Louder Than The Music

When I found out that Event 53 were hosting a night with Frances Chan and worship from Rend Collective Experiment I think my excitement went into overdrive. As anybody who has read much of LTTM on a regular basis this year will know, I have been championing this band as the next big thing. I personally love their debut album Organic Family Hymnal and think it's the freshest worship sound to be recorded onto CD for a long time.

We made our way to Swansea at around 6pm as the doors were opening at 7pm and the event was starting at around 7:30pm. We thought we had left plenty of time as the trip shouldn't have taken much longer than an hour from Cardiff. All was well until we tried to get onto the M4, we hit a horrible traffic jam and were stuck in it for around 40mins on this one road of about a mile, slowly making our way to the M4. Argh!

Once onto the M4 it was plain sailing all the way to Swansea, we jumped out of the car, paid and displayed and ran to the venue making it just in time to take our seats. Rend kicked the event off with tracks from their debut album and played Come Over My Soul, Faithful, Movements and Exalt, the latter really making a big impact on the people there.

Hearing these songs live that I have continuously played on my iPod for 8 months was a great experience. The band are a great live outfit and I would also love to hear these songs again in a true gig environment.

Frances Chan, the author of International best seller Crazy Love and his new book Forgotten God, gave an amazing, powerful and thought provoking talk. He was very funny giving his message on courage and being bold, what an amazing time of preaching.

To end the evening Rend Collective Experiment jumped back on stage to lead us in the Tim Hughes track Consuming Fire then their fantastic You Bled which sounded amazing live, and then finished with a really powerful rendition of In Christ Alone.

What a great evening, I enjoyed it immensely, and am grateful to Event 53 for putting on such a wonderful event with the amazing Frances Chan. Now I have experienced the Rend Collective Experiment in the flesh, I can't wait for the next chapter in this bands future.

Jono