Compassion at Christmas
The relationship between worship and justice has never been written about, sung about and talked about more than at this time. Compassion Art has just been released as leading Christian song writers have decided to stand up and make a project with all the proceeds going to fight the plight of those affected by poverty. www.compassionart.co.uk
You may have seen Matt Hooper's latest blog talking about ‘The Stand’ event we just did working with ‘Hope for Justice’ tackling the injustice of human trafficking. The awareness of the issues facing our world as a result of poverty is growing, just take a look at your TV screen! films like ‘Blood Diamond’ or the latest episode of ‘24’ that was on our TVs so recently highlighting the recruitment of child soldiers. Awareness is growing but what’s next?
It’s so easy to be moved to tears, by the stories and statistics of what is actually happening in our world but unless our awareness turns to compassion and unless our compassion finds a corresponding action then aren’t we just staying on our side of the road when we could cross over and help.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m challenging myself here too, there’s always more that we can all do, myself included, but I just wanted to lay out a challenge, let’s increase our compassion this Christmas.
We have the privilege of partnering with an awesome charity called Compassion. Through Compassion you can sponsor a child for just £18 a month. This finance will help feed and clothe the child as well as putting them through school with all the educational material they’ll need, it pays for medical care and on top of all that the children are taught about the amazing God we serve. My wife and I are currently sponsoring children through this programme and it’s amazing, you get to correspond with your child and swap pictures, the difference such a small amount can make is astounding!
As a church we have now been able to adopt an entire town of over 1000 children. Every child in Kinango (Kenya) and some of the surrounding villages will now grow up nourished and educated and every child matters.
Maybe you can’t afford to commit £18 per month but maybe as a group you could do something? As a worship team we have adopted 12 children whom we collectively take responsibility for. Taking our weekly offering for those kids is as much part of our worship as singing our next praise song.
So all I’m saying is as we enter this Christmas season and we remember how blessed we are let’s remember also that we are blessed to be a blessing, first in our communities, towns and cities but also to our neighbours around the world, let’s put our compassion into action and make a difference.
God Bless
Jock
www.compassionuk.org
Worship is Loving Others
Hey
Thanks for stopping by!
In my blog today I'm going to carry on with the teaching that we've been doing with our own worship team here at Abundant Life called worship is...... Below you’ll find the mp3 from our recent rehearsal.
This message is titled 'worship is loving others'
Click Here to Listen
God loves people! I think we would all agree with that statement and as worshippers we are to conduct our lives in worship of God. You could therefore say that worship is solely about you and your relationship with God. However the boundaries of worship extend much further than that as Jesus displayed when He was on the earth. Bringing truth, justice and hope to a hurting world is all part of our worship which very much involves ‘others’. Placing this within a worship team context I believe we have to look way beyond ourselves and help people connect with the power and presence of God. Through praise and worship people find strength, peace, joy, empowerment and so much more, after all God wants to give us every good thing. As members of worship ministries it’s up to us to move past our own limitations, distractions and weaknesses to create and protect those connection points so that others can get their breakthrough and push forward in God.
Being totally honest I’m sure we’ve all had times when due to
whatever circumstance we didn’t want to get up and lead or play or sing (or is it just me….) but we have to overrule our soul and our body, let the Holy spirit guide us as someone’s breakthrough could be at stake.
I hope you enjoy this short, open and honest teaching.
Why not let us know what you think by leaving a comment. I would also encourage you to check out Paul Scanlon’s teaching (our senior Pastor) on ‘Others’, insightful teaching into God’s heart for people.
Bye for now
Jock
Welcome to the new website!
So you've made it to the new site, awesome! Here's a quick vid telling you what it's all about and for those that can't be bothered to read it..... It's all about resourcing the Church to worship.
This site is our attempt to help you, along with all of our conferencing, our network and other events to empower you and your worship team. We're gonna up date this site regular and just pile it with free resources such as free songs, practical teaching, articles, guest interviews and so much more. There's even a podcast coming soon so look out for that.
Welcome to My Blog
Hey thanks for stopping by and a big welcome to my new blog!
God's doing some awesome stuff here in our worship team at the Abundant Life Church and I'm so excited about the opportunity to share some of that with you and have you along for the journey. My moto for life at present is a particularly biblical one........ 'Every day's a school day!' ok so it's not that biblical but it is very true. Through all that we're undertaking here in Bradford and around the world God is doing some awesome stuff and is constantly challenging me and causing me to grow and I'm hoping to share some of what I'm learning with you to encourage and inspire you!
For those of you who don't know me (which I guess is most of you) my real name is actually Jonathan but no one calls me that although I don't really know why? I'm married to an amazing woman of God called Shirley who is also on staff here at the church and together we have an awesome baby girl called Bella, who is officially the cutest 3 month old in the world (although I might be a bit biased).
I became a Christian at the age of 16 through a worship experience. Ever since then I have had a passion to see people, especially young people connect with the awesome God that created them. That is the heart beat of what our worship team is all about and hopefully what you'll find this new website to be about.... helping people connect with an amazing, forgiving , powerful, exciting God.
I have the awesome privilege of leading RPM which is the band of our youth ministry 'Rocknations'. We are committed to using relevant music to connect young people to God and empower them to change their culture for Christ, starting right here with our own young people in Bradford. Along the way God has given us some amazing opportunities to export that sound around the world so on this blog I'll also be posting some tour diaries of what God's been doing while we've been out and about.
So looking forward to chatting to you!
Jock James