just the rev

Great French Cocktail Party Simon!

we are off for half term. So more thoughts in a week or so.......

On Sunday my kids got baptised! By me! In a gigantic swimming pool! In our church! the water was extremely icy!

I love my kids sooooooo much and am very proud of them.

I reckon the same can be said of our heavenly Father when he looks at us. Here's a snippet from my ash wednesday 'sermon'...

During lent take time and allow God to love you. Allow God to love you. Feel the Father’s embrace. The Father doesn’t love you because he has to, he loves you because he wants to. Of course that doesn’t mean the Father delights in everything we do. God likes to love you. To be loved means to be chosen. The sense of being chosen is one of the very best gifts love bestows on the beloved. It means someone has seen me as unique person and that someone desires to come closer to me, to be on the same side as I’m on. Someone believes I have a significant contribution to make.

This lent is a chance for all of us to see ourselves the way God sees us. It is a chance to remember that Someone is watching over us. You may not see or hear him. But you are never out of His sight. You are never out of his care. You friends are the beloved of God. What more do you need to acquire or prove or achieve? Who else do you need to impress? What other ladder do you need to climb?


As I got Zoe and Toby wet on Sunday I thought of the voice from heaven saying "my Son , in whom I am well-pleased."

God delights in us

this is a pic of the banner that hangs outside the Church in California called "Vintage Faith Church". Not sure I dig the name but the words underneath jumped out at me. Especially cos I am trying to put something on paper about our little alt. worship gathering - the fountain. Not really sure where we are going as the fountain but maybe what we are enjoying at the moment is being a worshipping community of missional theologians.

by the way did anyone else see that prog after the ITV News about naked people at work?!! It started with a lay minister who leads a church where people are naked and it pictured them singing "walk in the light".......weird!

decent music helps I wrote.
Ah yes but what is decent music?
is it a style? Is it a standard?
is it about volume? Is it about tempo?
what makes church music decent?
Perhaps decent was the wrong word to use. So why did I use it?

Well personally I find the vast majority of church music to be performance driven. It maybe this that leaves much of the music I hear in churches bereft of passion, spontanaiety and adventure. There are precious few moments when the music in church makes you want to tap your foot let alone dance. the church music I have tended to enjoy the most of the years is the music that has been played by people who are really getting a buzz from playing for God.

There is however some music in churches that is consistently excluding insiders as well as outsiders because it is blatantly lame in style and delivery and we'd be better off wacking a CD on during our worship times.

Whatever it is and However it is played church music should surely lift you and not leave you feeling suicidal.