by David | Nov 9, 2011 | Diary
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for all your amazing support and prayer for Liz
And for my tour to Singapore and Finland
Liz is ok, and not having any further immediate treatment at the moment for her lymphoma. It is a journey ahead – please do keep praying for her complete healing thanks
Feedback from 2 tours
1. David and Finlay South Island NZ trip
Watched 2 Scotland Rugby World Cup games in Invercargill – brilliant fun!
Ministry
Balfour church Sunday morning – spoke and led worship(Team workshop Sat) super deep time
Invercargill – St Andrews 5pm youth service – sang and spoke to an amazing group of young Polynesian kids
Invercargill – Knox church – men’s outreach concert night. David and Finlay and great buddy Jeff Rea played some Scots classics and DLM material!
Hosted on 2 farms with the Reas and Elders – yay – thanks guys!
Dunedin – East Taeri pres service (team workshop Sat) led with their team and Finlay – powerful worship time
2. Finland and Singapore
Best ever ministry trip in so many ways
Finland – did a big road trip on the first weekend
Seinajoki -2 Jarmo’s and Jemina played so well with us
Free flowing worship time and super version of Finlandia
Jarmo’s parents and sister’s family came
Joensuu -2 gigs at Gospel festival -African guys helped to break out the dancing in both meetings!
A number of key town and business leaders were touched
Helsinki – Host family the Pouttu’s were so kind to me again
Played with some of the band from last 2 years – cello, percussion and vocals
Beautiful and powerful worship time
Titta and friend danced so beautifully.
Hameenlinna – My great friend Max M and family hosted me, and publisher Paiva (Merja
Kiitti!) were very kind as always
Max played perc and sang with me – always great to be together
Dancing broke out again and we had some amazing times around ‘Amazing grace’
and a U2 song Psalm 40
Radio Dei – national Christian radio – good friend Kirsi really open doors for our ministry
Really productive interview, and they played 4 songs Devotion incl ‘Your kindness calls to repentance’
Recording
Started an exciting new project with Anders and Manku – more a singer/songwriter/band album
Incl Caledonia Girl (written for Liz for our 20th), Tapestry now called ‘Something beautiful’, ‘Desired haven’, ‘Well of life’, ‘When love lies broken’ – will get some lyrics to you soon
Other songs like ‘Love and let go’ are also needing to be recorded – God is really pulling a lot out of us, as ever when things seem the most challenging!!
Singapore – fantastic worship weekend with a new bunch of friends
Band – massive group of great young people who were a delight to work with
Dancers – a group of 4 women were such a blessing
A professional dancer in training, stunningly interpreted ‘Stolen Years’
Joel 2 – wow!!
Response times were powerful, and even senior pastor responded at the end of meetings.
Delight to walk and play over people throughout the weekend
Sold a good number of the Cds, which were all signed – love the Singaporeans enthusiasm!
Integrity Asia have been so helpful and insightful in opening doors for our ministry – thanks guys!
by David | May 17, 2011 | Reviews
David Lyle Morris’s newest album, released on March 12, is pregnant with promise.
He’s written the 14 tracker to encourage the listener to promise to spend more devotional time with God, and filled it with music with is overflowing with God’s promises of grace and love.
Morris, who has spent three years on this project, recently told Challenge Weekly the album had “a very intimate acoustic guitar emphasis; it is more like having me in your lounge, this kind of intimacy rather than the big live worship which some of my other albums have”. Such intimacy, it seems, was discovered by the likes of legendary blues musician Eric Clapton more than a decade ago when he recorded his Unplugged album and sparked a whole series of albums by artists abandoning the big band sound for the acoustic guitar.
Morris, in taking such an approach and adding just a few other instruments to the mix, has come up with a very gentle album which had me turning the volume up so as not to miss any nuance as I listened while I drove.
Of the 14 songs The Stolen Years, inspired by Joel 2, resonated with me the most because it offered such hope. Then, I discovered a hand written note from Morris on the envelope in which the CD had arrived. “Track 3, Stolen Years, a good one for Christchurch – God can restore!” It included God saying, in its chorus: “I will repay the stolen years, soothing balm for all your fears/Wipe away every tear/I will restore the wasted years, sweetest music to your ears/Through the gloom, light appears”. And one of the choruses includes the wonderful guarantee: “Everyone, call on the name of the Lord and be saved”.
The first track, Glory to the God of Grace and Truth, introduces the listener to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is followed by Be Exalted, Father, in which Morris adapts lyrics from an A.W. Tozer poem to praise the trinity. You Are Good Lord follows The Stolen Years and compares Christians to “trees planted by the water” in a time of drought.
If you thought George Matheson’s hymn O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, written in 1882, was moving try Morris’ adaptation. Matheson said of the hymn: “It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression of having it dictated to me by some inward voice rather than of working it out myself. I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.” Morris’s version is quietly contemplative.
O Lord You Are Our God is a reflection on Isaiah 25, Embracing on Joshua 22. Dancing In Heaven was written for the funeral of Jane Peters, a family friend who had multiple sclerosis. Good Shepherd puts to music Jesus’s promise to lay his life down for his sheep. For Such A Time As This reflects on Morris’s time of ministry in Finland.
Change Me was written for Morris’s baptism, in England, in 1986. Your Kindness Calls Us To Repentance speaks for itself, as does Harvest Fields of Finland where Morris obviously had so many God times. Holy Spirit of God, which closes this album, is a benediction of types as it asks “Holy Spirit of God, fall upon us”.
This is, indeed, a beautiful album.
***** Reviewed by Chris Gardner – Challenge Weekly NZ March 2011
by David | May 17, 2011 | Reviews
David Lyle Morris talks to Challenge Weekly reporter Michael Hamilton about his new release ‘Devotion’.
Prolific and popular New Zealand singer/songwriter David Lyle Morris has completed his 13th album. I caught up with Morris at his house recently to chat about his new album Devotion and his plans for this year. You wonder how Morris finds the time to make an album. He is active in ministry and manages to pop up at events around the country, the most recent being Parachute Music festival in January and last week’s the New Zealand Christian Leaders’ Congress, where he led worship.
He was enthusiastic about Parachute and said it was great to see worship artist Chris Tomlin and preacher Louie Giglio ministering at the event. “They have had had a positive influence on music and the youth scene in the United States in recent years,” he pointed out.
Morris also recently did some ministry in Finland, and he now plans to go to several cities where Rugby World Cup match events will be held, to hold concerts. He takes any opportunity he can to minister in churches around the country.
Devotion was three years in the making and, says its creator, has “a very intimate acoustic guitar emphasis; it is more like having me in your lounge, this kind of intimacy rather than the big live worship which some of my other albums have. “The emphasis is on Scriptures that have helped me, my wife and some friends, in issues we have been through. This includes grief over marriages, death of peers, family issues — and the whole economic recession which we have been going through,” explains Morris. The music on the album, he adds, would work “really well in a devotional”. “It is good for listening to during a person’s devotions or quiet times. It is intended for all Christians, but I believe God will minister through the music and lyrics to people facing hard times”. “Maybe we are being thrown on God in a new way. It is a time to trust God. We have to turn to God. God can renew, restore, refresh in miraculous ways. There is hope and we can trust in God.
“The deliberate intention was to identify with people’s pain in the songs so that they can find release from what they are feeling, and more importantly in the spiritual sense that the biblical lyrics should bring healing when people soak in them. The music is helpful, and has a Finnish string trio included”.
Morris said he felt that a key song was The Stolen Years, based on Joel 2, saying that God would restore “the years that the locusts have eaten”. The singer said the song had the sense that God wanted to restore people, that his heart was to replenish and restore people, so we could have hope even when all seemed lost.
The song Dancing In Heaven relates to a woman, Jane Peters, who was wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis. Jane, who was the wife of Auckland pastor David Peters, died in 2007. “Jane lived a beautiful life and I was asked to write a song for her funeral,” he explained.
You Are Good Lord is based on Jeremiah 17 and the promise of God that “we can continue to bear fruit even through dry times. As Christians we can have a greater hope than people who do not know Christ and who rely on material things”.
Be Exalted Father was inspired by a poem written by A W Tozer in his book The Pursuit Of God. “It speaks to our materialistic age, especially in these challenging times and is a prayer that we place God above possessions, friendships, ambition, family, health and even life itself. I read the poem and it totally blew me away,” added Morris.
DEVOTION ALBUM INTERVIEW CHALLENGE WEEKLY NZ 2011
by David | May 17, 2011 | Reviews
A singer/songwriter who began life as the child of military parents and had lived in three countries by the age of nine has continued his international wandering as a singer and teacher on worship.
David Lyle Morris released this his 12th album in 2010. Morris called his latest album Lifestory, because the songs recorded on it chart the journey of his life over the last 22 years, “through grief and to a new birth”. Tracks on the album were recorded with different backing bands and in different countries, so a range of musical styles is heard on the album.
Lifestory was produced with the help of Integrity Music in Singapore and, says the artist, “looks back at my life, ministry and my journey of discovery in music and worship”.
So what makes Morris tick? Well for one thing, he has a desire to see people have a more child-like faith. “In the West we can lose this; we have to worship with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength. I plead with Western cultures, that people need a childlike abandonment, and a total trust of God as a loving father who doesn’t need to be continually questioned. Sometimes we over-analyse. ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so’ — if we really know this as adults, especially in Western culture, we would have a lot less stress and be a lot more liberated,” says Morris.
“I find music a great language for undoing people, giving sheer exuberance and the trust that you see in children. So I pray that God will keep me young in spirit. We need to allow God to soften hearts, to not be cynical. We need to be like the kids whom Jesus took onto his lap. God wants us to allow him to hold us and carry us”.
Being part of renowned UK contemporary Christian worship leader/composer Graham Kendrick’s band and ministry for 13 years has a lot to say about Morris’s love of touring and leading worship. “Kendrick taught us theology and music on the road. We went to Nigeria, Russia, France, Czech Republic and many other countries. The band had people of different nationalities.”
The artist recently returned from releasing his album at the most significant Lutheran Church in Finland’s capital of Helsinki, The White Cathedral. This month he spent a week checking out Willow Creek Church in the United States.
Morris frequently travels to Finland, Ireland and Fiji. “I have ministered several times in Singapore, Hong Kong and the US. Certain countries hold a special place in my heart as it is a thing God does. God put Finland on my heart. I first went there in 1993; something happened…I had a good connection with the main Church in Finland, the Lutheran Church.” Morris says he goes there to, “Encourage new life in the more traditional churches; it is good having tradition and the more modern going hand-in-hand. It is great using ancient tunes, but having new lyrics and a modernised tune”.
Some of his songs have even been translated into Finnish and French, and are in the process of being translated into Chinese languages.
Morris loves teaching others in seminars about worship. “Worship is such a key in God’s Kingdom. I teach about worship and the importance of having passion in worship. We need to release passion in our worship, especially in our Western culture. We can be so inhibited. We need to be open and open to surprises, and to expressing emotion in worship — including pain, grief, suffering as well as victory and praise. I write in this area. My album Trust, released in 2007, is built around the theme of suffering and finding rest in God in our trials and battles. It is okay to express our pain in worship. God will lift our heads so we find his joy”.
Morris has another concern. “I have a plea to the older generation: to pray for, support and mentor the younger generation. I am saying this over and over again. We mustn’t disconnect with young people because we can’t understand their language or things in their world. Increasingly people need fathering and mentoring, in an increasingly fractured society.”
This busy musician certainly has no plans to slow down and has already started work on his next album, to be called Devotion.
He also hopes to add new countries such as South Korea to his well-worn itinerary and will be visiting a few Korean churches around Auckland this year.
LIFE STORY INTERVIEW CHALLENGE WEEKLY NZ 2010
by David | Mar 8, 2011 | Diary
Our new CD Devotion – an acoustic collection of new worship and ministry songs recorded in NZ and Finland, producer Evan Cooper
LAUNCH concert Sat 12 MARCH 7.30 pm at St Georges Church
19 Ranfurly Rd, Epsom, Auckland, NZ!
Free entry but please buy a CD
Please do come and pass the word on! All welcome
Here are some other points for your prayer please over the next 6 months
Thanks so much for all your friendship and support
Vision (the Evangelical Alliance in NZ) National Leaders Congress (3 yearly)
Wellington NZ, 21 to 24 Feb
David leads worship for the 3rd time with a local band from Meadows Church
200 Christian leaders attend from all spheres of society, church, para-church etc
April to June
Two church weekends in Katikati (16 and 17 April) and Whangarei (11 and 12 June) including team training seminars
August – Finland and Asia
David will be in Finland 10 to 22 Aug to follow up on the new Cds and possibly record another one, which I am collaborating on with the band there
Singapore stop wekend way back, 25 to 28 Aug
September – South island NZ Rugby World Cup tour with family
Invercargill, Dunedin, and Christchurch depending on the earthquake recovery
8 to 25 Sep
Arranging a main church to host us in each city
For possible outreach concerts, training and Sunday service ministry etc
Supporting the Scottish rugby team as we travel around!
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