September 30th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun, Music
As said earlier a normal blog will appear soon maybe, I have however added a link to a new blog on the blogroll, that being the blog of Matt Thiessen, singer of Relient K.
I have just added some new tracks to the mp3 player too from the likes of Fall Out Boy, Tim Hughes, The Calling, Avril Lavigne and some others…enjoy
September 30th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Joanna, Just For Fun
Just thought I’d post to say ‘grr essay’!
I’m currently writing the first practice recording of the year for uni, it’s weird trying to get back into writing essay mode, I know there’s lots of youthwork issues involved in what I’m writing only problem is I can’t think of them.
I got to see Jo friday afternoon and saturday in Sheffield where she’s at uni which was cool, saw a ‘Stop The Traffick’ musical on friday evening, however it seemed to me to be more like a slideshow but with songs and singer, never-the-less it was ok, quite informative just not a musical!
Also went Salsa’ing on saturday (sssh!), which was actually pretty cool, my legs didn’t get too tangled and no poor unsuspecting people got flattened feet so it’s all good.
Anyway back in Peterborough and back to essay, I’m gonna aim to have it done by half five which could be interesting!
I’m gonna try and update the blog mp3 player later too!
September 26th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun
The Chuckle Brothers have been going 20 years today!
Also I discovered that Paul Chuckle has the same birthday as me!
September 25th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun
So yesterday my phone decided that it wanted to restart everytime someone tried to phone me, so today I took it to the shop and got a very cheap motorola, I’ve been told me phone will be 5 days, this little motorola is gonna drive me nuts, texting is tedious! ah well…roll on 5 days.
or perhaps just 3 cos on saturday I see Jo, 
September 20th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Articles, Christianity, Just For Fun
Before I go off to pack for camp tomorrow a couple of Christian things
First, the other day I did a huge post on worship leading, one key thing I forgot to mention was that it doesn’t matter how ‘into the worship’ people are and although the blog may have suggested that I don’t think old people worship to the new songs I should probably add that those people are a minority, I believe that it doesn’t matter on the song or how into the worship someone looks but that it is a state of their heart. True worship isn’t dependent or a song or a state of mind but on praising God whole heartedly.
The second thing is something that struck me from Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis which I have been reading, he talks about how if God is the creator then anything that is good can glorify God, it doesn’t matter if it’s Christian or not…obviously he worded it much better than I did, I’m only 3 chapters in but I think in a couple of weeks I’ll be posting telling you all to buy velvet elvis!
September 20th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Articles
SO yesterday Macdonalds announced that in Sheffield 11 of it’s “Restaurants” would be, for a trial time, be turning it’s waste into electricity (by waste I assume they mean what customers throw away opposed to all their food!), in principal it’s a good idea however those 11 stores will actually only provide enough electricity for 50 homes which in comparison to the size of Sheffield is nothing, and there will still be a vast amount of waste from each store. Perhaps a better thing for MacDonalds to do would be to actually try and reduce the waste each branch produces. Perhaps they should try and cut down on the use of polystyrene packaging along with other non-biodegradable packaging. I can’t help but feel the whole thing is just a bit of a marketing ploy for them, let’s face it, it would be great cheap marketing, it got them onto every national news on television, it got them into the papers and got them onto all the news websites. It has ‘we don’t give a damn about the world but would like free marketing’ all over it.
On a slightly related note I finally got an e-mail back from ASDA. I e-mailed them about a month and a half ago about a car wash I got where one of my wing mirrors was flung out of position, it wasn’t major damage but I’d thought I’d test the waters at ASDA’s attitude towards customers, the reply basically said it’s not their responsibility and that they hoped I’d continue to give them their custom, it may as well have said ‘Please come again, but we honestly don’t give a damn about you’. I guess it’s no surprise from Walmart who continue to do nothing about crime problems in their car parks in the American stores in which people have had cars stolen and sometimes even been abducted.
Anyway blogging moan over I think, I’m currently sat on a train returning to Peterborough after a day in London, it’s been my first week back to the commuting twice for uni and it hasn’t knackered me as much as I thought, however I have a busy weekend with a youth weekend in Trimmingham so monday I shall be sleeping I think…
September 18th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Articles, Christianity, Worship Leading
I guess it must be around a year and a half since I first led worship, it was at Park Road Baptist Church in Peterborough and I didn’t really know what to do, I had mental pictures of Matt Redman or Tim Hughes in action, and didn’t think I matched up to that. Here I am a year and a half on and still I don’t think I’m much of a Tim Hughes, however I think I am beginning to grasp what it means to lead worship but at the same time wrestling with various things. This is a blog on worship leading.
Firstly leading worship can mean very different things from church to church, some it means having a set of songs, deciding when to repeat chorus’, build up again etc, in others it might just mean playing a set of songs given to you, I daresay that in others it might not even mean singing!
The Audience Of One
I’ve been to churches and witness idolatry. By this I mean a church where the band appears to be performing, where they stage-dive, leap around and generally look like muppets, and it seems to come across like the congregation are an audience, on the other side of the spectrum I’ve been to churches where the band are a bunch of miserable old people (or just miserable people), not a smile to be seen for miles, often they look like they are in pain.
The fact remains that when we lead worship, play in a band or are even just in a congregation our worship should be aimed at one person and that is Jesus. We should play like Jesus is stood in front of us, sing like he is in front of us, we should be worshipping with all we’ve got and I admit that sometimes that can look like performing but I think we often forget the power of the words we’re singing, when we sing ‘Jesus, my everything, be my everything’ for example do we actually think what it means to sing that, do we actually realise that by Jesus being our everything we are dying to ourselves, accepting that we may go through suffering because of it?
There’s a fine line between giving it everything for Jesus and getting caught up in performing and I don’t know where that line is, I guess it depends on how the congregation see the band, for example when a band is the background on the screen which the words are displayed doesn’t that distract from Jesus? I personally find it difficult when that happens not to try and suss out the make of guitar the leader is using, or what the fills are that the drummer does are. I find myself focusing on the band by mistake.
So the first key to worship leading is remembering that there is an audience of one and that is Jesus, so no matter how much the congregation do or don’t get ‘into the worship’ you are still worshipping Jesus.
Leading The Songs
Of course it’s easy if you’re busy singing along to the audience of one to forget that you are meant to be leading, after all the purpose of a worship leader is to lead a congregation in worship so whilst it’s important to make sure you are worshipping through it I think it’s important to remember that you need to listen to God’s spirit and where he wants to lead a song, it might turn out that the 10 chorus repeats and 2 breakdowns you had planned aren’t where God is leading the worship. Being open to God’s spirit and where it is leading you as a worship leader is important.
To upset or to not upset?
People in churches get upset easily, whether it’s because their pew was touched by someone else or whether they didn’t know any of the songs. In fact it’s one of the most ridiculous things about churches, we have a group of people who claim to have found new life in Jesus Christ yet instead of celebrating that, instead of looking at the words to the new song and embracing the power of them and echoing them to God through singing they grumble. Jesus Christ is good news, we should go to church to celebrate good news! Even if we’ve had a rubbish week we should still go to church to celebrate Jesus Christ, the songs I relate the most to are the ones that cry out to God in times of trouble, a while ago I wrote some lyrics that never found music but part of them was ‘I want the bad times, and the dark times, Just so I have to put my trust in you, I want the sad times and the broken times, then my heart will cry out to you‘. I sincerely believe that it’s in the dark times when we cling onto God that we develop the most in our faith, it’s easy to worship a God when everything is good but when things get crap how easy is it to say to God ‘you are good’. It takes faith to cry out to God in times of trouble singing ‘you are good’
But back to my point, how open should we be to the congregations needs when we lead worship? I think the answer to that is ‘fairly’, personally I find it difficult to worship to an organ, however I am aware that others don’t and that others find a band difficult to worship to, trying to find a balance is a good idea, afterall in Romans Paul talks about trying to not make others fall and although someone finding it difficult to worship isn’t exactly a fall it makes them find things that much more difficult.
Conclusion?
My long rambling blog hasn’t gone into very new territory, it has got me thinking more about lament (lament = crappyness) and how perhaps we should have more of it, but I hope my ponderings on worship leading help your thinking, obviously there’s a lot more I could write but this blog is already huge, perhaps I’ll start a series on worship leading…maybe!
September 17th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun
Yesterday I finally got around to installing Ubuntu on my laptop, ubuntu is a free Operating System based on Linux, I have it running alongside my Windows XP Proffessional installation and so far have found myself choosing to boot ubuntu. I’m finding it pretty easy to get used to, much faster and on the whole more fun. However it doesn’t really run windows apps which is a shame, there are alternatives but they aren’t as good, for example there I haven’t found a ubuntu version of Dreamweaver or Flash, nor a media player as good as itunes. I’m not sure if I’ll keep using it but it’s fun for the moment.
Ps. I will do a proper blog soon!
September 9th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun
An end of contract means a new phone and I’ve ended up getting the new Samsung G600. This phone is a Samsung slide and boasts the feature of a 5 megapixel camera which is the highest to ever go on the phone. In the 2 weeks I have had the phone it’s impressed me, I’ve used the camera a lot and the picture quality is good, I also use the phone for my diary and mp3 player both of which are easy to use and impressive, all in all it’s a great phone and the sliding amuses me!
Here’s a couple of photos I’ve took using the phone if you click the photos you can get the larger sized versions
From the top of a church tower
The sea at Cromer
September 6th, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Joanna, Just For Fun
September 3rd, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Articles, Christianity
It seems like forever since I wrote anything remotely serious on my blog, I guess I’ve been so busy over the summer I just haven’t been thinking much!
Summer however is drawing to a close and friday I move back to Peterborough for what is potentially my final year there. This next year is going to be strange because I don’t quite know how it’s going to work, Jo is going to start uni in Sheffield so many-a-day-off will be spent up there no doubt but how that’ll work will remain a mystery for a few weeks.
On the 21st September I have a youth camp to run which’ll be lots of fun and I’m really looking forward to it, uni kicks off with a residential next week and I have a damn big theology book to start and finish before that, however this week has filled up already.
I feel like I should have some proper thought on this blog but I’m not entirely sure what!
One thing I was thinking today was about weddings and how they’re a good chance to evangalise, let’s face it, it’s easy to get non-Christians into a church for a wedding. Why not take the opportunity to make it a proper sharing of the gospel as well as the wedding, a chance to show people what church is about, with worship and praise. After all a wedding should be a celebration!!!
Anyway there’s my 2-cents worth and I’m off to bed!
September 1st, 2007 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Uncategorized
So today Ben and Laura tied the knot. It was a lovely service and the reception was brilliant and they look so good together.
They’re off on honeymoon tomorrow but I thought it would be nice to post a photo here of the happy couple and to wish them a happy marriage.
Congratulations Ben & Laura
For more photos check my photobucket here
