New Albums

Two new albums for your listening, agreed not everyones taste:

Jewel - Goodbye Alice in Wonderland.
Great singer from states, quirky at times, great words.












Dixie Chicks - to be honest, I aint bought this yet but intend to.
Their past albums are awesome.

wots going on like bonny lad.....

There seems to have been lots going on in life generally recently, which now needs to die down after this weekend.

Two weekends ago I was leading worship at a conference in London – Lay Readers Conference called God of the Hear and Now. I believe it was specifically aimed at those lay readers who are aged 18-35, but somehow people generally seemed a lot older. I won’t explain a long story but basically the band mostly was made up of BT Employees via its Christian Network (apart from my star flute player, who is from Norwich). It was a real priveledge doing it and was amazed at the way we were brought together to serve a common purpose. It was great.

Unfortunatley at the end of the service I got a message on my mobile. Again, cutting the story short, Max had collapsed with a seizure on a train in Cromer. He basically had a fit, blue lips, foaming at the mouth and shaking. Once that eased of he went unconscious. Naturally this freaked Emma out and 999 was called. They gave him oxygen and took him to A&E at the Norfolk and Norwich. The upshot was is Max had chickenpox (which we already knew) which in turn had given him a temperature. Apparently quite common, Max had suffered from a condition called febrile convulsions – this is were the bodys internal temperature rockets upwards causing the seizure. Although very unpleasant and frightening, unlike an epileptic fit in which you can swallow your tongue and in serious cases stop breathing, a febrile convulsion whilst looking the same, doesn’t have the same effect.

Max is now fully recovered and as parents we are going to be a lot more vigilant when he has cold or illness. The consultants advice is to make sure he has medication as frequently as possible and these best for him is ibuprofen for kids.

Finally I have started doing another play. In reality I should be getting involved with the Norfolk and Norwich Operatic Society’s 42^nd Street production. However I made the decision not to join it this year because of family and a new baby arriving. Rehearsing schedules are pretty busy, kicking off in August every Wednesday and Friday from 7pm to 10pm. Then, once a month, they do a week long rehearsing, all day Sunday and every night during the week. In the end we felt that I could not commit to this and have decided against it. As a compromise I have joined a much smaller and somewhat more friendly amateur dramatic group called Thorpe Players. Based out of Roxley hall I am playing the part of teddy in a play called Arsenic and Old Lace. Teddy is a mad old boy who thinks he is the President of the United States. In fact he is being used by his aunts to bury people they are bumping off. He thinks they have yellow fever, in fact his aunts are feeding them poison. The commitment for this is much less. Its only a Friday night with no long midweek rehearsals. Should be great fun.

A Big Church

Ive been drifting around a few blogs recently where big churches in the modern world have come in for some criticism and I really am struggling to make my mind up about it /them.
The criticisms aren't particularly very clear to be fair but one is about a rock "culture" and if anyone is familiar with Hillsongs and so forth then you will be getting somewhat of an image of what I mean. So I will use Hillsongs as a reference point although in truth don't have any gripes about it.

I read somewhere recently that Hillsongs London have a team of a 1000 people (a 1000 - really??) simply dedicated to transforming the London Dominion theatre into a church and back to theatre at a weekend. Wait a moment, I will try and find the link....
Here we go .... http://www.hillsong.co.uk/london/home.asp.

Neither am I sure I have a problem with this in truth, but I struggle why church has to be done in a theatre like this, possibly at great expense (maybe not) and at great effort.

Thinking about it, my main issue with a large church is being established and maybe its a selfish thing. I lead worship in a church and consider it a priveledge - and I do it a reasonable amount. However I know that if there were lots of other competent worship leaders around, then I would be doing it less. If I were to join a large church where people were very skilled I suspect I wouldn't cut the mustard and not be able to be part of the worship, simply because I am not good enough in terms of skill.

I would hope then that my skills would be used in cell group / home groups or something like that, but in truth I am a person who likes performing in front of a larger audience. Not that leading worship is performing in a sense of "hey look at me" but there is a greater amount of pressure and nerve needed as the audience size grows. So leading worship at a smaller level, although good, possibly wouldn't hold the attraction it has. I guess that could be wrong of me and not very humble, but its honest.

I do enjoy leading worship at a small group, thats cool. But if thats all I was doing then I think I would slowly become frustrated.

The other thing (and the last thing as I am horribly rambling) is that a large church means you never get to know a majority of people as its impossible. The people at the "top" running church become somewhat divorced from the people at the "bottom" making tea and coffee. (I use top and bottom in a heriachical format because its easier to demonstrate although I don't like classifying people like this. In my mind someone who cleans the toilet is just as important as the preacher - one cannot do without the other). But there is a seperation occurs I believe from the leader and the non leader.

Anyway enough there for a pyschologist to examine and probably determine some issue of leadership and self righteousness or something. Champion

Updates

Hi

Apologies for the lack of posts. I have been away on business for a little while, leading worship at a conference in London for CoE Lay Readers and Max has been unwell.

Back to normal for a week and then off on Business again.

Just a reminder that I have another blog which I occasionally post to which is my photo blog. http://viewed.blogspot.com

Cheers

Dave

New Template Part 2

MMMM

Interesting.
It would appear that my new template has dissapeared.
I looked at Emily's blog who has used the same "service" and hers has dissapeared as of Thursday 00:39. If it doesn't return looks like it will be back to the standard templates.

Champion - or not...........