To all our friends and family—I am very excited to announce openly (at last) that Megan, the girls, and I will be moving back to the UK early next year, where I will be taking on the leadership of The Kings Way Church in Exmouth.
The last 6 years here in Portsmouth with Harbor Church have been the best, and at times the toughest years of our lives. It will be very hard to say goodbye to the country and church family we have loved and given our lives to here.
But we are also very thrilled that Jesus is now sending us to Exmouth, and amazed at how welcoming the church have been towards us already. We had a great time visiting with them over the summer, which was for me the key moment in knowing that Jesus was leading us there.
A lot of practical things will need to be sorted out in the next few months—like selling a house in an incredibly depressed housing market, as well as the cost and stress of arranging another international move. For these things we would very much value your prayers.
So that’s the big announcement! I’ll be blogging more about all this in the coming days and weeks. The picture on the header of my blog is the Exmouth estuary and gives you an idea how beautiful the town is.
To The Kings Way Church in Exmouth—we really cannot wait! :)
Somehow I missed this, but on July 6th Delirious? announced that for the foreseeable future they will not be touring or recording any new albums as a band. Not only is this an end of an era for Delirious?, but also the end of an era for many of us who have grown old(er) with them.
I remember back in the early 90’s as a student driving down the coast from Brighton to Littlehampton in my red VW Polo packed with friends to see Delirious? (then The Cutting Edge Band) play in a school hall to a couple of hundred teenagers.
Back then life was simple—no responsibilities, plenty of free time on my hands, and whole lot of love for Jesus.
Today things are very different. I am married, a daddy to 3 girls, and an elder in a church on the east coast of America. Life has changed a great deal—a lot more responsibility, but still a whole lot of love for Jesus.
I will miss Delirious? a great deal. I will never forget when I first heard songs like “Thank You For Saving Me”, the deeply prophetic “Did You Hear The Mountains Tremble?”, and the heart swelling “My Glorious”. I have bought all their albums, and their music has lifted me to worship God. But like me, they have changed from young adults with few responsibilities (and whole lot of love for Jesus) into grown men with families—and I am sure life is very different for them too. I totally understand how time changes things.
Here’s the wonderful thing though—Jesus never changes. Many things will come and go, but he will remain forever.
Earlier this week I caught wind of the fact that Mars Hill Church were poised to open up their homegrown social community networking application “The City” as a hosted service for other churches.
Today this news became official with the launch of OnTheCity.org.
Watching the preview video I am astounded by the quality of work the development team at Mars Hill have achieved—again doing something no church has ever done before. At the moment there is no indication how much the service will cost, although given Mars Hill’s often stated vision not to profit from what they do, I can only imagine it will be affordable.
Good job Mars Hill—and thank you!
UPDATE: Adam Wygle, one of the Mars Hill technogeeks, has informed me that this is not a social networking service, but rather a community networking service. The differential here is that the goal of the service is to help churches build real communities who love Jesus, and not a virtual ones.
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