At the end we asked those who have exams coming up to stand so we could pray for them. Dotted around the room were teens holding hands or laying hands on each others shoulders in encouragement and support of one another. May/June can be such a stressful time for 15-18 year olds with Standard Grades & Higher Still exams. It was so encouraging to see them encouraging one another.

Because of exams, there'll be no PP next month, but we'll be giving it all we've got in a new venue we're trying out in June. It'll be the last Powerpoint event of the academic year, and we plan to make it a big celebration before school's out for summer.