We’re ready to roll!

I’m excited to let your know about the Aussie vineyard worship site. The site is now “live” and ready for you to explore.

The address is www.vineyardworship.org.au
 
As a member, you can log into the site, update your bio and upload new songs all by yourself. When you sign-up as a member, we’ll email you a User Guide which should help explain how the new site works.

If you can find your name in the contributors search, that means you have already been signed up – your login details and User Guide will be emailed out to you shortly.
 
Have a look around and let us know what you think – or post a suggestion on the forum.
 
A big thanks to Mark Barrett and his team for the many hours creating this funky site – now it’s up to us to make it work by adding our fingerprints.

We are especially waiting for those new songs we know are out there.

It’s really easy, go on…

AVCA and the Worship Development Role

Many of you know that I have been involved in a worship development role with AVCA for the last two years. This contract with AVCA will end next week, 31st January 2007. Here’s part of the letter Peter Downes (National director of AVCA) wrote to the churches last week explaining the role finishing, in case you have not caught up with this news:

“Greetings Everyone.

Over the last two years the Movement has benefitted greatly by the role that Di Hocking has fulfilled as our Worship Development person.  Many of you have given testimony to me of the value that Di has been to you and your worship communities. Unfortunately at the end of this month Di’s two year contract comes to an end. Financial resources don’t stretch enough for us as a Movement to be able to continues Di’s role and to resource the many other goals and plans that we have, so alas, we have decided not to renew the contract.

We want to convey sincerely our thanks and gratitude to Di for a job well done.  Not renewing her contract is in no way a reflection of how she has carried out her role, or of us lessening the value with which we regard worship in our movement.” There’s more in this letter but I’ll cut it short there.

As part of the changes surrounding me at the moment, both within the local church (YVV) and with this national role concluding, on Feb 12, I will be taking long service leave for a couple of months to catch my breath a bit.

I have really enjoyed the privilege of being able to participate with the mission of AVCA. I wish the AVCA board well as they focus on new goals for the coming year.

It’s been great meeting so many different, crazy and amazing God-followers. I hope we’ll all keep in touch.

NEW: AVCA Worship Website

This time next week, we will be launching a new website linked to the AVCA site. It will be going public on Wed 31st January.

We have been working on it over the last couple of months, and there has been some clever people who have found our links and started to direct people to the site. I’m delighted that you’re so quick off the mark Scott and Christina! Champion bloggers at work!

This site has evolved after trialling this blog over the last 6 months, and I also tested the waters with the previous Music library to share our Aussie Vineyard worship songs. So we’ve added a bunch of extra features (such as places for members to contribute on a wider level), so the site becomes more an Aussie Vineyard expression with all our wonderful diversity.

I’m not going to say much more….you’ll have to wait till we go live next week. The other exciting part is that we are inviting the NZ Vineyard worship community to connect more with us as well.

So, next week, we’ll have all our testing of the site done and will be looking forward to you visiting. If you are in an Aussie Vineyard church, you can start pulling together a bio and introduce yourself as soon as the site opens. And…you may have new songs you’ve written and are singing, or articles you’ve written etc…to share with us straight away….that’s gonna be a blast!

Interview with Brian Anderson

Peter Downes has put an interview with Brian Anderson on the AVCA website.

Peter says…”We caught up with Brian for this Skype interview to see how they are going since their time with us in
Australia.  Brian and Thora are Senior Pastors of Vineyard North Phoenix and were overseers of the Australian Vineyards for a number of years prior to our being released as a National Movement.”

Beautiful News Online

Matt Redman’s new CD Beautiful News is online on worshipmusic radio for a limited time. It’s the complete album so I’d encourage you to have a listen while it’s available. 

PS and if you haven’t visited the Passion Conference 07 main sessions (worship and teaching) then you have till this Friday, as they’ll be stopping the online availability after that.

Passion ’07

You can follow the Passion 07 Conference. They have all the main sessions online here for a short time.

2007 has arrived

The start of a new year!  Happy New Year to you all. I trust that you are entering 2007 with the richness of hope.

Graeme Oxford from Vineyard Brisbane West  recently sent an email to encourage all the Aussie Vineyard Pastors on their email list. I thought some of you may be interested in reading as we launch into the new year. It’s from Bob Craine, a Vineyard Pastor at Valley Vineyard, USA.

Rather than put it all up here, just visit his site and go to Sunday in Review. It’s not as pretty as the email that Graeme sent out, but hey, it’s the same words!