The Proactive Pastor

This is Pastor Felix of "Those who Trust in the Lord Church" in Montana (Western Cape, South Africa).

In June they are having a mission event hosting a speaker from Nigeria.  Big stuff.  Big expectations.

But Pastor Felix knows that most big events just make everyone already in the church feel excited for a few days and proud that they have done something important.  Then, it is business as usual.

Enter "Discipling Nations" (see post from 19 January).

Pastor Felix is also on the board of Discipling Nations (now you can see how forward-looking he is).  So he called Martin in to have a conflab, becasue Martin is the chair while Willem is on sabbatical.

The upshot?


A Storyboard Street Art course will run 22-23 July to enable the members of  "Those who Trust in the Lord Church" to get out onto the streets with the good news in a form people are able to receive.  Told in a way that allows people to move off with a story in their hearts which can speak to them until they are ready to find out more.

getting out (a little)

We love the people of the Claremont Urban Hub!
There are so many people; each one is so interesting; every person is so special.
Many of them experience the love of Jesus, and love him and serve him.  We pray for them.
Many of them still wait to hear the good news in a way that they can understand.

The balloon man is sharing the good news with the Hari Krishna man ... how nice that we are not the only people who care!
We pray for people who can't hear the "church" way.  We pray for God to show his love to each person in a way they can receive.

Thank you for praying for us.  We have made small steps in getting back into "Outsiders" ...

See our page on Facebook!  If you like it you'll see it.  If you share it other people will see it too.

new moonlighting

Okay ... so where does an ad-film agency find an older, bearded puppeteer in Cape Town?  From Artee Partees (Kirsty Paxton) of course, who just happen to "have" (sort of) Martin!

So Martin goes along with a suitcase full of puppets, including Captain Seaweed and Able (Lesley's coke-can puppet).  The film-dudes are from Belgium and are selling suitcases.  They like Martin (because he is funny and looks Belgian and has a huge beard at the moment); they like Able too, but htey can't have another product in their ad ... so 

Martin spends they first few days of a one week holiday having enormous fun making a puppet and being filmed.  Also not really getting rest, but ...  

Right through the BIble

... in about 75 minutes!  

Trying to help everyone make sense of each bit as they read it.

2011 into 2012

 

For those who missed it: Charis started 2010 really ill and missed her last year of school.  Joanna and Charis visited Thailand for three weeks in July 2010.  Joanna and Adam got married on 24 September 2010. 

2011 started off quite difficult:  After falling off a ladder, Lesley was flat on her back for 8 weeks and continued in the brace for another 5 weeks.  Life continued tough:  Martin's dad has been in hospital six times this year and had four operations.  In between he managed to turn 88!

Lesley had a small op, which was a bit tricky to recover from!
We have managed to "serve strangers" as well!


Martin leading a weekend workshop on using street art.

Martin had a huge teaching load this year: part time at two colleges and some weekends with churches. 

Lesley has worked mainly in our urban-hub project.  The big innovation there being the advent of a blog aimed at not-yet and not-anymore and not-at-all-sure Christians and others! see link below  We both have many privileged opportunities as "life coaches", formal and informal.

Right now, Martin has been painting a nativity scene on the pavement outside a shopping mall; he has spoken to witches, a JW, secularists, Christians and a Muslim, apart from the very angry shop-keeper and the dozens who have looked, enjoyed and commented. Lesley has been blogging about the Festive Season. 

We hope that you enjoy celebrating Jesus.  May God guide you as you reflect on living.

street art: free to live

 So, three weeks later than planned, there we were on Saturday.  The perfect weather for connecting with people in the urban hub.  An art installation on the street, a 'meditation' on Galatians 5: what does it mean to live in freedom in the city.  We chatted to about a dozen people and many more saw 'something' going on.  One family found it hard to believe that we were not (repeat, definitely not) selling anything!

For more pictures go to "outsiders - urban spiritual life" and "street theatre".

walk the hub

Last night the weather forecast was for rain again this morning.
We decided that whatever the weather, we would take the morning to walk and pray in the various spots where we hope to have street art events over time. 

We prayed for God to show us clearly whether, where and when we should do the "free to live" installation. 

We also prayed for God to show us how he wants to communicate with people in these places through street art.

a post about posters

Long ago, academics gave learned lectures to small groups of like-minded people.  Then they also started publishing the lectures as collections of 'papers' in journals.  They began to have large conferences, which were like live journals.  Then they realised that there is too much going on for it all to be presented to huge plenary sessions at the conferences, so they started having elective sessions, where everyone divided up for smaller presentations.  Now, they also have 'posters': one A1 with pictures, headings and a small amount of text with 5 minutes of talking. 

So, one project in the Theology of Mission course is a poster on a significant figure in the history of mission.  The list they have to choose from contains the names of about 50 men and women who lived and sorked all over the world during the last two millenia.  These are people like Ulfalas who re-evangelised the pagan Italians, or Matteus Ricci who wrote one of the classic Chinese essays.

 These people form nodes in the time-space matrix (vs time-line) of Christian history.  The class becomes excited as they hear the stories from each other.

installation as interactive performance art

As you know if you have read our "pages" (see the tabs above this post), we use art of most sorts in most aspects of what we do!  If you know us, you will have experienced the irregularity that this causes!  One of the places we are committed to using art is on the street in our "outsiders" ministry. 

Usually this is sub-fusc; Martin sits somewhere drawing, Lesley writes a vignette in the coffee shop.  Sometimes all that 'happens' is that we connect more deeply with the city and its people because we have been listening differently.  Occasionally the art leads to conversation with a passer-by, although we never know what God does with that.

Every now and then, we plan a creative event, bigger and more directed at communicating with the people in the urban hub.  We are planning one for 29 October and there's lots to do before then.

The Pavement and trees!

This is to be and installation in the visual-art-sense, but with a performance twist.
The basis is a 'live' display on chains hung from a rope strung between trees on a pavement. 
This will be a small display to keep down costs and make it easy for few people to manage.  It will not be big enough to be visible for people in passing cars.  We rely on a steady stream of pedestrians, and have tried to choose our 'venue' accordingly!
Chains will carry the words (the letters hung vertically): LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GENTLENESS, FAITHFULNESS, GOODNESS and SELF-CONTROL. 

A poster will declare: 

FREE TO LIVE. 

There will be chains which start off empty, and are gradually filled with interesting things - feathers, corks, beads, bells, and so on - people who come past will be invited to add something.

note: in this concoction chains are not used for metaphorical significance, but because they hang well, are easy to hang things from and look professional

You might have noticed that this all tries to reflect Galatians 5.

Join us if you'd like some fun.  Pray if you remember.

moonlighting with children

I've mentioned before how we sometimes do things we get paid for which contribute to the finances.  We try to make sure these don't divert us from our core business, either by making us unavailable or because they are at odds with the concept of "serving strangers".

Yesterday Martin spent two hours with a Grade 1 class ...

The theme was SPACE:
There is a book specially created for the occasion called "Zooty the Space Girl".
There were hundreds of cut-out bits of corrugated cardboard which assembled themselves into 28 spaceships.  (Yes, don't come to our house today if you have a problem with millions of tiny offcuts of cardboard box!)
There was great excitement about pretending to float, catch a planet and open it to find ... an imaginary smarty inside!

AND much more ...








These occasional stints at school (two or three a year) are enormous fun for Martin, and totally exhausting!  (How do the grade one teachers do it year after year?)  They also often seem to come when we really need the small financial injection: today we'll be able to pay the French teacher and the cell phones!!  We are grateful for the way God keeps us.  We are also grateful for how much fun our work is.

children are important (part one)

Like everyone we love our children and think they are wonderful ... although they no longer qualify as children in any other sense, by any stretch of the imagination, they are still our children.

I'll tell you about Charis (right at right) in this post ... more about the others another time.

Charis still lives at home with us, which is very nice for us, and mostly quite nice for her.  She is nineteen and her main activity at present is frantic study for self-taught/correspondence AS levels.  This has meant studying even on holiday ... and also always being tired!

  
However Charis is a passionate actor, and can't survive without being involved in the dramatic arts (though she also provides us with more than her share of drama).  She has a job as a drama teaching assistant, is helping a friend with a production of poetry for high schools, and is preparing for Trinity Guildhall associate diploma.

This means she is extremely busy ... we are very glad that she is old enough to have her own drivers' license! 

The big question is not what she eventually wants to do.  The answer to that one is "act, help people, live a life that reflects Jesus" (please note, these are my words, but checked with her).  The big question is what next piece of education/training does God have in mind for her. 

Charis is an awesome young woman with fierce opinions, especially about justice and kindness.   She has a deep spiritual walk with Jesus, and is often a good reminder to us of how to live well.  We try to be helpful parents-of-an-adult for her, especially given the challenges she faces of living with a lot of pain (fibromyalgia).  How amazing to be parents!

Charis still participates in some of the things we do in serving strangers; she is an essential part of who we are, as well as giving us good advice (how else would we understand the latest dialect, or know some of the strange sounds of current music?), and her creativity (painting, flute, flowers, singing, wrting a novel ...) is a crucial part of home.

... now we ...

are trying to reorientate to 'normal' life

so we ...

collected 2nd hand books

wrote poetry

ate jolly jammers
to celebrate Jonathan's life

painted pictures

took photographs

had someone do our washing
(courtesy of Whitfireld Parish, Glossop)

had space for visitors

had space for friends

looked at the sky

enjoyed the promise

loved family

walked together

walked on the beach

walked in fynbos

moonlighting for a good cause

Martin, as part of his busy week, has been finishing off seventy-two illustrations.

These are a fascinating and challenging variety of pen drawings of people doing all sorts of activities.  He has loved the disciplined exercise of his skill, but it has definitely added to the tricky squeeze in the last few weeks.

These pictures enhance the effectiveness of a workshop manual.  The workshops are run by an NPO called Khululeka which trains and mentors adults working with children who are grieving.

imagine how much better this will be with the pictures

We love what this group does.  Martin enjoys being part of creating the services people need to live more fully in a society where so many people don't have access to resources.  It also helps the exchequer as he gets paid for it!

Introducing ...

Martin and Lesley Mostert:  that's us!

We follow God into the places of service he takes us to ... and we do it along with a whole bunch of people who think this is what God wants, and help us to do it.   Many of these people (and other friends) like to keep up with what is going on in our life and work.
We have tried different news formats over the decades ...so let's try a new one!

Serve Creatively

God is the creator; we think he made people to be creative too.  After all, we are created in his image!  So we try to approach our work with imagination and innovation.

We use art a lot.  Martin is a capable visual artist; his paintings and drawing invite people into more.  Lesley gets involved in visual art too in her own way.  We try to write an speak aesthetically.  We use drama, role-play and mime whenever we can.  Music is one of the arts more commonly used in Christian activity and we try not to neglect it!  Our children try to keep us up to date. 
We love the flow of ideas that happens when we 'do art'. 
If you follow this blog you'll see more about how we use the arts.

Creativity is more than using art and different media.  It's being willing to clear the slate and imagine doing something as if it has never been done before.  It's going back to basics and being inventive.  We hope to always be developing, always learning, always discovering in the way we serve God and his people.

Boring?  What's that?