Namibia Part One

I've been in Windhoek for just four days so far, but my penchant for making lists has already kicked in. Here's my top 4 things of interest up to this point:

1. The weather
-After 6 years in Durban's hot and sticky all year round humidity, and now three freezing cold and wet winters in Cape Town, the incredibly dry nature of Namibia has lead to a permanent blocked nose and a desperation for Nivea body lotion to keep my skin from becoming even more gaunt and wrinkled.

2. Volker and Esther Backhaus
-This couple have been married for 41 years and have lead All Nations Church here in Windhoek for +-35 years! Fresh out of bible college they took over the leadership of this local church and have since lead it from being very reserved, congregation lead and very fearful of the Holy Spirit to  where it now is a wild people who embrace the call to the nations, the Holy Spirit and an eldership lead body... and it is still pioneering new and fresh Gospel inspired initiatives. A model example of faithfulness and the oft quoted phrase, "there's no such thing as retirement in the Kingdom of God!"

3. Double morning meetings
-With the city closing down most evenings, this local church decided that growth would come with having two morning meetings instead of pursuing an evening congregation. For them this means having short and sharp services (an hour each which makes 30 minute sermons a must...yes, I did manage this. A modern day miracle!), mainly because they place a huge emphasis on the community aspect of being the church. Neither the sermon nor the worship are held as the high point of their reason for gathering on a Sunday, but each are given equal value linked with their connecting with each other after each service. Their conversations around coffee and hot chocolates were louder than the worship times!
Or is it all worship?

4. The high schools
-Have had the privilege of preaching the Gospel at two local high school assemblies the past two days. Both had the marks of being very prestigious institutions once upon a time, but now have been left largely uncared for and untended. But what the grounds lack in upkeep, the students certainly make up for in character and manners. Having to address 900 and 600 teenagers from another nation and culture is particularly daunting but the incredible amount of respect and attention I was given was almost supernatural (or maybe it was because it was the first time they'd been publicly spoken to by a red head?). But even better was their response! Many saved, and lives dramactically interrupted by the Gospel. This is what I live for!

Here for 5 more days and trusting for ever increasing fruit, deeper relationships...and to buy more moisturising cream!

Thanks for praying

The nations are our inheritance

We believe at Life Changers that when Jesus said "Go and make disciples of all nations" in Matthew.28:19 He ws not just making some metaphorical point, nor just an inspiring charge to those within earshot or in close proximity. We are firm and unwavering in our belief that God's original and ongoing intent is for the nations to be OUR inheritance.

With that being said, God is opening doors for us as a local body to partner more and more with God's great story of redemption here in Cape Town in winning our city as all of us embrace our call as modern missionaries, as well as in an ever increasing capacity translocally (just a fancy way of saying into other nations) through permanent relocations (Gavin and Ang Benjafield to Amsterdam; Ben Gerber to Bangalore) alongside various short-term trips.

Over the next fort-night or so, I will be heading into Windhoek in Namibia to an influential church called All Nations before taking a team into Harare in Zimbabwe where we will be with The Base church, and coupling it with a youth conference hosted by the non-profit organisation Dare2Serve. Although only a few of us are able to go in on this occasion, we are being sent in faith from our local community and base and therefore this is something we all partner in and all reap the rewards from.

The nations are our corporate inheritance!

How can you partner with us and begin to lay claim to what is rightfully your inheritance? Let me suggest three ways:

1.       Pray for us

-Pray for safety, opportunities and open hearts as we preach the Gospel, build and strengthen relationships and learn.

-send any prophetic words to gabe@lifechangers.org.za

2.       Join us on one of our next trips

-Get a passport, start saving, plan your leave around one of the trips, start reading up on the history and contexts of the countries we go to

3.       Sponsor someone else to go

 

       -Speak to an elder about the who and the how

We are a pilgrim people, and whether at home or in foreign lands, let's keep our hearts inextricably tied with the mission of the Gospel....to seek and save that which is lost!

Your roots Are Showing (Part Two)

This last fortnight’s series, “Your Roots Are Showing”, has been an incredible journey and defining period for us as a community of faith as we have dug down a little deeper into the very root system of who we are. Beginning with God’s original intent of intimacy, influence and inheritance found in our primary texts of Genesis 1 and 2, we then finished week one in chapter 3 of the book  of beginnings where our devine DNA and desires was distorted by the second preacher to become weaker and yet still controlling passions for sex, sleep and success.

Week two saw us launch into Acts 2 as we rapidly glanced at how this thing we call church was birthed. Contrary to popular belief, the church was not launched after much deliberation by grey haired men in stuffy windowless rooms surrounded by piles and piles of doctrine and creeds.

No, the church that the gates of hell will not prevail against, was birthed in fire and drunkenness that took weak, fearful men and women out of hiding in a second story room and onto the streets of Jerusalem with utmost courage.

We also see from this passage that the Holy Spirit was poured out not for feel good, bless me club meetings but for the mission! To give weak, cowardly people like us a boldness and power that is not of our own but that would be used also not for our own fame but the fame of another. Which brought us to our landing point: The church was birthed for Jesus.

What began in Genesis.2:7 with a kiss will culminate in a wedding. Jesus is coming back for a bride, His bride! We believe that this whole thing called humanity and creation was a glorious setup for Christ to be glorified. And as John Piper writes, “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him”. Or as the ancient creed says, “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.”

These are our roots. And as we said often over the last couple of weeks, our roots determine our routes. What began with Christ will end with Christ.

He is our proclamation.

He is our preoccupation.

Our roots are showing more and more, and our routes have never looked more exciting!

http://www.lifechangers.org.za/sermons/your-roots-are-showing/

Your Roots Are Showing (Part One)

A few years ago, I went through this strange phase of being embarrassed of my red hair.
Strange, I know.
But for a period of around 10 or so months I would dye my glorious ginger locks a dull and deathly boring black. Now, this isn’t that weird a phenomenon for teenagers just out of school desperate to express themselves, but it becomes peculiar when you remember that I have a paler skin than the entire cast of Twilight. And unfortunately I don’t sparkle, so without my red hair I’d disappear into a hazy background in the majority of photos. So for all intents and purposes, 2006 was a quiet year on my Facebook timeline! That being said, things got a whole lot crazier when my natural colour started to push its way back to the fore after a few weeks after the dye process! I moved very swiftly from having a goth-type look to having an absurd tiger effect going down.  Looking back, it was all very embarrassing.

It’s with this unusual trip down memory lane that we kick off our two week series “Your Roots Are Showing” at Life Changers in the evening meetings. For too long the church, the “ecclesia”, the called out ones, have been duped by the second preacher who introduces his lying self in Genesis 3 and who continually distorts the word of God to us and sends us on a lifetime of retreat, religion and cover ups. Over this fortnight we aim to remind ourselves of our roots and to begin a journey of removing the metaphorical dyes that we have allowed to discolour our lives.

Stick around on this blog as we expand on this and check out the sermons of this series on our Life Changers website if you want to join us on this journey.

A Zimbabwe Adventure (part 2)

Check out the link and youtube clip below to get a small feel of what Rob Chifokoyo and his Dare2Serve team are doing with the Street School they have started up and are implementing in the city of Harare.

Adding to their mobilisation of young people in the city to serve the lost, the last and the least through building into orphanages, retirement homes, street corners and youth conferences, comes the initiative of adding value on an educational level to street children who would normally have no hope of anything greater than their present circumstances. We were able to catch a glimpse of this incredible work.

To read more about who and what Dare2Serve is about, click on the link below

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.397927590266227.89398.164905960235059&type=3#!/pages/Dare2Serve/234595256603066?sk=info

The storm is coming but I don't mind

People are dying, I close my blinds

All that I know is I'm breathing now
I want to change the world, instead I sleep

-Ingrid Michaelson

Straight talk

Martin Luther, the great reformer, spoke straight and true and was often much maligned for his gun-barrell approach. But as we become more and more Gospel people, my prayer is that we would become fathers, mothers, church leaders, businessmen, friends who do do not hide behind lukewarm, lace-covered, earth-stained conversations.

 Here is a portion of a letter from Martin Luther to his friend Philip Melachnton (June 27, 1530) that colours my point:

Those great cares by which you say you are consumed I vehemently hate; they rule your heart not on account of the greatness of the cause but by reason of the greatness of your unbelief. . . .

If our cause is great, its author and champion is great also, for it is not ours. Why are you therefore always tormenting yourself?

If our cause is false, let us recant; if it is true, why should we make him a liar who commands us to be of untroubled heart?

Cast your burden on the Lord, he says. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him with a broken heart. Does he speak in vain or to beasts? . . .

What good can you do by your vain anxiety?

What can the devil do more than slay us? What after that?

I beg you, so pugnacious in all else, fight against yourself, your own worst enemy, who furnish Satan with arms against yourself. . . .

I pray for you earnestly and am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain.

Christ knows whether it is stupidity or bravery, but I am not much disturbed, rather of better courage than I had hoped.

God who is able to raise the dead is also able to uphold a falling cause, or to raise a fallen one and make it strong.

If we are not worthy instruments to accomplish his purpose, he will find others.

If we are not strengthened by his promises, to whom else in all the world can they pertain?

But saying more would be pouring water into the sea.

A Zimbabwean Adventure (Part One)

Over the last two weeks I have ended each day closing my eyes in seven different beds, in 6 different cities and towns , including one very restless night on a cold, hard floor in Chinoyi. As I write this particular blog in my own warm bed in Cape Town tonight, the memory of the +-90 hours in a car, back of a bakkie or squashed amongst music equipment and baggage as we travelled close on 6000kms already seems a distant memory. The hundreds and hundreds of people that we spoke to, hugged, touched, prayed for, preached to, worshiped with, played with, fed and clothed seem light years away as I draw my curtains on a quiet Tableview cul de sac. The amount of speakers, cables, guitars, drums and the like that were loaded onto bakkies, offloaded, carried into rural settings, plugged in, fixed, tweaked, restrung, equalized, unplugged, carried and loaded back onto bakkies (often in the dark with the only light being from a solitary torch or cellphone) are mainly brought to mind as I casually switch on and off my television, kettle and bathroom light.

The dust, the sweat, the tears, the seemingly endless hours at the Beit bridge border have come and gone and life returns to a much more comfortable and normal hum drum pace.

Or was the last fortnight a small taste of what life really could and should be like?

"O God, rip from me a desire for comfort, a desire for mere earthly pleasures, a continual craving for worldly treasures. Whether on foreign soil or daily-chore-bound, let the memory of Christ’s passion burn brighter and brighter still"

(Check out the next few blogs for Stories from our time in Zimbabwe)