James' Lazy Day
Hey all. It's Monday and I have nothing that needs doing (except this), and no staff meeting this morning as David's away for a week in sunny Cumbria so I'm having a lazy day; although not too lazy - I did get up at about half nine. So I've spent today playing guitar and trying to work on some songs and finishing off watching the latest haul of DVDs from Blockbuster. It's been really good because by yesterday evening I was feeling totally wiped out (oh and, for the record, Lucky Number Slevin is a little disapointing and My Super Ex-Girlfriend is very funny).
So anyway, there's not really that much that's happened this past week, but there's a couple of things that are probably interesting enough to write about.
On Saturday, I went out for lunch with Matt Sellers and Ben Read. Just in case you don't know them, Matt used to be a Youth Worker at St. Mike's, and I think pretty much saw me through the biggest part of my teenage years (as well as my wonderful parents obviously). He was also was the one who gave me the nod to put together the old youth worship band and to start leading worship, and encouraged me and guided me through all of that - so it was great to catch up with him, and Ben - who was a youth at St Michael's, did a year in the Academy, and is now in his last year at Cardiff University doing History and president of the CU there as well - because he's amazing and is probably going to end up being a vicar ;-P.
We went out to a 'Spoons in Cardiff to eat and talked for a few hours about different things, which was really good.
Sunday, I spent the 9.45 formal service down in Sunday School / Children's Church / Sunday Club, which was good fun. This week was all about Elijah looking for God in the Hurrican and the Earthqueake, but finding Him in the quiet whisper - complete with sound effects, Whoooosh!
I led worship at Time for Praise, which was on Elijah being called to prophecy against Ahab - the point being God is an awesome God who alone has the power to judge. Anyway, I thought I'd include my little songlist just so you can see how things are progressing at Time for Praise. There was even a song written in 2006!
Call to worship: These are the days of Elijah
Worship Block: Beauty for brokenness (in 3/4, aaahhh!), There must be more (Consuming Fire) into The Stand, We wanna see Jesus lifted high
Out of prayer-time / to Close: God of Justice (We must go)
None of these songs were done for the first time on Sunday - There must be more is reasonably new to the congregation, as is God of Justice which I think might be the song of the season at Time for Praise - I think God is really highlighting it and speaking to us through it; The Stand was done once whilst I was away over Christmas, but is literally only a single chorus and fits really well into Consuming Fire. It's from a Hillsong United song, but is on the 2006 Soul Survivor Live Album. Beauty for brokenness (which I was terrified about but actually came together in the end, and We wanna see are the old favourites. I'm really delighted by how the congregation are picking up and taking on the new songs, and by how quickly the average year that the songs we use were written has gone up by about 10 years.
The worship block from Sunday goes from quite quiet and reflective (coming out of a time of intercession) to finish really loudly with We wanna see, where as usually you expect a worship block to work the other way. Often in the past I've tried to force this, and it hasn't worked so well, so I was really glad with how well this worked. We finished The Stand really quietly and then began We wanna see with just a few cheeky strums of the guitar and voices, knowing that people would recognise it pretty much straight away, and then picked it up straight away, and then finished it off with a quiet prayerful chorus of "We're going to see Jesus lifted high".
This week I decided to try out making some short, but quite detailed notes next the the songs on the chordsheets, because in previous weeks we were forgetting some things from the the practice which is on a Thursday night. The notes worked really well because they helped jog people's memory and also made it really clear how things were working so there was no confusion, but still room to be flexible and sensitive to the holy spirit. So all in all, I was really pleased with how it all went.
So anyway, there's not really that much that's happened this past week, but there's a couple of things that are probably interesting enough to write about.
On Saturday, I went out for lunch with Matt Sellers and Ben Read. Just in case you don't know them, Matt used to be a Youth Worker at St. Mike's, and I think pretty much saw me through the biggest part of my teenage years (as well as my wonderful parents obviously). He was also was the one who gave me the nod to put together the old youth worship band and to start leading worship, and encouraged me and guided me through all of that - so it was great to catch up with him, and Ben - who was a youth at St Michael's, did a year in the Academy, and is now in his last year at Cardiff University doing History and president of the CU there as well - because he's amazing and is probably going to end up being a vicar ;-P.
We went out to a 'Spoons in Cardiff to eat and talked for a few hours about different things, which was really good.
Sunday, I spent the 9.45 formal service down in Sunday School / Children's Church / Sunday Club, which was good fun. This week was all about Elijah looking for God in the Hurrican and the Earthqueake, but finding Him in the quiet whisper - complete with sound effects, Whoooosh!
I led worship at Time for Praise, which was on Elijah being called to prophecy against Ahab - the point being God is an awesome God who alone has the power to judge. Anyway, I thought I'd include my little songlist just so you can see how things are progressing at Time for Praise. There was even a song written in 2006!
Call to worship: These are the days of Elijah
Worship Block: Beauty for brokenness (in 3/4, aaahhh!), There must be more (Consuming Fire) into The Stand, We wanna see Jesus lifted high
Out of prayer-time / to Close: God of Justice (We must go)
None of these songs were done for the first time on Sunday - There must be more is reasonably new to the congregation, as is God of Justice which I think might be the song of the season at Time for Praise - I think God is really highlighting it and speaking to us through it; The Stand was done once whilst I was away over Christmas, but is literally only a single chorus and fits really well into Consuming Fire. It's from a Hillsong United song, but is on the 2006 Soul Survivor Live Album. Beauty for brokenness (which I was terrified about but actually came together in the end, and We wanna see are the old favourites. I'm really delighted by how the congregation are picking up and taking on the new songs, and by how quickly the average year that the songs we use were written has gone up by about 10 years.
The worship block from Sunday goes from quite quiet and reflective (coming out of a time of intercession) to finish really loudly with We wanna see, where as usually you expect a worship block to work the other way. Often in the past I've tried to force this, and it hasn't worked so well, so I was really glad with how well this worked. We finished The Stand really quietly and then began We wanna see with just a few cheeky strums of the guitar and voices, knowing that people would recognise it pretty much straight away, and then picked it up straight away, and then finished it off with a quiet prayerful chorus of "We're going to see Jesus lifted high".
This week I decided to try out making some short, but quite detailed notes next the the songs on the chordsheets, because in previous weeks we were forgetting some things from the the practice which is on a Thursday night. The notes worked really well because they helped jog people's memory and also made it really clear how things were working so there was no confusion, but still room to be flexible and sensitive to the holy spirit. So all in all, I was really pleased with how it all went.
