I've been asked by Norman Barratt to put together a page about myself for this site, so here goes! My name is Andy Thomson, I live in the North West of England, in a town called Newton-le-Willows, with my wife Lynn and my 2 boys Daniel and Mark.

By the way don't be fooled by the name of the town, its an industrial area, so it sounds better than it looks. However, its where I grew up and apart for 3 years spent in Sheffield studying, this is where I've lived all my life.

I work for Pilkingtons Glass writing software during the day... no I don't wear sandals and an anorak, well not sandals anyway, and I am an elder and worship leader at Newton-le-Willows Christian Fellowship the rest of the time.

My ambition, as far as being a worship leader goes, is to gradually do myself out of a job. By this, I mean that more and more I would like to see worship springing from the body, and I have to say we're gradually getting there. A scripture that has been key for us is 1Cor14: 26 "…when you come together, everyone has a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation."We experience something of this each week, but I would love to see more of it, and to get to the point where we don't need anybody up at the front as a focal point anymore.

Anyway, I guess I had better get on to the reason I'm writing this. And that reason is the album "Look Down On us". It all started when Gary (he's a mate and fellow elder) prophesied to me that God was going to give me some songs that were going to open up peoples hearts. At the time I thought great! I expected to get something quite soon, but nothing came. Every now and then Gary would ask me if I'd got any new songs to sing, but my answer was "no". I was looking for it, but nothing seemed to come. Then gradually in the meetings, God would give me lines to sing out and as I responded week by week, more would come, until I'd get something like a full song.

An example of this is "Send down Your Spirit", where God gave me the chorus and first verse prophetically in one go. At the same time, I began making myself available for God to give me songs at home. Ideas for songs would come to me as I sang to Him in the shower or sat strumming my guitar ("Songs of Deliverance" came as I was mowing the lawn!).

About the same time I felt that God wanted me to approach Norman Barratt who is in our fellowship, and take up his offer to do an album. I did this, and eventually we produced "Look Down On us", with the help of many people in the fellowship.

The fellowship's involvement in the project is key, since whatever anointing is on me when I lead worship, or is on this Album, springs out of what God gives us together. It may be judged to be small potatoes by some, but the presence of God is real when we meet together.

So there it is, feel free to like it or not to like it ...thanks for your time.

Yours,

Andy Thomson.