Human Trafficking in South Africa

The good news is that a Helpline has been launched to combat 2010 trafficking.

3 shocking pieces of news on this issue:

1. There are an estimated 50 000 child prostitutes in South Africa – most of these presumably the result of human trafficking.

2. Of the approximately 2 million people worldwide who are trafficked each year 450 00o of these are in Africa.

3. There is still no legislation to fight human trafficking in South Africa.

How can I have been sitting in  Reformed churches who claim to love their neighbour and NEVER ONCE have even heard this spoken of?

What can we, the church do to love our neighbours, the vulnerable and the oppressed in this situation?  Surely as we serve a God of mercy and justice and whose Kingdom is one of compassion, justice and reconciliation we ignore this as not being a spiritual problem.  Our hearts must be broken, contrite and moved to loving action.

But what?  What can we do?

Does anyone know of any organisations, individuals or groups who are doing good work in this area?

Learning from Albanian church planters

Tim Chester has been blogging about his recent experiences visiting church planters in the Balkans.

Here is some great advice from Albanian of all places (Side Note: Isn’t the church beautiful like that.)

“Invest in people not programmes.’

“What impacts people is not just what you say, but what you do.”

“Something that worked well for someone else may not work well for me. I am tired of people claiming ‘this is the way to success’. The lessons we should learn from them is this: they heard from God how they should work in their situation and we need, too, to hear from God how we should work in our situation.”

“Start each day with prayer. Don’t go anywhere without prayer.”

“We should not love a style or technique, but the people, the culture, the ministry, the gospel.”

Read the whole thing here

Luxuries and Necessities

Tom Smith has a timely, contextual post exploring the tensions between luxuries and necessities. This is an important issue for all South Africans to think through.

“1. If we want to define luxury it is really helpful to explore that question with other people. I (and I think you) have an amazing ability to rationalize our luxuries into necessities. In the last few years I’ve kept an informal “rationalization journal” in which I write my rationalizations down. To give you an example, I am about to upgrade my phone and I’m seriously considering an Iphone. My reasons are …. So I write those reasons down and discuss it with people who know me. Having other people speak into our lives help a lot.

2. BUT. When you have people of more-or-less the same socio-economic level in a church/group you will find that the rationalizations are the same. Our creative ways of moving luxuries into necessities are not that many. So I recommend having the luxury chat with people who are not in your socio-economic subculture. This is tough, I know. Sometimes by just having people who are poor(er) in your house, the rationalizations get challenged. So in order to truthfully answer the luxury question become friends with poor people.

3. Have a yearly chat as a family about a standard of living that you feel comfortable about. Pray over it and study the Bible with your budget in mind. Become so comfortable about this ‘holy cow’ that you won’t mind sharing the details of your budget with trusted friends.

4. Go through your house and look at items that are taking up closet space. Those luxury items that have become such a luxurious item that you never use it (like that beautiful china set or the golf clubs signed by). Give it away or sell it and then give the money away. By walking through our house and noting the excess, we engage with the luxuries of your life.

5. Another way to determine if something is a real necessity is by abstaining from it and seeing if you can still function.

Defining luxuries in our lives are definitely not clear-cut or easy … but well worth to explore. The idea is to take the extra resources spent on luxuries …. and give it away.”

Missional Church Video

Missional church made simple:

HT: Brad Brisco

Haiti: A Deficient Gospel

This quote fromDr Dieumeme Noelliste, president of the Caribbean Evangelical Theological Association, quoted here in CT, made me think of many of our own problems with a reduced gospel of  “saving souls for heaven” that has resulted in a church which has nothing to say to the issues of social justice, economic inequality and racial reconciliation.

“My view: the gospel that has been preached in Haiti has left a vacuum—has left the political landscape untouched. The church doesn’t see its business as being a prophetic witness to those in power. The result has been a political sector left to its own devices; this is why the common people were the first responders to the crisis, not the government. This is the result of the gospel being truncated, emasculated, instead of confronting the powers that be to do what God intends for them to do: protect and enhance life.”

HT: TSK

Walk 2: Tranquility Cracks

Matt and I set out on what we thought was a beautiful morning only.  When we got around to the Camps Bay side of the mountain there was a surprise waiting for us.

So in thick, wet mist we made our way along the pipe track and up corridor ravine.

Apologies to Matt who had to put up with a 34-year-old father in the midst of a horrible reality check regarding his hiking fitness!

But once we reached our goal – the lesser known beauty of Tranquility Cracks on the back of Table Mountain.

It was all worth it!

Best part of the day – Matt breaking into spontaneous prayer at the top of Corridor Ravine.  We then spent a few minutes praising God for his creation.

Reading Plan for 2010

After my disastrously over-ambitious reading plan for 2009, I decided to be a bit more realistic and strategic for my reading plan in 2010.  Although I am a hopeless idealist so the chances of practical and realistic are slim…

I have decided to focus on a few key areas this year and try to focus my reading in these areas as much (but not exclusively) as possible:

What will make my plans more interesting is that with all our great changes and new beginnings this year, my wife has (wisely) put a bit of a moratorium on my book spending.  So I will be  (a) plundering my shelves for bought with good intentions and not read yet books I already own (b) Making use of the public library and friends books where possible, (c) I have decided to add a selected wish list to my blog this year.  It feels kind of wrong and cheeky but I have realized lately that God’s people just love to bless and be generous when they know what you need.  So here it is – all blessings welcome

1. The Bible – I used the Bible reading plan that Tim Chester put together last year, it worked I enjoyed it and so I am going to use it again this year.  What I like most about this plan is that it has readings for a week rather than day by day, so you can organise your reading in a way that works best for you.

Our Sabbath-rest day is on a Monday so we are going to aim to read the whole weeks reading together on Monday and then individually go back and reread and meditate on the parts that we want to focus on some more.

2. South Africa – the history, her people, our stories   Whilst I am far from being historically and politically ignorant I realise that I have read far too little about my country and the stories that make up our history.

I particularly want to read more on the history of the church in SA.   Names like – Beyers Naude, Desmond Tutu, Frank Chikane spring to mind.  This is not necessarily a theological endorsement but an historical understanding of the history of the church in South Africa.

Four books I am hoping to read in this category:

William Mervin Gumede: Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC

Desmond Tutu: No Future Without Forgiveness

J.B. Peires: The House of Phalo – The History of the Xhosa People in the Days of their Independence

3. N.T. Wright: His understanding and grasp of first century Judaism is brilliant, insightful and stimulating – definitely my favourite commentator on New Testament background and texts.  Secondly he is probably the most influential New Testament scholar today particularly in the debate around the so-called New Perspective on Paul.

To my shame I have owned but not read (except to dip into occasionally)

The New Testament and the People of God

Jesus and the Victory of God

I also would like to read:

Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision

4. The Church/Mission/Missional Church/Church Planting: This is probably the one area that I have read most of my books in these areas.  And as it is where my heart and situation is at the moment I probably will read substantially in this area again this year.  Here are two books on my shelf that I am most likely to read this year:

Harvie Conn (editor): The Urban Face of Mission

John Stott: Christian Mission in the Modern World

5. The Classics: I have made it a rule to try read at least one classic, older book that I have never read each year.  So this year it is:

Reformation Accomplished and Applied: John Murray

6. Islam: The area we are moving into in April has a significant Muslim population.  Missionally these are two key books for me this year:

John Gilchrist: Muhammed: The Prophet of Islam

John Gilchrist: The Qur’an: The Scripture of Islam

7. Other: After reading Christopher Wright’s: The Mission of God last year, I have been inspired to get hold of and read The Old Testament Ethics for the People of God this year.

Racial Diversity at Willow Creek

This is an interesting TIME magazine article on racial diversity at Willow Creek:

Hybels says, “I thought I was gonna faint.” He was stunned to realize that racism is “not just an individual issue but a justice issue” with “structural and [systemic] aspects” violating dozens of biblical admonitions. “I went from thinking ‘I don’t have a race problem’ to ‘There is a huge problem in our world that I need to be part of resolving.’”

“Yet there is one part of Willow already living 2050. It is not the sanctuary. At Promiseland, Willow’s vast Sunday-school complex, Jim and Ellen Strasma wrangle a band of 2-year-olds: seven Caucasians, a Caucasian-Asian, six Hispanics, an Indian American and an African American. A boy in a T-shirt and sporty maroon track pants shares a miniature plastic baguette with a ponytailed Latina. He looks like a preschool Bill Hybels, yet one of his parents is Asian American. The Indian-American girl and the African-American girl dance together… Here, today, Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation about Sunday school is finally refuted. In one room of one huge church striving to do the right thing, the harmony of His kingdom has already arrived.”

HT: JT

Steve Timmis on Laying Down your Life for Jesus

This is a series of tweets done by Steve Timmis, collected and posted on the Acts 29 blog:

• How can I be sure I would lay down my life for sake of Jesus & the gospel? Perhaps I’ll be like Peter in his bravado and subsequent denial?
• Can’t ultimately be sure until I’m called on to do so. But there are indicators in what I am reluctant to give up…
  
• If I’m not prepared to give up my bed to go and serve someone, I can be fairly confident I won’t give up my life…
  
• If I refuse to give up a holiday abroad so I can support someone in gospel ministry, I can be fairly confident I won’t give up my life…
  
• If I’m not willing to pursue people who are different from me in order to bless them, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life…
  
• If I’m not prepared to miss out on promotion so I can stay & help plant churches, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life…
  
• If I’m not prepared to jeopardise a friendship so that I can tell others about Christ, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life.
  

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus Christ

Read the original here.

Favourite Blogs 2009

The blogs I read the most, enjoyed the most, thought about the most, debated with the most (even if only in my head) were (in no particular order)

Tim Chester – Tim has a real gift for bringing together leading missional thinking with deep, meaty reformed theology.  Tim’s theology is conservative and traditional in all the good senses of those words but yet when he works it out it is refreshing, challenging and even yes radical (is that too drastic for an Englishman)!  If evangelicalism had more thinkers and practitioners like Tim it would probably be a lot healthier movement right now.

Andrew Jones (aka Tall Skinny Kiwi) – probably one of the original Christian bloggers.  Firstly this must be one of my favourite blogs to read – irrespective of the content.  Now this is not to say that TSK has bad content, it is just so darn enjoyable to read.  As for the content, Andrew is a true missional thinkers and practitioner.  His blog is always challenging, always spurring on my thinking.  And full of stories about people doing things, trying things and getting out and on mission with God.

Jonathan Dodson (aka Church Planting Novice).  Jonathan has over the past few years proven himself to be one of the most challenging and insightful bloggers in the Acts 29 network.  In fact I have often used Jonathan’s writings as a resource for my own material and to point others to for some great ideas on intentional missional living as a community.

Tom Smith – Tom has become my favourite South African blogger this past year.  A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that we are wrestling with similar issues around racial reconciliation, economic inequality, poverty and wealth etc.  Tom’s blog has become a great resource for me in thinking through these issues, serious attempts at contextualization, reading stories of forging a true gospel-at-work church in SA and being challenged by a community taking seriously these issues.

Two other bloggers I have always enjoyed when they have posted but who post too infrequently to be included with the above luminaries.  But who are well worth reading whenever they write:

Micheal Foster – about church planting and nurturing them to maturity.

Jeff Vanderstelt – a church planter and equipper of church planters with Soma Communities.