SPIN LIKE THE WIND-the blog of Nigel James.

DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS.

I'm sitting in the house of Lott Shudde in San Antonio, Texas. Lott is Third Day's road manager and we go way back to 1995 when we were both working with Newsboys. Over this last weekend we've done 4 shows- one in Arkansas, and three in Texas. All the Texas shows were outside, and were started off at an open air amphitheatre in College Station, home of Texas A&M university. The weather was pretty extreme, and whilst the band and I were in the cinema, the venue was hit by a flash flood:

It was touch and go whether the concert would go ahead, and the crew had to unload and load the gear and set up the stage twice in record time. Then the wind kicked in, which made the whole night very cold. Next day we were in San Antonio, laying two shows at SeaWorld's PraiseWave- a Christian family themed funday in the theme park. After each Third Day show, there was a performance of Shamu-the killer whales- doing movements and tricks to Christian music! Included in their repertoire was the Third Day song, Otherside, and in the second of these performances David Carr, Third Day's drummer came onto the Shamu set and prayed. For Mark Lee, Third Day guitarist, and I sitting in the audience, the whole experience was surreal! Our final show of the weekend was in a cool open-air rock venue in Corpus Christi.As always you can keep up with my devotions with the band on my road pastor blog.

REVELATION TOUR-2 WEEKS IN.

Highlights of the tour so far:

* Discovering PANDORA radio-courtesy of Mark Lee. It's like the Genius feature on iTunes but it's streamed from the web. You can type in a band and then have hours of their music or music of a similar vein.

*Consistently high numbers of World Vision children sponsored each night.

*Catching up with Jeremiah Lacoille and members of HolyFire ministry in New England. 'Miah used to intern at Ignite a few years back.

*The concert at Geof Barkley's church- he used to play keyboards for Third Day. Mac invited him onstage for one more song-a heartwarming moment.

*Scotty Wilbanks-the current keyboard player- performing the next song wearing an LSU tee-shirt as a tribute to Geof who was never seen onstage without some LSU merchandise on.

*Hearing Geof talk about him fostering an 8 year old boy called David.

*Watching the movie Paul Blart:Mall Cop  with Mark and Stephanie Lee. Low expectations but found myself laughing out loud a lot!

*A longer than usual Bible study and prayer time with the band on the subject of Living in the presence of God. You can follow the devotions on my road pastor blog.

*Listening to Surrey v. Yorkshire pre-season cricket match online from the United Arab Emirates ( how sad am I?)

*Catching up with Mike Winegeart from ACU who drove to the Fort Worth concert to see me.

*The agony of following Wales v. Ireland rugby online/by text message. 

*Visiting First Baptist Church of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where Mac Powell and Mark Lee led worship at both morning services. They wheeled me out to pray at the end of each service-I think people understood my accent.

*Drinking Land of a Thousand Hills coffee -a coffee shop in Atlanta frequented by David Carr and Tai Anderson from Third Day. The shop imports fairly traded coffee from a collective they have set up in Rwanda. The guys have invited Thousand Hills out on the road to give them some profile.

*David Carr getting hit bang on the nose when pitching a wiffle ball (a plastic ball with holes in) to Dave Hanbury of Revive who walloped it straight back.

* The British Commonwealth (me and the Aussie band Revive) losing 9-1 to the USA (Third Day and Brandon Heath) in the aforementioned Wiffle Ball (baseball with the plastic ball) game.

*Listening to the redemption stories of people each night- for instance a couple whose marriage was as good as over 6 months ago but the husband listened to the song 'Revelation' a few weeks ago and begged God for a fresh revelation about his marriage and his future. Now he and his wife pray together and are back in love. She was weeping as she shared this story with me, and he had a big grin on his face and a thankful heart when I met him a while later.

LEPROSY COMMUNITY.

Ever since I've been working with Pastor Prasad in India, we've made a habit of visiting a church based on a leprosy colony. We take food and clothing with us, and worship alongside these people who live in terribly difficult circumstances but who know what it means to find hope in Christ. Ignite are aiming to build a church for the colony, whilst City Temple will begin to provide clean toilet facilities in their simple homes. We also want to initiate a vaccination programme for the children living in the community.

CHOICE No. 6- Being committed to the local church.

 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near. Hebrews 10.25

On the day before I leave Cardiff for 3 weeks touring with Third Day on the Revelation tour, it's a good time to look at my sixth 'good choice' in life. My whole life has been spent being involved in local church- from the one I was born into, the one I went to at university, the one I began my ministry life in and met Gill, the one we were members of for the first 10 years of our marriage, and now City Temple where we have been for the last 10 years.

It's easy to pick holes in local church, and even to fool yourself that you can live as a Christian without the fellowship of the local church. Yet once you start reading the Bible seriously you see that the local church is God's idea, it's the body of Christ on earth, and as Bill Hybels says 'it's the hope for the world today.'

I couldn't do what I do without being firmly earthed in a local church.I rejoice in the fact that when I travel to minister I'm being sent from City Temple, and that when I return I'm welcomed back to share stories of what God has been doing. There are countless times when I know I am being carried and supported by the faithful prayers of people in church, and that is an incredible comfort and privilege.

I don't really mind what expression of local church you go for- whether it's very traditional or extremely radical, but in order to fully function in the way God intended you must be involved in church.

One of the growing excitements about touring in this season with Third Day is that our concerts are often in big churches again, after a few years of only playing arenas. It's great to find out what God is doing in these local churches, and I'm making it a priority to talk to leaders and pastors, and to re-affirm their ministry in the local church.

BRECWAST GWEDDI CENEDLAETHOL CYMRU.

Two days of earlier-than-usual starts in a row for me. Tomorrow I'm on a train at 7.25am to London for the EAUK council meeting, whilst today I attended the National Prayer Breakfast of Wales at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. I sat between the chief of Police for Cardiff and Mike German-assembly member and ex-deputy first minister of Wales. I was impressed by the short speech from Paul Murphy MP-he's the Secretary of State for Wales- who focused on the rich Christian heritage of Wales and the importance of not being afraid to own up to our faith in public or private life. The main speaker was Roel Kuiper, a Senator representing the Christian Union party in the Dutch government. One fascinating comment he made was about the difference between contract and covenant. Most business transactions are based on contract, but Christians should live by covenant. Contract is legalistic, self-serving, whereas covenant is relational and highly values the interests of the other party. I'm going to explore this further- particularly with regard to the way most business is done in the Christian music industry.

2 NEW SERMONS POSTED.

I've just posted 2 recent talks that I gave at City Temple:

1. Anointed by the Holy Spirit- this was from a series of meetings called 'Deeper' which were aimed at delving deeper into the presence of God and His purposes for us. The talk focuses on the difference between an Old Testament anointing by the Spirit of God and a New Testament anointing by the Holy Spirit.

2. Confidence in Uncertain Times- this was a Sunday morning sermon and reminds us of some of the certainties that come with our Christian faith even though we may be living in uncertain times.