A few weeks ago I posted a Scripture Challenge. I gave the passage for the message of a service and asked you to think about how you would go about setting up a worship set for a Sermon/Teaching on that passage. Now I’m going to revisit that challenge and let you know how I approached a service in which the main passage was Galations 4:12-20. I have to confess, though, that in retrospect I wasn’t quite as forthcoming about the details of the service as I should have been. There was another element in the service which significantly affected the development of the worship set: Communion.

Whenever you have Communion in a service, there must – at least at some level – be a decent focus upon the Cross and Christ’s work there. Luckily for me, the approach I wanted to take to Galatians 4:12-20 worked extremely well with Communion. My general thoughts on the passage was that Paul was expressing frustration and even exasperation over how the Galatians had strayed from the original Gospel of Grace he had preached to them and they had been saved under.

The key to the passage – at least partially, in my mind – is that they (the Galatians) had stopped considering the work of Christ as being all they needed for salvation; they were trying to supplement it with works. So the main theme for the worship set is how Christ’s work is all we need and that when Christ died on the Cross and rose again our salvation was complete – nothing else is needed to be right with God.

So here’s how the set worked out:

Opener:

• Hallelujah (All I Need) – from the Catalyst Music Project
• (Opening Comments)

Worship Set

• Enough – Christ Tomlin
• The Glory of it All – David Crowder Band
• Scripture Reading: Heb. 10:1-4, 11-14
• It is Finished (Hark the Voice…) – Red Mountain Music

Offertory

• God of All – Catalyst Music Project

Communion/Response

• God of All – Catalyst Music Project
• Saviour King – Hillsong

You can give the whole set a listen on Grooveshark if you so desire.

This is going to be the last post (for now) on creating chord charts. After getting all your lyrics and chords laid out, with instructions for the band as well as adding some measure indicators, you just need to take a step back and look over the chart. Is there too much information cluttering it up? When you look at it does it just look like a mess of letters and words and slashes? Here’s the biggest question for me (at least right now in chord chart creation): can I glance at the chart and almost immediately pick out where the chorus is (if not a chorus, then separate sections)?

Here’s the reality, while your team will use the chart at first, many musicians memorize at least partially as they learn. So they will be glancing away from the sheet to check on your visual clues, but also just to focus on worshipping (I hope). In any case, when they turn their eyes back to the chart, will it be easy for them to find the section they need? If not, maybe some re-working is in order.

For most songs with a chorus, that chorus is the primary division of the song – if you can find the chorus, the section you need (if not the chorus) is right above or below the chorus. Your musicians must be able to find that chorus at a glance! In using charts that are not quite so clearly laid out, I’ve found myself making brackets or lines or just drawing around the chorus of various songs I’m playing just so I don’t lose my place when I have to look away.

Recently I ran into this issue in creating some chord charts for a service I’ll be leading soon. I resorted to different methods for different songs. On one song, “Hallelujah (All I Need)”, I found the writer’s chord chart on his site, but  the sheet was really minimal and after creating a chord chart I realized it was pretty involved. I resorted to putting a box around each chorus to set them apart from the rest of the chord chart. I think it came out pretty good without making the chart overwhelming.

Another song, “God of All,” had a chord chart on the album website, but (again!) I found the chart to be inadequate – primarily because I was going to tweak the arrangement and I wanted to notate the changes in the chart. After getting everything down, the chart wasn’t too busy, but the divisions were just not sticking out to me. Instead of resorting to boxes, I just added extra blank lines between each section of the song, which turned out rather well.

Here’s one more option for making the chorus of a song stick out from the rest of the song: indent all of the song except for the chorus. It might look something like this:

verse verse verse
verse verse verse

chorus chorus chorus chorus
chorus chorus chorus chorus

verse verse verse
verse verse verse

chorus chorus chorus chorus
chorus chorus chorus chorus

bridge bridge bridge
bridge bridge bridge

chorus chorus chorus chorus
chorus chorus chorus chorus

This method is a little more subtle, but it can be effective. In the end, there are many different ways to make sure the divisions of a song are clearly delineated. The method is less important than its effectiveness: does it help the instrumentalist quickly find where they want to be on the page or does it distract?