my contemplations

In our denomination we have a week of services around Pentecost. Every evening we get together, and usually there is a theme running through, so this gives pastors some room to run through something in a short space of time. Also, it’s quite common to get someone from another congregation to preach for the week. We had ours this week, a week late, to accommodate the guy we got to preach for the week.

Every second Thursday we have a youth night. Nothing fancy, nothing grand, just a place where youth between 13 and 16 get together, sometimes play games, sometimes read Bible, sometimes watch a video, socialize and where I can build relationships with them.

When this clashed with our Pentecost service this week I decided to arrange that the youth join the service. Did I think that they would find this the most amazing thing ever to happen at church? No. I actually knew that they wouldn’t really like attending church. But if we do things parallel, then I’m actually saying to them that church is for old people, and not really for you. Something which is the exact opposite of what we would say in our congregation.

So we entered the service. About 15 of 20 kids, into a church with another 80 people or so. First we sang some hymns, and in great discomfort we sat there, kind of mumbling together, I tried singing, tried saying to them: “this is OK, you can sing”. Then a looong sermon started, about how we neglected our pneumatology and should make more of the holy spirit in the Reformed tradition, or something like that. First three girls walked out, then another two guys.

I’ve been using the reviewing methods of Roger Greenaway for a number of years now. In reviewing we would say that a bad experience become a positive learning experience when reviewed well. So I decided to scrap the program for the rest of the evening, and review the church service. What came out was the usual, discomfort in church, church being for old people (although they did say they are very positive about our informal service on a Sunday morning). Looking at something like Four Views on Youth Minstry, which I’ve read a number of years ago, they would actually go for something like a “church-within-a-church” model. Where youth go to a separate ministry, and at some point move over to the “real church”.

But sitting in that service on Thursday, noticing their discomfort, I suddenly realised that these people are our conscience. They are the conscience of the church. If we take them out, we can just continue playing a number of songs on the organ, while no one really experience anything, or like singing when it feels like your singing alone. We can keep on with long sermons that only a few insiders can understand. We can just continue doing church the way we do church, because everyone that is sitting their is trained that “this is how things are supposed to be”. But when our young people start attending in their masses, we need to ask the question: “Why are we doing this?”.

Because they do not know our church conventions that well, they won’t do things just because this is how it’s supposed to be done, they ask stupid questions which the rest of us know we are not supposed to ask. Malan Nelthought me this valuable truth in my first year, saying that: “When we take the kids out of the church, the rest of the church is losing out, not the kids”. I wonder what the preacher thought when the kids started walking out of his sermon? Did they address his conscience, or only madden him? What about the rest of the congregation?

I do think this is the more difficult approach to youth ministry. Because now the whole church need to start thinking youth, the “family” need to start thinking “teenager”, instead of just getting the “baby sitter youth worker” to keep their kids happy. But we need this. If you lose our kids out of the church, the church will lose.

Last night I visited Arthur and some of the Pangani people. They have been starting to feel a call to get involved with the Zimbabwean situation. Since Friday I’ve bee feeling the same calling, although with no idea how to actually get involved, so I do what I do: I blog, I tell the stories as I hear them, and I hope to get as many people as possible to think and talk and hopefully get actively involved with Zimbabwe.

But we talked, Andrew was there, who wrote the article I referred to on Saturday, and Jody the Canadian, who is currently working with Zimbabwean refugees, and Arthur, and Mariah, who has spent some time in the past working with refugees (in Canada I think). We talked about the big picture, but also about the small. And this is where our attention got fixed. The small problem (or rather, one of the symptoms) is the millions of refugees currently in South Africa, and on this level it seems possible to get involved.

Obviously, no one will be housing millions of refugees, but it is possible to help a few. These people face enormous problems in Zimbabwe, except for the lack of food and basic medicine, many of them now fear for violence and their lives. In South Africa they now experience some of the worst forms of xenophobia in the squatter camps where they found safety up to now, and this also result in a fear of bodily harm or death.

South Africa don’t do refugee camps, but at places people are trying to help refugees. Central Methodist in Johannesburg is the one example we talked about. There is differing of opinion on what is happening there, but you can read some of it (Ekklesia Article, News report on refugee camp linked with crime), but in spite of the troubles, I hear very positive things about this move. A few other examples were also mentioned, people housing Zimbabweans in their homes, other smaller shelters. The conversation turned so that the other members, who are working together, are now talking about doing something similar, Arthur have a short post on this. My one recommendation is that when this is done, care should be taken that we are not taking away jobs from South Africans when trying to help Zimbabweans. However, if this article is right, there seem to be some space for skilled workers. 

Anyone out there also doing this? Anyone know of anyone that is involved in helping Zimbabwe? Helping refugees? Anyone that would want to get involved but don’t know what to do?

I found a copy of Where We Have Hope last night on my shelf. Bought it at a second hand book stall last years somewhere. It was written by a journalist who worked in Zimbabwe, Andre Meldrum (google this name and you’ll find a lot of info). The end of the first chapter really caught me. It gave words for what I’m more and more realizing my own feelings towards South Africa and Africa is…

“I am seated in the middle aisle and cannot see Harare’s twinkling lights dwindle as we fly up and away. But I do not need to. Zimbabwe is indelibly etched in my memory. I am steeped in this country, it is in my pores. More than just the physical look and feel and smell of the land, I have a deep sense of what the country stands for: liberation, majority rule, democracy and human rights. This is what Zimbabwe meant when it won independence in 1980 and it is what so many are valiantly fighting to regain. This conviction of what Zimbabwe stands for cannot be erased simply by forcing me out of the country.”

Update: I’ve been thinking since Saturday, but forgetting to say this: This might be a good time to again watch Schindler’s list, or using it in church.

As discussions about Zimbabwe go on, and as I myself are thinking about Zimbabwe more and more, and thinking about the role of the church in Zimbabwe, and sitting in a class where I feel that we are talking about Zimbabwe, but not about the idea that we have a role to play in betering things (wow, this is getting to be a looong sentence), I just read that the Anglican Church is actively taking part. According to an article on our churches official website they played an active role in Kwazulu Natal in getting the court order that the Chinese weapon ship bound for Zimbabwe cannot enter South Africa. When searching google on this I also read on BBC that they are making statements that international action are needed in Zimbabwe, and this was a few weeks ago.

Update: I had lunch with Albert Nolan and some other people today, and he corrected this. It was not the Anglican Church, but an ecumenical body, which currently has an Anglican bishop as voice. So the ecumenical church did this, and they did more. They got the legal advice, which would have been almost enough to stop the deal, but to ensure that this didn’t go through, they talked with the trade unions, who agreed that the dockers would go on strike if the ship enter any South African harbor! This is the type of stories that the world need to here about, where the church is working together to change society. And as Nolan reminded me today, there is a lot of small things happening in the church which bring hope.

I preached on Genesis 11:28-12:9 on Sunday. I started preparing real early, reading Brueggemann’s Genesis commentary on Monday, and Von Rad’s shortly after, but never quite got around to making the sermon. I knew what I wanted to say though. God call Abram, promise to bless him, but in the same breath call Abram to also be a blessing to those around him (see some thoughts in Afrikaans here). God call Abram, but he doesn’t call him out of this world, but to be wholly part of this world (see some more thoughts in Afrikaans here). In Genesis, it is the creator God who now become further part of the creation-gone-bad by calling Abram, and by becoming involved with human history.

But last week we again had two armed robberies on houses in our congregation. In one the people were wounded, in the other a man was killed, leaving behind a wife and kids. Shot in the head when he wanted to press the alarm button. This happened on Friday evening, on Saturday I finally got around to finalizing the sermon. Furthermore, the reports on Zimbabwe started coming in, I blogged on that here while I was preparing the sermon.

How do we preach in this context? What do we say? As I said to the congregation at one stage: In church many would say we are not supposed to talk politics. But in this context, and reading the story of Abraham, I cannot do other but talk politics. But politics isn’t about who is right and who wrong, I never spoke about Mugabe for example. Maybe what we call politics in the church, is actually just ethics. Public Theology.

I believe the message, even for this hurt congregation, and believe me, our congregation, and community, is hurt. The violence have been going on for weeks now, every week the reports come in, for this congregation also, the message is that we should bring hope. There is a message that God bring hope to the world, but the other side of the coin is that God bring hope through us as well.

We need to preach on South Africa. We need to preach on Zimbabwe. Telling the stories of the people there, telling the story of the Bible, realizing that the story of the Bible is forcing us to, in some way I don’t understand yet, take part in the story of suffering ongoing around us. Our congregation is starting to talk about our role, a missional role, in the context of violence around Kameeldrif.  It’s not a new conversation, but we took it upon ourselves in all earnesty. I’ll be getting together with Arthur tomorrow to have some talks on Zimbabwe. What is the role of the church in a time like this? What can we as a church do?

It’s been years now since we started talking about Zimbabwe. I remember hearing the stories of farmers being forced from their farms, even of farmers being killed. I still think it was a crime, and I still think it was quite stupid and didn’t help the country at all. But life went on, the farmers lost their farms, they got new farms in Australië, or new jobs somewhere. Somehow, throughout all this, I still thought that much worse problems was going on in the world. But I think that might have changed:

The evening after first hearing about the ship full of weapons on it’s way to Zimbabwe, I told my flatmate that: “now, for the first time, I am really worried about Zimbabwe”. At that point I started thinking about Rwanda, Uganda, and the other worst case stories of Africa. Could it be? Is this really where Zimbabwe is heading?

Yesterday I’ve been hearing some of the stories about the current situation in Zimbabwe. The personal accounts stand out more than the news. One pastor told about people he know very well who actually are still farming in Zimbabwe. ZANU-PF (Robert Mugabe’s party) are doing “voters education” on the farms. So they had to leave and go stay in town, so that ZANU-PF could “educate” the workers. This education involved the chopping of of fingers, of hands, the cutting of of lips…

Arthur sent me a mail yesterday with an article written by a friend of his who was there, the photo’s ain’t nice…

The things which happened over the past years in Zimbabwe was bad. It was really bad. But when we all thought that Zimbabwe has hit rock-bottom. When we thought that now the people would throw out Mugabe and start something new, it got worse! We assumed that Morgan Tsvangirai will win the election. A friend who is onto economy and things like that said a few weeks ago that within 5 years a lot could again be back on track in Zimbabwe… that idea has changed.

What do we do? What should the church do?

Our denomination has started a project to help feed Zimbabwe. We made an arrangement with Makro to pack crates of food which is then sent to Zimbabwe and can be picked up be church leaders there to help the people of Zimbabwe. Currently a crate cost R15000 (approximately $2000). This certainly is needed, and even if political problems stop today, would still be needed for quite some time. Anyone interested in contributing to this could mail Dr Gustav Claasen.

I think the church have a mayor role to play in forming people thoughts on this. We need to talk politics in church! We can no longer turn our heads away. How about using Hotel Rwanda, Last King of Scotland or The Interpreter and discussing the Zimbabwean situation along with them. After first seeing The Interpreter I remember thinking that this is telling the story of Zimbabwe (that was some years ago). Today I fear that Last King of Scotland, or worse still, even Hotel Rwanda might be telling the story of what is approaching in Zimbabwe! For more information on Zimbabwe you could also visit this site posting updates on the Zimbabwe Situation, or this blog from a Civic Action Group keeping you up to date on the situation in Zimbabwe.

But what next? Is it maybe time for the church to start saying out loud that the world powers should play a much stronger role in Zimbabwe? Could it be time that the United Nations step in in Zimbabwe? Should the large church organization, the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church not say very loud that “enough is enough!“? What about other faith or philosophical traditions, almost all of these would agree that what is going in is deeply unethical. I’m not a politician, and surely don’t understand everything. But I do know a little bit about ethics, and I know that the right to self-government should be respected, and that Zimbabweans should have the opportunity to govern themselves, and do things in their way, which might differ from developed countries. But I also know that the right to life had priority over the right to self-government. And when this right is taken from the people of Zimbabwe, how long can the world take part in active non-participation?

If your not taking part in this months bloggers unite yet, I urge you to join in. On Wednesday bloggers all over the world would be joining hands to blog about human rights. And when blogging about human rights, remember Zimbabwe.

Let us be a voice for the voiceless…

The South African reformed church scene is quite a complex one, I can’t think how to explain it to outsiders. But then again, I guess you find the reformed church scene around where you live complex too?

I’m in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. Studying with me is a number of students from the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa. Basically the same church, but they split up about 150 years ago, and ever since been apart. Then there is a Reformed Churches of South Africa, again supposed to be basically the same church, split up because of some theological debates in the Netherlands just under 150 years ago which was brought over here by the ministers studying there. Then the “Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk”, I’ll do them the honour of not writing there name in English. They split up from us in 1986 because the Dutch Reformed Church said Apartheid was wrong, and a number of other things. Then you’ll find three other churches within the Dutch Reformed (our Dutch Reformed) family. The Uniting Reformed Church (the old coloured church and a part of the next church which would be mentioned), another Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (traditionally the black church), and then another one whose name I can’t remember, but this was always the Indian church. And this is just the beginning.

This is the legacy of Apartheid, and the legacy of Afrikaners. My flatmate was working with a laywer for a few months who does settling between companies and employers or something like that. They said that you can find settlement between anyone, except between an Afrikaner and a Zulu, because these two groups are so hard-headed.

So the long intro to a few thoughts after yesterday’s debate about whether the Afrikaans churches do enough to combat racism within themselves, hosted by the center for Public Theology at TUKS. We had Mr Neels Jackson, a brilliant journalist from Beeld who does the religious journalism. Must be one of the best journalists on religious matter I’ve ever read. Then Prof Piet Meiring, formerly from the department of Missiology at TUKS, and part of the Truth and Reconciliation committee. Prof Theuns Dreyer from the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (Nederduits Hervormde Kerk), and Dr Johan Pienaar, moderator of the Northern synod of our church.

At first I thought about giving a summary of the whole debate, but that won’t be possible. So, some high and low points.

A definite low point for me was Prof Dreyer’s speech. Although I don’t disagree with what he said, I got the idea that he was using very beautiful language to defend the fact that you won’t find a lot of black people in the church he is from, and that there is no chance that a large part of there church will ever be non-white. He talked about racism being part of a bigger problem of stereotyping, and how we should actually battle things like forced integration and affirmative action, since this is making Afrikaners negative and thus more racist.

A definite high point was Prof Meiring suggesting that we need to take the problem of racism much more seriously, and that we should consider putting an interdisciplinary course together on the subject which is compulsory for all theological students. This I think must have been the best and most concrete suggestion of the whole morning. Another interesting thing he mentioned was a study on radio sermons a number of years ago, and the finding that almost all radio sermons was about our relationship with God, and almost nothing was said about the ethical dimension of faith, about our public role as Christians.

Neels Jackson made some very good remarks from the observations that he made after attending a number of synod meetings last year. His answer is that we are not yet doing enough about racism. I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Meiring told the story of Nelson Mandela visiting the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1994, and telling them that the telling sign of whether they could put Apartheid behind them would be whether they can unite with the other churches within the family. If Madiba was right, then we have failed miserably. My question to the panel was this: Do you think Nelson Mandela was right when he said that this would be the telling sign of whether we could put Apartheid behind us, whether we have put racism behind us, and if not, what would be?

Meiring obviously agreed with Madiba. So did Jackson, saying that we need to end racism to unify the churches, but the churches would need to be unified in order to end racism. Dreyer differed from him. Saying something in the line that forcing unification would not ensure the end of racism (which I’m sure no one in that room said), and then saying something which boiled down to the fact that different people should have different churches, not only because of race, he basically also said that it can’t be helped that the Afrikaans churches cannot unite into one. Although Pienaar didn’t respond to the question, by gutt feel is that he would also say that we don’t need to unite to show that we have put Apartheid and racism to and end.

My thoughts? Well, it seems like 9:00 AM on a Sunday morning is the most segregated time in South Africa. That can’t be right, can it? We can say nice things as much as we like, and talk about “spiritual unity” and other beautiful words, but before I’m not standing next to my black brother on a Sunday morning, I can’t say that I’ve overcome Apartheid. Would we ever do that? I think so yes, but sadly, I think it will take other factors to really put pressure on the existence of the churches in South Africa to bring us together on a large scale. In the meantime, our congregation will be joining the local Uniting Reformed Church in a course on parenting over the next few weeks…

You might wanna look at this post (Multi-Cultural Church), and this blog (Sorry for Apartheid). South Africans touching on similar topics.

You know what must be one of the worst things in life to do? Re-typing something! I absolutely hate re-typing! I don’t mind writing, I do that a lot, and actually like doing it. But when I loose something and have to re-do it, that’s really bad. Although usually it ends up being written better. Well, I lost this post. Saves it on a flashdisk, and I think I didn’t stop the flasdisk the last time I used it. First time I loose data this way.

So, Scot McKnight from jesuscreed.org is visiting South Africa. Attie Nel from Attie se Koffietafel got him over for Pentacost. We have a tradition in the Dutch Reformed Church to celebrate Pentacost with a series of church services over throughout the week, Mcknight is leading these in Attie’s congregation, and Attie dis the rest of us the favour of arranging a whole program full of other speaking arrangements for McKnight.

Yesterday morning I attended a lecture McKnight gave on the New Perspective on Paul. Actually it was presented to the fourth year New Testament class, Stephan Joubert’s, from e-kerk, class, but it was opened up so that the rest of us can also attend. There wasn’t a lot of visitors however, but I found it interesting to see how bloggers got together. Attie en McKnight got together, both bloggers. I visited, because of blogging. And Tom Smith also came to visit, although we didn’t talk about it, I guess also thanx to blogging.

I found out that McKnight disagree with the New Perspective, and the things flowing from it. Also with NT Wright’s idea that Paul was writing against a Roman political system, an idea very influencial in the later works of Brian Mclaren (Secret Message of Jesus and Everything Must Change). I also found it interesting that McKnight was introduced as a leader in the emerging church, this while I can swear I read McKnight himself writing that he write about the emerging church from the outside. However, I think this he does very good, do read his article on What is the Emerging Church? if you haven’t doen that yet.

Then later I had the oppurtunity to have lunch with McKnight and some other pastors from our denomination. We had some interesting conversations on the theological influences on South Africa. Someone at one stage summarized it like this: We are Dutch people, watching American television, reading German theology and talking an obscure language which no one understand. Interesting that British theology never really had a big influence on South Africa.