Not for sale

Around the world approximately 27 million people are enslaved in one form or another, this includes women, men, boys, and girls. This movement, called Human Trafficking, generates about $31 billion annually. Sound like an impossible mountain to tackle? At times, I think so too. However, there are many people in the world who are working to combat this horrible issue: modern day abolitionists. This Friday, at our weekly prayer and worship service, we will be learning more about this issue by watching a documentary called, “Not for Sale”. In this video we will be hearing the stories of those affected by Human Trafficking and of those who are fighting it. There are some incredible stories of people who have showed great courage and have said, “Enough!” I think it will be a great, yet difficult, night. An important step in ending this horrifying pandemic is awareness. So, please, come be made aware this Friday!

Not for Sale is an organization begun by David Batstone, a professor of ethics in San Francisco, California. Please visit www.notforsalecampaign.org for more information on this amazing movement!

The Kingdom of Heaven

We’ve started the “Contending for the kingdom” posture, which means understanding what the Kingdom of God (or “Kingdom of Heaven” as Matthew writes it) means. If the kingdom is at hand, as Jesus said, what might that look like in the reality around us? That was the question we asked ourselves this week, which resulted in these photos, shown at Rhythm, our weekly prayer and worship gathering. Some photos are self-explanatory, others need an explanation from the photographer. You can view the full set here.

IUM Conference later this week

We’ll be at the Institute for Urban Ministries conference later this week (Wednesday evening to Friday evening).

The Institute for Urban Ministry offers a community of hope, support and learning for the Urban Church. We grow together in wisdom, imagination and faith. We resist the common stories in society about poverty and its causes, safety and security and the understandings of vulnerable people and social decay. Our local wisdom has led us to ask deeper questions about urban systems, and issues of justice and ethics, beyond merciful ways of being involved.

This falls neatly into the Contending posture and it’ll be exciting to see what other people are doing and how they understand the kingdom of God – heaven on earth. Arthur is doing a workshop on “Beyond traditionalism”. I’m excited to catch up with Trevor Ntola (speaking on “Beyond racial barriers: becoming human again” with Alexander Venter from Vineyard). Moss Ntla, the head of the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa and one of the convenors of SACLA (which Change Agents, a youth workers training network I’m quite involved in, came out of) is leading the morning devotion on Thursday.

All in all it should be a good time of making new friends and dreaming together. Come and say hi if you’ll be there!

Between the curtain of two realities

It has been about a month now since returning from Rwanda, where I attended the Amahoro Gathering (this year’s conference focused on the gospel of reconciliation). Allowing myself to experience Rwanda in its fullness became quite intense, especially as I wrestled with the story of the genocide. Coming from a privileged, comfortable, peaceful country and background, this horrible event in history was a very, very hard event for me to accept. The process of my acceptance wasn’t fun. It took me on very dark internal journey of anxiousness, stress, guilt, and depression.

You see, I realized that there was another side to life. People and countries have very different stories from mine: stories of poverty, injustices, and war. I realized that for most of my life, up until living in Africa, that only one reality was true to me. But, now that I’ve traveled more, especially to South Africa and Rwanda, a curtain has been pulled back revealing another reality. It’s a reality that can be quite ugly, and one that you could run from and choose not to deal with if you had that luxury. But the true reality is that it really wouldn’t go away. So, one must embrace both. For both are true, no getting around it. It’s just the way it is. We live in a time where both good and evil exist; where joy and suffering are both experienced. Sometimes these two realities seem so are far apart, yet I think they are often separated by just a thin curtain.

As you can see, I’ve been thinking a lot lately and processing all this: all the joy and suffering, and my faith in God. What’s the correlation? How am I to respond? What does God think? What did Jesus have to say about this stuff? How much suffering will He allow? Why does He allow others to be so blessed and not experience pain? Why are some all too familiar with one side of the curtain and not the other?

These are some of my questions. Maybe I’m not asking the right ones. Maybe there is even more for me to see. Maybe there is another curtain that needs to pulled back, and then I’ll have greater clarity. I just want the truth. I don’t want to be in the dark anymore; behind the curtain. I want to know both sides of life, see all sides of the story, and get a bigger, deeper picture of reality. One thing I’ve decided to do is not run from the ugly realities or the dark parts of our world and lives. I choose to embrace it, to engage it, and yes!, even fight it.

Simplicity

Recently we’ve been talking around living more simply – for the sake of those around us, for the kingdom of heaven and for ourselves. Spending less money and paying more attention to the money we do spend is a worthwhile pursuit which can lead to some unsettling conclusions. As a community, how much money do we spend each month? How much “stuff” do we communally own that we could give away? Some local South Africans manage to live on R1500 a month…and are supporting families! And so we ask ourselves these questions and become more aware of our options.

The goal isn’t, of course, to create a rule that everyone must follow, for turning something like simplicity into a set of rules leads us away from freedom. The goal is to allow ourselves to be invited into the freedom that comes from holding our possessions loosely…which is counter-cultural to a lot of us – and hard! Yet just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we don’t try.

There is an excellent post at Think Simple Now written by Cindy Loughridge who, after spending 3 months in India with very little, returned home to discover that it felt like her world was weighed down with things she didn’t need. She writes,

‘The physical stuff clutters my living space and the sense of peace I feel in my inner space. This state follows a quote I once heard: “Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.”’

She has many suggestions for how to reduce the amount of stuff we have, like the Re-Gift Box for birthdays and the Buying & Giving Rule. The truth is that we need very little to be happy.

In this last week I’ve noticed a more sharing practice amongst people here – from laptops to chocolates (and choc chip cookies and banana bread!) to soup…and maybe that’s where it’ll show the most, in the things that are “ours” which we hold lightly and share generously.