Connect with Point Community Church

With everyone cracking into gear at work in this new year I thought it would be a good time to share what the majority of my time will be made up of this year (and for a few years to come) and how you can connect with the work.

This year Jacques Erasmus (the lead-planter) and myself (co-planter) are hoping, God-willing, to plant and establish Point Community Church in the Sea Point and Green Point areas of Cape Town. At the end of this month our first three gospel communities (we shamelessly plagiarised that name from the Crowded House guys) will hopefully be up and running. So in order to get connected with us or stay up to date with how we’re doing check out our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.

Top 8 for 2008: Everything

Who was I kidding? There’s no way I’m going to find the time to write a series of ‘top 8 for 2008′ posts between now and the end of the year so instead I’ll simply cram them all into one post. So here you have it, my top 8 for 2008 of everything!

Top 8 things I did or experienced in 2008:

1. Got married! (October)
2. Got engaged! (March)
3. Started planning and implementing a church plant (All year – but especially last three months)
4. Heard Piper, Driscoll, Chandler and Mahaney at the Resurgence Conference at Mars Hill in Seattle, spent time at the Journey Church in St Louis and met a whole lot of great peeps from Acts 29, and others, in the States (February)
5. Was taught Deuteronomy by Gary Millar – the best Old Testament teacher I’ve been taught by to date (September)
6. Road up Sani Pass – my first real 4×4 experience behind the wheel (October)
7. Decided to stay in Cape Town long term – gotta love this city (March)
8. Had my thinking about the gospel deepened and enriched ten times over by Tim Keller through numerous mp3s, articles and the odd blog comment (throughout the year)

Top 8 Blogs I followed in 2008 (See my 2007 list here):

1. Church Planting Novice – Jonathan Dodson. A newcomer to the list, this blog has been perfect for where I’m at in my thinking at the moment. So much wisdom and insight from a guy on the ground.
2. Between Two Worlds – Justin Taylor. Last year’s number 1 drops down one place – but still a great blog.
3. Tim Chester. Up from last year’s number 7 spot. Tim’s writing never stops enlightening, challenging and encouraging all at the same time.
4. John Scheepers. Give it up for the Saffa bloggers! John is a friend of mine who writes a great blog and brings a welcome voice to the South African Christian blogsphere.
5. Drew Goodmanson. Down from #2 – sorry Drew. Drew doesn’t post very often, but when he does its almost always worthwhile.
6. Justin Moffat. Another newcomer to the list. Justin writes an informative and challenging blog with an Anglican slant – I’ve enjoyed it a lot this year.
7. Michael Jensen. Michael drops down from last years 3rd but still turns out great post after great post. Plus he sent me a copy of his new book which I’ll be reviewing here shortly.
8. Jason Allen. Jason was one of the first people I became ‘blog friends’ with when I started blogging. I’ve always enjoyed his blog and the sanity he brings to some current trends that rage through the church blogging world.

Top 8 Books for 2008 (books I read this year – most of them are older than 2008 – please note that the books are a little one-sided topically because most of my reading this year revolved around my dissertation):

1. Total Church – Steve Timmis and Tim Chester. Ok so I first read it in 2007 but I’ve read it several times this year because of my dissertation and I still think its the most important book I’ve ever read on ecclesiology.
2. The Reason for God – Tim Keller. The first apologetics book that I feel comfortable giving to my friends.
3. Planting Missional Churches – Ed Stetzer. Great book with practical insight. Really helpful for where I’m at.
4. The Forgotten Ways – Alan Hirsch. Really good yet at times frustrating. I’m on the same page as Hirsch with a number of things – I guess I’m just a bit more conservative on one or two others.
5. Breaking the Missional Code – Ed Stetzer and David Putman. Another great help on all things missional.
6. On the Incarnation – Athanasius. I delved into a bit of church history this year and thoroughly enjoyed this one.
7. The King of God’s Kingdom – David Seccombe. Dr Seccombe (Doc) was my New Testament lecturer this year and so I got a chance to have a crack at his book. It’s a great overview of Christ in the gospels.
8. Jesus and the Victory of God – NT Wright. Vintage Wright – I don’t agree with him at every point but this is an important book.

Top 8 places I visited in 2008

1. Seattle, Washington, USA
2. St Louis, Missouri, USA
3. Castleburn, Drakensburg, KZN
4. Sani Pass, Lesotho
5. Lost City, Sun City, North West Province
6. Franschoek, Western Cape
7. Betty’s Bay, Western Cape
8. Durban, KZN (my old stomping ground)

That’s my year in a nutshell. It’s been the year with the biggest changes in my life to date. Not only did I get married but we decided to stay in Cape Town and plant churches here rather than in Durban. Things have come a long way in the last 12 months – here’s to an equally exciting 2009.

Merry Christmas all – have a great one!

Church Planting Foundations Conference

Here’s a line up of the speakers for the Cape Town leg of Acts 29‘s Church Planting Foundations Conference (2-4 Feb 2009):

Mike Gunn:
Mike Gunn is the pastor of Harambee Church in Renton, Washington. Mike helped plant Mars Hill Church in Seattle and now currently serves as the director of Church Planting Internationally for the Acts 29 Network.

Dave Fandey:
Dave Fandey is the pastor of a growing new church called, The Fields, which he planted in 2003. Dave wears many hats as he sits on the international board for Acts 29 as well serves as an adjunct lecturer at Biola University teaching New Testament and Leadership.

Al Barth:
Al Barth oversees and encourages church planting and church planting movements in Europe and Africa on behalf of Redeemer Presbyterian’s Church Planting Center. Al is a seasoned church planter with a particular passion for church planting movements in the major cities of the world.

JD Senkbile:
JD Senkbile has recently moved to Cape Town to oversee the Acts 29 Network in Africa. Before moving to Cape Town JD was involved with justice and mercy ministry at an Acts 29 affiliated church in Omaha, Nebraska.

Sam Groves:
Sam Groves is the pastor of Church on the Ridge in Pietermaritzburg, a young growing church which he planted with two other couples just over three years ago. He has a passion for church planting and cultivating communities of gospel-centered disciples.

Siegfired Ngubane:
Siegfried Ngubane serves both as a lecturer at George Whitefield College and as pastor of Mandela Park Community Church. In the past few years Siegfried has overseen a number of church planting initiatives in township areas in and around Cape Town.

Dave West:
Dave West is the senior pastor of Melville Union Church in Johannesburg which he and his wife planted. The church is heavily involved both in ministries to students as well as ministries to street children and HIV/Aids orphans.

Send me an email (stephenjmurray@yahoo.com) if you’re interested in attending.

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.

Church Plant Diary #2 – Prayer

Our first port of call in this plant has been to pray. Now this might sound obvious but its super easy to leave out. Like most Christians I really struggle with disciplined prayer – I have my good weeks and I have my bad weeks. But in reality I’m kidding myself about the entire venture if I’m not going to regularly get down on my knees and plead with God that he would be pleased to plant a church in Cape Town.

Jacques, my co-planter, got us all together just over two weeks ago for our first corporate prayer meeting. There were only 9 of us but it was the most exciting time we’ve had together around this plant so far. We’ve now committed to getting this group of people, and others who’d like to join, to pray corporately twice a month from now until January when both Jacques and I will start full-time on the plant. If you’d like to pray with us then here are some of the things you can pray for:

• Jacques and his wife Lindy are heading over to Redeemer Church Planting Center next month for a 6 week training intensive – pray that this would be an amazingly fruitful time for them.

• We’ve had a number of people mention interest in the plant to us – pray that God would start to firm up this interest so that they’ll commit full-time to the plant next year.

• Robin and I don’t currently live in the same suburb that we’re planning to plant in – pray that until we can find accommodation in Green Point or Sea Point we would make time just to explore and hang out in the area more, meeting people.

• Pray for Holy Trinity, Gardens and St Stephen’s, Claremont, our two sending churches that God would use this church plant to mature and grow their congregations in godliness and gospel-centered thinking and living.

• Most of all pray that God would, through this plant, seek to glorify himself as his Son is proclaimed in Cape Town transforming the lives of broken and lost people.

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.

Paul Tripp in Cape Town

This evening we had Paul Tripp with us at St Stephen’s. He gave an exceptionally helpful talk on relationships, conflict and the heart issue of idolatry. He’ll be in Cape Town until the 17th of August I suggest you try and catch him at one of his sessions:

Mon 11th Aug 2008
14h00 – Biblical counselling & identity
15h30 – Biblical counselling & the use of Scripture
19h00—Counselling & the Bible as a story – The genius of how the Word transforms the Heart
Venue: Jubilee Community Church 21 Nelson Road
Observatory

Tue 12 Aug 10h00 Cape Town Baptist Seminary: Getting to the heart of conflict

13h00-14h00 City Partnership: Meeting held at Capetonian Hotel Foreshore Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands

19h00 Durbanville Community Church: Chesterhouse School, Mosselbankrivier Road, D’Urbanvale, Durbanville Getting to the Heart of Parenting 2 sessions & Q&A

Wed 13 Aug 12h15 Goodwood Baptist Church: Pastor & Christian Workers lunch. Counseling and the Bible as Story

19h00 Christ Church Somerset West: Corner of Old Stellenbosch and Helderberg College Roads Getting to the Heart of Parenting (2 sessions)

Thu 14 Aug 09h50 Bible Institute Kalk Bay: Main Road Kalk Bay

13h00-14h00 City Partnership: Meeting held at Vineyard Hotel Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands

19h00 Common Ground Church: Milner Road; Rondebosch Marriage, Family & Friendship

Fri 15 Aug 11h00 Christ Church Hermanus: Jose Burman Ave, Hermanus Pastor’s Meeting: “Too Many Unproductive People” & “Biblical Counseling and the Use of Scripture”

18h30 Christ Church Hermanus: Held in Municipal Auditorium, Hermanus Getting to the Heart of Parenting

Sat 16 Aug 10h00 Monte Vista Presbyterian Church Age of Opportunity (3 sessions)

19h00 Living Hope Bible Church: 5 Fir Grove Way; Bergvliet Getting to the Heart of Conflict

Sun 17 Aug 09h45 St Matthews Church CESA: Jannsens Ave Table View Relationships: A Mess Worth Making

Sun 17 Aug 19h00 Meadowridge Baptist Church: 136 Ladies Mile Rd; Meadowridge Relationships: A Mess Worth Making

For more details check out the CBD website.

Healthy Critique

Some of the heat that has been directed my way due to my post about Hillsong Cape Town has disturbed me somewhat at the ability (or lack thereof) of Christians to critique and ask hard questions of themselves. I understand that when one is part of something that you believe in you’ll defend it tooth and nail – but shouldn’t Christians be slightly different? After all we should be fighting tooth and nail for one central issue and that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its centrality to life and practice. For everything else shouldn’t we be prepared to critique and be open to critique?

In the last two years of blogging I’ve followed a lot of different types of Christian blogs and if truth be told I’ve learned an absolute ton from Christian traditions other than my own. I’ve learned things from (wait for it…) Roman Catholicism, the Emerging Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Neo-Monasticism, Pentecostalism and even stuck in the mud Reformed folks. By reading widely and interacting with the different expressions of faith I’ve been able to critique my own expression and refine it in order to be more faithful in following Christ. Going back and forth between the scriptures and these various traditions has been a thoroughly fruitful exercise. And so I think that when we become unable to critique we lose much and are worse off for it. We also might be (and I say this tentatively) exposing the idols in our life and practice when we discover areas that we are unable to critique (i.e. what do I value above the gospel?).

Too Old for Passion

The Passion band are coming to Cape Town in August. Yup, Chris Tomlin and David Crowder are going to be here, but I’m too old to attend! The Facebook group says its only for people between 18 and 25! What the…? How does that work?

Working with the Homeless in Cape Town

My fiancee works for an organisation called U-Turn who work to uplift homeless people in the area of Claremont in Cape Town. They’ve just got their new website up and running and its worth a look.

The reason I mention it here is due to the current difficulties our organisation is facing. Up until now the municipality has allowed us to lease a building in central Claremont which has operated as a second-phase shelter for the upliftment of homeless men and as a base of operations for all the other work that goes on with the first-phase homeless folk who are still on the street. Unfortunately the municipality requires us to move because they will be demolishing the building in order to build a new road through the area. We have known about the move for a few months now and the municipality has promised us an alternative venue also in central Claremont. However things have come to a head and we’ve been asked to vacate the building within two weeks. Unfortunately the alternative venue is nowhere near ready for our second-phase residents to move into (it completely lacks proper ablution facilities). The costs of making the new venue ready for residents and fully operable are quite significant.

Now I don’t normally do this on my blog but I thought it would be worth putting out there (especially for my US and UK readers who’s Dollars and Pounds go a lot further than our South African Rand):

Would you consider partnering with this ministry in some form? There are suggestions on the website as to how you can contribute to the ministry and help us in this time of need. Thank you for your consideration and please be in prayer for U-Turn over the coming months of transition.

iPod therefore I Am

George Whitefield College is running its annual ‘Summer School of Biblical Christianity’ from 23 Jan to 1 Feb 2008 at their campus in Muizenberg, Cape Town. They’re offering courses on Biblical Theology, Church Response to Contemporary Issues, New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew, Advanced Exegesis and Post-Graduate Research. I’ll be attending the Post-Graduate Research course.

What was really interesting to me is that Mark Norman will be down from Pretoria to teach 6 sessions on understanding postmodernism entitled ‘iPod therefore I Am‘. Here’s his schedule:

Part 1: Understanding Postmodernism – The differences between ‘Premodern’, ‘Modern’ and ‘Postmodern’ societies.

Part 2: Postmodernism and the Problem of Truth – A Christian critique of postmodern views of knowledge and truth.

Part 3: Postmodernism, Terrorism and Fundamentalism – The new global war and what it means for the church.

Part 4: Postmodernism and African Thought – How post-colonial African thought relates to postmodernism and its relevance for the church.

Part 5: Postmodernism and the Use of Language – A study of postmodern approaches to language, with special relevance to Jacques Derrida.

Part 6: Postmodernism and the Stories We Live In – Are you living in the Christian story?

Mark’s talks will take place in the mornings of each day prior to the other Summer School classes.

For more information contact GWC  (021) 788-1652

Or see the college website.

See you Shortly…

I’m off to the Drakensberg for the next few days and I don’t intend to go near an online computer. So have a great Christmas and I’ll catch up with things on about the 28th of December when I head back to Cape Town. Later…

South African Urban Ministry Blog

A number of readers from outside of South Africa have from time to time asked me about ministry conditions in South Africa, but being a college student my experiences and stories have been somewhat limited. However I’m always keen to point you to other places where you might get other insights into ministry in South Africa. And so it was with interest that I checked out a blog on urban ministry taking place right here in Cape Town. Rev. Thomas Scarborough is the pastor of an urban church in Cape Town and for the last few months he has been chronicling the day to day life of urban ministry in South Africa. He briefly contacted me through email and pointed me to the blog having discovered that I too share an interest in urban ministry. Go and have a look.

Are ‘White’ Christians Scared?

I watched a documentary last night about the community of Atlantis a former industrial area about 40mins drive north of Cape Town on the West Coast. The community was originally designed to be an industrial hub under the previous government pre-1994. Many factories relocated to the area and received government subsidies. At the same time the working force swelled as people flocked in, and were brought in to work in the industries. When the old government was replaced after the first democratic elections in 1994 the subsidies ceased and most of the industry pulled out leaving some 200 000 residents, approximately half of which became unemployed as a result.

In the years following and due to the high unemployment the community of Atlantis has undergone massive moral and social decay. Gangsterism, drug abuse, alcoholism and sexual abuse of all sorts abound throughout the area. As an outsider looking in the entire situation appeared something akin to anarchy to me. My heart bled as I listened to stories of families torn apart by gangsterism and violence and young children being horribly sexually molested. I couldn’t but help wonder about the responsibility of the church, as those entrusted with life giving gospel of Jesus Christ, to this dire situation.

I’ve been involved in two major denominations in this country as well as regularly fellowshipping with people involved in other Christian groups in South Africa, and whilst I don’t deny that there is much good work going on I can’t shake the feeling that we’re not even getting past the tip of the iceberg. My main issue is with the ‘white’ churches – and there are many. These churches have people, they have facilities and they have finances – why are they not launching an all out offensive on communities like Atlantis. Why aren’t they pulling up their sleeves and getting dirty, down there in the grit and grim of these scarred communities, listening to the needs of so many desperate people? Why aren’t they mobilizing others? Why aren’t we seeing church planting on a larger scale? Why aren’t we seeing mercy ministries springing up left right and center? How do so many of the members of these ‘white’ churches sleep at night knowing that in the suburb next door another world is being played out? How is it that the bearers of the news about a Suffering Servant turn a blind eye to the suffering going on right next to them?

I think they’re scared stiff. I know I’m scared stiff when I think about what’s out there. I’m one of those ‘whites’ in a ‘white’ church and I’m terrified. Atlantis is just one of a hundred other such communities in this country – it scares me to death. All I can trust is that the message of that Suffering Servant will grip my heart so tightly that I will be constrained by the love of God to pull up those sleeves…

Blogging South African

Yesterday my pastor had some interesting thoughts on immigration in his sermon on the life and times of Joseph in the Genesis narrative. This in light of South Africans listing numerous reasons for wanting to move to places like Australia, New Zealand and the UK. At the top of most of those lists is the crime factor here in SA, and this article from the East Coast Radio Blog just shows some of the horror of the situation. I’m still wondering, as a Christian, whether leaving or not due to crime and corruption in this country is a gospel motivated action. I suppose each individual case needs to be considered.

Elsewhere Dion makes some interesting comments about the ‘recolonization’ of Southern Africa and punk rockers, NOFX, the band that refused to be ‘colonized’ by major record labels since 1983 will be jamming in Cape Town on the 9th November.

Finally, I just discovered a blog tracking site for South African blogs, unlike Amatomu which tracks all the movements in the SA blogsphere, this site, South Africa’s Daily Voices, daily updates the top 15 posts and blogs in SA. How did I find it? Well somehow a little throw away post that I wrote two days ago got ranked inside that top 15 – can you believe it!

Getting Books Quicker

Justin Taylor has just pointed out that Pierced for Our Transgressions (a UK publication) has finally arrived in the States. Now get this – I visited a book store here in Cape Town over a month ago and the book was already on the shelf there. So for all of you out there who always complain that us South Africans get everything after everyone else – cheer up, things get here quicker than you think.

Foto For Friday

African Beauty, originally uploaded by a_dOgshOw.

Ah, Cape Town…summer is finally here!!!

Freaky Friday Foto: The Sentinal

The Sentinal, originally uploaded by a_dOgshOw.

The home of the beast; Dungeons.

Islamic Pluralism

Today I spent some time conducting a few interviews with Muslims in and around my local suburb. They main point of the interviews was to gain what sort of an understanding grass-roots Muslims had of the term ‘gospel’. Ironically the vast majority of them associated the term with gospel music.

That wasn’t the biggest surprise for me though. When I posed the question as to whether or not they felt it was important for people to believe in just one specific faith, and if they thought that all the others were false faiths, they all answered contrary to what I understood to be an orthodox Muslim view. All, without exception suggested a pluralistic view of belief in a god(s) – all roads lead to the same place in the end. As far as they were concerned (or at least as far as they were prepared to admit to me) there was no judgment for those who refused to adopt Islam. Surprising?