Anyway, last week my dear wife did the sensible thing on my day off, and demanded that I left the house with her to go exploring. We made our way to Hyde Park and then over the bridge to the Serpentine gallery, which was a real source of inspiration. Sometimes a bit of fresh air and a wander does the world of good!

Vicky’s not just a worship leader, or even simply a great songwriter – she’s a theologian. Oxford trained, no less, she’s not afraid to bring the occasional weightier concepts of God alongside tried-and-tested words of Biblical truth. Just as Phil Wickham manages to use certain picture language in his songs that sometimes feel a little out of place in a traditional worship song, Vicky provocatively uses words and images that cause the mind to stumble briefly before carrying on – something I think we all sorely need in a culture where challenge isn’t always that trendy.

As she sings on her newly released EP,  in Blessing And Honour, “The atmosphere is changing as eternity invades / And suddenly above us the floor of heaven breaks…”, the words invite the power of the Holy Spirit to break through. It’s big, it’s powerful, it’s challenging, and it has to be my stand-out track -  with the kind of chorus/bridge I just can’t wait to let loose on a congregation sometime soon! It’s exactly the kind of worship song that leaves me thinking ‘Drat, now why didn’t I come up with that?’

The sound is modern, the production is tight, and Vicky’s songwriting has clearly been influenced by the CCM circles she’s found herself in since relocating to the States. The end of Deliverer bears a passing resemblance to It’s Your Love off last year’s Hillsong offering, Faith+Hope+Love, but that doesn’t stop it from being a well defined hook that stays in your head for some time.

The EP is available now on iTunes, and at £1.79, it’s a snip.

Unsure how she would hold up in a singing/acting role, it was a pleasant surprise that Vickers held her own very well, giving a strong but necessarily understated performance. The meatier acting roles were handled deftly by a small but strong cast; Lesley Sharp was a tour de force as LV’s burnt out slapper of a mother, who barely stops to draw breath, and Marc Warren plays a loveable but altogether mercenary talent scout.

A nice touch was having the curtains up five minutes before the second half, introducing us to the club scene, with a drums-and-keys combo rattling out some particularly cheesy lounge nonsense.

The show runs until the end of January before Vickers goes back to the studio to complete her debut album, before starting on her first tour. Given her vocal performances from the opportunities provided here, she should become a real star.

• Had an eventful year of work – yes I was in work all year, despite the recession! That said, having grown in ministry and personhood, I have come to the end of the year having lost a vicar and an associate minister, and the weight of that on my work has been significant. But powerful.
• Music has been an interesting one – not much of note has appeared, but there has definitely been some interesting work going around. Watch out for my yearly roundup coming soon.
• As a performer, I experienced the highs and lows of running an open mic night in central London – no easy task, and the location was also a tricky one. I’ll be giving it another go in the new year, and will be making an extra effort to get performing more regularly around the city.
• Looking ahead; I’m so full of vision and ambition. I often have to calm myself and take stock of what I am currently faced with. Even so, I’m definitely looking ahead to the further possibilities that lie before me, and I want to do the absolute best I can with whatever I am faced with.

I’ve been really struck recently by the use of the word ‘love’, and how it so often becomes a cover-all for things we don’t like, or some kind of self-justification for all the dreadful things we are actually doing – “because at least, deep down, we love each other and are doing our best!”

Tish, pshaw and nonsense. When Jesus told us to love each other just as He has loved us, what did that really mean? I mean, when you stop and think about it, that means that for Jesus, loving someone meant tipping over their tables, rejecting what they currently perceived, albeit wrongly, as their chosen method of making income. Loving someone meant looking them in the eye and saying “Get behind me, Satan!”, risking them taking on all kinds of fear and rejection. Loving us meant not falling in line to the assumptions of those around Him about who He might be and what He was going to do – it meant instead of rising up and leading a coup against the Roman oppression, He submitted to those very oppressing hands to be strung up and effectively murdered in a public display of ‘justice’.

To love does not mean buying everyone a giant, pink, fluffy Forever Friends card at Clintons.

To love is to risk rejection, pain, misunderstanding, confusion, and despair.

But we love because it’s worth it. And the benefits far outweigh the sufferances.