Soteria Music

For those of you who haven’t read Rob’s blog (blog.soteriamag.co.uk) about
last weekend yet let me tell you about the rocking time we had.

Unlike our intrepid evangelist I didn’t get to Trevithick Day in Camborne,
Saturday was the only quite day I had to get the stuff for the next issue of
Soteria magazine done. But the problems I had leading up to the weekend just
kept coming…

I knew months ago that the evening service on Sunday that I’d been asked to
lead the worship for was going to have a guest speaker, and also I knew it
was going to be my old friend Winston Thomas from Porthleven, however about
a week or so before hand the Elders called and told me that we were also
going to have a baptism! I was more than happy about this, even if it makes
it a bit more complicated.

Last Tuesday then I finally get and evening where I can sit down, pray a
lot, and hopefully get a service plan together. Surprisingly after the
prayers the plan really fell into place, I called the leader of the
technical crew and relayed the whole plan to him to program the projector,
and all that went well too (I’d even beaten the morning worship leader for
getting the song list in first!). This did all seem to be going a little too
easily if my past experience was anything to go by…

…Then the problems started, the singer and the piano player couldn’t make
it to the service, turns out there had been some screw up about the music
rota. At one point it looked like it was going to just be me and Rose on
guitar and drums! Out of all the piano players at the Church I knew there
was only one available that evening and she was out when I phoned, so I left
a rather desperate sounding message, hung up the phone, and prayed…hard!

Mother was willing to replace the singer so that part was taken care of, and
after a few hours of me panicking the piano player called back and
thankfully agreed to play with us that evening! It was only later that I
found out that she was playing the morning service too!

So things trundle along for the next few days with all the difficulties of
life and the usual problems and temptations that come along when leading
worship, then the Friday night practice came…

Well the group gathered and we tried playing the first song…badly! We just
couldn’t get it together, mostly down to my inability to pitch anything that
evening. Anyway we muddled through it, and no further changes became
apparent, we were set to go.

Sunday night comes, I drive round and pick up mother, Rose and Rob and then
head to Church. For the first time that I can remember the sound tech and
projector operator beat us there! Amazing! All the musicians arrive and set
up. Then we gathered in a big circle on the platform and prayed…

Then the time arrived, the congregation had gathered, so we began our
service. This became one of the loudest, most intense, most passionate RBC
services in recent memory. The sermon was great, the chap was baptised, and
the people just really wanted to worship the Lord Jesus with all their
might. We actually ran 20 minutes over time in all!

And for a Church that sports the word “Baptist” in its name, how ‘Baptist’
was it? Well firstly RBC is an independent congregation, although the
building is owned by the Baptist Union. And yes, it was led by a born-n-bred
Baptist, but we did have a Welsh Pentecostal pastor come to preach, and we
were baptising a former Free-Methodist. And doing the baptising was a former
Methodist preacher and a former Brethren pastor. So to begin the proceedings
that evening our first song was a rocked-up version of a bit of Anglicanism;
a leader/congregational type song: “Victory Chant”.

I love leading worship, yes I still panic over it but this is where God
called me and He gives me the ability to work outside the comfort-zone and
do the job anyway. Yet this service was different, cos after it was
completed we wound up back at Rob’s house where I collapsed on the sofa with
just no energy left. I suddenly had a new appreciation of what those bunnies
felt like on the Duracell advert.

Jon

For those who haven’t heard yet Rose Grigg’s band “Auditoria” is this
weekend on RedTV in the Live&Unsigned competition semi-finals.

We’re all here wishing God’s blessing on her and the troop for this event.
Even though it means she’s missing a guitar spot in the Church Sunday
morning!

In other news the DaySpring album is still plodding along. I’ve recovered
from the freezing cold of Easter (see the photo’s here) and the Soteria crew
have another of our summit
meetings tomorrow night, not that that last one will be of much interest to
the general public I’m sure!

God bless everyone, especially Rose this weekend.

Jon

Hello,

Quite curiously the last few days have been riddled with bugs for our sister site SoteriaMag and the Church’s site had similar bugs. Fortunately Rob seems to have seen all this and has got on top of it all.

Today I have given my little tug-boat website a good coat of paint, and given it a more professional look. However there is now even less actual content on this site it mostly serves as an introduction to me, Soteria and Redruth Baptist Church. That said it does look quite nice, so have a look for yourself if you like at jonathanrichards.co.uk

Some great news for WMD now, our Church (Redruth Baptist) is soon to be getting new computerised recording equipment and they have said that S-WMD can use that to make recordings with! Yay. This is still only a rough, verbal agreement, but even so it is very encouraging. S-WMD has needed new premises for it?s recordings for a long while. The Mag publishing is ok to be put together at Rob?s place, the websites and mastering of sound is ok to be run from here. However actually getting artists in a micing them up and recording takes space! So this new news has been an answer to a very long-said prayer.

Some more sorrowful news is that Phil Gray has now left Soteria and is pursuing a ministry of Church technical support. All here at Soteria thank him for his input and efforts with S-WMD over the last little while and wish all God?s blessings on him and his family as they follow God in this new direction. Phil and I personally have been great friends for many years now and have worked on many projects together. He has been and still is a great and loyal friend; the nice thing with Christian work is that people continue to be friends even once the work is finished. God bless you Phil.

Yesterday Rose was round here recording a few more bits for her album. I?d just like to thank everyone for their patience this album has been a long time coming but we will get there in the end.

A real great shame is that I?ve spent so much attention working on the new tug-boat this afternoon that my coffee has gone cold

God bless you all

Jon Richards