Emerging Africa

Last night I spoke about how our suburb is changing, but not our church. In the Afrikaans South-African story, churches became the last place of safety and comfort. Apart from our high-tech security that changed our streets into base camps and our houses into prisons, the church became that one place where everything must be familiar and predictable.

We do this with language and cultural theology.

The idea is (although we don’t admit it) that when outsiders stumble in, only those that look, think and talk like us will come again. The rest must keep on looking for a church with people of their kind.

In search of a spa as a birthday treat for my wife, I stumbled upon a little spa called The Soul Khaya. In the Zulu language Khaya means home.

In the book "The Irresistible Revolution that I am blogging about (http://doubtfuldiaries.blogspot.com)for the next few weeks, Shane Claiborne speaks of Christians forming hospitality houses as a new way of living in community.
Tonight our home became a hospitality house, or a Soul Khaya if you will. Strangers became new friends when a group of Jesus Followers from Mozambique joined us for a very simple but soulful dinner.

Religion taught me that church happens in a big building on a sunday, or when Christians pray and read the Bible together.

Back in high school a song about God topped the charts and dominated the airwaves for a while.

“what if God was one of us, just a stranger on the bus...”

I remember being in two minds about the song. Can we really sing along with this, God being one of us?
Back then; being a typical teenager I had a very negative view about people in general. God had to be out there, far away and utterly different for me to believe in him.

These days I find the opposite to be true.The more human God becomes, the better I relate to God.

On Sunday night I listened to someone speak about God being Jesus-like. We usually talk about Jesus being God with us, but maybe we should flip it upside down.

God imitating Jesus.

I'll be chewing on this one for a while...

I‘m chewing on the words of the Wandering Rabbi: “Sell everything and follow me. Let go of all the stuff, lighten your load and come take a walk.”

When it comes to the way I did church and faith most of my life, I have to ask how far off did I (we?) wander from the road Jesus travelled?

The story of the Good News Journalists that travel the (un)Known World telling stories of Faith, Hope and Love quickly evolved into an institute that crusades around in search of power and wealth. Somewhere else it became a club of elite members constantly judging people to be in or out. Somewhere it started as a great Idea, but got dragged behind by hidden agendas and selfish ideals.

I can go on like this for quite a while.

But somewhere someone sold her stuff and followed.

The problem with being a coffee snob is this: Not everyone you have coffee with buy freshly roasted coffee, grind it just before making it and use just the right amount of coffee to water ratio, not to mention the type of cup and temperature of the water used to make the coffee. No, most of the times someone offer me coffee, they plan to give a spoonful of the stuff coming out of that big yellow tin, which is fine if that is the way you drink your coffee.

But not me, I am a coffee snob.

So I ask for a cup of tea instead and I don’t even like tea.

My wife and I took our dogs, the Land Rover and a few essentials on a journey to the Drakensberg Mountains. On our way to our destination we took the fastest possible route. Tar roads all the way, a smooth ride filled with convenience, safety and all things familiar. On our way back we changed the settings of the GPS to dirt roads and detours. We took the road less travelled, the routes on the map marked as “not recommended” and “slippery when wet”. The ride was bumpy, dusty and dirty. The roads were empty and scary. But what an adventure! It took us along the flow of the rivers of the mountain; it showed where the autumn gets its colours from and where the winter gathers the cold. We drove through villages that do not exist and over bridges that still have to be built.

I had a professor who used to say: "We don’t read the Bible, the Bible reads us."

I always wondered what the heck that means.

Let me attempt an explanation:

I think what my old proffie meant was that the stories of the Bible play out in the lives of ordinary people all over the world.

The Spirit inspired truths that carry with them the potential to shape lives, change paths and cultivate good moral characters, need to be lived.

For most of us, that’s like third base.

Modern Religion got stuck at first.

The church I grew up in taught me that a clever Christian is a good Christian. The end in mind of the faith journey is to know everything there is to know about Christianity. The goal is knowledge that we can test, measure and evaluate.

I am confronted by my need to be right. It’s been part of my faith experience for so long. One of the first things that I was taught was that we are right and they are wrong. The world may have lots of questions, but we have in our possession the only right answer. That theology kick started a way of thinking for me. I did not want to engage with people different from me. I did want to hear about the arguments for a new way of thinking, because it might just confuse me.

I know it’s not just me. It’s part of the collective identity of so many religious people. I see it many times. We need to be right. That is how religion works.