Generation Unleashed

 

A dear friend of mine sent me a whatsapp video of his 18 month old daughter taking her first two clumsy, stumbling, and yet awe-inspiring steps on her own tonight. And as he followed that video up with a half laughing, half choked up phone call, I knew that this was a moment he and his wife would tuck deep into the memory bank of things they will never forget.

This past weekend I had the extraordinary privilege to be a part of a moment that resonated deep within me, and has quite possibly become one such marker in my life.
Five years ago I met a couple named Geoff and Jane Kirsten who quite literally birthed dreams and awakened wells in my heart through one very late night of conversation. Coffees were drunk, my mind raced and plans and schemes formed as the embers of the dreamer inside of me were breathed upon.

Five years on, we met up again, four days ago, in a parking lot in Joburg as they squashed me into the front seat of their car bound for a 3 day student camp (a group called Satellite from 3CI) in the bush. Things have changed. I am no longer a skinny, wide eyed, awkward Durban teenager...I am now a skinny, wide-eyed, awkward, Cape Tonian pastor and they have blossomed into parents with wild stories of victories and scars. But as we drove and chatted something burned within me again. A sense of something new. As Chris Wienand says, there was a strange sense of electricity in the air, and the three of us could almost touch it!

Friday, Saturday and Sunday followed as a group of +-150 Pretoria based students and one red-haired, red-faced preacher felt a seizmic shift in our hearts and in our destinies. The stuffy, over-bearing, stiff and powerless imposter of religion was pushed aside as the cosmic, wild and joy-filled Gospel of Christ cut a clear and decisive picture and reality in the deep recesses of our souls and minds. Shallow moments of religious nods and hat-tippings were discarded with abandon for a life of diving again and again into the wild, unpredictable but all satisfying depths of His goodness. Salvations, baptisms, tears, repentance, joy, unhindered worship were the order of the weekend as the Spirit of God shook the bottle and began to loosen the top.

What happens next keeps me awake tonight. Just like 5 years ago, my heart is dripping with anticipation and unbridled excitement. Is it possible that I get to live THIS life?
 I feel like a teenager before a big date.

Or a parent watching breathless as their child takes her first few steps...

A generation is about to be unleashed.

IMMERSED part two

 

Last weekend saw us preach our second installment in our new series "IMMERSED", where we are exploring the fundamental doctrines of baptism that we find in scripture. Week one saw us inviting our church to wade deeper into the depths of real community life as we unpacked what it meant to be immersed into the body of Christ. In week two we painted a compelling and strong case why baptism by full immersion in water is so vitally important for us individually, corporately and for the world, so much so that we abandon the previously held religious connotations and mindsets that come with it and rather embrace the life changing power of obedience that leaps from faith.

The response to the Word of God being preached uncompromisingly was staggering. Multiple first time commitments to Christ in both meetings, mothers who attended the morning going home and bringing the rest of her family in the evening (and the family responding to the Gospel) and a queue of people signing up to publicly declare their fully immersed faith by being baptized this coming Sunday.

 It was a humdinger of a day!

And so tomorrow our journey continues as we seek to dive in deeper into the wild adventure of faith that we have been called to. Our church floor will be soaked no doubt, but our prayer is that that won't be the only thing completely drenched. The thing our city needs most is not more dry religion. It needs wet, wild and alive Sons and Daughters who have fully leapt into the ocean of adventure, forsaking the safety of the shallow-end, and pushed out into being immersed in the pursuit of Christ, community and the mission.

The right questions

 

 

In a world where the quick answer has become king, the rewards of asking the right question becomes less and less appealing and this leads to an almost wreckless pursuit of solutions rather than of truth. And we all have the tendency to ask the wrong questions. It's human nature. Fueled by the competitive lenses that the world has sold us, when-ever we get together whether we are being successful or not is put up against a pre-determined measuring stick. Our questions of each other and that we ask of ourselves are often based not in an endeavour to get at an answer, but rather based on what we've already established (or allowed to be established) the answer to be.

 

 

Confused? I think we all are...and that's the problem!

 

 

Here at Life Changers, we are on a journey of rediscovery as we have begun to deconstruct the targets that we've been aiming at, whether they've been self-erected ones or simply just aiming points that we've inherited from our world-view and from those around us. The question of what success looks like has become so disfigured and tarred with such carnal brush-strokes that we've sent ourselves on never satisfying and very expensive rabbit trails that have often left us jaded, guilty or just ready to give up.

 

The simple agenda of this blog is to suggest that maybe we've been getting the wrong answers because we've been asking the wrong questions.

 

Or maybe we've not posed the right questions because we've allowed wikipedia, google or the latest best-selling growth book with 10 easy steps to success to lead us into frustration for too long.

 

Or maybe the problem is quite plainly the fact that WE'VE been asking the questions in the first place!

 

Maybe one day when we hand-over all our solutions and ready-made answers to all our insecure, self-imposed questions, He will quiet our posturing, push aside our growth strategies and ask us these questions:

 

 

"When I was hungry did you feed me? When I was thirsty did you give me something to drink? When I was a stranger, did you invite me in? When I was naked did you clothe me? When I was sickdid you look after me? When I was in prison did you come visit me?"

 

 

A good way to end this blog is with a good question...

 

What questions, or even better still, whose questions are we allowing to motivate our pursuit of success?

9941 The Event Highlights

Here's some highlights of the 9941 The Event, the conference we were involved with in Harare a couple weeks back. People responded to the Gospel, the Church in the city was commissioned and we had ALOT of fun. The Gospel can not be contained!

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

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

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)

Top 10...reasons to be excited about this Zimbabwean trip

Between the 21st June and 4th July we embark on another trip North of the Limpopo. Here's 10 reasons why this one will be incredible!

10. First-Timers

-Taking a team, the majority of who have never been out of the country, on a life-changing 2 weeks that will enlarge, challenge and shape their hearts all the more for the bigness of God’s beautiful story of redemption

9. Beit Bridge

-Coming face to face with every Limpopo River crosser’s arch nemesis. Queues, queues and more queues, it’s bureaucracy  at its best (worst?). A worthy opponent to anyone’s patience

8. The Base Church

-An NCMI church that is pioneering new God adventures in the city of Harare, the country and excitingly other nations. Great to partner with them

7. Pizza Inn

-The best pizza south of the equator hands down. Not to mention that I once was their poster child as a redheaded Peppi the Pizza Boy (but that’s a story for another day)

6. Rob Chifokoyo

-Pioneer of the organisation Dare2Serve (under the Miracle Mission umbrella) who serve orphanages, old age homes and street children as well as empowering and inspiring the church of Harare. Privilege to dream with their team and be inspired by him.

5. CD’s on endless cycles of repeat

-3 days travel there, 3 days travel back. Enough said

4. Youth Ablaze Outreaches

-5 nights in 5 outlying rural towns, wild worship, declaring the Gospel and seeing momentum launched as we head to nationwide youth camps in the near future

3. Late nights, (very) early mornings

-Mission trips are not for the feint-hearted. Sleep-ins are a thing of the past.

2. New and old friendships

-Travelling and ministering with over 60 people from Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Durban as well as numbers from Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare, this one’s the biggest yet

1. The Gospel changing lives

-no matter the cost, the leave taken, the administrative organisation, the emotional and physical output, there is nothing that can replace the joy of seeing the Gospel impacting lives and nations.

We go for the lost, the last and the least. We exist for those who are yet to believe.

Welcome to Zimbabwe

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege to head back to the country north of the Limpopo where I was born and raised up until half way through my teenage years. This was the second time I was going “home” in the last 8 and a half years since the Phillips family traded in the working out of ever increasing prices for ever decreasing amounts of supplies for the more stable South African rand (purely a move made out of fear that our lack of simple mathematic skills would cost us dearly in the everyday routine of adding some more zeroes to the exchange rate).

But almost a decade on, my heart was filled with huge measures of excitement as the plane landed in Harare, with me an older skinnier twenty something year old carrying a new currency and a renewed love for the people and church of Zimbabwe.

The week long visit had two purposes. Number one on the agenda was to speak at a week long A.C.E (Christian education system) convention where hundreds of high school aged students along with their teachers and parents came together from all parts of the country to have their annual week of sporting, musical, dramatic and academic competition. My role was to preach each night at the evening rallies.

The second reason was to continue in building relationships with men like Rob Chifokoyo (pictured here) who runs a non-profit called Dare2Serve which we partnered with to run a conference that ministered to several hundred people in Harare last year and who is presently in the process of implementing our model of Swop Shop which has worked so successfully here.

I also spent some time with various people from an incredible local church there called The Base who we are hoping to be linking and partnering with more and more into the future. The six months in between my first and second visit to this church has seen it move into their new building and almost double in congregation size. This local church is not merely surviving in the testing times they find themselves in, but absolutely thriving! They have decided to believe God and to trust Him for not just a safe, neat congregation and not even just their suburb or city. This is a church whose mission statement and heartbeat is “to be a gateway to the nations!” Any people who have set their hearts on a heavenly kingdom and are pursuing the width and breadth of the Call like they are will always catch my attention...and the favour of the Holy Spirit for that matter!

Check these links out, start praying and saving and join us later this year in Zimbabwe as we too aim to be a people who pursue the nations, the broken and the lost (your and my inheritance) with people of similar hearts! I believe our future lies with people like these...and this is just the beginning!

Dare2Serve: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Dare2Serve/234595256603066

The Base Church: http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheBaseChurch

The Power of The Gospel #2

The Gospel in 1 Peter:

1. The PAST is forgiven
(2:24) "He himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his words you have been healed"
(3:18) "For Christ died for sins once for all, te righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God"

2. The PRESENT is protected
(1:5) "...who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of salvation..."
and motivated (4:2) "As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God"

3. The FUTURE is assured
(1:4) "...and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you..."
(1:7) "These have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may prove genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed."

The power of The Gospel

The Gospel addresses 3 elements head on:

1. The penalty AND the power of sin
-not only does the cross address the legal transaction of exchanging death as the wages of sin for eternal life but it also strips sin of it’s power over us. We are no longer just at the mercy of sin, but Christ’s cross empowers us to walk free from the snare of sin here on earth. If you only believe you will be free of sin when you die, then death is your saviour!


2. The accusation of the law
-the bony accusing finger of the law that seems to always be pointed in our direction addressing all our flaws and short-comings was silenced that day on Calvary’s hill. As Christ yelled out, “it is finished!” all requirements of the law were fulfilled on our behalf! The Law which is powerless to save us but which had shown us our desperate need for a saviour had completed it’s task as Jesus became our new standard and we received his righteousness.

3. The power and dominion of darkness
-In the garden, the first Adam gave satan the very dominion and authority God had given to us. In a desert in the fourth chapters of Matthew and Luke, the final Adam, Jesus, met up with the
very same temptations but this time the result was entirley different. And the cross and subsequent resurrection sealed satan’s fate as Christ made a public spectacle totally disarming and embarrasing them!

The Gospel does not contain power, but it is the power of God! We need no other secret wisdom, the great mystery is Christ and Him crucified, and then living in me! The Gospel is not elementary or just the entry point, nor is it just a ticket to heaven. Signs and wonders follow it when it is preached and lived with conviction. God, give us a greater understanding of the fullness of your glorious Gospel!