Reorientating ... again!

Martin has been teaching various combinations of missions and missiology classes as a part time lecturer for about 8 years now.  This hasn't been exactly how he imagined his "second half".  He had expected to be still in Thailand church planting.  Then he had hoped to be on faculty at a Bible College participating fully in college life and decisions.  Then he realised that this part time work was his work for now.

This was the result of three things:  

1.     Bible colleges in South Africa need to be committed to racial transformation.

2.     Bible colleges are cash-strapped and cannot not afford a large full time faculty.

3.     Bible colleges everywhere tend to marginalise mission.

We wholly support the first of these.  We struggle to understand why God allows the second.  We feel sad about the third.

David Bosch, in his book "Transforming Mission" reminds us that mission is nearly always marginalised by the church as a whole, and that the worst mistakes (and sin) in mission have happened when it has not been in that challenging 'edge space'.  That encourages us.

But.

Ever since Martin started on this strange borderland existence, the mission and missiology courses at both of the colleges where he serves have gradually eroded.  

One of the colleges, which started about 50 years ago as a missions college, is no longer a Bible College, but a liberal arts college with an increasingly minor theology stream.  This year he has no courses there in the first semester, and none in the second either.

At the other college, one of the two first semester courses he used to teach has been cut.  He will be teaching the other, but we have no idea about the second semester courses.

... The next blog will be about what is happening instead, but losing this outlet is psychologically challenging.  

Martin is having to reimagine his life at this point.

Plus, we feel helpless about the lack of availability of training for missions and in missiological thinking.

Collage

Settling into our new half-house home has been good.  We love being on hand for Martin's mom and dad.  We think Mom has adjusted to having a smaller space and people so invasively close; she definitely enjoys having someone on hand and a little help with some of life's responsibilities.  We want to make sure she gets to church every second week while someone stays with Dad.  We need wisdom when to help and when to leave.

In December I (Lesley) had the privilege of going to a big Engineering Education Forum in Dubai where I received an award in memory of my brother Duncan and his awesome contribution to the field.

Martin's latest leisure project is puppet creation.  One of his work projects is his PhD - he has completed his pilot study and is ready to interview a large number of Methodist ministers.

Lesley's latest "leisure" project is masters studies.  This means giving up painting and writing for now!

Lesley still works at UCT part time.
Martin teaches at three (sometimes four) different theological organisations.
We work on our "Outsiders - Urban Spiritual Life" project which is integrating more into the life of Claremont Methodist Church again.

Joanna and Adam live next door and we do a lot of community living.
Charis lives in the UK and has had a very hard year.

Hopefully I will be better about news ...

living water?

Martin labels the spring water, bottled at source in Newlands!

Andrew collects his tlc, fruit and water.

Spring water was one of the things we offered to passers by at Earth Dance.  For some it was very helpful as they had only brought liquids with additives.  For some it went deeper - one friend called it "holy" water, and lay on the ground to let it pour straight into his mouth every time he came past.

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".

Mission from Africa - the other half

at last ... the rest of the story!

PLEASE let me know if you know a book on the subject of "Mission FROM Africa" - here are some of the fascinating issues...I taught the course, but I feel like I am only starting to learn the subject!

Bryson&DeborahSamboja
Global Team: missionaries in Kenya and Africa Director

Does Africa have a distinctive voice for Mission? Who were the unrecorded heroes of the African Christian Movement, the marginally mentioned Evangelists who did most of the work? What sort of Mission agencies and initiatives have arisen from Africa itself? Uhuru & Ubuntu and other key concepts. Am I an African? Pan-Africanism and adoptive euro-african & asia-african cultures. Can the growing African Church avoid the excesses of the Victorian church in mission?

The African Church is key in God's mission to his world,

and African Christians have been part of it from the beginning and still are!

blog experiment

With the kind of work we do, there are no definitive pathways and no trails blazed.  In a way that is the point ... we are trying to serve those who are strangers to the gospel, or strangers to the church.  That means we need to

• have millions of ideas (no problem there)
• work out what God wants us to try (listening to God is tricky and we need other people)
• be willing to keep going without measurable results
• be willing to fail
• work out when to stop trying something

One of the trials this year is blogs ... not, I hasten to add, trial as in burden but as in exploring or assessing. Now. That means that I am trying to construct each blog well, professionally.  I am trying to write about appropriate things, in an accessible style, with interesting bits and bobs and good pictures.  Oh well ... we have to rely on God for everything anyway, so why not attempt the impossible occasionally, or frequently for that matter!

BUT more challenging still, we have to get LOTS of people to click on the blog - because if people don't see it at least once, they won't even know whether it is interesting to them or not. 

• The aim of this blog is that people who are interested in what we are up to (either because they like us, or because they like what we do, or even both) will become followers and visit often.  We hope that this will help you guys to be more part of our life and service.
• The outsiders-urbanspirituallife blog, has been created for people we don't even know. or at least only know a little, or don't know yet.  We hope that it will enable them to pursue the quest at the heart of being human, that it will help some people to discover Jesus.

So here I am tracking how many people have visited a blog.  (Don't worry about my list of other things I plan to do on the whiteboard under my notebook!)  Of course, I can't tell whether people found the blog interesting or helpful ... so I shall have to keep doing this for a long time before I can decide whether I am supposed to keep going, or whether it is another failure in the matrix of brilliant ideas!

SO ... Outsiders has a facebook persona which people can join to see whernever there is a new post.  I put the outsiders blog on my facebook wall too, and I keep hoping that other people might pass it on.  (BTW the day I had the most 'hits' was when I put up a picture of a mime with a 'prostitute' in it!!)

AND if you know anyone who knows us and doesn't know about this blog, please pass on the link!

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

HOLIDAY !!!

Sorry about the long delay in reporting ... But we finally did get to leave on holiday! 
And here we are, at Pearly Beach - between Hermanus and Aghullhas.

 In a lovely house, with a lovely fire place and space around us, and time within us.

 

 

Martin's Crazy Days

Martin has just finished a marathon of marking exam papers and essays.  BI courses complete!
He collects his final CI essays this afternoon.
He has been preparing a course for BI for next semester ... 'Evangelism'.  He is amped to teach it, but starting a course you have never taught before is a major undertaking.  He has found some fun stuff on how not to do it; up YouTube!

He is just busy finalising his prep for running his street-art-and-talking workshop - happening for the third time over the mountain pass in Villiersdorp.  Tomorrow morning will see five paintings happening on the village main road.

Then he will drive post haste back to the Cape Flats to run a seminar on 'Becoming a Life-Long-Learner' for the lay preachers in our group of churches ... tomorrow afternoon.  He will finish off that preparation tonight at bed-time.

Meantime, we are hoping to leave on Sunday for a long-desired holiday.  Martin was really tired before last week, so you can imagine that he will be a basket case by Sunday!  Also that some prayer for all this would be essential.

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!

Mission to Africa - half a story

We are fairly familiar with European mission to Africa, although there are generally two opposing views of the whole enterprise:

the wonderful sacrificial missionaries OR the wicked colonialising missionaries

The reality, as far as one is ever able to apprehend it (!), is almost certainly somewhere in between these two extremes or maybe both extremes in different indiviuals.

  

Jacob Schmidt and Robert Moffat
What most people are NOT familiar with is the early mission to Africa during the first few centuries CE; this was mission from Christians in the Middle East and Asia Minor, often at the express request of rulers and their people who were weary of exhaited and exhaisting religion.  How these ancient churches have survived or failed to survive is a significant learning resource for a church caught in the currents of global secular aggression and resurgent old religions.

 

Ethiopian churches

We are also usually ignorant of the significant role of African Christians in early global-church theology, and even more of the huge battle of the North African church for its own indigenous theology.  The results (positive and negative) of this battle, in particular its affect on the reaction of the church to Muslim colonisation, has useful impications for us (the African church) as we seek to live a truly African theology.

 

ancient North African baptism pools