Monthly Archives: August 2010

08/22/10

X-Factor

Back in 2001 as a family we tuned into ‘Popstars’…a new concept as far as TV Shows went…as the weeks went on we went from seeing people audition to finally ending up with ‘Hear Say’.

The show continued introducing us to the band as they recorded their first single and filmed their first music video before their song hit the shelves…pure and simple!

I have to admit that whilst no longer own the single I did buy it…I never owned the album (but back then I only really brought singles).

Popstars as a television show, wasn’t bad…it was fun and gave you an insight into how the life of a pop star begins…and I guess after two albums from Hear Say we saw how it ended!

Then X Factor came on the scene and sadly 6 years later it still takes up our Saturday nights for a third of the year. The problem with the X Factor is that it’s just not very good….and nor are the contestants!

Sure Alexander Burke can sing…I wouldn’t buy her music but she has a cracking voice…in turn JLS seem to have done well for themselves and generally each of the winners have bagged themselves a number one (one of which wasn’t a Christmas number 1 thanks to the RATM campaign).

Last night as the new series began I didn’t tune in but I did catch the hype on BBC’s breakfast and in turn saw 1 act which pretty much sums up the X Factor.

This act consisted of a lady giving a rendition of Duffy’s ‘Mercy’ which can only be described as a cross between that famous scene from ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and the noises someone would make as they went through the transformation between man and werewolf (or Jekyll and Hyde). Despite having buttons all 3 judges let her carry on before putting her through!

Now I’m all for novel acts but she wasn’t an act…she’s wasn’t a singer she was just a nutter who (truth be told) probably needs to be introduced to Jedward and locked away with them in some padded cell where the world will never hear them again!

For me it sums up the X Factor…it’s not about music it’s about 2 things:

1 – Entertainment - Ridiculous acts get through so people tune in again…fair enough and we know they won’t win but kinda defies the whole point of a talent show…it’s like the holiday camp talent shows where the 2 year old who managed half of ‘mary had a little lamb’ goes through just because she looked ‘cute’.

2 – Simon Cowel’s Pocket - The biggest winner from the X Factor is Simon…he pockets a nice tidy sum from Christmas sales hyped up by the X Factor and all he has to do for that is to record a middle-of-the-road single and promise them an album at some point. Awful as he is Joe McElderry (or whatever his name as) proves that once the Christmas money’s made no-one cares…afterall what’s he doing now?

So anyway there’s my rant…I won’t be tuning in but I will take part in whatever the campaign is that stops Simon bagging a number one!

To finish here’s a song called ‘The Next Big Thing’ by MxPx…I think it sums it up nicely

08/19/10

Greenbelt 2010

Next Friday Jo and myself (plus a various others we know) head to Cheltenham Racecourse for Greenbelt. For those who’ve haven’t heard of Greenbelt it’s probably the most unique Christian festival that happens in the UK. I’ve heard it described by some as ‘fantastic’ and others as ‘liberal’ so it should be an interesting experience.

Perhaps one of the most unique things about Greenbelt is that it doesn’t have an exclusively Christian line-up…for example one of the headlining bands are The King Blues…this wider variety of music is something I’m really looking forward to…there’s only so many Matt Redman clones you can bare to watch!

Also in the musical line-up who I’m anticipating seeing is Luke Leighfield…a Ben Folds style musician from Southampton (Luke’s album ‘Have you got heart’ is free here and well worth downloading) and some worship being led by Andy Flannagan which should be a refreshing change.

The speakers include Mark Yaconelli and there’s also some interesting panels on the line-up including ‘Musician: how to do it yourself’ and ‘Is Meat murdering the planet’.

Alongside all this there seems to be plenty of other stuff going on…including a beer tent (the place I believe Jesus himself would be hanging out!). I’m really looking forward to the experience and being challenged but also having some time out to enjoy good music.

I’ll do a full blog round-up on Greenbelt after I’ve showered and reflected on the festival!

08/14/10

The Wedding Blog

So Jo and myself have got married, been on honeymoon, received all the wedding gifts, received some amazing photos which we’ve put in frames, written thank you cards and received our wedding video (on a complete tangent if you’re getting married avoid Clearview wedding videos in Caister at all costs…worst, most unprofessional video I’ve ever seen…but it’s okay we’re making our own so not remotely bothered!) and for all intensive purposes everything wedding related is done.

However throughout the process of planning a wedding and all the learning we’ve done throughout I’ve wanted to finish it all off by writing a blog about my perspective of planning a wedding and maybe even throw in some helpful advice for those who may end up planning one in time to come.

The Beginning…

So we got engaged last July in Italy and knew that we wanted to get married this year…in fact we’d pretty much picked a date before we were even engaged! During our second week in Italy (the week after our engagement) our friends Tim and Wendy came out to stay in a nearby villa with their daughters and naturally having seen the engagement on Twitter they offered congratulations and advice.

There have been two pieces of advice that helped us immensely throughout the wedding planning and the first came from Tim in Italy. Being a minister Tim has helped many couples as they’ve prepared for their wedding and his advice to us was simply ‘be selfish’, informing us that there’s so many people who have preconceptions about how a wedding ‘should’ be that it’s easy to get bogged down trying to please everyone and that you need to remember that it’s your wedding not anyone elses.

This advice was enforced by a few other married friends of ours too and certainly proved absolutely invaluable…it meant we had to do some difficult things and make some difficult choices but looking back whilst we’d change the attitude of some towards us during our wedding planning I wouldn’t change any of the decisions we made in planning our wedding.

Generation Gap

It’s amazing how weddings differ and I guess what was fairly unusual (historically) about our wedding was that Jo and myself did all of the planning ourselves, between us we designed table decorations, picked colours, designed invites and did pretty much everything in between. For me this joint effort really reminded us of our similarities…there weren’t arguments about ideas it all just came together organically. There was so much unity between us in our planning Jo said it seemed odd buying a dress without me!

As we flicked through the photos last week and reminisced on the day Jo glanced at the image of the room and remarked ‘that’s what success looks like’.

Involving Friends!

One of the nicest things about our wedding was the amount of our friends that were involved. As part of the service we invited a selection of friends from all the parts of our lives to pray for us which was a really special moment, we had friends leading worship in a band, Stuart being our master of ceremonies and leading some games (the best reception idea ever, I might add!), and Steve driving is very nice Audi as a wedding car.

On the other side we also seemed to have a collection of people involved who were also Christian, our flowers were done by the churches’ flower guild, the cake baked by a lady at my parents church and our photographer went to a friend of Jo’s church but was also a professional photographer (http://www.bexphotography.co.uk…highly recommended…fantastic photos and top bloke).

On top of this Tony who led the service has known me since I was 11 and known Jo a few years too as we’ve gone to midnight mass and led their youth work on the church weekend away on one occasion.

All of this really made the day mean so much more…if you can get mates involved it’s fantastic…don’t get caught up with professionals get caught up with what means something to you!

Wedding Preparation

The most difficult thing to find time for when planning a wedding over distance was time for wedding preparation…we found a couple of opportunities. One in the form of a fantastic afternoon with St Andrews’ Church and the second on a lovely evening with Phil and Christine (the minister and his wife of Jo’s Sheffield church).

We’d also set out to read ‘The Marriage Book’…which we failed miserably!

My Final Advice…

Whilst I could ramble on forever about our wedding and preparation, our struggles and celebrations there’s just a couple of things I’d like to finish with…firstly my top 4 pieces of advice for planning a wedding:

1. Be Selfish - You’d be amazed at who has what ideas about weddings but you need to be able to tell people to butt-out, ask yourself what the two of you want as a couple and stick to that. For us this involved making some difficult decisions and discovering sides of people that neither of us liked but we know in doing that we were able to have the wedding we wanted and not be looking back now with regrets (thank you to all our friends who listened to us and prayed for us in our difficult situations)

2. Personalise! - Forget tradition…as an addition to advice 1 it’s your day so plan what you want…I hope that people walked away from our wedding saying ‘that was very Jo and Mark’ so make that you’re aim…and plan together (as a couple), you probably won’t regret it.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask - Money is a massive issue with weddings and we saved some by having people we knew get involved whether it was cars or cakes and actually in having people we knew do things it made the day mean a lot more. There’s nothing like having a good friend drive you from the church in his car…if nothing else you don’t have to start the awkward conversation with ‘Been busy?’.

4. Make Time For Yourselves - Jo and myself spent a year pretty much just talking weddings and probably neglected us too much…try and make time for things other than weddings. I once heard someone say that for every 1 hour of planning you should have an hour for yourself…it’s far more difficult than it sounds!

Finally to finish this massive blog post I want to publicly thank my parents who were fantastic throughout the whole wedding process…they visited the venue, painted twigs, created a ‘wedding room’ in their house and were genuinely fantastic.

08/13/10

Update

Hey all,

I’ve updated my template from the one I designed to plug my album…think of it as a sign of things to come in the next few weeks…I’m planning to write a few new posts and get back into blogging again properly.

Until then…Mark

08/9/10

Wedding Photos

As followers on Twitter will know we received our wedding photos this week. The best thing about our wedding photographer was that unlike many others who give you a handful of photos and no digital versions we got an entire disc of over 300 edited photos from Bex Photography giving us an amazing choice of options of what to do with our photos.

I put them all online yesterday which you can view online here however my favourite by a long shot is this one (although I don’t really know why!)

08/1/10

Sermon Swearing

Yesterday as we boarded the ferry to journey back to France after a week’s honeymoon I purchased ‘The Sun’ in order to catch up with the news in a format that my 5 hours-worth-of-driving brain could handle and it wasn’t the ‘coming out’ of X-Factor flop Joe McElderry the caught my eye (although his coming out was a blatant case of his manager saying ‘no one knows who you are…confess to something quick!) but it was this article titled ‘Vicar Preaches Lord’s Swear’.

In the article (which I suspect puts the chap slightly out of context…however I couldn’t find his e-mail address online to ask him myself) Rev Michael Land who’s 67 suggests that ministers need to swear in their sermons in order to connect more with people..here’s an extract;

The vicar, who preached for 28 years in London’s East End said: “I’d have no problem using the F-word in a sermon if it meant I was connecting with people. The number attending services is falling and the church needs to modernise so it doesn’t fall behind completely.

“If that means swearing I say, ‘Why bloody not?’ People place Jesus on a pedestal. They’d probably be shocked by his language. He was poor and lacked any real education.”

Married dad-of-three Mr Land also told how he used the F-word on a motorist who cut him up. He said: “I wound my window down and said, ‘Why don’t you learn to f***ing drive’. He just walked away.”

I’m not going to get onto the rights or wrongs of the minister (or any Christian) opening a window and swearing at a motorist however his comparison of swearing in sermons to ‘connect with people’ to Jesus swearing is, in my opinion, completely off.
I’m not going to say anything about whether I think Jesus swore or not (although some theologians would say that ‘brood of vipers’ was about the nastiest swear word that you could say at the time) for two reasons. Firstly I think it would spoke unnecessary debate and secondly a ‘swear’ word is a relative term…words we use may not be offensive or swearing to others…for example there is a place in Australia named the f word…is this a town with a swear-word for a name or merely a different use of the word?
However even if we take the approach that Jesus occasionally used ‘extreme’ language then we need to look at the context in which He used these words. Jesus didn’t infact aim to be popular in any way, shape or form and so his use of language wasn’t to become a popular figure but to challenge society. The ‘brood of vipers’ incident is an example of Jesus pointing out what was wrong at the time…something that could only be expressed using such words however using swearing to become popular seems completely wrong to me.
Perhaps the most fundamental floor in what the minister has to say is that adding swearing into services is by no means going to bring anyone into church…what are we going to promote? Come to church…we swear just like you do? It’s stupid!
What the church needs to do rather than focusing on becoming more like the world around is to focus on becoming more like the Saviour they claim to follow…in the world…not of the world.
(If anyone knows the minister and has his e-mail I’d love to be able to drop a line to him to see if he was misrepresented)