Worship Training Weekend

Well, a rather interesting weekend has just gone by. THRE3, the new band I'm in with Dan and Lee, were asked to go and lead a worship training weekend for the team at Mill End Baptist Church in London.

We had such an AWESOME weekend! It was great to take not only our musical experiance and knowledge, but also the manifest presence of God...The whole weekend was just a huge blessing to us and to them.

I'm still exhausted though, I should have taken more Red Bull!

The weekend kinda went like this:
Friday evening, pack the van up and head to London, Lee and I arrived about 9pm, set up our stuff and went to our Host home. Dan had plans that evening, and joined us at about midnight. Sleep!

Saturday, up and off, first things first, COFFEE! Then a time of worship and then some teaching by Lee. Then Dan and I lead a workshop on band dynamics, orchestrating a song with them - they really enjoyed that, especially the singers! In 10 minutes they had a song with rising and falling dynamics. Then we handed it over to them to arrange a song. They started to get the hang of it.

Lunch! Then followed some teaching by Lee on communication within the team and stuff, all good, then we aksed them to pick a song, they picked a song me and Dan hadn't even heard of before! The challenge was us vs them! Was very funny. We won. (joke). Then we had quite a long Q&A section, followed by DINNER!

In the evening we had a praise and worship time that the whole church was invited to, not a huge amount of people came along, but we led, and God really turned up, the place was filled with his presence, and we got the chance to minister and pray with a few people, everyone else was just chilling out in Gods AWESOME presence.

Sunday morning, we led alongside their band, and Lee preached, it was great, although a bit weird not being in our home churches. Then Sunday afternoon, our hosts prepared the most MASSIVE sunday roast ever, and we filled our bellies before driving home.

Then we led with Lee and some of the Presence crew at Kingsland that evening. And, then we had chinese.

All in all, a FANTASTIC weekend!!!

Life...

There I was, having a nice, relaxing evening...I thought to myself, I'll watch a comedy film and then catch up with some much needed sleep. So I flicked through the movies on www.alluc.org (great site) and watched 'Click' featuring Adam Sandler. I thought this was going to be a bit of mindless comedy...just the ticket!

Turns out, it's a fairly rubbish movie, but very thought provoking.

In Short, Adam Sandler gets a remote control that can control life. However, the remote control learns to fast forward automatically through all the crap in his life, and he very quickly gets old, lonely and dies. Fortunately, in true Hollywood style, it was all a dream and he returns home a changed man.

However, it still made me think - a lot, I have these questions:
> Am I just drifting through life, from week to week, making a small difference in the world?
> Do I just turn off, go into auto-pilot and miss the little things in life?
> Is life just passing me by?!
> What are my achievements to date / what are they going to be?
> Are my priorites right?

A lot to think about...and I'm going at it, not from a self indulgent point of view, but a WWJD point of view...Jesus made a difference in the world...as did his disciples.

If a bunch of fishermen can change the world, I'm sure I can!

Oh what a job.....

Ok, this suprised me, especially as I thought the swiss were so conservative! Read on...
Sex for the disabled
A Swiss welfare group is recruiting volunteers to have sex with disabled people. The Basel-based Welfare Group for Disability and Sexuality already arranges erotic massages for people with disabilities.

But it is now providing full sexual intercourse and is also signing up gay volunteers to have sex with homosexual disabled people. The group's leader Aiha Zemp said it was a subject that "needed to be tackled." She said: "It's a big taboo that needs to be broken. Having sex is a basic human need like eating and drinking and we have to fight for this right for the disabled."

At present three men and one woman offer an erotic 'touching service,' and nine new volunteers have come forward to offer sex at £65 per hour. Among the new recruits are four men, two of them homosexuals. Zemp rejected criticism that the group were simply training up prostitutes.

"The big difference between the assistants and prostitutes is that the assistants show tenderness and are conscious of the needs of the disabled, rather than rushing and just taking the money," she said.
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Words can't explain it!

However, at £65 per hour (equivillant to £135,000 per year) I'm sure it's an attractive offer for some.