Quite a full on day today, but excellent nonetheless.

Met Sam Parker for breakfast in London – he’s just moved from Soul Survivor Watford to be the new worship pastor at Christ Church London. What a diamond bloke. I guess we have similar roles in our separate churches, but I can see already I’ve got a lot to learn from this guy – I look forward to connecting out more in the future.

Today mainly consisted of a Newday Review team meeting all day in London with the Newday team; Joel Virgo, Stef Liston, Stu Gibbs, Stephen Dawson, Adrian Holloway, Nicholus Ferguson and Phill Grey. The team meets 4  times a year, and I’ve had the huge privilege of joining these meeting in recent months. One of the major characteristics of all these team meetings is we always spend the first hour or so in prayer and worship together.

I’ve heard people say they care about different issues, or that they’re passionate about a whole number of things, but I heard my dad say once

You know what people really care about by what they pray.

I tell ya, worshipping and praying with the Newday team for an hour was one of the privileges of my year. Hearing these men pour out their hearts for this generation, for the youth of this country, for the glory of Christ in our land; hearing their passionate yearnings for God to move in power and change a nation… I was moved, inspired, challenged and grateful. Grateful that God has blessed us with such godly, humble men who will lay down their lives to see God’s kingdom come in our lives. These guys are the real deal. Wow. Absolute heroes of the faith. They’ve seen something of Jesus and His purposes that I’m hungry to see also

Got back tonight and went out to see The Xcerts live in Brighton. Free gig which is always nice! Not bad gig. They’re a three piece with a big sound, lots of energy and an American accent.

Newday tent photo courtesy of Steve Rowland Photography.

For 2 weeks we’re giving away the sheet music to Stuart’s Gethsemane hymn, for use over Easter. It’s an awesome hymn about Jesus in Gethsemane, moving words and haunting melody.

Download pdf: Gethsemane Hymn

TO SEE THE KING OF HEAVEN FALL
In anguish to His knees,
The Light and Hope of all the world
Now overwhelmed with grief.
What nameless horrors must He see,
To cry out in the garden:
“Oh, take this cup away from me –
Yet not my will but Yours,
Yet not my will but Yours.”

To know each friend will fall away,
And heaven’s voice be still,
For hell to have its vengeful day
Upon Golgotha’s hill.
No words describe the Saviour’s plight -
To be by God forsaken
Till wrath and love are satisfied
And every sin is paid
And every sin is paid

What took Him to this wretched place,
What kept Him on this road?
His love for Adam’s curséd race,
For every broken soul.
No sin too slight to overlook,
No crime too great to carry,
All mingled in this poisoned cup –
And yet He drank it all,
The Saviour drank it all,
The Saviour drank it all.

Stuart Townend & Keith Getty
Copyright © 2009 Thankyou Music

Download pdf: Gethsemane Hymn

So I have been known to enjoy the odd poem now and then… and recently I came accross this. Such a stunning piece of work..

He giveth more grace when burdens grow greater
He sendeth more strength when the labours increase
To added afflictions He addeth His mercies
To multiplied trials His multiplied peace

When we have exhausted our store of endurance
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving has only begun

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure
His power no boundary known unto men
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again

By Annie Johnson Flint

The official video for our recording at Abbey Road studio is now out:

See if you can spot Stuart and myself…

Easter is just around the corner and we’d love to resource you  for your Easter and Good Friday services.
For 2 weeks we’re giving away the sheet music to three great Easter songs!

A song on Good Friday:
Gethsemane by Stuart Townend | sheet music

A song on the Cross:
Pardoned by Mike Sandeman | sheet music | video

A song on the Resurrection:
The Third Day by Simon Brading | sheet music | video | MP3

Download all (.zip 10MB)

Pardoned:

The Third Day:

Our band took some time out of rehearsing our usual worship numbers to play at the CCK Leader’s Party. We did a full hour set featuring some classics from MJ, Maroon 5, Stevie Wonder, Jamiroquai and more…

Was a hugely fun yet stretching experience for us. Recommend it to any band if you get the oppotunity – the discipline of learning a load of function songs beat for beat, helped us raise the game a lot. Anyways here are some videos from the rehearsals and live performance. (I got promoted/demoted to percussion)

Pete Coggan and his band Forerunner were leading at CCK last week and did a great version of Beautiful One. Nice arrangement.

We were invited up to Abbey Road recording studio to sing on a charity song for Haiti, with many other Christian artists, singers, choirs and rappers. Here’s a little video blog of the day plus some photos below…

Our good friends The 29th Chapter have released a single mainstream – Invincible. It’s an absolute tune.

They very much feel God is calling them to move into the mainstream world right now and we wanna support them as much as possible. The single was released on Monday 22nd Feb and they basically need 15000 people to buy it in the next 2 weeks to make the top 40.

Please will you stand with our brothers and support them by buying the single?

1. Buy

There are three easy ways to buy it:
iTunes £0.79
Amazon £0.69
HMV £0.79

£0.69, easy peasy – that’s peanuts. Or even better why not buy it 3 times from all three places? £2.27 in total, that’s not even a pint (all three will count towards the total). The charts close 11:30pm Saturday night so be quick. Check out their website, or facebook page for more info.

2. Make some noise…

Please can you tweet, facebook, myspace, text, email this around to anyone and everyone and get people to buy! Here’s the direct URL to the track on iTunes http://bit.ly/brNNdr

For more info check out at www.29thchapter.com
Thanks for all your help.