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Showing posts from November, 2012

Narrative and Theology in Songwriting

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Well it’s been a while since I last posted on my blog. Thanks for not giving up on me. Being a school teacher (yes, that is my day job!) means that the weeks leading up to Christmas are packed full of every activity imaginable. And volunteering for a Church means pretty much the same – Christmas gets very busy! Anyway, I have now finished writing my reports so am able to take a little time to update my blog. Last night a few of us from our church travelled to Peterborough (our nearest city) for ‘The Big Church Night In’ with Rend Collective Experiment and Matt Redman playing. We had a fantastic evening as I’m sure you can imagine. The lighting was awesome, the bands sounded brilliant – most importantly Jesus was glorified! During one of Rend Collective’s songs ‘Build Your Kingdom Here’, whilst standing in the 2000 strong crowd, I started thinking again about something that I had pondered over the summer: the songs we write need to 1) be full of the truth of God’s word – to be

'The Me I Want To Be' - part 4

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Having started back at work I have been incredibly busy. I've managed to squeeze a few blogs in centred on other topics, but finding the space and time to simply sit, read and think just hasn't happened - until now. Aren't holidays great? A vital time to relax, unwind and re-commect with your loved ones. my one-week holiday has seen me tackling the next few parts of John Ortberg's book 'The Me I Want To Be'. I've been really enjoying reading, thinking about and blogging about this book over the last few months (see previous blogs) and trying to live a less complicated and more real and authentic life that is full of God. This next part of the book continues on that trend of being enlightening and very freeing. Here are some of my thoughts about Part Four . . . Part Four - Redeeming My Time Prayer Ortberg tries to demystify the whole concept of prayer and encourages us that prayer is not some high and lofty activity that only the super-spiritual can

Christmas Worship Song

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As the daylight hours get shorter and as the autumn leaves fall off the trees in blustering breezes, the time has come for worship leaders to start to search for Christmas songs. This gives enough time for important decisions to be made, think through how things fit together etc. I would imagine most of us will include a few traditional christmas songs to include, but are still searching for Christmas songs that will fit within the sound of a modern worship setting. With this in mind, I set about writing this Christmas song called 'Emmanuel'. It centres around the theme mentioned in Isaiah 14 and Matthew 1: But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, [ f ] because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this too