Christian Music Ministries: May catch-up

Blaithwaite House

May was another busy month here at CMM. It started in a wonderful way when Roger, Annie, Simon and Sarah travelled to Blaithwaite House in the Lake District to lead the church weekend away for Trinity Methodist Church, Hexham. The church had suffered a lot of heartbreak in recent years, and the retreat aimed to allow God to bring in some healing. There was a lot of prayer ministry and a great deal of blessing from God's Holy Spirit. In a message to our prayer group, Annie wrote this: "Thank you for prayers. We've had what Roger describes as a really exceptional weekend with the folk from Trinity, Hexham. One person said 'You've no idea how much you have spoken into our situation.'" We praise God for this kind of ministry opportunity.

The Stowmarket Choir

After a well-earned weekend off, Roger, and Mary travelled to Stowmarket, where they were joined by Sarah, Catherine and Maurice. CMM have regularly been invited to Stowmarket by Mike Arbon, and many of the musicals have been performed by the wonderful choir and soloists at St Mary's over the years. Sarah helped with the choir a great deal, and Maurice and Catherine played violin and cello respectively. The musical for this year was 'From Pharaoh to Freedom', and the choir and soloists were supplemented wonderfully by some excellent dancers, including a rather scary 'Angel of Death'. After rehearsing all day on the Saturday, Roger and the team led the Sunday morning services, ahead of the performance later that day. It was a tiring but worthwhile weekend. It is always so good to see the choir there and share with them. The booking is already in the diary for 2017!

Catherine and Maurice playing

The following Tuesday Helen had a special event at Coventry Methodist Central Hall. A group of 20 had been working through an intensive 'Spiritual Formation Course' for the last year, and Helen had been invited to lead an evening on music and prayer. This was a wonderful opportunity for Helen to share a bit about ministering in song, and also about how music can be used to bring a prophetic word. It was great to have Amy to help that evening, and she really blessed the group there when she played her clarinet over them in a time of improvisation.

Some of our supporters at the dinner

Later on that week was the annual EBRG dinner, where the CMM staff, the EBRG prayer support group, the EBRG trustees, and some of our key supporters from the Midlands area gathered together to share in food and fellowship. Roger gave his 'State of the Union Address' where he shared some of his ideas for the future of CMM, and encouraged the group there to pray and see what God is saying. Exciting times!

Then May came to its conclusion with our annual music week at Grange-over-Sands. Watch this space for a blog post covering it in more detail!