A weekend in Wanganui

We’ve just come back from an enjoyable weekend away in the beautiful river town of Wanganui. The drive down from Auckland took 5 1/2 hours, and we thoroughly enjoyed the rolling hills and lush landscapes (though the North Island still have nothing on the vistas of the South!) We were fortunate to be able to …

HBC Service Redux: 7 November 2010

Since taking on the worship director role at HBC, one recurring feedback that comes through is that a list of songs we did each Sunday would be useful, for people to look them up at a later stage and get to know them better. So I think I will at least try to put up …

HBC Service Redux: 31 October 2010

Last week’s Sunday service was definitely something different, for a number of reasons: It was a wonderful baptism service where five people gave testimonies of how God’s turned them from darkness to new life in Jesus Christ. We celebrated Reformation Day, the day when fallible people read the bible for themselves and recovered the gospel …

HBC service redux: 24 October 2010

Just thought it might be helpful to share in a post, a bit of the thinking that goes in the background when planning a Sunday service. Throughout the week, there’s a fair bit of prayer, communication with the preacher, bible reader and the rest of the music team to do our best in leading the …

A blueprint for worship music part 1 – “Let the Word of Christ…”

So last week I started unpacking my own convictions about worship music. In the first post, we set the scene by establishing the biblical basis for why we even have music at all in our worship: in a nutshell, it’s simply because God tells us to (Col 3:16-17, Eph 5:19, Psalm 33:1, Psalm 150). One …