Faith and Cancer

Picture by Matt McChlery (Creative Commons Copyright, Non-Commercial)  I had great fun on Sunday afternoon when loads of friends and supporters from The King's Church, Wisbech (and a couple from further afield) descended upon Grange Farm Studio in Emneth! We were there to record a 'live congregation' sound of a brand new song 'Perfect Love' . This is all because Springharvest (a large Christian Festival that happens during Easter in the UK) invited me to submit a song/songs for consideration to be added to the Springharvest 2013 Songbook. I was not successful in other years past, so this year I was (and am) a bit more determined to try harder and hopefully succeed. So this year I've gone all-out! I have written a song specifically for Springharvest 2013 - after doing much research on their website as to 2013's theme and the book of the Bible they will be using as their major text. I even took some of the congregation along with me to the studio to

Continuing with my blog about the book 'The Me I Want To Be' by John Ortberg, I have reached the end of part two 'Flowing With The Spirit'. These are my thoughts and reflections as I have read this second section of the book. If you want to read the first part and start with me on this journey from the begining, please have a look for 'part one' in my blog archive. How about subscribing or 'following' my blog so that you don't miss future installments? Part Two - Flowing With The Spirit The key to happiness and fulfilment is staying connected to God (not the gaining or money, prestige or celebrity, not succeeding at an achievement or the gaining of fame). This simple, yet powerful concept underpins this second part of the book. For me to fully become the me I want to be, the me God created me to be, all I need to do is to stay connected to him. This will give me ultimate fulfilment, satisfaction and happiness - everything else in life will f

I almost did not write this blog. The thing is Sunday's musical aspect of the service was  . . . ok. It was nothing spectacular, it was just mediocre (in my opinion). However, thinking about it, I decided that it would be less-authentic of me if I did not publish or write this blog. Why should I try to project and 'image' where everything is sparkling and successful? Often it isn't. Often it is a lot of hard work. And often things don't quite work the way I think they should. There were a few challenges to face this week. Being the summer holidays here in the UK quite a few musicians and singers were away on holiday. In fact I had only just arrived back from a holiday myself a few days before the service. So we were quite thin on the ground - only one acoustic guitar, one electric guitar and a violin. An interesting combination of instruments to work with to say the least! Anyway, despite the challenges, the congregation were mostly engaged, but from my point

I first heard this song in Zimbabwe over a decade ago! It was during the time that I had just been introduced to Ryan Baker-Barnes in our home town of Marondera. Little did I know that we would still be freinds today and continuing to write songs together! This song started off as 'Ryan's baby'. He had written the verses - I liked the simplicity of the concept and at the time he had some original lyrics that included 'landscapes burn and people turn'. but some years later he revised these as they were quite obscure and it was not very obvious what they were refering to, even though they sounded quite poetic. I liked the song, but felt it needed a chorus to help hold it together more comfortably as well as add interest and variation to the melody from time to time. So I added the chorus and Ryan liked it. As far as I know, this song has never been recoreded on a CD but through the wonders of the internet, churches in various countires around the world have p

 During our recent holiday to South Africa my grandmother gave my wife and I a gift voucher each as our birthday presents. They were for a fantastic Christian bookshop in Somerset West Mall. When it came to redeeming the vouchers, I scoured the shop, finding it difficult to decide what to get. In the end I chose a book by John Ortberg called 'The Me I Want To Be' as I felt it would apply to what God is doing in my life right now beacuse I feel I'm not the me I want to be at the moment. he has also written 'Everyone Is Normal Till You Get To Know Them' which my mother-in-law has read and really enjoyed - so that's got to be a good thing, right? I still had some reservations! With a title like that, and with a giant 'ME' written in capital letters on the cover, I was worried it would turn out to be a self-centred pseudo-spiritual self-help book. But after reading 'Part One: Finding My Identity' my fears were calmed. This is an extremely

One stop on our recent South African holiday was Grahamstown. I went to university here (Rhodes University) and attended a fantastic church while doing so called 'Hie People'. I wanted to share this part of my life with wife: take her around, show her the sights etc. There were some university friends still involved with the church and living in Grahamstown so it was also a great opportunity to catch up with them. A few emails later and I had been invited to have a chat with the worship leaders of the church, give a prophetic worship seminar/workshop and possibly play in the band on Sunday! Fantastic! The worship leaders chat is what I'm blogging about here. It was great to see so many on the leadership of the worship side of things, and really exciting to learn some co-lead together and that there was also a choir! Also great to see those who've been doing it for a while creating space and helping those who are very new to worship leading grow in their gifting.