the outside people ...

The high-end street vendors.

We call ourselves "outsiders" because we try to go with Jesus to where people are outside church.  We pray; we are present; we listen; we connect.  But on our beat are many people who are not just outside of church (though many of them belong to churches), they are literally outside in the weather every day.
There are others, but I am thinking of the street vendors: people making a go of life, making a living by selling goods and services 'in the weather'.

In our urban hub there are upmarket, middle-market and downmarket vendor spots.  Some have quite sophisticated permanent shelters (sanitised for the rich, you know); some have created their own very clever shelters to erect where they hire a spot on the pavement; some just squat next to the passing people with their wares on a cloth on the ground.

Street vendors with permanent stalls.

But all of them share several things that challenge me as I pray for them.

1. They create and pack up their entire shop every single day.  I admire them for this alone, especially as the displays are often so beautifully arranged and the display methods so innovative.
2. They are out there in the heat and cold and the dry and wet.  A few stay at home when it is cold and wet, but most are there whatever the weather.  Their sales are deeply affected by the weather, but every possible sale is so important.
3. There is a mobility among them.  On Sundays many don't open, and those that do often move into a better spot for the day.  New stalls open and close frequently.  (Though this is so true inside the centres at the moment too!)  What exactly a stall sells is very variable as the vendor tries to follow their market and adapt to the moment.  Sunglasses in summer, beanies in winter, and team caps when there is a sports event!

We ask God to give these hard-working men and women strength for the task that they face each day.

We ask that their wares will sell well so that they have enough to cover their needs.

We pray for God's protection over them as they sell in such vulnerable places.

We long for God to touch their lives so that they know Jesus and walk with him.  We pray that those who already have a vibrant faith are able to live godly lives and reach out to their neighbouring vendors with the good news.  

It is too easy to walk past without praying.  It is difficult to make the effort to engage with the people who run the stalls.  I don't naturally buy on the street, but if I care about these people I must.

Our church (Claremont Methodist) has a current project to pray for the businesses of the Claremont Urban Hub.  We include the informal traders in this and every couple of weeks we write up one of the stalls for prayer.  

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.

being and insider is easier

It is so hard to do something so simple.
As we become tired or stressed or busy, the thing that gets neglected first is serving the outsider!

Nobody has noticed that I haven't written an outsiders blog for six months.  Nobody has complained that I haven't been systematically walking prayer into the Claremont Urban Hub.  The businesses around this centre don't rely on my prayers.  The workers don't know whether I pray for just behaviour on the part of their employers.  Lonely people don't care whether I am there to notice them or not.  Nobody wants to know whether I have had the peaceful energy to write a poem about the city.  None of the people who can't do church even know that I care about them and wish I could find a way to touch their spirits.

So, it's hard to re-energise.  It's hard to let the call of God take my life by storm when there is nothing else.

Today I have sat in the urban space again.  Sit with me by praying for God to bring about his work in me. Please.

taming the chaos

About once a year even we cannot cope anymore with the mess in our house.  The time has come to TRY to tame it.  We are not aiming for a house that looks like yours (stay with me here), just for ... well, maybe piles of stuff that aren't in imminent danger of collapsing on our heads.

Our house is used in lots of different roles (see the "At Home" page in the tabs along the top) and when things get busy we are inclined to move from one thing to the next without much thought (and usually no action) for what has been left behind after whatever we were doing. 

Right now I'm really glad the weather is allowing us to eat in the back yard:  I'm trying to sort out an accumulation of stuff and the dining room table is the place!  We will be making some new shelves as well as repacking old ones, and hopefully supplying Friends of Valkenberg Charity Shop with several large boxes of stock.

We are really bad at housekeeping - it is our ungift, if there is such a thing.  So we need prayer for this - if you are the praying type, we appreciate your help in this!

We hope to come out of this with more space and less tension, without losing the creative serendipity of reasonable mess.  Our house is a place of service, and the most important thing is that it is a space filled with the Holy Spirit.  Our prayer is always for people to experience Jesus here.

We also want to be faithful in making this gift (a beautiful house in a lovely place) something that Jesus can use - for us and everyone else. 

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.

Right Now ... Graffiti and Sudan

Graffiti artists are a tribe ... you've probably never thought of that, unless you are an anthropologist or were at a church youth group in Bellville last night!
Martin is the speaker for a mission weekend, involving a total of six sessions (four today) ...

If you were to attend, you would find out that it is quite possible that the Irish were originally told about Jesus by Berber Africans!  SO ... a Irish missionary telling a Berber about Jesus in North Africa today would be risking their life to give back what was given 16 centuries ago!

You would also be treated to the South Sudan National Anthem ... a new song for an ancient country, with a history of people following Jesus longer than most European countries!

Pray for Martin to communicate lovingly and effectively God's heart for the people of his world!

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!