Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Surprised by books and radio

Its been a strange week. A week were I have seen surprises right before my eyes. On a personal note, I was totally Gob smacked when I received the new delirious book called "I could sing of your love forever" www.delirious.co.uk The book is a collection of writing from the biggest English christian band of all time. Over the last 5 or so years I have become, with my family, very close friends. They have been with us through the highs and lows of life. So I got the book were they write about how they and why they wrote the songs that have changed the way we do worship world wide.
Chapter 5 is on the song "Majesty" As I started to read, I started to smile and then start jumping up and down with my kids. There in black and white for all the world to see was this. "I was listening to a talk from Pastor John King of Peoria, Illinois" For those who don't know this is my dad. He got a mention. It carries on in the chapter about this message my dad spoke on worship. It made my day. My dad has been faithful over the years and I have always felt he should be heard world wide and in some ways he is. But to be mentioned by the biggest worship band in the world, be also in the book were Matt redmann and Darlene Zchech do the forward, it was just awesome for me.

Then on my day off yesterday i get a call from the leading talk radio station from the top show DJs on the station asking me to come on and chat about dream center and they feel Dream Center will be an answer to the crime problems in Peoria. they love DCP and wanted the world to know. I agreed to go in and went on at 3:30pm. I finished at 5pm and then the guys carried on for another 30-45 min about dream center and how people need to help, volunteer, donate and support DCP. Now here is a non christian radio station promoting us and talking in depth about all of our programs. It was amazing. Another God surprise. we look forward to seeing what God has planned for the future but all I know is Peoria are hearing the message loud and clear. Also every Monday now at 4:00pm I will be a live call in guest for 10 minutes on whats happening at DCP. Here's the link, note the DCP web link, you can also hear the podcast from Apr 30, there is 3 episodes as I was the longest interview ever on the show. Take a listen and spread the word about DCP. http://www.1470wmbd.com/skin/feature.php?sectionId=208

Monday, April 23, 2007

Blog your way to Heaven

So its taken me some to get this blog set up but it's finally here. Yet another way to communicate to people. If email, myspace, cell phones, phones and all the other countless ways were not enough, here's my blog.
So I figured this would be a great way for people to connect with me on many different levels. We will journey together talking about many areas of life. Some you may enjoy, others you may think "whats Andy on about?"and that fine. We will talk about family, Dream Center Peoria, church, worship, music, current events, football(soccer for you Americans reading) and anything else that happens on the way to heaven.
As you may know I am in charge of Dream Center Peoria (www.dreamcenterpeoria.com ) Its an organization that is committed to help individuals, families and children who live in poverty in the Peoria area. The need is so great. Just this last weekend we started our 5 year of Adopt a block. It's a program which volunteer commit to adopting a block in the projects. At the same time we run a program called Metro kidz. A fun hour packed kids program for the kids in the same blocks. We had, with volunteers, hundreds out there and it was a great time in seeing the church in Action. Many different churches were represented and we also had a youth group from Northwoods community church, who in a month or so will be going to the Dominican republic on a missions trip. There day at Dream Center was a pre mission trip event for them.
It was amazing to see the walls of church denominations, age, race and gender come down and work for one goal, to see God in action on the street, effecting a city.