Andy B Podcasts and Stuff

Send us Fan Mail When you work as part of a team, that functions really well, it can be so hard when one team member is taken out of the loop. A well organised team will be able to step in to each other’s roles as necessary. Our usual day for filming new BerryBunch material – every Saturday - takes up around 4-6 hours each time. We work efficiently, and consistently - and all help out in different...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a rather crude phrase in the UK about how P£*$ Poor Planning Produce P£*$ Poor Performance. (You can interpret those symbols for whatever works best for your innocence!) The basic point is simply that if we don’t put in the effort to plan something, it’s likely to go wrong. And planning poorly usually results in poor outcome. As humans, as parents, as friends, as children,...

Send us Fan Mail In the Film series, Ice Age, there is little sabre tooth squirrel. He always gets so close to being to safeguard his precious nuts, when disaster strikes. If I’m honest he’s my favourite character because he never gives up trying. Everything gets thrown at him. And, yet, he just picks himself up and gets going again. Sure, he suffers some typically calamitous disasters that requir...

Send us Fan Mail Life can be so busy at times we might wish to scream for someone to stop the world so we can get off. And, yet, God’s plans are never for us to be that busy. A wise man once said how important it was to leave spaces in your day for the unexpected. I think there’s two reasons for this. Firstly, if we don’t leave any spaces in our day, we’ll be tired and exhausted because our pace i...

Send us Fan Mail Isn’t It Amazing what Jesus did? He was the Son of God – of course. But He was also a carpenter, an older brother, a son. One thing remains certain about His life and that is that He obeyed His parents, and his Heavenly Father too. He didn’t just do what He wanted, but knew He was part of something bigger. He was Jesus Christ. And, yet, He was the world’s greatest servant too. As...

Send us Fan Mail We’re always trying to make life just a little easier for ourselves, aren’t we? Well, mostly anyway! And, as we age and mature (again, mostly) we discover things that don’t work, and things that work better. But how are you with change?  Personally I enjoy needing to change things – it stops things getting boring. It means I have to rethink things I thought I knew, or was certain...

Send us Fan Mail Titles can help us in many ways because they can instantly help us understand the function of the person we are talking to, or interacting with. And titles in churches are just as important. If I’m honest I think the title ‘pastor’ has been thrown around far too liberally because if I’m talking to a pastor I want to know they’ve been chosen to lead the church, and have preferably...

Send us Fan Mail “Everything new must be better”. This must be the mantra on anybody involved in selling anything – that the new thing is better than the old because it is newer. But as we’ve seen with new and old version of the same cars this isn’t true. Also, just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Marmite Easter eggs? No thanks!  When we think about styles of worship in churches, it’s easy...

Send us Fan Mail I wonder if you’re anything like me and feel like you spend so long praying for God to bless you with something, that you miss the moment when God actually blesses you with the very thing you were praying for. I think part of this is that we are not expectant enough of what God wants to do in our lives. Perhaps we have experienced false teaching about how blessings are always fina...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever received a gift that was begrudgingly given? Perhaps it was merely someone who you beat in a game but their ‘well done’ felt more like a knife in the back, rather than a sincere congratulatory statement. It can, so easily, spoil our elation at winning! Tithing is something we often think as just an Old Testament thing - tithing is simply an old word for ‘tenth’, and...

Send us Fan Mail When we get involved in a project it’s quite possible for us to get so focused we can miss the most obvious of mistakes. That’s the reason why you’ll find the breakdown truck driver refuse your help when they load your car on to their vehicle – they need to make sure nothing has been left loose!  It’s the exact same thing with driving a truck – the only person who can ever ensure...

Send us Fan Mail It’s easy to see all the gaps and fill them up. If it’s a dam, great. That same finger shoving effort may not be quite as helpful if it’s a colander you’re filling the holes in, while you’re trying to strain some cauliflower from the water it was just boiled in - for your dinner! Context, as ever, matters! We can treat our diaries, and our time, a little like this – we can fill ev...

Send us Fan Mail If you’re late for work, then rushing like a mad thing is rather a sensible course of action. Of course we shouldn’t break any speed limits doing so! But hanging about and taking our time to drink a second cup of tea isn’t appropriate either!! There are times in life when we simply need to get a hustle on, to get the job done…and keep our job, perhaps… As we switch across to some...

Send us Fan Mail There will always be parts of our lives we’d rather forget – those moments when something traumatic happens to us, or those times when we’ve done something that may have ruined the life of someone else, perhaps permanently. Those moments define us, and they can be moments we’d rather not ever have to remember. But, having undergone a 15 month of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Cog...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever heard the phrase ‘phone a friend’? While it may have been made more widely known by a popular British TV quiz show, I’ve used it and heard it for many years before that. The meaning is fairly simple – when you get stuck, you contact someone who may know more. We all need people we can talk to – either as some form of a sounding board (I have several people like this...

Send us Fan Mail When we look around the world we see houses built for their surroundings. But one thing all houses remains constant – they really do need fresh air to keep them healthy. As people we produce moisture all through the day, and that needs to be allowed to escape the house. You can keep your doors and windows closed, but while this may make you warmer, it is also going to make problem...

Send us Fan Mail We can treat life how we treat eating toast! We can take it all and shove it and hope for the best. But there is a better way and, having a beard, has made me more aware of the need to bread my toast into smaller pieces; any of us would do well to break up our lives into smaller pieces too. I’m reminded of the phrase, ‘Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.’ And I think that...

Send us Fan Mail There are always issues to face in life. Sometimes we can pretty much work them out as we go. Sometimes, we need a manual. Or, in the case of the new video editing software we’re now using, lots of time spent watching YouTube videos kindly made by others! One of the problems with us as human beings is that we don’t like to embrace change everywhere. And software can be one of thos...

Send us Fan Mail As a slight caveat, this is the first video edited with some new video editing software we’re now switching across to. I think it’s improved various elements of both the editing and the videos you can watch that we make.  But we’d truly love to know what you think. Perhaps you can’t see a difference – we’d be grateful if you could let us know! We’re hoping that both the audio and...

Send us Fan Mail I sent a quick message to a friend. I’d fixed a bin. He was a mechanic, so I told him what I’d managed to do, with my own hands and some ingenuity (and some super glue and cable ties). I also took the opportunity to check on how he is doing. He is a good friend, and someone who had given all for his country, and pays the price of that sacrifice today. So, I checked in with him – a...

Send us Fan Mail Jesus will return one day. It states it in the clearest of terms at the end of the bible, but also all the way through the bible too. Jesus IS coming back, and there WILL be a judgment made of those who are going to heaven, and those who are going to hell. This may not be popular teaching, but it is true none the less.  But, how should we wait for His return? Well, firstly, we hav...

Send us Fan Mail Our sensor bin gets used often and, as it gets used, the batteries eventually get tired and give up their efforts. We put in hew batteries, or freshly recharged batteries, and it becomes all spritely once more. Are you struggling with feeling tired all the time? You’re serving God but never feel the benefit of His refreshing and recharging? Then it’s quite possible you’re doing so...

Send us Fan Mail Our kitchen has a sensor which enables the lid to raise, and hold in place – open – at just the swipe of your hand. Or your butt if you back towards it. It really isn’t fussy! Anyway, ours stopped working and a critical element of this capability is a small black box that joins a motor to the bin lid itself. And inside this black box are a number of small plastic white cogs, and o...

Send us Fan Mail In our home we bought, quite a while ago, a battery operated sensor bin. Put simply, you wave your hand in front of the sensor, and the in lid opens for you. And, we love it! Some friends had one and, once we’d used their sensor bin, we knew we wanted one too. However, as is often the way, the engineering to keep it at a lower price, was not as good as the idea. Eventually, our bi...

Send us Fan Mail Halloween – is it a good thing or a bad thing to celebrate Halloween? I’ve heard both sides of the argument! I’ve listened to church ministers of the gospel who say we should celebrate it, because it is nothing to fear since we are Christians; putting on a Halloween celebration is good for the church to do as it shows how churches are still relevant for a modern world. I’ve listen...