Raising The Roof At Woodbine

Susie and I rode together to set up for the service at Woodbine UMC last Saturday and
on the way she made the comment that one of the greatest things about what we do is getting to experience all these different churches. She's right, every church we go into has a different vibe, a different feel. Woodbine UMC was no exception, this is a beautiful church with a beautiful group of people worshiping there. Our good friend James Cole is the pastor at Woodbine, but he was out of town (in Guatemala) on a mission trip so we were walking into a church where no one knew us and we didn't know anyone, so we didn't know what to expect. We were met at the door Saturday by a wonderful lady Nancy Ezell who had agreed to be our host and we felt right at home immediately. She made us feel so welcome! Then when we saw the sanctuary of the church we new we were in for a wonderful morning. The sanctuary at Woodbine was built in 1915 and it holds all the charm and beauty of churches built in those times. I love the old churches that have a balcony and all the stained glass with each window dedicated past members. They knew how to build churches back then, the acoustics in the sanctuary were not to be believed, if we had not been using drums I would not have had any need to even bring in our sound system. You could hear a whisper from the front all the way to the back. The room also had a natural reverb that could make a quartet sound like a choir.


But I'm rambling, let's move on to Sunday morning.

The day was perfect, warm and sunny and when we entered the sanctuary the sun was shining through the stained glass, painting the room with a rainbow of color. We did a quick sound check and waited for the service to start. After a prayer with the lay minister we were introduced and kicked in with "Piggy Back Ride" from our CD "Rhythm and Praise" it was just the beginning of a morning full of praise.
Our worship set was made up of the songs "Amazing Grace/Peaceful Easy Feeling", "I Will Worship" and "Open The Eyes of My Heart". To set the feel for Tommy's sermon as the offertory song we did "No Place Like Home" (also from the CD), the old time church song "He Touched Me" was used as a song of invitation and then we closed with "Oh, Happy Day". It was a great service, we left feeling fulfilled and if the comments from members of the congregation are any indication they did too. Hopefully we will get to worship with them again sometime very soon, it won't be soon enough!
V