5 to midnight and counting

Martin is tense.  Very tense.

His PhD thesis must be ready for final approval by his supervisor, also known as a promoter, by 15 November 2017.  Then it must be printed and bound and handed in by 30 November 2017.

 Martin started writing in earnest in January and has kept up a demanding writing schedule since then.  He is in the tidy-up-and-finish-off phase now with a chapter a week on the table.  I get requests for calculation of % done (25 pages of 58, this instant)!

Every now and then a whole paragraph must be relegated to footnotes.  Occasionally a small section needs to be written or rewritten now that everything is in place.   Mostly it is finding the reference behind the [cit] which was left as a marker in the previous draft! 
The book situation in the house is pretty dire!

Whilst navigating these dark tunnels, Martin’s trusty PhD computer went into a coma and was diagnosed dead-on-arrival at the computer shop.  This event nearly sent Martin over the brink into some unknown place of trauma in spite of full (multiple) backups!  However, Charis came to the rescue with her laptop, which is similar enough to feel familiar!

The background tension is the potential hostility of theological faculty to the subject of evangelism.  This will result in increased panic when we get near the viva, but we won’t go there now!

Ultimately, can God use this to touch (the Methodist part of) his church (in South Africa)? 

the demise of the green pen

Martin is marking!

Each lecturer develops, over time, their own style which reflects both intentional values and unconscious personality.  One of Martin's choices early in his growth as a teacher of theology was to use green for marking rather than the more traditional red, or alternatively common pencil.  But this is no longer the case ... marking now has to happen on-line!

So marking no longer involves piles of paper or green pens.  For us this is good as it is a huge effort to make sure nothing gets lost in our house.  But for someone who is inclined to think with his pencil, this is quite an adjustment.  That is apart from the irritations inevitable in any sort of computerised system - they have all been designed specifically for the spiritual growth of their users!

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!

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.

Serve People

People are more important than plans.

In fact:

People are the plan.

A chat on the steps

We are programmed by everything we've ever been taught to achieve.  We have been brainwashed effectively to know that in order to achieve we must have a plan.  So far so good.

The trouble is, it seems that sometimes (maybe even often) God isn't very interested in our plans.  Now we aren't saying this is true for everyone, and we really do value the training we've had in plan-making.  We are just saying that we don't get to use it very often in the normal, expected way. 

People in the house

People don't fit.  We are awkward shapes in the jigsaw puzzle of life, leaving blank spaces and sudden transitions away from the picture everyone else is building.  No plan we have ever made has happened: almost always because of people. But then, God sends us to people, God brings people to us.

People in the garden

So we have found that one value we need if we are to serve God in the way he wants us to is the people one.  Jesus was constantly stopping for individuals.  He ate lunch with them; he had long conversations with them (even if they weren't 'stratigic' people); he cuddled the babies and took his disciples fishing.

So, there are days when we don't get anything done, but somehow those are the days when we go to sleep with our hearts full of people, carrying joys and sorrows, experiencing hopes and fears.  We think that maybe those are the days when our chaotic lives are most touched by God.





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?