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)

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.

Worship Leading: Song Selection (Part 3)

Third part of three blogs on the basic lenses we look through when choosing worship songs for our corporate worship times.

1. Theological

2. Congregational

3. Seasonal

-Songs that carry the life of God. It may have the funkiest bass line, or the most incredible groove, but if it is not carrying the spark of the life of God then jettison it fast. Be wary of the trap that says, “it worked in the past so it must work again and again”.

-Songs that serve the church’s season. Again we must make it a priority to work in team with our local church leaders in this regard. Learn to carry a heart for the church. David in the Psalms was a man very in tune with the seasons of God and the seasons of his own soul and those of the people he lead. We are not “ra-ra” cheerleaders. Our worship times are not therapeutic pick me up times. We lead from where the people are at, and LEAD them to where God wants them to be. Again I must mention that we don’t pander to man centredness or emotions, but we do not deny them. That is Gnostic!

Worship Leading: Song Selection (Part 2)

  1. Theological

        2. Congregational

-Songs that are not just personal favourites of ours. It is vital that we remind ourselves that leading worship means LEADING! Worship leaders have a tendency (another generalisation) to have a rebellious slant that surfaces from time to time as it becomes “their ministry” and they try to push through their agenda’s. This is unhelpful and prideful. Be involved in the community of the church, be submitted to the leadership. Have conversations with them often around the culture of worship in your local church. Ask for feedback.

-Songs that are easy to sing. On a very practical note, consider the keys you are singing in. Too low and the song hardly ever gets off the ground, too high and you alienate half the congregation. Again, remember the leading is about the people who are following you!

Don’t introduce too many new songs too quickly. Most people in our congregations only sing the songs we’re singing once a week, whilst we as worship leaders play them at practice, at home, in our cars all on top of our Sunday meetings. So we definitely will get bored of them quicker. But again we must remind ourselves that this is not about us! Our aim at a base level is to get the people singing, not primarily to get their feet tapping.

3. Seasonal

 

Worship Leading: Song selection

Here are 3 criteria/lenses that I find helpful when choosing songs for our corporate worship times.

1.       Theological

2 aspects:

-Songs that are God oriented, not “me” focused. The great error in the modern church (I’m generalising here) is getting stuck in an adolescent type phase where everything is all about me. Our Christianity becomes a roller coaster experience based on feelings, circumstances and emotions when we denigrate our worship of God to what Christian Smith (author of “Soul Searching”) calls “Christian Moralistic therapeutic deism.” Worship leaders, we are not attempting to become the soundtrack to our congregations lives! Count the number of times personal pronouns of “me”, “I” and the like crop up in the songs we are singing. Make sure we are not just adding to our prevailing culture of idolatry by presenting them with an Oprah-esque type God who can fit in their pocket.

- Songs that are New Covenant in nature. We need to keep forefront in our minds that worship did not tear the heavens open, the blood of Christ did! Worship does not take us into His presence. The blood does! It is again idolatry of the grandest nature when we elevate our worship to a status that is not biblical. So sing about what Jesus has done! Revel in His goodness. Songs that remind people that we have direct access to The Father. Christ is our mediator, not our corporate worship times!

2.       Congregational

3.       Seasonal

The other two will be outworked in the next couple of blogs.