What an incredible weekend we had, full of praise, amazing music making and collaborating, energy, love and lots of hard work! You can view our launch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYOr9lY_mLg.
People came from all over Australia, even with the crazy challenging weather! Thanks to the commitment, hard work and can-do attitude from everyone who participated including:
Choir - Peter, Kyria, Nathan, Tim, Liz, Andrew, David, Belinda, Susan, Meah, Jacqui, Gabriella, Nita, Rosie, Phoebe, Madeleine, Timothy, Jonathan, Hava, Jake, Fiona, Siana, Zadok, Judah, Margaret, Anne.
Ensemble - Miriam, Carolyn, Brent, Harry, Caitlyn, Heidi, Caroline, Nita, Phoebe, Georgia, Julia, Rosie, Rhiannon, Ash, Matt.
AV - Chris, Andrew, Luke (huge thanks to Luke Wheeldon Audio)
Stage - Chloe, Ketty
Catering - Anne, Wendy, Leanne, Madeleine, Ketty, Tim
Logistics - Ali
Theatre - Christina, Dominique (huge thanks to Lake Macquarie Council)
Chairs, instruments - James, Clyde (huge thanks to Charlestown Ecclesia), Matt, Pete
Distribution superstars - Nita, Georgia

One section in our service included the dedication of the worship book and below is our dedication prayer, given during the service:
​
Dear Father
“LORD God, there is no one is like You. You never forget the promises You have made with Your people and You are loyal to those who faithfully obey Your teachings.”
Thank You for bringing us here together tonight in person from all over Australia, as well as online, from all over the world.
We now present this book, the blue Worship book, to You as an offering of our service and love to You, and as an offering of service and love to this community of believers worldwide.
We pray that the Worship book is used to glorify Your’s and Your son’s names, to help believers focus on You, to help bring them into a sacred space where they can sing and meditate and praise Your name.
We thank You for inspiring the talent within our community to produce this work - the composers, the lyricists, the musicians, the poets, the notators, the proofreaders, the distributors, the many people worldwide who have come together to collaborate on this book, as well as all the participants tonight, all of these servants of Yours who belong to You. We ask that You continue to bless them, to continue to inspire them to put their talents into service for You and for this community of believers.
We ask that You always turn our hearts to You, fill our hearts with thankfulness, help us recognise the blessings in our life that You provide, including forgiveness of sins, and fill our hearts with these good things so that we praise You joyfully with our whole being. Keep us turned towards You so that we focus on Your goodness rather than our own fears.
Please help us to remember to sing together as a congregation, in harmony with each other, focusing on our commonalities in Your love, rather than any petty differences. Help us to use this book to create more harmony, more music in our community to help unite us. Help us to listen to the lyrics contained in these songs, inspired by You, so that they motivate us in our individual lives.
Please always help us to have a new song in our hearts, for Your mercies are new every morning. We look forward to a time when Your glory fills the earth, when entire nations, not just denominations, sing with one voice Your praises, when a new heaven and a new earth is finally here.
We give all of this night to You, we give this book to You, and we pray You hear our words, hear our praise, and accept these.
In Jesus' name we pray,
Amen

We are currently working through a list of 144 songs, listening, notating, creating accompaniments, cleaning up scores. Thanks to our hard working notators from all over the world:
Timon Burney (Australia)
Dan Hardy (Germany)
Rachel Hocking (Australia)
Nita Lawrie (Australia)
Amy Parkin (UK)
​Phil Rosser (Australia)

In other news, we’re planning a launch April 6th, 2024 DV, to be held in Newcastle, Australia, in partnership with the upcoming Newcastle conference. Here’s the link to find out more about the conference: 
​https://www.newcastle2024.com/ 

It's been a while since my last post! Enforced time away from work has resulted in time for orange worship tracks. During these last couple of weeks, I've managed to record 65 tracks and popped them online. Joseph Cheek from Island Recording Studio is mixing/mastering these, thankful for his help with this. There's still a fair few more to go but it seems like we will be stuck at home for a while yet. We've also managed to put together an international performance of Amy Parkin's beautiful 'Lullaby blessing' from the orange worship book. Daniel Melching (Germany), Dan Osborn (Canada), Nita Lawrie (Australia), Rebecca Hocking (Australia), myself on piano, and the composer herself, Amy Parkin (UK) make up the ensemble. I used iMovie for the collage video, took a bit of experimenting but I think it's ok for the first. We're hoping to get more orange worship book songs known whilst everyone is relying on the online environment to get by. Please view our video, we hope you enjoy it!

Well, we're progressing through our task list, accompanied by the sounds of the Pacific ocean, kids, and the cricket (that last one is not by choice). Between us all around 20 songs have been transcribed/notated/edited - that's 12.5% of the book, which is progress. Amy 'amazing' Parkin from the UK has taken on some transcribing (notating music by ear, a task not for the faint-hearted).  Timon Burney, Dan Hardy and Phil Rosser are providing fantastic help, and we've also had help from Dan Osborne. I've typed out all the lyrics and they've gone off to Sam, Ken as per the last blog and Stuart Muir (another lovely lyric consultant). Our printers (Ligare) have started providing us with colour samples (see below!), updated quotes, as well as answering important questions like 'if the book is 400 pages long, how many can we fit in each box for postage?' I'm also setting up the preorders page so we can plan for print numbers. We have to finalise these numbers by April, a hard thing to judge! The other hard number to judge is 'how many songs can we actually fit into the book?' - a persistent question.

An exciting update on one of our previous blogs Moving Towards a Songlist is that Hartmut Sieber from Germany (Esslington ecclesia radio station) has offered to help with our radio station idea. We've also had helpful advice from Andrew Longman (UK - the only other Christadelphian radio station that we know of!). I'll provide more details about this project as we go, but the general idea is to have an internet radio station that is basically a playlist of Christadelphian music (not only those in the Worship book). If we can set up the project now, we can hopefully save chasing and include permissions for airplay with the Worship book printing permissions. 

It's so wonderful to have so many people contributing to this project, every single skill is needed, and the amazing technology that exists today means that we can do this across the globe. Exciting!