New (Easter) Song: TU4TX

TU4TX (Thank You For The Cross) was recorded during an Easter Service at Grace Church in 2008 but never released because it needed some serious remixing. But now here it is. Seriously remixed (well refixed is more like it).

The song was written in 1996. I rewrote the chorus melody and the verse lyrics in 2005 and rewrote the verse again in 2008. I really painted myself into a corner with the rhyme scheme and structure but a few people said it really moved them and that encouraged me to finish it.

The initial motivation was wanting to try to balance out the many sanitised portrayals of the crucifixion in movies and paintings. The cross was a bloody, sickening, humiliating spectacle... Mel Gibson had the same burden a few years later.

The song also predates the substitutionary atonement 'debate' that kicked off around the same time, so the emphasis on Christ dying FOR me wasn't prompted by a need to state which theological team I was rooting for, but I'm glad to let that be known all the same.

The unusual title came out of the fact that my church already sang one song with 'Thank You For The Cross' as the title (Brenton Brown's excellent song from Vineyard UK's Holy album) and another with it as the first line (Darlene Zschech's Worthy Is The Lamb, with it's unusual “darlene darling of heaven” line). Though I felt my song covered some fresh ground the title didn't. It was a happy accident that in writing songs I usually refer to them as acronyms. 'Thank You For The Cross, Lord Jesus' became TYFTCLJ became TYFTC became TU4TX.

Free Downloads!

TU4TX Live mp3
TU4TX Chord Sheet
TU4TX Lyrics Sheet

Related Posts: The Weight of Glory (Live)
Son of God/God the Son
Other free songs by Matt Blick
Download all my FAWM 2011 for free!!!

Wednesday News: A New Home For Grace Church

My home Church, Grace Church Nottingham, has been on something of a whirlwind journey recently. For the last few years we've been looking to lease a building as a more permanent alternative to rented rooms at the Notts County Football Ground that we are beginning to outgrow. On Sept 29th last year our venue team took at a look the former Labour Exchange right in the center of Nottingham. It was wonderful, but far too big (and almost certainly too expensive to lease).

Now a mere 4 months later Grace Church owns the building!

There isn't time or space to list all the marvelous ways that God has helped us through this season but here are a few...

As a Church we only had 3 weeks to raise a deposit. We had 1 week to offically announce an offering and then take it up. Things moved so fast that the information pack the church intended to produce never got made and a national postal strike mean the offering plans had to be rethought even as they were being announced.

And yet by the grace of God we raised £267,000 in a single offering! 
 Our church has about 200 members, around half of them students. This is nothing short of miraculous.

We beat 3 other commercial bidders.

We not only were granted 'change of use' planning permission on first attempt (very rare) but obtained it 2 weeks early. This is unheard of!

God went ahead of us in adding to us church members with experience in architecture, finance, project management and urban planning to serve on a venue team. These people have been such a blessing to us. We thank God for them.

In a few weeks we will have our last meeting at the Notts County Football Ground and begin a new chapter in the history of our church.

God is amazing, and a master of the unexpected.

Related Posts: Behind The Song: No Other God