Purchase This Video – Streaming license Included
If for some reason your church cannot afford to pay this cost and you would still like to use this video, please send me an email at loewen.dan (at) gmail.com.
This is a more somber and reflective version of the hymn, ‘Were You There When they Crucified my Lord’. This video would work well for a Good Friday service or Easter morning service. You’ll notice I left out the last verse about rising from the grave to better capture the sense of darkness and despair the disciples would have felt.
Used For Good Friday or Tennebrae
We used this video in an evening tennebrae service of shadows where we slowly extinguished candles as the service progressed. This video was played when the room had become almost completely dark and the only candle left was the Christ candle. Having the room dark really helped to set the mood and allow people to enter into the darkness of the story and video.
Easter Morning
You could use this video for your Easter morning service as a way to introduce and setup the resurrection celebration. Because the song is in Dm, the worship team could start playing as soon as the video is done, tastefully switch to the relative major key of F and start singing the last verse – “Were you there when he rose up from the grave!” Ideally the whole band would slowly build and a crescendo – this combined with the shift from a somber minor key to the major key can work great for launching into some celebratory songs like ‘Happy Day’ or ‘He is Risen’ etc.
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Greeting Dan
I am wondering if I may have a copy of your “Were You There” Video for our Good Friday service? I pastor a small rural church in NS and we have no budget for this kind of thing. My email is in all small caps
Blessings on your Easter celebrations
If purchased, can this video be used on a church’s social media such as Facebook and Instagram?
Yes
Can your videos be used as part of an online worship service if purchased? Please let me know ASAP. Thanks!
You bet!
Thinking of using your “Were you There” video for a prayer service I am doing at an assisted living community this Friday. How long is it?
I have just returned from our Easter Friday service and your video was played during the congregation laying stones at the foot of the cross for their personal burdens. Very moving and the music so beautiful and reflective of the situation remembering Jesus on the cross.
Would you make your arrangement available in chord sheet form for our worship team to be able to learn your arrangement?
Blessings in Christ
Peter
I updated the post with the chord chart – hope it works out well for your team.
Dan, this is a wonderfully creative and moving rearrangement of the hymn. I’ve chosen to use this for my Good Friday morning service over and above Johnny Cash, a cute 11 year old, a n other… THank you so much for sharing this gift. Blessings to you. Jonathan, Copplestone Methodist, Devon, UK.
thank you for your sensitivity and creativity in making and sharing this video. We’ll be using it to close our Tenebrae service this year. First UMC, Moorestown, NJ
Dan,
Thanks for posting this video as well as the updated one. I plan to use this at our Good Friday service this year.
FYI ~ I grew up in Abbotsford!
Simon Tuin
Our church will close our Good Friday service with this clip. Thank you for making it available.
What a fantastic video. I work in youth ministry and have been looking for something like this for weeks. Thank you for offering it for us to use at our school liturgy on Thursday. It will finish off our modern stations of the cross very well.
Great video. What was the video editing software that you used to make it?
I used iMovie for the older version and Final Cut Pro X for the latest version.
I am planning on using this at our service this year, it is so moving and I would like to thank you for having the imagination and faith
We sang this at our Good Friday service and I was moved. Being relatively new to church, I hadn’t heard it before. Then, after watching The Passion of the Christ today, I found your video online. There are so many versions of this song on youtube, but this one is my favorite by far. It captures the somber feeling perfectly, without being showy like so many other versions. Good job. And Happy Easter tomorrow! Allelujah! He has risen!
Thank you so much for this – we used it in our Good Friday Stations of the Cross last night – really powerful and extremely well received. Thank you for sharing it.