Stumbling Service

The Stumbling Service is a band driven communion liturgy drawing heavily from the Gospel of Mark lectionary readings. It can be led with the provided stand alone bulletin, augmented with additional scripture and song inserts, or broken apart as individual songs in other worship environs. You can punk it up or folk it down. The boot on the front is a call to follow, an acknowledgment of our stumbling, a symbol of change, a tool for work, and an allusion to our faith journeys – stumbling and all – with the hope of one more step toward the cross. By downloading The Stumbling Service you get: The Stumbling Service Bulletin .pdf. .tif image files of individual songs for use in making your own bulletins. One sized for legal and one for standard paper. MP3s of all the songs. One rock and roll version and one solo acoustic version. (Performed by: Justin Rimbo, Graham Peterson, Nikki Dahlman, Bonnie Wilcox, Erin DeBoer-Moran, Jodi Houge, Micah Taylor, Grant Applehans, Sean Johnson, and Nate Houge) Songbook with melody lines, chords, and leadership notes. Now that you’ve downloaded it, take care of the legal side: If your congregation has a ccli license report the songs by the title printed in the bulletin. This is important. This is how I feed my family. I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty, I’m only saying this to avoid my darling young girls from dying of starvation via your negligent hand. If your congregation does not have a ccli license please contact: Nate Houge – nathan.houge@gmail.com – 612.269.9023 and we will work out a mutually acceptable licensing agreement that is fair to both parties and our situations. It’ll take 5 minutes and a few bucks. Now that the legal side is taken care of… Here’s what you can do with the printed resources: Print as many Bulletins as you want for the rest of your life. Use the individual songs as often as you like. Make copies for the band. Put them in songbooks, project them, quote them in your status updates, paint them on your car, tattoo them on your arm, pay thousands to have those tattoos removed etc… They are yours. If another congregation wants to use them too, awesome. Send them a link and they can purchase it as well. Rad. Looks like I get to take the family out for dinner! Here’s what you can do with the audio resources: You can send them to the band for practice and reference. You can play them at church. You could use them for a poorly attended liturgical karaoke festival. You can look to them for inspiration. You can dust off your boombox and put these songs on a mix tape for your favorite liturgy nerd. He or she will most likely cringe. Ultimately they are a tool to help prepare musicians and song leaders for worship. In Closing: Thank you. I feel this resource is an example of how a tradition keeps us both rooted and moves us forward, breathing new life into our worship and continually exciting our faith. As an independent musician I’m always available for concerts and consulting and I’d love to hear how your experience with this service goes.