Category: Christianity

I’m learning Greek.  To be more specific, New Testament Greek.  And boy does it make my brain hurt.

Thankfully I’m not doing this alone, Ellie is learning with me.  Or, to be precise, I’m learning with her.  Technically it’s her course, I’m just looking over her shoulder.  It’s a module from the distance learning course she’s doing from St John’s College Nottingham, teaching the basics of New Testament Greek using 1 John as a reference book.  It’s quite a challenge, what with the completely different alphabet and sentence structure and whatnot, so she decided it would be easier for her to learn if there was someone learning with her, so she had someone to talk about it with.

So I’m learning Greek.

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There’s something about young people that fills me with optimism.  Perhaps it’s their all-encompassing world view.  Maybe it’s their insatiable love for life.  Or possibly even just because I remember being a young person myself and how crucial it was in my development.  Whatever the reason, I’ve discovered I all to easily agree to help kids in all sorts of ways, keen to teach them something new, point them in the right direction, prod them into thinking about things in a new way, and then shove them off a cliff to see how far they fly.

I guess it’s partly with that in mind that I and my wife are leaders each year on a Christian youth camp.  I say ‘partly’ because the other half of the reason I go is that Ellie asked me to, and since we were engaged at the time (the first year we went) I felt I ought to say yes.  Since that first year we’ve both made ourselves quite indispensible, doing lots of stuff, leading lots of things, running hither and thither to help out wherever we can.

This year was slightly different for both of us, for different reasons.  The main difference for me, as you may have read, is that I’ve had a hernia.  I was under doctor’s orders not to lift anything heavier than a kettle, and not to do too much walking around either.  Ellie’s time was also eaten into by the attention of our baby Samuel, who had his first experience of exuberant teenagers this year.  Camp this year was tough on all of us – physically and mentally.

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Further to my previous post, I’m afraid to say that my blog is still feeling a little under the weather at the moment.  I’ve Googled, I’ve prodded and poked, I’ve FTPed and upgraded, and all to no avail.  So, for now at least, I’ve given up.  One day when I have time I’ll look into it again, but for now I’m going to rely on other ways to update my blog.  My previous post came courtesy of the built-in blog editor in Flock.  This one is being written in ScribeFire, a Firefox plugin.

And it’s high time for an update, I’m sure you’ll agree.  A certain person has been on my case for days, if not weeks, asking for a photo of a smiling baby that I’d promised her.  I had intended on putting it on my blog, but that wasn’t working, so I emailed it to her in the end.  But, for those of you who are not Sarah, a photo of my darling son is in this post – the first I managed to capture of him smiling.

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This is a song I began to write at Spring Harvest last year.  On Sunday I included it in the worship songs and taught it to the congregation, as it seemed to fit well with the theme, and it seemed to go down well!  It was actually the first time anyone had heard it, my wife included, so it was good to get it out at last and being useful.  I even had a lady ring me up this evening asking for the words, because she’d found it really inspiring!  That’s such a huge encouragement for a songwriter.  Not that I seek attention or praise, but that God is working through my offering and allowing my gift to bear fruit.  Halleluia!

So, here are the words to the song, “Jesus your name is higher”.  I don’t have the music written out yet, but when I do I’ll try and make sure that finds its way onto here too.   (more…)

I love music.  It brightens my working day, it inspires my leisure time, it gives me an outlet for my passion and creativity.  No surprise, then, that I have a fair amount of music.  Not on the scale of some people, admittedly, but that’s probably because as a university student I was probably a little more honest than most and thus didn’t end up with a secondary hard disk filled with torrents and downloads.

When we were at camp just over a week ago my wife gave one of the talks, which was loosely based around the story of King Ahab and the vineyard – Ahab wanted it, the owner refused to sell it, Ahab sulked, his wife had the owner murdered and Ahab claimed the vineyard.  The point of the talk was that sin by association is still sin; God still condemned Ahab for his actions, even though it was Jezebel actually doing the deed.  He didn’t object to the sin, and benefited from it, so was held culpable by God.  Ellie used the illustration that “sharing” music is effectively the same thing – sure, someone else has ripped the music off the CD, but we’ve still accepted the MP3 files and are therefore benefiting from it.  So in God’s eyes, as well as the law’s, we are guilty.

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Here is a downloadable score for ‘Come holy fire’, a song I wrote fairly recently.  It was used for the first time at a Christian youth camp I was at last week (more on that later), and seemed to go down well, so I’m making it available for people to use at their home churches.  At the moment I hold the copyright and everything, and it’s likely to stay that way until a music publisher comes my way!

It’s a gathering song, speaking of our unity in Christ, so would go well at the beginning of a service.  I particularly like the end of the second verse, which says “trusting not in our own strength but in your power, saved by grace and not by what we’ve done”.  It helps us recognise how awesome God’s grace is, how he allows us into his presence despite our many failings, and the chorus invites God to “set our hearts ablaze with passion” to do his work.

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G is for Guitar and “Get a life”

Many of you will know that I am a keen musician.  I blame this partly on my parents, who insisted on taking me to a brass band concert before I was even born.  I didn’t stand a chance.  Church helps too, there’s always music there.  And so it was that I started taking up musical instruments left right and centre, starting with the piano, moving on to cello, and not stopping thereafter.  The list isn’t exactly endless, but it’s fairly sizeable.  The main problem with this, though, is being able to afford the instruments themselves, which don’t come cheap, especially if you want something decent.  So for many years I have had to get by without certain things, in some cases just the accessories, but in some cases the instruments themselves.  I’ve never owned a saxophone, for instance, much as I’d love to.

My first bass guitar was a pink (probably used to be red, but faded in the sun) Squier with a warped neck, which made playing anything but open strings uncomfortable and bone-jarringly out of tune.  Still, for £100 it wasn’t bad, considering it came with a whopping 80 watt amp.  The bass was replaced several years ago, thankfully, with a wood body Aria (I’d give the actual model, but since it’s a “Research and Development” model I think it’s more of a one-off, so comparing it to the mass-produced model that resulted from it might not actually be particularly useful).  The Aria is a dream to play, and has a lovely warm tone to it.  The amp, however, was always pretty ropey, so it wasn’t a huge tragedy when it stopped working.  It was something electric, I know that much, and it just played a very loud humming noise while it was turned on.  So I left it turned off, gathering dust in the garage.  Until just before we moved, when I took it to the dump.  Sad, but somehow very therapeutic at the same time.

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On sale now – only £5!!

Rooted is a band I set up at Orchard Baptist Church a couple of years ago, mostly playing completely original songs written by members of the band.  After almost a year and a half in the making, our debut album is now finished and available for you to buy.  At the moment there are limited copies available, so get your bookings in now to ensure you don’t miss out!

In the beginning features 7 songs, including one bonus track at the end, and covers a range of musical styles, from rock to reflective, with the aim of stimulating worship in a variety of ways.  From the loud and rocky “Father God you reign” to the softer “I draw near” featuring a cello trio, there is something for everyone in this concise album of original Christian music.

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Where to start… there’s just so much to say, and squeezing it all into one post is going to be a challenge and a half!  Let’s see, how about we start with an introduction…

Introduction

This year Ellie and I were both leaders on a Christian youth camp (a CYFA Ventures camp) for 14-18 year olds, at a boarding school near Southampton called Stanbridge Earls.  We’ve both been before, but this was the first time we’d been as a married couple, so that was a nice novelty!

Our week was actually started off a few days earlier than everyone else, as we went to Southampton University for my brother’s graduation.  It was lovely to see him, and all our family, and generally hang out in Soton for a bit.  Photos will be up on a gallery somewhere in due course I expect.  Ellie and I then stayed a couple of nights at a guest house in Soton, visiting the New Forest on the Friday before going off to camp on the Saturday morning.

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They say time flies when you’re having fun.  My recent absence from this blog is testament to the additional truth that actually time flies regardless.  True, I have had a lot of fun recently, but it has been mixed with periods of busyness too, the combination of which has meant that finding time to sit down and rant about it here has been quite difficult.  Nevertheless, the time has now been found, and here I sit to write a conspicuously verbose update.  In case such lengthiness should put you off, I’m dividing this blog into subheadings, to make the sheer quantity of text a little more bite-sized and easier to digest.  If you haven’t the time to read it all, I completely understand.  Just bear in mind that I went to the effort of writing it.  So there.

So, first of all, a general introduction.  Many things have happened since my last blog post, including (but not exclusively): two trips to theatres, some significant developments on the business front, a somewhat extended birthday, Neddy going to the garage a couple of times, a couple of additions to the Dawkins household, an above-average number of requests to lead worship, and a general realisation that Ellie and I are taking over our church.  That’s quite a lot to write about.  I’ll try to keep some of it brief.  Just to demonstrate that, you’ll notice the lack of information in the spaces between words.  Every little helps.

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