Songs to suffer well

  Our home church has been going through a preaching series on suffering and the sovereignty of God. Before the series began, Pastor Peter and the rest of the worship leaders agreed that the congregational songs during this time needed to help the church to worship and praise God amidst trials and sufferings, in a …

On marriage and the name game

One of the questions Cheryl and I worked through soon after our marriage was the issue of changing her name. We talked and prayed it through for a couple of days during our honeymoon, before she eventually decided to adopt my family name and become a “Chong”. Thankfully In New Zealand it’s pretty convenient to …

STAND 2010 Video online

It’s taken awhile but video for the general sessions of the STAND conference are now available online: The five sessions are: Session 1 – Standing Firm on the Sufficiency of Scripture Session 2 – Standing Firm on the Centrality of the Gospel Session 3 – Standing Firm: A High View of God in Evangelism Session …

John Mayer fans are rather frightening

I found this review of last night’s John Mayer concert in Auckland fascinating mainly because of the quote from the reviewer: “John Mayer fans are rather frightening. Silence in the foyer, can’t tell if there is a gig on. Walk in to take our seats early – mostly so I could see if the crowd …

Reflections on leading worship at STAND2010

In my previous post I put up the music set list for STAND 2010, a bible conference we hosted at HBC. This was the first time I had been tasked with organising all the music for an event of this size. I’m certain that God really used it as an opportunity to teach all our …