Crowder does Friend of mine

So if you thought the last video was funny, it seems to be catching on. Check out David Crowder at his church.

Hip Worship Band

A few friends pointed me to this video and I had to share it, it's very funny.

A song and a dance

So as a good friend has reminded me I need to update this Blog a lot more. I'm trying to decide whether to continue blogging or just call it a day. In the mean time here are two pretty funny videos I came across thanks to Justin Taylor.



This is why church dancing is probably a bad idea...

Whats going on?

Hey I thought I should update this blog again and you know what I'm up to.

Speyer-
I just returned from leading a team of 8 young guys to Speyer in Germany. We hooked up with the vineyard church in Speyer and spent 5 days with them having teaching and worship sessions and hitting the streets of Speyer doing some servant evangelism. We had a blast and met some great people! Chille Langah!

New Wine-
I'm heading down to Sligo with the band from CCV to play at the New Wine Ireland Conference. Never been. Should be fun.

Internship-
My worship internship with CCV has now finished officially and I'll be heading back to Ards for the time being. It's been a great year at CCV and I've made a tonne of friends. I hope to keep in touch with all thats going on at CCV and all the guys up in the North Coast. God has really used this time to teach me a lot about life and ministry and I am convinced more than ever than Jesus Christ is the only hope for this world and giving ourselves to anything other than serving him is simply a waste of our lives. I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

GT ON DUTY

I haven't posted in a few months and some readers ( I didn't think I had any) made me aware of this. So to kick off my blogging life again I thought I would upload a funny pic of a friend. You know who you are!

South Africa Trip

I have some exciting plans for the next month or so. From 10th - 22nd April I will be in George, South Africa on a missions team organised by the Causeway Coast Vineyard in Partnership with Out of Africa Missions.


View Larger Map

The team will included working with street kids, helping with relief work, school's work and visiting townships. We will also get to visit the 'Living Hope Home', a project supported by CCV, which has been built in one of the townships and we will get to meet the family responsible for it.
I am really looking forward to the trip- It'll be my first time in Africa. I would really appreciate your support and prayers. My hopes are that God would use us on powerfully while we are there to bless others and that He would use the experience to powerfully impact our lives and worldviews for his glory.

Good Friday and Easter

Some thoughts on Easter from Tim Smith (pastor at Mars Hill Church):

"Easter is full of distraction.

For children is a time that can easily be about bunnies and baskets. For the rest of us it can easily become a brief remembrance of a often told story; a small bump of religious observance along the road of life.

However, what we remember in Good Friday and Easter is the most essential and profound event of all time. It cannot even be contained in human words. The death and resurrection of Jesus, with all it’s implications, should shake and affect us to the very core of our being. Peter said it this way:

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,”
(1Pet 1.8 ESV)

As we take time to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus this weekend my prayer is that we do not simply remember the truth and facts of the events but rather that we are moved, shaken, disturbed, grieved and overwhelmed with the glory, majesty and holiness of our Savior.

We should be horrified at the brutality Jesus was subjected to. It should literally make us sick.

We should be shaken with grief and sorrow at the realization that OUR sin nailed Jesus to the cross, tore the flesh from his back and mocked his divinity.

We should be overwhelmed at the loss the disciples must have felt as they watched Him die.

We should be filled with inexpressible at the glory and majesty of Jesus as he conquered Satan, sin and death as he rose from the dead.

If we are not dramatically moved in mind, heart and will and if these revelations and remembrances to not work themselves out in physical response and action as we talk to one another and sing together in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, then I submit that have either missed the truth of scripture or suppressed the work of the Spirit. We have either failed to see the profound truth of the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4) or we have suppressed the work of the Spirit in our lives transform us into the likeness of Christ from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:18).

Don’t let this weekend pass you buy in a flurry of music and production, bunnies and baskets and religious observance. Take time to behold the glory of Jesus and allow the Spirit to affect you in the deepest way possible that everyone we come in contact with, both as we gather Friday and Sunday as the church and as we are scattered with with family and friends, would see the glory of the Savior in us."

The Real St.Patrick

Word on the street tells us St. Patrick is the man behind green beer, owned a pet leprechaun and had affinity for pinching people who weren’t wearing his color of choice. But as people continue to consume exorbitant amounts of green beer (which dyes anything it comes in contact with, including teeth), chant Irish bar songs and find something green to wear, it’s time we figure out just what the holiday means and how the myths began.

Although St. Patrick is somewhat of a celebrity in our world today, the story around his life is often distorted or shaded with ambiguity. What we do know about him is that he is credited with “driving the snakes from Ireland.” The saying, however, is really a metaphor for the way he eradicated paganism in Ireland during the fifth century, cleansing the island from years of misguided theology. St. Patrick is not just a product of Western imagination or an embellishment of tradition and culture—he’s a prominent hero of modern Christianity.

St. Patrick was born a Briton at the end of the fourth century, but was kidnapped and taken to Ireland, where he spent six years in captivity as a shepherd. During his seclusion, he found solace in a deeper relationship with the Christian God.

After he became free, he spent seven years in Europe trying to figure out what his purpose in life was. Feeling convicted to bring the faith back to the people of Ireland, St. Patrick studied at the Lerin Monastery to become a priest. Although he was not the first to bring Christianity to the Irish, he was the one who made faith relevant to the people and spread the Gospel further than it had gone before.

As one familiar with the Irish traditions, St. Patrick chose to combine Christianity with some of the pagan imagery in Irish culture to ease the civilians into a new faith and lifestyle, instead of trying to completely strip them of their heritage. Because the Irish of that time were very organic in their religion, St. Patrick incorporated symbols of Christianity and fused them with symbols from nature. The universally recognized Celtic cross, for example, is the combination of the pagan sun and the Christian cross.

For the Irish pagans who practiced pluralistic theologies, St. Patrick used the shamrock to illustrate the triune nature of God; he explained that as three leaves grow from the same stem, so the three personalities of God come from the same being. It is also taught in Irish culture that the three leaves represent hope, faith and love, while the rare fourth represents luck. The shamrock was considered sacred by the ancient Celts because it represented fertility and the rebirth of spring. Not only did St. Patrick illustrate the Holy Trinity in a unique and refreshing way, he chose an image to spread his message that was familiar and already esteemed by the Irish people.

As with many ancient holidays, we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 17 because that is the anniversary of the saint’s death. What began as a day of mourning for the saint became a day to commemorate and celebrate his life. And, like many other holidays, the life of St. Patrick has become trivialized and redefined in the eyes of mass appeal. But the modern commercialization of the day shouldn’t negate the contributions St. Patrick made to Christianity and the Irish community.

For many, St. Patrick’s Day has long been celebrated as a day of religious piety. Up until the 1970s, pubs were not allowed to be open on St. Patrick’s Day in observance of the holiday. It wasn’t until 1995 that the Irish government decided to use St. Patrick’s Day as a way to encourage tourism and showcase Ireland to the rest of the world.

This year St. Patrick’s Day was officially moved by the Roman Catholic Church from March 17 to the 15th to avoid a conflict with Holy Monday (the Monday that falls during the week preceding Easter Sunday). Yes, that’s right. St. Patrick’s Day has already come and gone this year, and chances are you missed it.

So what does the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day mean in our lives today? It still represents the life of a saint who was willing to be innovative and make sacrifices to bring the Gospel to a lost people. The holiday can also be an inspiration for anyone who is struggling to figure out what their place is and how to have maximum impact on the world.

Whether or not you choose to wear green, go to a parade, drink green beer so that your teeth resemble a mouthful of mold or stick to eating an entire box of Lucky Charms cereal, there are lessons to learn from St. Patrick. Radical faith and passion to see the Kingdom of Heaven rain down on earth should be enough for us to celebrate and remember the message behind St. Patrick’s Day.

Author : Kayla Smith

Kayla Smith is an Editorial Intern at RELEVANT.

Off to London!

I am heading to London for the weekend. Will be back St. Paddy's day. Heading with a few guys to Worship Central Conference on Saturday in Westminster Hall. Should be good times. Will post when I get back. Also keeping an eye on the Champions League draw tomorrow at 1200. Hopefully Utd get a good draw.

O LORD, you are my God

“ O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name,for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.” (Isaiah 25:1)

C.S Lewis Quote

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

Making your life count.

Great quotes from John Piper from Dontwasteyourlife.com on making your life count:

"You do not need to know a lot of things to make a huge difference for the Lord".

"People that make a difference in the world are not people who have mastered a lot of things, they are people who have been mastered by a very few things that are very, very great."

Minature Earth

This is an incredibly fascinating and at times shocking looking at the make-up of the world that we live in.



As well as the command from Christ that we are to be salt and light in this world, this verse in Luke came to mind while watching this.

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." - Luke 12:48 (NIV).

There is much expected of us as followers of Christ in the Western world. I'd love to hear comments.

Bushmills Whiskey Distillery

Last week I went to the Bushmills Whiskey Distillery with some friends for a tour of the distillery. Some of the other interns wanted to do the tour especially so I decided to join them as it was something I have always wanted to do but never got around to. I found the tour quite interesting learning that this year they celebrate their 400th anniversary. Here are a few photos.


Afterwards we went to the Nook Bar beside the Giant's Causeway for some lunch and viewing of the Scotland-France game before walking down to the rocks.

Vineyard Leadership Conference

I spent last week at the Vineyard UK National Leadership Conference. So Erik, Matt and I headed off to a hotel near Portsmouth, England for four days of worship, teaching and fellowship. We got to meet a lot of new people and hang out with old friends. We got to use the leisure facilities and ate like kings every night which was sweet! Speakers at the conference were Rich Nathan ( Senior Pastor of Vineyard Church of Columbus, Ohio) and Simon Ponsonby (Pastor of Theology at St. Aldates Church, Oxford). I enjoyed both their ministry for different reasons. Rich was a wealth of knowledge calling the church to contextualize the Gospel for a now post- Christian culture, by being both faithful to Scripture yet relevant to our culture and the many pressing issues of the day. A lot of what I heard from Rich, I have heard from various leaders in the church today (Piper, Keller, Driscoll, Molher) so it was good to see the vineyard engaging with the same missiological emphasis. Simon was a refreshing character who taught through Jude 20-25 in the morning bible readings. The overview of his teaching was as follows: verse 20-21 reminding us to first look inward, verses 22-23 to focus outward and verses 24-25 calling us to upward worship. There is a real need for us as Christians to be rooted in Scripture, understanding the complete Gospel we have to offer the world, and yet engaging with our given culture and contextualizing the message to speak hope into peoples lives.

Through out the conference the band from Trent lead worship along with various leaders. In the afternoon we had a selection of seminars to attend. All in all it was a pretty intense week with a lot to take in and consider.

Jon Foreman EP's

Current Listening to Jon Foreman's solo EP projects- Fall and Winter. Check them out. The project will see him release four 6 song EP's representing each of the seasons. I am loving the raw honesty to his lyrics and although they are simple self produced songs the musical creativity is still brilliant. I find them enjoyably intriguing at worst and masterfully worship at best. Download on iTunes or listen first at http://www.myspace.com/jonforeman