Monday 30 January 2012

A weekend to remember

Last weekend Annie and Helen travelled with Flick and Rosey to The Oakes, a wonderful Christian Youth Centre in Sheffield.  The team at the Oakes run youth and children's camps all year, and every now and again we go along to lead a performing arts weekend.  There were about 35 campers in total, aged between 8 and 15 and together we performed Simeon.  Quite a few of them had brought their instruments, some wanted to sing, and others wanted to dance.  The Oakes has a wonderful big team working there all year round, mostly on gap years, and they also took part in the performance.

It was great to have Rosey on team for the first time, although as she is regularly on team at the Oakes she was often stolen from us and made to wash up and clean toilets!  She did a brilliant job holding the choir together, singing solos and making sure the girls sang the descant at the right time.

Flick was in charge of the dancers.  Before the weekend she had planned for some girl dancers, but when it came to it she had almost entirely boys and had to quickly rethink.  She choreographed a wonderful 'soldier' dance for Caesar's Fractious.  She then tried to send the boys away to the choir in order to work with the girls on 'O little town of Bethlehem', but they wouldn't go, so we had some interesting lyrical boy dancing!  Flick says that the morning stars together were a bit more like supernovas.

The choir and orchestra went well - Helen had some brilliant singers in the choir, including quite a number of the house team, and Annie had a lovely group of instrumentalists.  She had three drummers who had to take it in turns, an Eb horn, a trumpet, a flute, a clarinet, an oboe, two violas and a cello.

Another delight of the Oakes is their proud decision that the gospel is always clearly told.  They do this by having some Bible teaching times, dorm time, and lots of memory verses.  Mes led the Bible studies, and did an excellent job keeping the kids engaged and focused.  We also learnt a brilliant song called 'Super Saviour'.

Click here to go to the CMM Facebook page and see the Oakes performance of song 2 from Simeon - Why should I be so favoured.

Monday 16 January 2012

A weekend retreat

This weekend EBRG travelled to Shallowford House near Stafford for our annual retreat weekend.

EBRG stands for East Birmingham Renewal Group, and was originally a house group in East Birmingham years and years ago.  Gradually over time the group evolved to become a support group for Roger and Mary, then Annie and eventually Helen.  EBRG still functions as a house group, but also works alongside CMM, encouraging, praying, seeking God, and keeping us all in check!

So this year EBRG travelled to Shallowford House to spend some time together.  We had some wonderful input from Alison Morgan, who works for ReSource - http://www.resource-arm.net/index.html .  The teaching was based on her book 'The Word on the Wind', which is a kind of follow-up to her book 'The Wild Gospel'.

On Sunday we spent the morning reflecting on what Alison had brought, and finished with some worship and prayer.

God has really blessed us all this weekend, and we look forward to the coming weeks where we reflect upon the weekends some more and think about where God is leading.

A huge thanks go to Simon and Alison who run Shallowford - they are a real blessing.

Wednesday 11 January 2012

Roger's latest email

Roger's update for January 2012:


Hi Folks 
Happy New Year! I'm just one month into my Sabbatical (ends mid April). It has taken time to slow down, with admin to be done, desk to clear, VAT report to do, etc. But, the model railway rebuild has begun, and we are having lots of family & Weston times. I'm re-reading, Alison Morgan’s books in preparation for her to lead our annual EBRG retreat (14-15 Jan). Leaving Christ Church after 30 years was difficult and emotional, but we are very appreciative of all the folk there have been and still are to us. SIMEON (CMM Choir) was a good start to sabbatical and end of our time at Christ Church. We are now starting to settle in to Holy Trinity Lickey, where we already know quiet a lot of people, and Rev Margaret Brighton has been very welcoming and supportive. 
Life at CMM goes on without me, and over the next few months there are exciting events: 
CMM Choir presentations of SIMEON:Sun 29 Jan - Holy Trinity Lickey 1800Sun 05 Feb - Holy Trinity West Bromwich 1830Sat 11 Feb - George Rd Baptist Erdinghton 1930Sun 12 Feb - St Germain's Edbaston 1830 
SING FOR JOY- day of vocal coaching and choral singing (with Katie Leaver & Steve Davis)Sat 25 Feb - St Andrew;s Barnet Green 1000-1600 
Evenings with DEVON BROWN: (inc.CMM Choir)Sat 03 Mar - Marston Green Baptist Free Church *Sun 04 Mar - Millpool Hill Church Kings Heath * 
Evening with ALISON FUGGLE: (inc CMM Choir)Sun 11 Mar - Harborne Baptist Church *(* = times to be confirmed) 
YOUTH AND YOUNG ADULT DAY - vocalists, instrumentalists, dancers, actors, etcSat 17 Mar - Selly Oak Methodist 1030 (with 1700 performance) 
For further CMM NEWS:http://www.cmm.org.uk/downloads/courses-events.pdfFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/Musicalman?ref=name#!/Musicalmanand https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christian-Music-Ministries/71919407369Twitter: https://twitter.com/CMM Blog: http://christianmusicministries.blogspot.com/CMM in Action (pictures): http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb229/rogerwjones/ 
Roger

Stargazers in Nairobi

We have been sent a copy of a prayer letter from Fran Etemesi, a lady working in Kenya who was at college with Roger in Birmingham.  Alongside the amazing missionary work she has been doing, she has also attended Lavington United Church in Nairobi, and joined the choir for their Christmas performances of Stargazers.  Here is what she had to say:


"When it was announced in September that the choir, youth and other groups would be doing a cantata for Christmas I offered to join them—just for that. However ... after putting that one tentative foot in, I was so drawn by the joy, fellowship, music and fun we have that by November I was fully a choir member! Interestingly the cantata we sang at Christmas was Stargazers by Roger Jones —someone I was at college with in Birmingham about 45 years ago! We performed it three times, once at the Sarit Centre (shopping mall) on a Saturday morning bringing the Christmas message of God’s love to shoppers in the city. Last week we also sang Christmas music to patients in two of the city’s hospitals. I am being richly blessed by the fellowship and my new friends in the choir."