Practical choices for Benediction • Sending • Unity • Seasonal Services

“The final song is more than a musical ending. It’s the last word spoken blessing and inspiring our congregation for the coming week.”

For worship leaders 

Choosing closing worship songs that bless, commission, reaffirm identity or unite the church can help set tone long after Sunday’s service ends. Below are four worship songs from KDMusic, intentionally written for congregational use —…

Jesus Loves Me (He is Strong) ~ is a study of the much loved classic children’s hymn
'Jesus loves Me This I Know" by Anna Bartlett Warner & William Batchelder Bradbury.

So, how do you cope with uncertainty?

It's been an interesting few years lately! Many of the things we took for granted have been rattled to the core. Doesn't it make you a bit nostalgic for 'simpler' more certain days? But of course that's a big lie too isn't it!
The past is only certain because it's fixed when we look back on it.
At the…

Kingston Jamaica  |  Newry, Co. Down  | Shankill & New Lodge, N. Belfast  

Can you remember where you were during the first Gulf War? I was working in a church community project, the Mel Nathan institute, Hannah town, Kingston Jamaica. I loved Hannah Town. It was like the Shankill Estate with sunshine by day , street food & pumping music at night. By the orange street lights it was edgy, like a scene from Dante's inferno. Half derelict due to political gerrymandering, three letter tribal markings on the…

Kingston, Jamaica | Newry, N.Ireland

I recently heard a clip of Tom Hanks being interviewed. He was asked why he felt compelled to act. He cried. He was searching for a vocabulary, a way to express his ‘loneliness’.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p03t5p63

There is a loneliness that's not boredom or isolation ~ it's closer to panic. I think the word is……desolation. Space movies explore this a lot. The horror of drifting off into eternity, waiting for your oxygen to run out. I’ve tasted that sort of…

Dugort, Achill Island  |  Ireland

I’ve always thought of misty, shadowy West of Ireland weather as gloomy or mysterious. It wasn’t until I read CS Lewis on the difference between half light (Nordic) & full light (Mediterranean) beauty that I broadened my perspective. He compares a northern landscape & light to water colours, bright southern light to oil paintings. One vivid & exuberant, the other subtle & nuanced. Ambivalent.

Minaun cliffs and Keel surf, Achill, Co Mayo. © 2019 Sarah Whitcroft

Different…