09/25/08

Faith & Ethical Banking

The credit crunch, breakdown of banks and merging of Halifax and Lloyds TSB seems to have dominated our news the last few weeks…alongside this it seems to be becoming more and more ‘fashionable’ to recycle plastic bags…buy cotton bags instead of using plastic bags and living life in a more ethical manner.

Last year I transferred my bank accounts over to Smile (The Co-op Bank) from Natwest (crapwest) for two main reasons…firstly Natwest were annoying me and secondly the Co-op has a very clear ethical policy which includes making sure that they do not invest in the arms trade, businesses involved in animal testing or goverments/businesses do not support human rights.

Amongst this they also do not invest in companies which have a bad impact on the environment or business which are involved in genetic modifications.

Since this move I have been pondering the implications of ethical banking as a Christian, should there be a link between the bank/building society we use and our faith?

The answer I’ve concluded is yes…let me explain.

If we accept that as Christians the impact of Christ is meant to effect every aspect of our lives then part of our lives is our money and investments. If a Christian operates a business you’d expect them to treat their customers and staff in a way which would reflect the way Christ treated everyone.

The same way (in my opinion) if as Christians we can make sure that we can reflect these views and morals Jesus set out within our banking and investment principals then we should. If we decide that as a Christian war is wrong then is it right to be investing in the arms trade through our banking?

I know that it’s impossible to know what the big high-street banks like Lloyds, Halifax, HSBC, Barclays and Natwest do with our money but it is possible to know what certain banks such as The Co-operative bank, Smile and Triodos don’t do with our money.

So I put it to you that as Christians Christ should be the centre of every aspect of our lives right from the way we treat people up to the way in which we shop and bank.

Remember banking is important to Jesus…’Jesus saves!’

09/22/08

Alphabeat

I’m not a massive fan of pop music however having spent a week of having ‘Fascination’ stuck in my head I thought I’d purchase Alphabeats ‘This is Alphabeat’ and I feel like I made a good choice. The album is fairly standard pop with a bit of a 70/80′s feel however it has such a feel good feel about it you can’t help but like it!

Most the tracks on the album are good with ‘Fascination’, ’10,000 Nights’ and ‘Boyfriend’ (the three singles from the album) really standing out.

09/22/08

Of all the places to cut whilst shaving…

I cut the end of my nose!

09/18/08

Carols at Costa

During last nights church meeting (during which a massive 2 decissions were made) I did some doodling on my angenda for the meeting. We have been discussing Cafe Church for months and it was mentioned last night that the first event for Cafe Church could be ‘Carols at Costa’ so here’s my thought on the matter….

09/17/08

For Sale: Virginity

You may or may not have come across the girl in the states who’s auctioning off her virginity in order to pay for college. If you haven’t here’s an article.

There’s a few things that get me by this article. Firstly I’d expect that many Christians (if not most) will find issues with this from a moral perspective and I follow those footsteps….not just because of sex before marriage but the selling of sex (I believe) is wrong.

Secondly there seems to be a lot of people (including the girls mum) who disagree with the whole process, and I think to an extent I’m surprised at the amount of disagreement in a world where prostitution is fairly rarely condemned and where pornography also often gets the blind eye, to move more locally the area of the states where this is taking place is in one of several states where brothels are legal, yet in this sexually open society there seems to be a disagreement with the whole process.

Some would argue that this disagreement is because she may be hoping that like that last girl to sell her virginity that the buyer will just be bidding high in order to give her the money and let her keep her virginity but who knows her motives other than wanting to pay college fees (I can’t help but feel the £500,000 she’s aiming for will more than manage that!).

I also wonder the type of person who’s likely to bid on her virginity, I’d imagine it would consist of very rich older men or men who get some kind of buzz from taking a girls virginity.

I guess the worst thing is that the whole process is showing our society that the selling of sex is 1 – becoming more acceptable and more worryingly 2 – an easy way to make money. Surveys in Britain have shown that more and more young girls are going into prostitution and escorting because of the good money in it….and with the cost of education (particularly university education) and student loans barely covering housing costs let alone food who can really blame them? The only other job prospects I suspect consist of stacking shelves or pouring pints both of which often pay absolute minimum, as one girl being interviewed on her job as an escort said ‘Uni students are meant to sleep around, the only difference is I get paid to’

So what is the issue here? Is the issue promiscuity? Is the issue the selling of sex? or is the issue greed in our money-hungry society?

09/15/08

Unplugged Worship

Last night I was leading worship at church and in order to try something that little bit different I decided to try an ‘unplugged’ worship set.

So the usual singers, pianist, drummer (usually me) and bassist were given the night off and with 2 guitars and a bongo we did a more chilled out worship set.

I also introduced the song ‘You never let go’ by Matt Redman which seemed to work well.

If you’re remotely interested here is the ‘set list’ we used for worship unplugged.

How great Thou art, You never let go, Strength will rise, the highest and greatest, You chose the cross & Who is there like you?

If you lead worship in a church give a unplugged evening a go sometime!

09/12/08

Profound Music

Recently I’ve been leading more worship at church and also I’ve been listening to a lot more Five Iron Frenzy and it strikes me that worship songs tend to be very similar, all full of the same kind of language and all making very similar (yet worthy) points about God, however very rarely do you find a worship song with anything profound….I should add that by worship song I’m thinking of people like Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Stuart Townsend, Ben Cantelon etc.

Although musically Tim Hughes and Matt Redman’s current albums are brilliant and will set a new goal for quality in Christian worship music the lyrics lack anything new.

This is where Five Iron Frenzy come in….I’ve been listening to a lot of their ‘Electric Boogaloo’ album which I believe is one of their best and the lyrics of the song ‘Far, Far Away’ have really struck me, they’re not overly profound but they seem to take a very different angle than the lyrics our average church songs take…so here they are:

Staring at the shoreline
wishing for some hope
the weight of empty fishing nets
is more than twisted rope
And underneath stern faces
they wait with baited breath
with broken hearts from hoping
while casting out their nets
See the figure on the shore
He speaks His words like plain men sing
His hands they still have holes in them
glory to the King

[Chorus:]
Can you hear the bells are ringing
far, far, away?
Can you hear the voices singing
far, far, away?
I know that one day soon a song shall rise
you’ll hear it with the sleep still in your eyes

And Peter was a liar
a traitor just like me
and Judas was a hypocrite
and Paul a Pharisee
When truth can be so distant
and hope evades our reach
Peter swam across the water
and found it on the beach

I hear they’ll hang you upside down
stretched across two boards
for hearing distant voices
and crossing to the Lord

The thing with this song is that theologically it’s brilliant, at the same time I think it puts things in a very different way….I hope you like the lyrics as much as I do.

I wonder if there’s a place for songs like that in church worship?

09/12/08

My current thoughts…

1 – I’m very glad big brother is over…at least for another 6 months, it’s such a waste of time.

2 – I’m now sitting in a fairly clean youth room at church having tidied and established that young people cannot tidy!

3 – I’m glad the world didn’t end as many people suggested it would, I can’t help but feel some people didn’t really understand what was going on, I don’t entirely understand the experiment…or care if I’m honest, I do wonder though why we need to spend so much money on projects like that when there’s people in the world who don’t even have enough food to eat.

4 – I have 15 tracks to mix from the summer and very little time

5 – Apparantly I also have very few thoughts….

09/4/08

Blogging has resumed…

So it turns out my original thought of blogging resuming on tuesday just didn’t happen…however I’ve been back in Peterborough 3 days now and I’m just beginning to get my head around the million and one things which need doing.

I shall continue blogging when I can think of something else to post!