Roger’s update

I’ve been back at Pangani for a week-and-a-half and it’s been great! Cape Town was a superb experience, although I was only able to hook up with the apprentices twice. Seeing my sister Lyndi (and her fiance – my future brother-in-law – Andre) ahead of her wedding there in October was fantastic – and she let me sleep on her living room floor – thanks Lynd! I was doing a training course – NLP Master Practitioner through AHT - and managed to learn lots of things about myself which has some life-changing consequences.

One of them is that I’m awake at 7am today processing my tasks and getting ready for the day. I think all of the NC people (especially Amanda!) are kinda amazed at this new development – none more than me! Turns out I had the following beliefs:

• You’re not allowed to enjoy what you do
• Nothing is worth getting out of bed in the morning for

Changing these has been fun! I find myself more at peace and more able to engage with community and relationships. Hooray!

A community Psalm

Last Friday night we wrote a psalm during Rhythm, our weekly worship time. Everyone contributed two lines – and this is the result. We’ll probably post it on our Prayers & Creeds blog too…

Thanks for Bryan for the idea and writing this up.

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!

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.