so after weeks and months it is finally official – the beautiful val and myself received an invite letter from the simple way to join them by 15 june to start a 19 month job slash ministry…

for those of you who don’t know anything about the simple way i suggest you get hold of a book called ‘the irresistible revolution’ by a guy called shane claiborne – one of my top three books ever and definitely changed my life – the simple way is the community that shane, who wrote that book, lives in and is a part of ministering to – it is in a place called Kensington, Philadelphia [ironically i grew up in a place called Kensington, Johannesburg] and the idea is that we will go and live there and work and minister in the community. we see it largely as a huge learning, stretching experience as we want to live among some people who we think really seem to be doing a good job of seeking God and living it out in real, pratical and world-transforming ways – we also hope that we will be able to add to the community in the different ways we serve

tbV is going to be involved in a few things, the main one of which is managing daily crisis control stuff – so dealing with day to day crises that present themselves and also some community development stuff…

i am going to be largely responsible for the hospitality house which is where people who want to go and check out the life and work of the simple way get to stay for a weekend or week or night or whatever [so if you come and visit my official job will be to look after you, hm] so organising people visiting and staying in connection with those who have and maintaining the house and hopefully getting involved with the magazine they produce called Conspire so hopefully contributing to that.

i think it will only really sink in and feel really real when we are sitting in a plane flying americalandwards but it is nice to finally know [many skype calls and emails since end jan/beginning feb] what we are heading towards. at the end of last year i quit my job believing we had to wait on God for the next step and His hand is really all over this and in seeing us survive after 4 months of no salary [sometimes literally day to day] – val and i have been doing transcription this month so we will have money coming in again at the end of april and may but we are still going to need to trust big and probably extend an invitation for others to get involved when it comes to organising vias and airplane tickets and so on.

in part i think the idea of this, living and working alongside one of my heroes, is a dream come true – one i never actually had but which God has brought to the table and which has captured our attention and excited us – this is the next step in the hunger that started developing maybe 6 years ago for real, authentic, world-and-community-transforming church and it is exciting.

i don’t think the way ahead is going to all be easy, but at least know we know it will be simple.