Daddy

Well, if you are pregnant for nine months or so then sooner or later something kinda crazy is gonna kick off. And sure enough, last Monday my wife gave birth to our first son Ethan Joel Matthews. The labour was pretty intense and lasted for about three days and he had to be born by Caeserean Section but when he was born it was quite an incredible thing to see something that has been living inside your wife for nine months that you helped put there. There aren't a lot of words that can describe that.

And so the journey of parenthood begins. I'm pretty tired already, but can't wait to get to know him and find out what makes him tick.

A true miracle, and all praise to my Father in heaven for little Ethan.

The value of information

I have to admit I've always found it a bit odd when people get shirty about people like the Police keeping information about us. There are many arguments for it and none of them seemed to make much sense to me - until the other day...

To be honest in that I never had a problem with people like the Police having information about me stored on their computers. It all seemed like a good idea to me - especially as I have nothing to hide. If the Police want my DNA on file it can clear me of being involved in crimes and work for my benefit. If all our DNA is stored on file then any crime can be easily solved right?

However my confidence in this argument has been significantly shaken over the recent controversy over CD's of peoples information being lost in the post. If you didn't spot this one in the news, someone from the child benefit agency copied the details of millions of peoples names, addresses and bank details onto a couple of CD's and sent it unrecorded in the mail. The CD's got lost, they were not encrypted and the data could quite possibly end up in the wrong hands. I say possibly of course because no one currently knows where they are. Oops. In fact - very big oops.

It makes me think that even though organisations like the Government and the Police strive to be careful with sensitive information, they make mistakes - and in this case a very serious one. And when they do the information that we've been so happy to give over to them may end up in the wrong hands - which is exactly what we do not want. I trust the Government and the police - I don't think a day is coming when someone evil at the head of either of those organisations is going to start meddling in my personal information for evil purposes. However, I am now slightly disturbed that other people may get in there and do the meddling for them if they can't keep a lid on the information I've been so eager to hand over.

I don't think this realisation is going to be a life-changer for me; I'm always careful with my personal details - but I think it has given me much more understanding as to why we need to be a little bit more careful about information about us and why just saying that because the organisation keeping the information can be trusted it still doesn't mean it is safe to let them have all my information.

Lovin' it

My wife and I popped down to Gunwharf Quays on Saturday for the grand switching on of the Christmas lights. Well, it wasn't that grand and it wasn't that slick, but the lights did go on - and I suppose that is something. To be honest, that is not really why we went. A friend of mine who is the worship pastor at Family Church here in Portsmouth told me that their youth band was playing as part of the festivities and so we popped down to see what all the fuss was about.

Well, let's be honest - the youth band were definitely the best thing about the event - but that wasn't hard! The music they played was phat, busted style, Hillsongs worship music and was needed as it was absolutely freezing! The guys and girls who played made a good band - they worked well together, they knew their tunes and had a lot of confidence up there. The music wasn't all that slick - quite a few mistakes, but that actually didn't seem to matter.

The thing that I really took away from it was that everyone up there was having an absolutely brilliant time. They were passionate about what they were singing about and they were not afraid of showing the entire of Gunwharf Quays that they meant it. In a world where young people are often portrayed as being couch potatoes who don't really care about they world around them, these guys really broke the mould - in fact it the mould was in tatters on the floor by the end.

It reminded me of a blog post by a mate of mine on his site Three Days. He was trying to work out in his head why events like Soul Survivor was so popular with young people. His conclusion was passion - the people up front were passionate about Jesus and didn't mind anybody knowing it. And that is what these guys did. Certainly gave me as a worship leader something to think about...

Ordinary People

The bible is rammed full of God using ordinary people to do absolutely extraordinary things. My wife and I watched the film 'Night at the Museum' the other night - and while not entirely my kind of film the main edge behind the story is that Larry, the main guy had the lost the belief that ordinary people could do extraordinary things - and of course, Hollywood helps him to overcome that.

I've been thinking recently about the whole being ordinary thing - especially in relation to being a worship leader. There are many worship leaders out there who we'd class as a bit extraordinary and are very well known and very well respected and I think that while that can be a great encouragement to many I can sometimes find it a bit of a discouragement as it serves as a reminder of the fact that many of us, me included are oh so ordinary. There does seem to be a stack of people out there who are hankering for that opportunity to become an extraordinary worship leader like Matt Redman or Paul Baloche, whose music is used as an aid to corporate worship throughout the world and get invited to lead at very large and very prestigious gatherings of God's people. It seems to boil down to the fact that a lot of people think that you are a good worship leader, or you have 'made it' if you have ascended to those dizzying heights.

This is all put into perspective for me when I hear someone like Matt Redman talk about things like this - because, from what I can see, the man does not ever view himself as a 'great' worship leader or someone who has 'made it'. For him it seems he is doing what God is allowing him and providing him opportunity to do and ensuring that his heart is right every step of the way. In a sense it must actually be really hard for people like him sometimes to be 'ordinary' with God as every time he leads worship there are probably 80,000 people in the congregation telling him he is not!

Again for me it comes down to heart: if your heart is to be the most prolific Christian songwriter the world has ever know and get as much international acclaim as your ego can muster then I don't really see much room for God to be glorified in that - as it is all about you. However, if your heart is to be someone who serves God in all they do and is happy and content to do the small things God has given you to do (as well as the huge) then that is where God can break in and make something extraordinary out of our ordinary.

I think for me that is where I need to keep my heart in check - as I sometimes can get on with the small things in the hope that God will lavish me with bigger things in the future. Man that attitude stinks! When did I get so important that God needs to do anything for me?! If we are truly people with a heart after God and a passion for His worship then it doesn't matter whether we are leading six people into worship or sixty thousand - God can use an ordinary heart like that for extraordinary things.

Money money money

There is a lot of stuff going on in the world at the moment to do with money. Oil prices are high, the dollar is plummeting, fear over banks' ability to lend money and oh yeah, me and my wife seem to be a little short of it too.

I don't really have a proper job anymore - I do some hours for my church and I'm trying to set up the music mentoring project (which currently doesn't pay me). I was doing some freelance work for my brother-in-law, but business is tight and there is no work at the moment. So when I came to crunch the numbers on our outgoings I found we had a teeny weeny gap in what was coming in and what was going out.

Actually, it was quite a lot - and as I looked at the numbers my only thought was 'God, I am going to need a little help on this one.' Surprisingly, it didn't actually worry me at all - as I feel confident that God has put me in this place and if He wanted me to stay there, we'd need to have some money to keep it that way. So I was speaking to our church senior leadership team about this and we committed it to God in prayer.

About six hours later, I got a phone call from our church administrator saying that Sure Start (who use our church building in the week) have agreed to give me over a months paid work to make a CD for their Dad's Project that they run. I'm not kidding - literally 6 hours later. And who says God takes ages to answer prayer! I couldn't quite believe it. So not only has God provided for me and Marianne financially for the next few months but He has done it in a way that allows me to make music doing it! More than that - if this had come along at a time when business for my brother was good - I wouldn't have had time to do it.

There is nothing left to do here, but sit down, point to my forehead and say genius. God is the one who never lets us down and always knows what He is doing. Legend.