So yesterday was my first real 'work' day of tour. I had a 15 minute slot at the South Australia Synod of the Uniting Church. About 300 ministers and church leaders were gathered, and I got the final quarter of an hour before lunch, a greatly coveted time slot ;). Later that day I had a music practice with the musicians I will be working with on Sunday at Hope Valley Uniting Church.At the Synod...

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So we're here in Adelaide for our three week tour, sharing the new album, 'Into the Deep' and promoting 'Songs that Unite.' STU is a website run by the Uniting Church of Australia, publishing and promoting songs by local composers, making them available to the wider church. They're doing a great job at it too. They have a committee that assesses each song before its included on the site, so they're taking things seriously.Why am...

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Recently I finished reading a book called, 'Why Johnny can't sing hymns.' It was a pretty darn good read. While I had to make my way past all the overt criticisms of a music form that I actually quite enjoy (that is, contemporary worship music) the author, T. David Gordon (no relation) had some compelling things to say.By trade, Gordon is a media ecologist, which I confess is a profession I had not heard of...

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In less than two weeks, we'll be getting on a plane to Adelaide for my first overseas music tour. That's pretty exciting huh?!The tour is to promote the work of the 'Songs that Unite' website, which is an initiative of the Uniting Church of Australia. The site publishes songs from local composers to make them available to the wider church. This is my kind of thing. Without really thinking about it, we've adopted a similar...

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Here are the One Voice Project, we were excited to hear about this initiative happening down south. Here's Cheryl Harray to tell us about this collaborative project to visualise the praises of God's people, and their testaments to God's goodness. - MalcsThe 10,000 Reasons 'Post it note' Praise ProjectFlagstaff Community Church, Dunedin, NZ The song ‘10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord Oh My Soul) by Matt Redman has rapidly become a well known and loved congregational song...

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My dear friends, Sam and Rach Callander have almost completed a crowd funding campaign to create the Super Power Baby Project. The project is inspired by their daughter, Evie, who died almost 3 years ago. Evie had a rare chromosome disorder. Yet in the midst of all the medical information Sam and Rach were bombarded with, telling them everything Evie would not be able to do, they chose instead to give voice to the wonderful...

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Some of you really enjoyed the rhyming all-age prayer I shared a week or so back.I knew I'd written another sometime earlier this year, I just couldn't find the receipt, or the serviette that I wrote it on. Turns out it was on an envelope. This is more of a call to worship. Come sleepers, come dreamers! Hey rank unbelievers! Come into God's house, find a pew.Hey husbands, hey sisters! Hey neighbours, hey misters! Come in, find the place, just...

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So, my friend Cate is preaching on 1 Corinthians 4 this Sunday at St Peters (where Paul boasts, 'I am the scum of the earth'). Alongside talking this over with her, I've been continuing to ruminate on the Philippians 2 hymn (where Christ empties himself, becoming like a slave) and the idea that we are all made of dirt in the first place (Genesis 2) which Eugene Peterson has helped me to remember in his...

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I led the worship service at St Peters on Sunday. It was a combined, all age service, meaning the whole church family was together for the whole service. That's my favourite kind of service. It's always a challenge, but I think its part of the challenge of being the church, living alongside one another, and learning to encounter God in the midst of unlikely fellow-pilgrims.I've been reading a lot of Hairy McLary to my two...

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Much of our worship seems to reject the incarnation. Karl Barth, when writing to address the growing atheist movement in the early part of the 20th century, answered their criticism that ‘there is no such thing as a God up there’ with the words, ‘quite right.’ He reminded the church that we don’t believe in a God like that either. The only God we know of is the one who came to meet us, who...

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So the gospel for this Sunday is the parable of the Good Samaritan.Here are a couple of songs that might help you prepare, or enrich your worship this Sunday.Firstly, 'These hands' is a song that speaks of God's seeking of us and tenderness towards us. Perhaps we are the fool who travelled down that dangerous road on our own. And maybe God is the one we thought was our sworn enemy, but turned out to...

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