* Happy Christmas
Christ is born today!

*Happy Christmas!
It's Christmas eve! Have a great Christmas.

I'm due to be doing the Christmas day service at my home church tomorrow.
Hopefully will be less full of cold by then...

*Happy Christmas
It's Christmas eve!
Happy Christmas!

"O come to us abide with us our Lord Immanuel"

Christmas Question
Where did the notion of Jesus coming "silently" (e.g. Silent Night, v3 O Little Town of Bethlehem, etc) come from? Seems a little odd to me!

Christmas is coming
It's getting to that time of year when I get to go and play piano for carol services!
But for those who play guitar or do band - led worship, carols can be a struggle (I know I've heard a few killed and probably mutilated a few myself!).
I'm pleased to see that Dan Wilt is one again plugging his "Simple Carols", from the " Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship" over in Canada. 10 carols arranged in singable keys (seems to be me that most trad. arrangements of carols plump for "F" even if goes way too high!).
Check it out here!

Worship...at Tesco?
I was in one of our local Tesco supermarkets today when I was struck by the music they were playing.
The usual mix of carols and Christmas songs is strange in itself - jumping from blatantly Christ-focused carols (and the dodgy ones about Jesus "no crying he makes"!) to Jingle Bells etc. But today in that mix was a full on gospel choir version of Oh Happy Day! Just struck me as wierd that some offices are banning tinsel and trees, but Tesco pumps out a song about Jesus washing our sins away!
And in a multicutural part of West London, where no-one seemed to bat an eyelid!

Christmas is coming...
Must be getting near Christmas as I did my first carol service today.
It's an annual "gig" where I go and play piano for a local church, for carols, kids songs, OAP's etc.
As always it was a creative/chaotic/moving/holy occaision!
The pastor gets the members to share short testimonies they've written that somehow relate to the usual Christmas readings. Powerful stuff - and means there's no need for a preach as the Gospel has already been heard so strongly.


Switched to Blogger Beta today. Seems good so far!

And I discovered some interesting stuff on Andrew's blog about some Germans who vistited my home church a couple of weeks ago (see here and here)