iGod

My Soul Yearns - New Vineyard worship album

 

 

We have a new release from Vineyard Record UK coming out called My Soul Yearns  on 30 June, so place your order now.

Blurb from the VRUK website:

"It was recorded live at the 2011 Vineyard National Leaders Conference with 1000 attendees comprising of leaders from the UK and European Vineyard churches, ‘My Soul Yearns’ offers an album of new and recently released worship songs that capture the heart and passion of Vineyard worship.

"With the opening title track that speaks of our desire to draw closer to God, through to the triumphal anthem of God’s all conquering love for His people (The Lamb Has Conquered), and finishing with a declaration of the King’s reign on this earth (Jesus You Reign), this album is an authentic expression of how God is moving with Holy power through the Vineyard UK movement where worship is one of its cornerstones."

Features worship leaders on 'My Soul Yearns' include Samuel Lane, Dave Miller, Carly Billingham and Joe Blustin, accompanied by their band which includes former Delirious? band member Paul Evans on drums. Produced by Trevor Michael (crave, Trent, Delirious?), the album was mastered at Abbey Road studios by Geoff Pesche (Gorillaz, Athlete, Coldplay).

The track I personally love is "I respond". A great audio snapshot from an outstanding national leaders conference. One to remember. One to get.  

ASD

 

Rapture - that was awkward!

So last Saturday came and went. The rapture due for the 21 May 2011 failed to materialise.

Just as well I prepared a talk for Sunday morning. Otherwise, that could have been really awkward!

Apparently a revised date by 89 year-old American pastor Harold Camping is in the diary for October. Watch this space, Christmas could be cancelled.

ASD

 

Vineyard National Celebration 2011

VNC 2011: Celebrate from Vineyard Churches UK & Ireland on Vimeo.

"The author of the whole of history has walked onto the stage". (CS Lewis)

For those of us able to get to one of the 10 venues around the UK for the livelink celebration of 25 years of the Vineyard in the UK and to see where we are heading, I am sure you will still be feeling reflective about the day.

It is extraordinary that God takes a rabble like us in the Vineyard and uses us in the most incredible and breathtaking ways to extend His Kingdom and be a blessing to others. Immensely humbling.

For those sadly not able to make Saturday I hope you don't feel too bereft. Maybe go buy someone a coffee who was there and get them to share their reflections.

For all of us, including maybe those who are are unaware of the Vineyard movement or have only experienced the local expression, here's the specially made film. It gives more than a little bit of flavour and colour to this significant day in our brief history here in the UK and Ireland.

Pull up a chair, sit down and enjoy.

ASD

 

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Would you swim the English Channel? Would you audition for X Factor? Solve world hunger? Wouldn’t it be great if we were guaranteed success in everything we touched?

Coming down from Mount Olympus, I wonder if a fear of failure stops us from going forward in life. Maybe there is a fear of failing in marriage because our parents divorced.  Maybe getting an education because we fear we will not have the commitment to see it through. We can end up counting the cost of failure more and totally miss the joy of trying.

When I was at school in the sixth form seven of us decided to cycle to North Wales to raise money for a Mountain activity centre in Snowdonia. For some dumb and inexplicable reason we choose to go in the February half term when it was bitterly cold and snowing. Considering that I had never cycled more than five miles in my life, you could say a cycle ride of 180 miles over three days was a risky strategy. Well, we made it and the local newspaper ran the headline “The Magnificent Seven.” Though I seem to remember in the film that only three of them made it. Anyway, moving on.

Life doesn’t give us any certainty, but certainly there is hope. In our church there is no stigma attached to failure. We come as we are. We come as failures being restored.

We have just come through Easter when the Church remembers the great sacrifice that Jesus made for us by dying on a rough wooden Roman cross. The Easter story tells us Jesus took our guilt and shame and substituted himself for us. We acknowledge that we can’t save ourselves from ourselves. It has to have divine involvement.

It’s amazing to think that the first pope of Rome, Peter, did not see himself as infallible, but a miserable failure before his reinstatement by Jesus.

He was one of Jesus’ closest friends, but when the tough got going he ended up denying Jesus three times to save his bacon. Not great qualifications for becoming the Pontiff of Rome you might think. Peter knew he had done wrong against God (sin) but received forgiveness from the only one that ultimately really matters. Furthermore, he was then trusted by Jesus to start the Church, which today sees a third of the world population following Jesus. Not a bad result for a failure.

So perhaps the question is not what would you do if you could not fail, but what will you do when you do? Contrary to some held beliefs, an authentic life in Christ does not live with continued guilt and shame, but allows us to come and be accepted for who we are, being set free and given new hope for a fail-safe future. Now you have to admit that is pretty cool.

ASD

Dare you not to be moved by this song sung by an old homeless guy

A number of people have asked me about the reflective song I played at our Good Friday Service recently, which had the effect of reducing a number of us to tears.

Two weeks before Good Friday a good friend of ours who is a local artist gave us a CD. I hadn't really given it much thought to be honest as my time was pretty sqeezed with my commitments. However on the Wednesday before our service I saw it in the corner of my eye and decided to slip it into my laptop to play.

Nothing prepared me for what I heard next  It was of an elderly tramp singing an old worship song over and over again. The song was called "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet". After a bit of Googling I discovered the full story behind the recording and so share it with you here.

Back in the early Seventies the classical composer Gavin Bryars was working with a friend in London making a film about the homeless living rough in and around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station.

In the course of being filmed, some of the guys broke into drunken song, but there was one who in fact did not drink, and sang the song "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet".

When Bryars played it at home, he found the homeless guy's singing was in tune with his piano, and he improvised a simple accompaniment. He noticed, too, that the first section of the song - 13 bars in length - formed an effective loop, which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way.

He took the tape loop to Leicester, where he was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and he left the tape copying, with the door open, while he went to have a cup of coffee.

When he came back Gavin Bryars found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.

People had been overcome by the old man's simple and bold faith being sung in this uncomplicated song.

Here are the words:

"Jesus' blood never failed me yet

never failed me yet

Jesus' blood never failed me yet

There's one thing I know

For he loves me so..."

Worship isn't about the performance, it's about the heart. As we reflected over Easter, Jesus was himself homeless for the last part of his life and lived and died with borrowed possessions. His love for the rejected, dispossed and hard-pressed is evident, not least by this elderly homeless man who knew the true meaning of Jesus' blood being spilt for him.

The old man died before he could hear what the composer had done with his singing, but he left us with a most precious gift.

ASD