World Aids Day

Life in South Africa has been lived somewhat under the shadow of HIV/AIDS for over a decade now. Conservative statistics put us as having 5.5 million people infected with the virus, which is about 16% of the amount of people infected world-wide. As a result of the pandemic we sit with an ever rising number of orphans, currently at about 1.4 million. And so today my blog post is a call to prayer. Won’t you stop for a second and direct some pray towards the following issues:

• The rate at which the virus is spreading: Pray that God will intervene here.
• The availability of medication: Less than a quarter of those infected in South Africa have adequate access to the right medication.
• Child-headed homes: As more and more parents succumb to the virus, more and more children are having to take over headship of households looking after even younger children
• Abstinence as a solution: Pray that people we see abstinence amongst the un-married as real solution and not something to be scoffed at.
• Faithfulness as a solution: Pray that married couples would be faithful to one another throughout their marriage.
• Discrimination: Pray against the terrible discrimination that some face after being diagnosed with the virus.
• The orphan crisis: Pray that God would raise up emergency parents, foster parents and even parents willing to adopt.
• Pray for our churches: Pray that the redemption they have received in Christ will flow out into acts of love and kindness towards those infected.

Pray for South Africa on World Aids Day. For more information about how to help with the orphan crisis here in Cape Town check out Arise: A ministry to vulnerable children.

Politics Clouds the Issue of Abortion

In the midst of Obamamania I’ve been reflecting on the one area I differ most with the new president-elect: the issue of abortion. It’s quite clear to me that particularly in America, but here in South Africa too, mainly as the result of American politics abortion has become so entangled with conservative political ideals that Christians fail to really take in or adequately respond to the horror of the murder of unborn children. I think its a desperate tragedy that we’ve allowed politics to numb us toward this massive issue.

I think this is causing a lot of younger evangelicals who are far more liberal politically than a previous generation (like myself) to not take the issue of abortion seriously. A new emerging church in the west needs to correct the abuses and incorrect emphases of the past but it must never stop being the advocate of justice for the unborn. Throw your politics out the window and vest your energy into caring about the people because they are created in God’s image and are his.

What does Obama’s Victory Mean for Me?

Precious little at the moment to be honest. I woke up to quite a bit of euphoria this morning in the media over Obama’s victory. Tim Modise was raving about it on SAFM, my Kenyan friend was so overjoyed he blew his internet cap watching and re-watching Obama’s victory speech, and my Angolan friend has been carrying around this smirk on his face all day long because a black man occupies the most powerful position on the planet. So what does it mean for me? Well I’ve written before about the fact that I’m rather distressed by the man’s views on abortion and the murder of unborn children is rather a big issue for me, but let’s not be a party pooper.

I think his election has the potential to do wonders for race relations the world over and that excites me. I’m also quite keen to see how his foreign policy will play out – on paper it looks a whole lot more friendly than the previous regime – that’s a plus. At the end of the equation however I’m reminded that he is just a man and so just like any other man he is incapable of bringing about true lasting heart transformation which lies behind all of the issues and ills we see on the global landscape today. Will his victory be a positive one for me a white South African living hundreds of miles on the other side of the planet? I hope so. But as I wait to see how his term pans out I must consume myself with the victory that has made all the difference to this life and millions of others. I must consume myself with Christ and be an agent of blessing and transformation – that’s what means the most to me, and ultimately it will mean the most for all of us, Barack included. So to my Stateside readers – I hope this one works out for you – in the meantime keep living in light of the ultimate victory.

Am I an Emerging Threat?

Well there’s a new blog doing the rounds in South Africa entitled, “The Emerging Threat of the ‘Emerging Church’ in South Africa“. Wow that’s quite a name. The stated purpose of the blog is the following:

‘This blog exposes the problems with the ‘Emerging Church’ Movement – an attempt to merge Christianity with the philosophy of Post-modernism: particularly in South Africa, but is also relevant to the rest of the world.’

Then I glanced down the sidebar and low and behold I found links to posts I’ve recently written under the heading of ‘Blogs on the Emerging Church in South Africa’- now does that make me an emerging threat or is it just because I’ve written about the EC on occasion (both positively and negatively). Not sure. Although the author does seem to be taking quite a number of pot shots at some of the EC guys I’ve interacted with here in South Africa. I’m not sure if his efforts are all that helpful – I’m also not sure all of the people he’s having a go at actually see themselves as part of the EC. Besides that I just think peeps like Roger Saner and Graeme Codrington need a break, they must be a bit tired of opening their inbox every morning to find out that some new blog or Facebook group has been created having a go at them for being heretics. I’ve met Roger and I’ve interacted with Graeme a bit online and I’m just not that sure that they really are heretics – but then maybe I’m an emerging threat too so my two-cents wouldn’t mean to much.

It’s quite strange that there seems to be a little bit of an upsurge of interest in the EC here in South Africa – even google is taking note. I guess that makes sense because South Africa has always tended to be half a pace behind the rest of the western world when it comes to church trends and most other things. I’m also guessing that the fairly large churchy culture that still exists here in South Africa is quite fertile ground for post-everythings to emerge out of. So its not really that much of a surprise. It will be interesting to see what tangible difference actually emerges in the church landscape over the next few years as a result. Till then be on your guard for those threats:)

Where we’re Planting

Some of you from the other side of the Atlantic have asked me where exactly we’re doing our church plant next year. Well here are some pics of the areas of Green Point and Sea Point which are the two suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa in which we’ll be starting the work. They’re both on the Atlantic seaboard of Cape Town, right next to the central business district – in fact Green Point kind of just fades into the CBD.

Here’s a shot of both suburbs – Sea Point is the larger suburb on the right and Green Point is central – the CBD is in the background around the corner of Signal Hill which is the middle of pic. Table Mountain is in the background and the new soccer staduim and the fields around it (which are presently being transformed into sports complexes and other things) is in the foreground, the Waterfront is bottom left:

Here’s a close up of Green Point where you can see the construction underway (they’re quite a bit further ahead now) and Signal Hill in the background – Lion’s Head is the little peak behind Signal Hill which is above Sea Point (far right). The CBD is just out of picture to the left:

Here’s a shot of Sea Point from somewhere up on Lion’s Head. Sea Point is the most densely populated suburb in Cape Town along with the Townships:

And of course there’s also the world famous V & A Waterfront, one of our top tourist destinations, that lies at the base of Green Point – you can see the edge of the CBD on the left:

So that’s where we’re planting – possibly the most cosmopolitan and diverse area in Cape Town and maybe even South Africa. We will have our work cut out for us. Pray for us, or maybe if you’re able to, join us.

Acts29 Church Planting Conference: Cape Town

If you have a Facebook account then you can sign up to attend the Acts29 Church Planting Conference happening in Cape Town from the 2nd to the 4th of February 2009.I’m sure there will be a more official sign up shortly but start by signing up on Facebook.

Zapiro’s Jacob Zuma Cartoon

What ought a Christian to make of Zapiro’s latest offering of political satire. It looks pretty over the top even though many of us might agree with the sentiments he’s trying to portray. I guess he could have been a bit more careful. Jacob Zuma was acquitted of rape charges and so Zapiro should be careful of undermining the very judicial system he’s suggesting that Zuma and co. are raping. Some people have commented that the woman in the cartoon is white whilst the rest are all blacks – I’m not sure if I can see that it – let’s not turn this into a race issue again because I don’t think that’s Zapiro’s line given contributions he made to the struggle during apartheid.

You can read more here (for) and here (against). And you can see the cartoon, with commentary, here.

Black Economic Empowerment and Individualism?

In thinking a little further about the whole Yebo Yethu thing a thought struck me – I know it doesn’t happen often, and when it does happen its not always that profound but just try stick with me on this one…

I’ve been doing a huge amount of thinking and research into the whole subject of community and even doing the odd talk on the subject recently. This has all been in the context of ecclesiology – my study of the church – which, for obvious reasons, is quite high on my priority list at the moment. An issue that I continually bump into is the rampant individualism of the modernist west and how it has saturated our lives, thought patterns and the structures in which we work, live and have our being. But thinking about the Yebo Yethu issue got me thinking about Black Economic Empowerement (BEE) in general in South Africa. I wonder, just wonder, if the reason that so many white people can’t stomach BEE is partly because they’re wrapped up in an individualist worldview.

So a white, individualist might look at something like Yebo Yethu and conclude that it is discriminatory in nature because it doesn’t allow HIM/HER, the individual, to invest in Vodacom shares. The collectivist (whatever colour he/she is) on the other hand looks at Yebo Yethu and sees that THEY, the collective group of non-whites who make up the majority of the country and who have often in the past had limited opportunity and know how in the area of investment, are being given a chance to invest and learn more about investment. A collectivist could then look at the whole situation and conclude that South Africa as a nation (white/black/coloured/indian etc) will benefit from this programme. Now obviously there would be a number of caveats I’d have to include – so for example if these programmes were attempting to build up the nation at the extreme exclusion of a minority group then I think it would also have a problem, but as I see it whites in this country still have plenty of investment opportunites – so I don’t think the exclusion can be described as extreme. And I do think that ultimately it is for the good of the collective.

So my my thought is: I wonder, just wonder, if western individualism is stopping us from building this country into the country it should be. Maybe I’m just a naiive optimist who hasn’t in any way, to date, incurred loss due to BEE or affirmative action – or maybe I’m right. What do you think?

Church Plant Diary #1

Since the cat is out the bag I thought I’d start slowly blogging through the church planting experience I’m about to embark upon. This gives you a way to keep up to date with what we’re doing and a forum to give some critical feedback. To be honest the more I think about church planting the more I realize that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Sure I’ve read some books and talked to some peeps – but let’s be honest Cape Town City presents a conundrum of challenges and opportunities in its radical diversity and its going to need serious prayer and real hard work to see something start emerging here.

To date God has been very good to us in laying the groundwork in so many different ways through the people he’s brought into our lives and the way everything, so far, has just effortlessly fallen into place. My guess is that its probably not always going to be that way and we’ll need to have a long term view of the work we’re doing to keep going. So welcome to my church plant diary and feel free to make comments along the way as a group of us take on the city of Cape Town with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Letting the Cat out the Bag…

I can finally tell everyone the news!!!

Some of you will be aware of this news already, some of you won’t, but today it all became official and so now I can post about it on my blog. We are joining and helping to head up a church plant in Cape Town City! As many of you know I’ve been completing my post-graduate studies at George Whitefield College this year with a view to going out to be involved in some sort of church planting ministry in the future. Initially Robin and I thought we were going to head back to Durban and be involved in some work there, but since January this year I’ve been in conversation with some people from our denomination about a church plant in the Sea Point and Greenpoint suburbs of Cape Town. Altough we’ve been fairly certain for the last 3 months that it was going to happen we had to wait for denominational approval. Well today we got it. Robin and I attended a selction conference where prospective ordinands are placed in various ministries throughout the country and there we met with some of the bishops of CESA and lecturers from GWC. They gave us the great news that they’re all keen on the idea of the plant and are happy with our involvement in it from January 2009 onwards! So we’re extremely excited about what God is going to do in this city through us.

I’ll be joining with a friend by the name of Jacques Erasmus to plant this church. Jacques has been working in the area with a ministry called Straatwerk (Street Work) for the last few years ministering to homeless folk, prostitutes, the homosexual community,  refugees and the night-clubbing crowd. He’s an amazingly gifted gospel worker with a huge heart for the unconverted – especially the marginalized in society. Together, with a small core team, we’re going to be launching an all out offensive on Cape Town come January. Please hold us up in prayer as we attempt this. Pray that God would be pleased to grow his church in these difficult places.

I’ll be updating you with news as we go along and give you more details to the plant as we flesh it out. Peace.

Acts29 Boot Camps in South Africa 2009

To all the budding church planters, and others interested, this is just an early warning call to let you know that Acts29 will be holding two Boot Camps in South Africa in January and February 2009. The first Boot Camp will be in Johannesburg 29th to 31st January before moving to Cape Town from the 2nd to the 4th February. I’ll keep you posted and provide more information regarding the venues as I get it. Please pass this news on to anyone who you think might benefit from finding out more about Acts29 and what they do.

The Problem of Africa

Make sure you read this post by Tim Challies. It has some brief interaction with two extremely provocative articles that appeared in the Irish media recently about the continent of Africa. Read the post and the articles and have a think about some of the gray issues being raised. As Africans we owe to ourselves to think through these sorts of things.

Out and About

I’m out and about in Durban at the moment. I got up at a ridiculous hour to fly here this morning, but as always Durban is bathed in warm sunlight in the middle of winter. I’m here until next week Tuesday sorting out some wedding preparations with family and then its back to Cape Town for the final stretch culminating in our wedding in October and the end of my degree in November.

I’ve also been out and about at the movies this last week. Saw two movies of interest: Son of Man and Prince Caspian. I loved Prince Caspian, although I’m told it didn’t follow the book very accurately (yes I haven’t read it…gasp, horror!). As a movie I actually thought it was better than the first one – great fun. Son of Man on the other hand was desperately disappointing. For a movie that promised so much it fell horribly short of expectations for me. All it consisted of was a poorly produced and acted version of a political, liberation-theology, humanistic gospel in a fictitious township in a fictitious southern African country (that looked surprisingly like Khayaletsha – how do you spell that?). Ironically the movie did help me realise just how radical the true message of Jesus really is simply because he didn’t do or say what the ‘Jesus’ figure in this film did yet they both faced very similar circumstances. In the words of Yoda, ‘muddied the waters about Jesus it did.’ You’d do well to stick to the 4 canonical gospel accounts or maybe check out a book like Mark Driscoll’s ‘Vintage Jesus‘.

I’ll be out and about with friends tonight – and it won’t be raining and freezing! Hope you have a good one too. 

A Dying Worldview?

Some people have their head in the clouds when it comes to the worldwide evangelical/theologically conservative Christian movement, be it Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Charismatic, Independent, the Young Reformed, the old Reformed, the Reformissionals, etc. etc. Take for example Father Jake’s comment that the rhetoric of GAFCON is “so obviously the last gasp of a dying world view.” – Not that obvious to me buddy. If anything it seems to me that there are numerous indications that in 20 years time the evangelicals (sure they’ll probably look different) will still have a substantial voice – maybe not so much on their traditional turf but perhaps more globally.

Is this a good thing? Well I think with wise heads like Peter Jensen’s close to the front it will ensure that the primacy of the historic orthodox gospel is on the agenda for some time to come.

The Global Village Failing Zimbabwe?

Right now Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC, is seeking refuge in the Dutch Embassy for his own safety. Yesterday he withdrew from the run-off election for fear of the safety of his voters. The Zimbabwean economy, which is already shot through, is about to get worse. And to cap it off… today the MDC’s offices were raided, 60 people were detained and Zanu PF mobs have been beating people in the streets of Harare.

One question I have to ask is where is this ‘global village’ that we now supposedly live in? After the lessons we’ve supposed to have learned from places like Rwanda how is it that we allow what is happening in Zimbabwe? The odd little condemnation that comes from foreign ministers here and there is futile – as is gently tightening the economic screws on the county – they’ve tightened their own screws already!

If we can’t sort out issues like this then what is the point of being part of global village of peers? We only help each other in the good times? Scratch each others back economically but don’t ever get your hands dirty. I bet that foreign inaction regarding Zimbabwe is going to go down in history as a major embarrassment to the ‘global village’ and most of all for the SADC.

GAFCON Starts Tomorrow

The ‘Global Anglican Future Conference‘ (GAFCON) starts tomorrow in Jerusalem. For evangelical and conservative Anglicans around the world this is a potentially enormous and important conference. My own denomination – the Church of England in South Africa (CESA), who have long been out of official communion with Canterbury, have been invited along as observers. This conference could potentially mark a significant turning point in the history of one of the largest denominations in the world. It is also a conference that is beginning to concretize much talk about the church of the Global South rising up to replace the West as the future of global Christianity. In that light its of no surprise to see Lamin Sanneh of Yale University as one of the speakers.

This is a conference all evangelicals should be praying for – that God would be pleased to bring fruit and resolution to the crises facing Anglicanism.

For more information David MacGregor is constantly updating his blog with stories about GAFCON.

My Dismay and Apology

I’m dismayed for a number of reasons that I’d like to share with you and especially everyone who read the now infamous ‘Hillsong Cape Town ???’ post. First off I’ve deleted the original post because I felt that it got to a place that was simply unhelpful to anyone. Yet I remain dismayed…

Firstly I’m dismayed at myself for the way I phrased the post and the use of sarcasm and hyperbole that I exploited to make my point. A friend of mine pointed out to me that I probably could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d worded it better (thanks Matt for your wisdom). I’m sorry for the offence I caused – in retrospect it really wasn’t my intention.

Secondly I’m greatly dismayed by the way some people chose to attack me. What really discouraged me is that I found out that the two people who wrote the harshest response to me (questioning my salvation) are actually both in full-time Christian ministry – one is even a senior pastor of a church. Yes I didn’t write the post as graciously as I could have but to be honest I think some of those comments were way out of line and deeply insulting to God’s honour. I want everyone to know that those particular comments (and if you read them you’ll know which ones) did not come from people directly connected with Hillsong Cape Town and should in no way be attributed to the Hillsong community.

Ultimately I still have concerns about the methodology employed by Hillsong Cape Town for their plant and I think others share my concerns. Yet at the same time I hope and pray that Hillsong will go on to be a source of blessing and hope in this city and result in many coming to Christ and so I want to encourage you all to be praying for Phil Dooley the pastor as he takes on this big task.

I hope the Hillsong community will accept this apology but I also hope and pray that as a church (global) we will not stop asking the hard questions.

A Response to the Xenophobic Violence

Dion has posted a letter from a friend of his in Johannesburg who is doing something concrete about the xenophobic violence through Calvary Methodist Church. He’s got a few suggestions on how we can help. Please go over to Dion’s blog, read it and seriously consider how you might help.

Thanks Dion and Alan for your efforts.

Xenophobia and Feeling Helpless

I’ve been browsing through news stories all over the web concerning the xenophobia crisis in Gauteng at the moment. What I’ve seen is completely sickening and heartbreaking (Warning some of the material is graphic). Sitting here behind a computer screen I feel completely frustrated and helpless to do anything worthwhile other than to pray and write blog posts about this tragedy. I’m sure that there must be other people out there feeling the same way. Can I call on you to be extremely prayerful about this situation and then also to leave a comment if you know of any practical ways we can help. May God have mercy on us.

Xenophobia and the Church – an Open Forum

Xenophobic attacks in Gauteng are rocking the press and media world here in South Africa – I think its been reported on CNN as well. This morning I was listening to SAFM and a bunch of guys talking through the whole issue. One phone caller made a rather outlandish comment which I think begs some discussion. This particular caller suggested that the xenophobic attacks we are witnessing are a result of the failure of the church to hold the government morally accountable!? Do you think this is the case? Are we the government’s moral watchdogs? In what ways can we be proactive in this instance?

This is a difficult discussion because categories like ‘the church’ are rather slippery and used differently by different people. When this particular caller used that category I think he had in mind the likes of Frank Chikane and Desomond Tutu. The other difficulty is the root cause of the xenophobia – is it outright xenophobia or simply reaction to unbearable economic pressures?

What do you think…?

***UPDATE (13:50): Tutu has come out quite vocally this morning against the violence pleading for it to end. It would seem to me that Tutu has been, for the most part, a constant moral thorn in the government’s side, irrespective of who the ruling government has been.***